[Marxism] More on car racing in Argentina

["NÃstor Gorojovsky" <nmgoro@xxxxxxxxx>]

2008/7/12, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
>
> When I was an undergraduate at Bard, I ran around with a group of
>  people who raced motorcycles and sports cars. One of them had the
>  inspiration to organize a showing of Juan Fangio racing films. He was
>  a legend to such people back then. We also burned Castrol oil in the
>  film auditorium, a lubricant used for racing cars that had a distinctive
>  aroma.

I might be wrong but I thihk that the team Fangio worked for was
sponsored by Castrol. But -burning Castrol in the film auditorium is
too much!  Distinctive aroma" might have sounded euphemistic for the
audience.

There is a museum of car racing at Balcarce, province of  Buenos
Aires, the birthplace and hometown of Fangio, who, after he quit
racing was the representative for Mercedes Benz in Argentina (in fact,
it was through his offices that the German firm located the first
truck factory in Argentina by the mid-1950s, at GonzÃlez CatÃn a small
town to the SSW of Buenos Aires City).

The museum at Balcarce, not far away from Mar del Plata, is worth a visit.

Fangio's skills with the steering wheel were the direct product of the
particular conditions of racing in the Argentina of the 30s. There was
(and still exists) a particular, "rallyish", kind of races here which
during those years was almost the single way you could run a race car,
which was known as Turismo de Carretera.

This means literally Cart-road Tourism.

Under British domination, the road system of Argentina was miserable
if not unexistent. There were almost no circuits. Cars were not made
here. So that races had to take place at substandard roads, mostly
dirt roads, with usual ("tourist") cars that were modified for the
race, and the highest degree of skill by the drivers.

This kind of car racing was directly linked with the development of a
grassroots mechanical culture. Most usually, every town in the Pampa
region had at least one (sometimes two, seldom three) racers of
"their" own. Generally, they owned a mechanic repair shop and were
considered local heroes.

Argentina fomented car racing in South America under PerÃn, and in
1948 (if I am not wrong) there was an incredible Buenos Aires-Caracas
race full of unbelievable incidents. One of them: there was a steep
slope in Chile that was to be traversed by a serpentine road
downwards. One of the racers, late on his schedule, decided not to
follow the road and to go straight down the slope. He should have been
disqualified by the authorities, but popular enthusiasm made it
impossible!

During the 60s, car racing was taken over by car-building firms in
Argentina, and "official teams" appeared for the different firms. The
most famous one was the IKA-Torino team who, in 1968 I think, won the
German race at NÃrburgring with the Torino, a car that had been
designed independently in Argentina.

As to the old fashioned independent racers, they were unable to have
the same teams the car producers did have, and attempted to do the
impossible, that is to compete with the "official" teams on their own.
Subsequently, there was a wave of deaths in our races by those times,
and now there remain few, if any, succesful independent racers.

Many car racing rings in Argentina bear the names of these last
fighters of independent racing.

-- 

NÃstor Gorojovsky
El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autorÃa
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