John Allen has been photographing cars (and a few aircraft, trains and other transport subjects) since 1968, and from 1981 he’s been writing about them, too. Although he earned his living as a Chartered Accountant, retirement from that most boring of professions has left him free to concentrate on marketing and adding to his large archive of images.
Whilst John still takes the (now digital) photographs, his wife Jenny deals with the administration, tends the archive (and tries to keep track of where everything is), and does the scanning of the pictures.
The archive is a long way from being fully catalogued, but gradually the many thousands of photographs are being sorted, labelled and filed so that they can be retrieved with the minimum of stress!
Most of the images are of sports-racing cars, at such venues as Le Mans, Brands Hatch, Silverstone, Laguna Seca, Phoenix, Road America, Watkins Glen, the Nürburgring, California Speedway, Lime Rock, Donington and Goodwood.
We major on the Ford GT40, but do not neglect such great cars as Porsche (eg 906, 907, 908, 910, 911, 917, 928, 934, 935, 936, and especially the 956 and 962), Cobra Daytona, Matra, BMW M1, Sauber-Mercedes, Ferrari (eg 512S, 365GTB4, 312P, 308GTB, 512BB), Jaguar (XJR series), Lola (eg T70, T280, T282), Rondeau, Lancia, Chevron, Aston Martin, Peugeot, Mazda (eg 707, 787), Corvette, Ford C100, Alfa Romeo T33, Toyota, Nissan, Lancia, Mustang, Gulf Mirage, Eagle, and a host of others.
We have a few people-shots, too, concentrating on drivers (eg Henri Pescarolo, Hans Stuck) who competed with the sports-racing cars of the period.
Now that sports-car racing is (in John’s opinion) not quite as interesting as it once was, more images from today’s vintage racing scene are being added to the collection.
Our tally of published photographs is now about 1000, and we hope to see it reach another milestone before too long!
