In the 1950s Daimler-Benz management authorized the construction of a museum to house the companies growing collection of vehicles in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. The museum was opened 1961, the year the marked Daimler-Benz 75 years of automotive engineering.

The displays were placed over three floors providing a history of Daimler & Benz and of engine and car development from the early days of Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz to the early 1970s. The ground (or 1st in the US) floor contained the early work of Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. The first floor includes the Mercedes-Benz passenger cars produced after 1926, the year that Daimler-Motorengesellschaft and Benz et Cie combined to form Daimler-Benz. The top floor was dedicated to the racing and sports cars from the earliest days to the mid 50s silver arrows. In 2006 Daimler-Benz opened a new museum providing expanded space to display over 160 vehicles. 

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MARCH was formed in 1969. The name being an anagram of the founding partners, Max Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd. The team, based in Bicester near Oxford., built a Formula 3 car (model number 693) that was raced by Ronnie Peterson.   The naming convention adopted by MARCH identified the year of the car with the first two digits and the third identifying the racing class.  The 1969 Formula 3 car was 693.

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The staged spraying of champagne by the race winners actually started as a spontaneous reaction by Dan Gurney after winning the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hour race. Gurney and AJ Foyt were the improbable winners of the event. The two, while fast, were not expected to last the distance, much less lead the majority of the race at a record pace. Dan Gurney led a number of races for Ford only to retire due to mechanical problems; it was Foyt’s first visit to the French race. The Gurney/Foyt team moved into the lead of the race in the second hour and led until the end. The Scarfiotti/Parkes Ferrari 330P4 team drove flat-out for the last hours of the race in an effort to catch the leading Ford. But the Ford Mk IV never missed a beat and won by over four laps.

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Porsche will be the featured make at the 2009 Monterey Historic Automobile Races. Porsche has been featured twice before, first in 1982 and again for the company’s 50th anniversary in 1998.

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Ferrari 312 s/n 0003 was Chris Amon’s primary car for the start of the 1967 Formula 1 season. S/N 0003 was the second car built using Ferrari’s new Tipo 242 3-valve per cylinder (2 intake and 1 exhaust) engine. The 60° V12 had a 77 mm bore and 53.5 mm stroke for a total capacity of 2,989.56 cc with a compression ratio of 11:1. Lucas indirect fuel injection was used and there were two spark plugs per cylinder. The spark plugs were fired by four Marelli coils working through two distributors driven off the rear of the exhaust camshafts. Ferrari rated the engine at 390 bhp at 10,000 rpm. Power was delivered to the road through the Tipo 606 longitudinal gearbox with 5 speeds + reverse. The engine and transmission were housed in the Tipo 606 chassis which used a stressed-bearing body of aluminum panels riveted to a welded tube structure. The nose and cockpit surround were of composite materials.

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