Passion's Wheels

The American male's craving to hand mama a stopwatch and go out and burn up some rubber in a sports car, first noted as a curiosity in the late 1940s, has increased mightily since. In the Sports Car Club of America alone there are 4,000 weekend Fangios taking a run at regional championships. Next week the 400 best will be invited to November's American Road Race of Champions, at Daytona. Artist Ed Kasper has inspected these neurosurgeons, electronics engineers and other such speed merchants, and on the following pages he salutes cars and people in a novel medium: oils on junk. From an auto graveyard he got pieces of steel that he torch-cut to represent the "trueness and ugliness" of a glossy sport's basic materials—and to suggest the love it takes to give them beauty.

Onto this scrap sculpture Kasper has brushed important elements of the club racer's atmosphere: the watchful, informative pit; the ubiquitous flagmen; the control tower.

THREE PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS