Vintage Sports Car - No. 1 - 2007

Review of Equations of Motion from Vintage Sports Car

Who of us isn"t familiar with the exploits of Bill Milliken. one of the VSCCA"s revered honorary members? The consummate enthusiast and racing driver of the fifties, who brought to the sport the practiced eye and exceptional creativity of an outstanding engineer. Milliken had enough adventures in racing cars to fill several lifetimes. Some of those stories have been retold in these pages over the years, including driving a Bugatti overnight from Buffalo to central Pennsylvania for a highly illegal (but great fun) speed run on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, to his winning of the first ever Mount Equinox Hillclimb in the FWD Special back in May of 1950. He has a corner named after him on the old Watkins Glen circuit due to a little incident in a Bugatti GP car there as well. The engineering finesse in that story includes the fact that he later modified a Bug with an automatic transmission. In truth his motoring exploits seem almost endless and arc c1carly the stuff of legends. But, they are only a small part of the man and his adventures and few are aware enough of all the others.

If Bill"s old friend. Rene Dreyfus hadn"t already used the title My Two Lives, for his autobiography Milliken could have called this tome My Three or Four Lives.

The book covers his years in the second world war as an engineer and pilot at Boeing developing bombers and other aircraft. His experiences there amid the politics and the dangers of test flying new airframes are enough for one life. His automotive passions and experiences racing right after the war are more than enough for a second life and the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory would easily make a third. Beyond that are the makings of several more.

Bill Milliken has led a life of passion for things that move. He built his first airplane in a barn in Maine when only a teenager. We saw it at the Owls Head Museum the last time we visited. He worked on some of the most important aircraft of the century and has done as much for automotive technology and for motor racing as nearly anyone alive. Throughout his book we get not only an eyewitness account of all of this but a window into the passionate enthusiast"s soul that made it reality. Milliken has always had an uncanny ability to tell the story of what happened in a manner that brought us all into the picture.

Our circle of friends in Ihe VSCCA is filled with the souls of little boys who are fascinated by anything that moves or makes noise. If, in that respect, we are like J.M. Barrie"s Lost Boys then Bill Milliken is our Peter Pan. His autobiography belongs on all of our shelves. I"m going to get my copy signed.

Review of Equations of Motion from Vintage Sports Car - No. 1 - 2007