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Six decades after Russ Snowberger wheeled his own cars around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his son John has taken on the job his father never got to finish. This 1952 Indy-style racer sat quietly for decades before the Snowberger family decided its story deserved a second act. What emerges is less a restoration than a homecoming, one built from memory, patience, and a name that once ran with the best at the Brickyard.
Held every May on the Indiana State Fairgrounds the week before the Indy 500, Dana Mecum’s Original Spring Classic has grown into one of the largest muscle car auctions in the country. Its 30th anniversary sale set a then-record $55.6 million across 1,208 cars sold, headlined by a $1.45 million Porsche and a Vault Find Corvette that drew a moment of silence for its late owner. Less than a decade later, the same event was moving over three times that much money.
American muscle cars didn’t die from a single law. Insurance surcharges, emissions rules that cut a 450-horsepower Chevelle engine down to 200 horsepower, and the 1973 oil crisis all hit within a few years of each other. The 1980s comeback cars, like the 302 Mustang and third-gen Camaro, were built for survival, not revival. Read on for how the technology that actually solved the problem didn’t show up for another fifteen years, and why today’s 700-horsepower factory V8s owe more to those lean years than most enthusiasts realize.
In 2017 a road-legal, fully plated McLaren P1 LM lapped the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 6:43.2, burying the standing production record by nearly nine seconds with 1999 Indianapolis 500 winner Kenny Brack at the wheel. Only six of these Lanzante-converted cars were ever built, each one a deliberate tribute to the six original McLaren F1 LMs. Then, instead of loading it onto a trailer, the team simply drove it home to the UK on public roads. Read on for how a converted track car beat every factory at its own game.