Automotive Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Richard M. Langworth

Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

5 April 2011

The signature on a fantastic autographed photo of Winston Churchill at Chartwell, which a friend framed and kept on his wall and hid from the light, has faded to nothingness. Even ambient room light will fade ancient inks, and there is nothing to be done.

Back when I was senior editor at Automobile Quarterly, I rescued a wonderful big 3×2-foot photo of the great Grand Prix champion René Dreyfus (the world’s last great Frenchman), and his Type 35 Bugatti, from the dustbin and brought it over to Le Chanteclair, his wonderful French restaurant on 49th Street, Manhattan, for him to inscribe to me.…

“Correrai Ancor Piu Veloce…” Beverly Rae Kimes 1941-2008

3 March 2009

None who read it will ever forget "Man on Fire!": Beverly Kimes’s biography of Tazio Nuvolari. It was one of those signal experiences when you remember where you were. I read it in galleys on the "Broadway Limited" en route to Chicago: started in Newark and put it down somewhere west of Harrisburg. She wound up with the legend on the great racing driver's tombstone: Correrai ancor piu veloce per le vie del cielo. (You will travel faster still upon the highways of heaven.) "Ah Tazio," she ended: "Godspeed." And that's all that really matters in the end: thoughts of old and good times, which eventually blot out the last sad ones. Ah Bev...Godspeed.