Weekend Watching: The Final Targa

This French or Swiss documentary has some spectacular period footage from the 1973 Targa Florio, which was to be the final year of the race as a Championship event. I know this weekend is Le Mans, but for me the Targa Florio really was the ultimate in insane road racing, even if it was never as much of a true test of machinery as Le Mans.  Where else could you find prototype cars practicing on open roads with family sedans and ox carts driving around?!

Comments

[Noah Vale]

Spectacular subject and setting make a great film. Too bad it looks like it was processed in a wine vat...by a wine maker.

[Michael Rose]

That's crazy at 0:42, that sedan is just putting along as if nothing was going on. I wonder if maybe it's an official vehicle of some kind. Looks very pedestrian though.

[Noah Vale]

Michael,

The Targa Florio was always run on public roads in Sicily that were not closed during the event. The circuit practically circled the island; it would have been impossible to close them all.

[Michael Rose]

Cool, thanks for the info.

[Bradley Price]

That's not correct, Noah. The roads were closed during the race itself, but not during the practice sessions. This footage showing the sedans sharing the road with the racing cars was shot during practice. Even the Sicilians aren't that crazy.

[noah vale]

That makes more sense. Thanks for the correction.

[Gabe]

While the practice roads are closed off today (though usually by just parking your tow rig to block a road and driving away from it slowly, then racing back), and it's not a paved road race, American stage rally still has some of this flavor of open road racing. Just through rural US areas and state forests, not Italian villages. And while the cars might not all be state of the art prototypes, the factory backed open class cars have impressive engineering under the hood - not to mention there's also a likeness to a recent Chicane post of a gearbox being rebuilt in pit lane with the team owner. In the first two rallyes of this year I've seen transmissions swapped in parking lots, cars arriving to service on 3 wheels, C pillars that were there at the start of the stage that were not on the a car on the podium, and even a car driven down from Chicago straight to the start line - a swap of the wheels and it was in the race. So if you're feeling nostalgic for this feeling of racing, this is my plug for US stage rally.

[Bradley Price]

Yeah I need to attend one of those events one of these days!!