Carpokes Porsche Forum

Here's a link to a pretty interesting and well done documentary about the Can Am racing series. Lots of great racing footage and plenty of big name drivers. I love how Porsche shows up late to the game, and within a couple seasons utterly crushes the competition.

icb wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 9:48 am Here's a link to a pretty interesting and well done documentary about the Can Am racing series. Lots of great racing footage and plenty of big name drivers. I love how Porsche shows up late to the game, and within a couple seasons utterly crushes the competition.

Will put this on my list to watch when I get a bit of time. Thanks for the heads up and the link!

This was great! I got to see the Can Am at Watkins Glen the first time when I was a wide eyed 14 year old, then again a couple years later when the Chaparral 2J Sucker car ran in 1970 with Jackie Stewart driving. I also attended a retrospective Walter Mitty type gathering at Road America that had quite a few Can AM cars from several seasons....when they went by the first couple of laps fairly close together your whole body would vibrate from all those 7+ liter engines going by...quite an experience.
Thank you for sharing that link.

I finally set aside the time to watch this Can Am retrospective compilation film of many of the Can Am races from 1966 - 1973/1974. Simply amazing - the cars and their evolution during the series, the drivers, the tracks, the actual driving, the incredible power and speed, the limitless "do whatever it takes" mentality.

Outstanding footage, especially considering that 60 or so years ago it was regular emulsion film footage that didn't allow for limitless recording. There must have been a lot of effort scouring film footage archives from around the world. Also the retrospective was ably narrated by Sam Posey and Jim Hall, with many filmed comments at the races from the racing greats of the day. (Were they the best ever? Probably. They certainly knew no fear.)

Pardon my Hijack but here are a couple videos (should you be interested) of one of the stranger and unique cars from the Can-Am, the original Shadow which was revolutionary in its initial incarnation, but later versions were more conventional in design.
The first is an SAE video during the beginning of ZOOM trends. The beginning of the video has sketchy audio but once you get into the meat of the video, it clears up. Pete Lyons is a journalist who's written books on Can-Am and who used to cover F1 in Europe at one point. Dean Case has been involved in covering motorsports for years and is currently the Nissan Motorsports Press Officer.


The second is a more recent video of the original Shadow with some retrospectives with Trevor Harris who designed the car.