Peter
This is not the post I was planning to publish next. That one is “normalizing” to allow me time to look at it agan and figure out if I want to put it up “as is” or massage it more. But Peter Giddings died Sunday and I need to reminisce and perhaps eulogize a bit about him and what he meant to me while the memory as well as the quiet sadness I feel for losing him still permeates my psyche.
I'm first going to include, verbatim, the notification I received from “Vintage Motorsports” magazine, something I would not ordinarily think of doing in my own blog, but which I think is warranted as a general introduction for anyone who did not know Peter, though within the confines of vintage racing I have no idea who that might be. He was that widely known and regarded. Anyway...
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I don't really recall when I first met Peter, but it was no doubt at some (relatively) early CSRG, HMSA, or GRL event...maybe my first Monterey Historic in 1986 or my first Sonoma Classic (as it was called for this first year) in 1987. But the first distinct memory I have was the day I wrecked the Siata in 1987 (see “This Is Not Going To End Well I, II, and III). I remember sitting on the tailgate of my Toyota pickup feeling about as low, dispirited, and yes, disoriented as I can ever remember. Peter sat down, put his arm around my shoulder, and quietly told me that the incident was just bad luck. He told me to take some time to regain my passion and composure, and then put it back together and get back on track. He then generously suggested I bring the car to his place in Alamo, and that he would ask John deBoer to start the work on my car in his spare time. John was, at that point, working for Peter helping maintain the cars mentioned in the VM piece.
But that was Peter...generous, kind, and though clearly a refined “upper class” Brit, totally lacking, at least for other car people, the rather snotty air of superiority and snobbishness which is the stereotypical caricature of so many of these folks. He was quiet and egoless despite his worldwide racing reputation and contacts...the epitome of the English gentleman. And this was no act. Once I got to spend some time with him away from the track I found his “out of the spotlight” persona to be identical to his “on stage” presentation to a wider public.
I visited the Siata a number of times while John worked on it. Peter and his wife Judy, the almost painfully thin blonde he called his “little surfer girl”, lived in a very interesting rural cottage outside the East Bay upscale town of Alamo. The house was all wood and had an “elegant cabin in the woods” feel about it. There were a couple of scattered outbuildings as well, stuffed with Peter's ultra-exotic cars. These were limited only in number but not magnificence. However, to correct one comment in the “Vintage Motorsports” eulogy, these were not all or always “pre War” machines, and even there I need to qualify that term, as Peter's interest in that regard was pre-WWII and not WWI. But the stable often included cars from the immediate pos-WWII era, most notably a Tabot-Lago late 40s Grand Prix car as well as at least one Maserati 250F Formula 1 car (http://petergiddings.com/Cars/250F.html)whichPeter owned at least twice. More about that below. During my visits Peter and Judy were always not only gracious hosts, but genuinely friendly and interested in me and Sherri and treated us as if we were closer friends than was really the case.
Peter and Judy always had big dogs...nothing but Great Danes as best I recall...and at least one of these gentle beasts was name “Tazio” after the great 1930s Alfa Romeo racer Tazio Nuvolari. Not inappropriate at all since Peter either then or later acquired the Alfa in which that driver won perhaps his greatest race ever, the Coppa Ciano,, taking over the car after his own broke an axle and left him seven laps behind. You can find the story here as well as in other places:(https://shop.motorsportmagazine.com/product/View/productCode/ALFAAHILL/)More will be said about this beast later in this article as well. The dogs, Peter, and Judy used a very nice but comparatively unassuming Lazy Daze camper at the track...about the same modest size as my Lance. It is hard to think of the two of them and a Great Dane in this thing, but then it might have been only a track refuge for them and they might have spent their track event nights elsewhere. I didn't know them well enough, nor did I ever think to, ask.
Until my trip back East with the Siata and Don and Alice Baldocchi in 2004 I only saw Peter and Judy at the track and, after the Siata left his place in Alamo, did not spend more than a few minutes at a time with him (see “The Long and Winding Road” series of articles and others from April of 2017). But that fateful first weekend at Lime Rock included an almost uninterrupted 24 hour stretch, part of which gave me an opportunity to, for the first time, really learn bout him in a deeper and less casual way.
Don was foolishly running an experimental block, which turned out to be too thin in the cylinder walls. I won't go into details here as those are covered in the aforementioned posts. Peter participated in this HMSA event at Lime Rock. He had repurchased the Maserati 250F he had formerly owned, and this was its first outing after being shipped back to the US from the UK. It did not run all that well but Peter used the sessions to learn what needed to be done to bring it back to his exacting high standards. After the event he had basically nothing to do and time to kill before flying off to a business meeting...in Asia as best I recall.
I and a number of Hmod enthusiasts urged Don to take them up on the offer of space in front of one of their houses as well as enough parts to cobble together a basic motor with which to at least be able to continue the planned track events for the trip. Don was reluctant, and once I got into it with him re-evaluated my “it can't be that difficult” claim about getting a motor out of or back into the Nardi. It was, as he had claimed, the biggest pain in the ass I think I've ever had working on cars. You had to have the hands of a girl (which I do) and the dexterity and patience of a watchmaker, which I do not.
Oh, and add in 40MPH wind driven torrential rain from the remains of a hurricane and a cold, wet couple of days under a dripping canopy to the equation. Though we did finally successfully install something which promised to at least get the car motoring, Don did not like the way it sounded and refused to use it at Watkins Glen or Mosport. Oh well...you can lead a horse to water, but...
The good news was the time I spent with Peter. With time on his hands and boredom setting in he offered to accompany us to Newtown and “chase parts” or otherwise help, if nothing more than providing “moral support.” Of course I welcomed him. I don't think he came until the next morning, but did indeed pick up some basic supplies like shop towels and drain pans, but what I remember best was his natty attire...black cashmere pullover and medium tan slacks of the same rich (in all ways) material.
And then there was the trip to restock Don's motorhome and my camper with food. Peter drove Alice and I to a nearby grocery, and helped by wheeling the cart and, later, shlepping the goods into the vehicles for us. My fondest memory of this adventure was the looks on the faces of the obviously up-scale women shoppers. Here we were, sweet but rather plump and a bit dowdy Alice in simple attire, me in my grubby work jeans and an equally oil-anointed shirt, and impeccable Peter with hid very proper British accent. I'm sure they were wondering how people who looked like us could afford an English butler!
I don't recall when, where, or how I found time to just chat with Peter, but I remember thinking that, though I had known him for about 20 years at that point, I really knew nothing about how he made a living. Judy always seemed to be working at the track, with some sort of open notebook and a laptop, either in the camper or sitting beside it. Somehow I figured this was not all just things like timing and scoring Peter, but was related to his career and her interaction with it.
So I asked him. And learned he was an obviously well compensated and traveling consultant for high end professional and commercial video equipment, and his major client was Philips Electronics out of the Netherlands. That certainly explained his flight out the next day to some Asian potential or current buyer of that type of gear...mainly TV stations and video production companies. I'm not sure that totally accounted for his taste in the very rare, very exotic, and very expensive to acquire and maintain world of 1930-1955 Formula One and Grand Prix race cars.
My last anecdote, at least for the moment pending any new awakening of my sclerotic brain, involves my grandson and that marvelous Nuvolari Alfa, though I recently read a piece by Peter which led Sherri and I to both think he was talking about Adin. Another case of brain fade by me? Or him? Or both?
The way I recall it Tristan was about four or five at the time, and I'm pretty sure we were at Laguna for the Historics, so it would have been the third weekend in August, and maybe 2005? Peter was racing the Tipo C 8C-35 Nuvolari Alfa I mentioned earlier in this writeup (http://petergiddings.com/Cars/TipoC50013.html),and it was parked nearby, angled slightly toward the aisle between two rows of pits. Peter was sitting in a lawn chair, in his driving suit though I don't recall whether this was in preparation for time on track or a wind down after. Sherri and I stopped to speak with him, and perhaps Tristan's eyes had wandered to that red monster of a car nearby. I think I might have indicated I was going to take the child over to look at it, but at any rate Peter told me to put him in the driver's seat.
So with this crowd of people clustered around the car and out of earshot of this exchange, I blithely marched over with the boy, picked him up and plopped him onto the seat. The steering wheel was as big as his entire body. He could not see out of the car but only had a view of the bottom of that wheel, the lower edge of the dash, and the footwell. There was a noticeable intake of air by the spectators, wondering who the hell had the balls to put a kid in this car, apparently without asking Peter, who was sitting there a dozen yards away with a grin on his face. The audience obviously knew whohe was and that this wonderful beast was part of Peter's stable of toys.
In Peter's version what he described as a tall, handsome young man who owned a Bugeyed Sprite spoke to him at an event about the time as a young child his dad had put him in the seat of the car, and that now he had followed his father's path into racing old cars.
Hmm...deja vu all over again? Was it Adin or was this yet just another starry-eyed soon-to-be protege and entrant to the wonderful world of cars? In either or any case it speaks strongly, once again, about just what kind of man Peter was, and how much I will miss him.
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| From Veloce Today© Peter in that magnificent Alfa 8C-35 |
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