PANAMERICANA - Panamericana

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Can-Am® Edition

Design Ethos

As the story written below by our friend Henry says, this is probably the most epic racing series ever. The colours on the dial come from the Mclaren and Lola race cars and the digit fonts from the numbers used on the side.

Can-Am®  - Written by Henry Hope-Frost.

Take a selection of the world’s fastest and most versatile drivers, equip them with massive, purpose-built, V8-powered sports-racers, unleash them around North America’s finest road courses and see what transpires.

That’s exactly what happened in the almost-mythical and much-lamented Canadian-American Challenge Cup in the second half of the 1960s and first half of the ’70s.

Running to motorsport’s governing body the FIA’s Group 7 regulations, featuring unlimited engine capacity and precious few other technical restrictions, Can-Am encouraged free-thinking from designers and engineers and required supreme bravery from drivers.

As a result, some outrageous machines appeared from inventive and imaginative brains at Chaparral, Lola, McLaren and Porsche. And with them came such wacky and wonderful science as 8-litre, 1000bhp engines, sophisticated, cockpit-adjustable aerodynamics and space-age materials.

With big-name aces, many of them Grand Prix heroes, on the driving strength – think John Surtees, Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Denny Hulme, Bruce McLaren, Peter Gethin, Jackie Stewart, Peter Revson, George Follmer, Mark Donohue and Jackie Oliver, all of whom won races – the series was as popular as the cars were powerful.