The first road racing in the Monterey Bay area* after World War 2 was launched under the auspices of the Sports Car Club of America on Nov. 5, 1950. There were four races starting at noon, and the overall winner was Californian Phil Hill, in one of 240 alloy-bodied Jaguar XK120s. The XK120, launched in 1949, offered performance that had been available pre-war only in cars 2 to 3 times as expensive, like Alfa Romeo and Bugatti. Hill would show up every year for the Pebble Beach races...
...which wound at first through the Del Monte Forest along a 1.9 mile route. The organizers did not remove trees along the race route, as Pebble Beach was already an exclusive residential zone linked to a famous golf course. Many of the ten thousand spectators stood between those trees, separated from the track by a rope and occasional hay bales, and were advised in the brochure: "The public is requested not to cross the highway and to remain at a safe distance during the trials and the running of the race..." As the photos below show, the concept of "safe distance" turned out to be a pretty subjective one.
For the 1951 running of the Pebble Beach races, Phil Hill acquired a prewar Alfa Romeo 8C2900B, a car powered by a GP engine, and which might offer some performance advantage over the production sports cars in the field, even though they were newer. That theory was derailed when Bill Pollack, driving a crude (by comparison) British Allard J2 powered by a mass-produced Cadillac V8, passed Hill and eventually won the race, with Hill (left in photo below) finishing 4th in the Alfa, with its more temperamental supercharged, aluminum twin-cam straight eight.
In the photo above, Pollack, in the J2 on the left, makes his move. In 1951, the 2nd year of the Pebble Beach races, the course was extended to 2.1 miles with a tighter turn replacing a sweeping arc. That course design remained until the end of racing in the Del Monte Forest...
Bill Pollack won again in '52, and to some people this may have presaged the rise of mass-produced engines. Not to racer Ernie McAfee, though. By 1953 at his Sunset Boulevard dealership in LA, McAfee (shown with a Siata 208S) offered Ferraris and Alfa Romeos alongside now-forgotten mass-produced English compacts like the Hillman Minx. The Siata, with its 70-degree Fiat V8 and 4-wheel independent suspension, was briefly popular in the 2 liter class. Road & Track tested it that year and praised its handling, looks and 12.4 second 0-60 time, but not its $5,300 price. The Triumph TR-2 they tested a year later did 0-60 two-tenths of a second quicker, and was only 2 mph slower (104 mph) at less than half the price ($2,448). It was the sign of another trend in amateur racing, as the British export drive offered weekend racers MGs, Austin-Healeys and Triumphs at Chevy prices.
On the other hand, if you really wanted to clean up in the 2 liter class, McAfee could offer you a Ferrari 500 Mondial for over twice the price of that Siata, or if you wanted to go for broke (in all senses) one of the new Ferrari 250MM series, with the Columbo-designed 3-liter SOHC V12 that would eventually become an endurance racing star in the 250GT. Phil Hill raced his 250MM on the left in the '53 Pebble Beach event, and took the overall win. He didn't win everything, though. The lady in the passenger seat eventually married Ernie McAfee. The car on the right is an even rarer Ferrari 340 Mexico, one of 4 tubular-chassis cars with Lampredi-designed 4.1 liter V12s intended for the Carrera Panamericana, and the only open spider.
Sometime car builder Sterling Edwards frequently competed at Pebble Beach, and in 1954 he recovered from an early spin to take the overall win in his '53 Ferrari 340MM, one of 10 built and bodied by Vignale to a design by Michelotti, like both Ferraris above. The Edwards Ferrari is the center car below. Like all other winning cars in the Pebble Beach series, it still exists.
The rainy 1955 event would be won by Phil Hill, his third victory in the Del Monte Forest, in a Ferrari 750 Monza, a twin-cam 4 cylinder, 3-liter car. During this period, Ferrari named cars after their individual cylinder displacements; thus, a 250 twelve-cylinder was a 3 liter engine, and so was a 750 four-cylinder...
Phil Hill also won Best of Show at that year's Pebble Beach Concours, the first time the event had been won by something other than a new (or almost new) car. The winning car was the 1931 Pierce-Arrow in which he'd learned to drive. This trophy for a Thirties car was likely a sign of a trend; maybe it was not coincidental that several books on classic cars were published around this time.
By the next year, Ernie McAfee's Sunset Boulevard dealership had become "the largest dealer in Italian cars in the United States", and offered the Maserati brothers' OSCA (trendy in the SCCA after Stirling Moss won the '54 Sebring) as well as Alfa, Siata and Ferrari. By 1956, fins were trendy too, but not many copies of the Boano-designed Ferrari coupe body below found buyers. More Ferraris would be sold after Enzo introduced his "production car", the 250GT, in 1957. By then, however, McAfee would not be around to reap any profits.
One of the newcomers at the 1956 race was driven by an old hand, Bill Pollack, who'd won in 1951 and '52 with an Allard. This time he showed up in an even more obscure British road rocket, the HWM* "Stovebolt Special", a former Formula 2 car with cycle fenders added for sports car events, and 2 significant upgrades by Tom Carsten: a new Chevy V8 replaced the 2-liter Alta four, and there were disc brakes at all four wheels. Making use of these amenities, Pollack was able to lead a field including #276, Ernie McAfee in a Ferrari 735LM, a brute powered by a 4.4 liter inline DOHC six, Phil Hill in a Ferrari 860 Monza powered by a 3.4 liter inline DOHC four, Carroll Shelby in the Ferrari 750 Monza Hill had driven to victory in '55, Pete Woods (D-Type Jaguar) and Bob Wittke (Austin-Healey). Eventually, differential trouble in the HWM dropped Pollack out of contention for the lead, but by that time those looming trees had intervened in a more fateful way...
Bill Pollack had dropped down to 4th when Ernie McAfee missed a shift and locked up the drum brakes on Ferrari #276, which led to his fatal collision with a tree, the only fatality in the seven years of races at Pebble Beach. Carroll Shelby in the Ferrari Monza that Hill had piloted in '55 took a somber win after the race was restarted. McAfee's fatal accident was enough to end motor racing in the Del Monte Forest, and to prompt the SCCA and local promoters to seek a suitable location for a safer course design. They found one at nearby Laguna Seca and started a road racing series there in 1957, but the story of how that happened is one we'll save for another day...
*History Notes:
Frequent contributor, vintage racer, and historian Keith Carlson notes that motor racing really started on Monterey Peninsula in 1903, when the owners of the Hotel Del Monte built a one-mile oval for racing. The original 1880 hotel burned down in 1924, and was replaced by the current building, designed by Lewis Hobart and Clarence Tantau, in 1926-'27. Guests eventually included the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. The Del Monte Hotel built Seventeen Mile Drive as a sightseeing route for clients, and the sights included what soon enough became Pebble Beach. In 1942 the hotel was leased to the US Navy for training technicians, later housed the Naval Postgraduate School, and was renamed Herrmann Hall. Seventeen Mile Drive now hosts classic car tours during Monterey Car Week, coming back full circle to its original purpose as an excursion route.
Frequent contributor, vintage racer, and historian Keith Carlson notes that motor racing really started on Monterey Peninsula in 1903, when the owners of the Hotel Del Monte built a one-mile oval for racing. The original 1880 hotel burned down in 1924, and was replaced by the current building, designed by Lewis Hobart and Clarence Tantau, in 1926-'27. Guests eventually included the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. The Del Monte Hotel built Seventeen Mile Drive as a sightseeing route for clients, and the sights included what soon enough became Pebble Beach. In 1942 the hotel was leased to the US Navy for training technicians, later housed the Naval Postgraduate School, and was renamed Herrmann Hall. Seventeen Mile Drive now hosts classic car tours during Monterey Car Week, coming back full circle to its original purpose as an excursion route.
*Footnotes:
The saga of Britain's HWM was retold here in "Forgotten Classic: HWM---Racing Into Obscurity on Alta, Jaguar and Chevy Power", posted on November 23, 2020.
The saga of Britain's HWM was retold here in "Forgotten Classic: HWM---Racing Into Obscurity on Alta, Jaguar and Chevy Power", posted on November 23, 2020.
Photo Credits:
Top: San Francisco Chronicle
2nd: Pebble Beach Concours Archive
3rd: Pebble Beach Resorts
4th & 5th: Dr. John Skivington, on tamsoldracecarsite.net
6th: North American Motortsports Pages
7th: Bart Jonkers on pinterest.com
8th: Collection of Phil Hill
9th: Del Monte Trophy Race Group
10th: K500.com
11th: Pebble Beach Concours Archive
12th: Ernie McAfee Importer & Distributor
13th: Don Meacham, on tamsoldracecarsite.net
14th: Don Palmer, on tamsoldracecarsite.net
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