About the photo

by Dennis Wesserling

The photo was taken during the Summer of 1991. I remember all of us in the building being shuffled out to the patio so that Mike Soper’s photo crew could get the shot. I seem to remember Mike directing the crowd while standing on a ladder and speaking through a bullhorn. A few weeks after the picture was taken everyone at Design Staff received a nice 17″ x 25″ glossy copy of it. Unfortunately, sometime throughout the years my copy disappeared, but there has to be several hundred copies of it out there somewhere. I see another familiar face every time I zoom in for close inspection of the picture.

Several month’s ago I received an email from retiree Nick Houvras. He wondered if I, or anyone for that matter, still had a copy of the photo. It was then that I included in my Muldoon’s Lunch Bunch reminder email a request to borrow a copy of the photo from anyone who might have one. Rich Barbour came through. He still had his copy safely stashed away at his home.

It was quite a job to scan and process the photo. Being of such large size I had to scan it in eight segments, not to mention the fact that Rich had stored the photo rolled-up, so it was a challenge to keep the document in position. I used a fairly high resolution to scan: 300 dpi. The work got a bit tedious when I used my photo processing program to join all of the segments back together digitally, trying to make the seams where the pieces join as invisible as possible. A tug here, a stretch there, shift a bit, etc. When completed I saved the photo in .jpg format. It’s almost 4MB and measures 5100 x 3300 pixels.

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The first chapter,“Laying the Foundation,” is the history of what the climate was like at Ford in the years prior to 1950 and the events that led to the design of the 1949 Ford. The full-color book has 182 pages, softbound. ISBN 1-931128-14-6. By the way, yours truly designed both books and covers.

Every chapter includes a timeline, pricing, and model information. There are many two-page photo spreads in the book. The gallery in this post is a collection of photos from Fords of the Fifties.

Thanks to Mike Parris and Howard Fisher.

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Porsche 917K at Riverside

In March of 1980 I was assigned, as a staff photographer at Argus Publishers, to meet L.A. Times owner/publisher Otis Chandler at his private warehouse to photograph a couple of cars from his collection. There were no exterior signs or indications of what lay inside the building, but it held Duesenbergs, Porsches, motorcycles, an Olds woody like one Chandler had as a teenager, and an assortment of other beautiful collector pieces. After taking photos of a Porsche 904 and a Speedster, Chandler asked me if I would like to come out to Riverside Raceway the following month to photograph his 917-K, the one Steve McQueen drove in LeMans. How fast could I say, “Yes.”

When arriving at the classic road course a couple of weeks later, I found that Chandler had rented the track for the day, brought his 917-K, his Mark Donohue 917-30 Sunoco CanAm car, and his then-current 935 twin turbo IMSA spec Porsche. He was licensed for IMSA competition and had his co-driver John Thomas with him.

After photographing all three cars, Thomas said that Chandler was thinking of selling the two 917s and he wanted to get an audio recording inside the “K” before it went to a new owner. So I donned my helmet, strapped myself in the “passenger seat” of the 917-K and grabbed the tape recorder. Once John was situated in the pilots slot the crew closed the swing-up door panels and he proceeded to fire up the big flat twelve. It fired up with a loud “rip” that sent a sharp chill up my spine and god, did it sound great. Slipping the clutch he brought it out of the pits and got up to a reasonable speed, still letting the transmission oil and tires warm up first. He went through a series of accelerate-and-brake motions to get the brakes up to temp also. After one cruising lap he began to pick up the pace significantly, double clutching in to every corner with the crash box and smiling as the flat twelve powered us out of each apex. Coming out of turn eight and on to the long back straight, Thomas was now in full throttle mode with that glorious sound ripping from dual open headers—right behind our helmets. Touching 160 mph before the dog-leg at the end, Thomas hit the brakes for turn nine, fighting the 917’s steering and man handling it through the corner. It might not have been the best mannered of vehicles but my goodness, those twelve singing cylinders.

By lap four, Thomas was bringing it hard through the esses, down to first in turn six and on the throttle to the off-camber turn seven. He was laughing out of seven and kept both of us grinning from ear to ear, just hearing the big twelve rev. What g-force, what acceleration and what a scary chassis and brake combination. What a car. What a great day.

Listen to the recording Mike made from inside of the 917K of his laps around Riverside!

Photography by Mike Parris

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Mike wrote and photographed all of the cars that are featured in his two books published by California Bill’s Automotive Handbooks, Fords of the Fifties and Fords of the Sixties.

Mark Donohue, captain of the Roger Penske Sunoco Javelin Trans Am car. Great shot by Mike Parris.

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