I wish there would be a spiritual successor to can am because imagine a racing series like this nowadays with modern safety standards but also modern ways on making car go brrrr

Can-Am was the most creative and exciting period of motor racing to exist. As a child, I marveled at what could only be called supercars back then.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s I was a tech inspector for SCCA. I had the privilege of working the CAN-AM races of ‘69, ‘70, ‘71 and 73 at the (now long defunct, covered over and over built) Riverside International Raceway. I met Jim Hall, Bruce McLaren, Mark Donahue, Denny (“She’ll come right by race day”) Hulme, Roger Penske and a host of other drivers, professional and amateur, of the time. Great fun at a wonderful time in motor sport.

I am old enough to have had these cars as Hot Wheels. All our favorite was the Chaparral 2E. The wing blew our minds.

I saw the Can Am series in 1972 and 1973 at what was then called Donnybrooke Raceway (now named Brainerd International Raceway) in central Minnesota. The '72 race was won by the late Francois Cevert, a good friend of Jackie Stewart. The track boasts the fastest turn one in America. I stood on the inside of turn one and watched the faster Can Am cars enter the corner at or near 200 MPH. Sights and sounds embedded in my mind for life. While turn one is still in partial use the track has been modified to eliminate the long front straight, slowing the approach to turn one. In '72 Milt Minter and Jackie Oliver came in second and third. Mark Donohue finished 17th after a puncture. Others such as Peter Revson, Denny Hulme and David Hobbs failed to finish for typical reasons of that era, smoking engine, cracked block and broken tie rod. The push for safety and the overwhelming dominance of Porsche horsepower spelled the end of Can Am. It was a time when aerodynamics were beginning to be seriously explored and horsepower was limited only by the quality of the materials used. Racing dynasties that live on to this day were born in Can Am.

I love the Chapparal 2E. Engineer: How big should the wing be Mr Hall? Mr Hall: YES

I was working at GM in Europe during this period and was an avid CanAm fan. Pete Lyons wrote the race reports for the British car magazine, Autosport, which I still follow today. There were rumors going around the Jim Hall was running a covert aerodynamics research operation for GM engineering. I'm inclined to believe this as GM engineering were a source of a lot of 'wacky' ideas that never saw the light of day in Detroit, but in Texas, away from the prying eyes of executive management, at Rattlesnake Raceway, Jim's private track, they could play to their hearts content. I'm fairly sure that the aluminum big blocks used by McLaren originated as part of a GM research project into making car engines from aluminum, especially those with linerless sintered metal cylinders for light weight and low friction, as eventually used in The Chevy Cosworth Vega blocks. The low friction surface was essentially sprayed on the linerless bores. That technology is common now but far ahead of the engineering then.

This includes the best description of the Chaparrals (the most innovative race cars of their time and even years later!). They were so unique that most of the people don't take the time to understand what Hall was trying to do and the result was that it sounds like they were just goofy cars. As a Chaparral/Jim Hall fan, I really appreciate the time that was spent to try to accurately explain Jim Hall's creations. I also appreciate the dive into the most amazing racing series ever - CAN AM!!! Thank you!

Two Kiwis who were so successful it was called the Bruce and Denny show! Bruce designed and built the cars and he and Denny drove them. Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme and the McLaren M8F. Over a period of 5 years they together managed to win a total of 38 races.

This is why historic racing is the only one to watch. Seeing, and feeling, cars from this competition and F5000s roaring down a straight is just…. An experience. Words can’t explain the feeling.

Literally the best racing ever. Best cars and drivers. I do wish someone could bring back a series like this.

I had the great pleasure of growing up going to Can-Am races with my mechanical, engineer, father and then later some Formula One for a dozen years Can-Am was truly magical. Amazing. The chaparral fan carswere just awesome I am thoroughly grateful I got to see them.

I am forever thrilled to have had a conversation with the great man himself - Jim Hall. It was at Goodwood FoS in the late 1990s; I asked him what car of his was the most fun to drive. Answer: the Chaparral 2A. Very cool experience. Thanks for making this video, Scott.

The closest you can get to seeing newer innovations and designs for cars or just something new and insane on cars is Time Attack and Hill climbs, always makes for some of the most entertaining watch even though they're just trying to get a better time.

As a kid in the late 60's/early 70's, I'd turn every pink eraser I had into a Can-Am racecar. Drawing wheels on the sides, air inlet up front, and a cockpit on top looking down ... so much fun to day dream in class. Can-Am; the coolest racing series ever ... and it's not even close.

I loved Can-Am when I was a kid. So much innovation. I am an engineer now and Can-Am had something to do with that. Also as a result of Can-Am I have an appreciation for Sport race cars. In SCCA in the '70's Sport Racers were a popular and favorite class. You video was great, but you are only touching the tip of the iceberg as you mentioned. And those big block V8's sounded great, made lots of power and were reliable, considering how much power they were making. There was so much innovation in Can-Am you can do a series just on engines, then another on Chassis development. Then the teams. My favorite was Chaparral, and second was UOP Shadow.

I'd always known CAN-AM was beyond ridiculous but your video really captures just how much craziness and innovation happened in this series, fantastic video!

After the Can-Am died, a lot of the McLarens , Lolas and a few Porsches ended up in the SCCA A-Sports Racing division, I can remember going up to the now closed Westwood circuit outside of Vancouver, BC, Canada and watching them thunder around the circuit. I also go to watch Gilles Villeneuve, Bobby Rahal and other future great drivers between 1975 to 1977, before I got posted to West Germany in June 1978.

Without meaning any disrespect to Jim Hall, it bears mentioning that he had a lot of assistance - both financial and engineering - from Chevrolet. Along similar lines, the Chaparral 2K Indy car shown briefly at the end of this video was designed largely by John Barnard, not Hall (though the latter implies otherwise).

"so the suction didn't leak out" - 🙌💪😂 Physics salutes your script sir 🖖

My god we need to bring this back : £150M cost cap, decent safety standards but no limits on fuel, engine size, tyres, aero, etc

At 17:30 you list the dominating McLaren cars. however the M8A never dominated the 69' season, it was the M8B with a high mount wing. The B actually won every single race that season making it the most winning Can-Am car ever.

The chaparral cars and the McLaren M8C are some of my favorite historic race cars of all time

917/30 Porsche was the best by a mile. 1580hp in qualifying. Weighed 800kg. 0-60 in 2.2sec, top speed of 250mph.

Great send up for a once great racing series. I attended a Can-Am race at Mosport in the early 70s and it remains one of the best experiences in my life. Beautiful cars, great drivers, great sounds , fantastic speeds!! When the field roared past....the ground shook! Saw Mark Donohue race the turbo Porsche.. Best looking car...the UOP Shadow!

Great video that reminds us when Cars were Cars, these CAN-AM race cars are basically XXL size and power of go karts when the outer shell is removed.

Fantastic job of covering story. I as a college student was lucky enough to watch can am at Laguna Seca in the late 60s and 70s, it was fantastic! Years later I raced my Formula Ford at laguna seca and sears point. A dream come true.

11:10, there's a hill climb car being made now with 4 S1000RR engines

I love this channel's series on racing/f1/other "with no rules", every single one of these videos is fascinating.

Can-Am was the pinnacle motorsports venue. Innovation over rules made it a real mans race series!

So you are telling me that Speed Racer (Meteoro) was real 😅

YES, PLEASE, MORE CAN AM VIDS, LOVE THIS STUFF!!!

“Rattlesnake Raceway” was the Chaparral factory’s test loop right on the property. It wasn’t a track open to anyone else.

my brother and I spent 3 summers following Can-Am all over NE North America, from our local tracks of Mosport and Mount Tremblant to 8 hour drives to tracks such as Road America. You got incredibly close to these monsters at most tracks, and what you saw and heard was barely contained violence at incredible speeds. Plus, the cars were beautiful, especially McLaren. No other form of racing has gripped me like that in all these years. The pinnacle to us was the Bruce and Denny Show.

One thing that you missed is the fact that the McLaren CanAm team was the first to demonstrate aerodynamically generated downforce with the under body. That doesn't show up in pictures but the engineers had pressure ports installed in their test cars and verified negative pressure in testing. They had a bit of celebration and then zipped their mouths about it. Porsche learned tourbocharging from Penske and Mark Donahue who had been racing turbocharged engines since 1970. Turbocharging was a thing in Indy racing since 1967 and won most pavement races from 1968 on. When the Penske team was brought on to Porsche's CanAm program they were surprised as the level of Porsche's knowledge and how much they could teach them about making turbocharging work. Jim Hall got most of his best ideas from advanced engineering at Chevrolet. They could not race it by company rules but they rolled the test items out the back door for Hall to work with. I would say that he had to do much work getting the concepts to the racetrack but the 2H was the exception as a car that Hall initiated.from scratch. If you wish to learn more then find a copy of "Chevrolet Racing?" By Paul Van Valkenburgh published 1972. Also the Chaparral Indy car was copied off the Lotus 78 design and Hall never would acknowledge that which was one of the reason Al Unser and Hall parted ways after Unser drove the car it's first year. I suppose PR is designed to be self serving but the claims made in the early 1980's by Hall Racing were beyond the normal in the twisting of the truth.

My first Can-Am race when I was six years old was mid Ohio 1971. Welcome to sports car racing kid. It will never be this good ever again.

At 15:15 you said the Chaparral 2H was the first to have a composite chassis. The 1st Chaparral 2 had a fiberglass monocoque chassis and only later did he use aluminum (2E I believe and Hap Sharp called it the eyeball shaker). Hall attributed using fiberglass enabled quick repairs for minor accidents. Jim Hall and Colin Chapman were the giants of race car innovation in that time period. It's been just evolutionary since.

I think that footage between 12:36 to 12:51 is footage from the event at Mid-Ohio that year. That looks exactly like the S section that is corner 4, 5, and 6.

I got to see a few CanAm races at Watkins Glen and Ste Jovite and never forgot them. This was a brilliant video -- thank you!

Awesome video! Love the series and I would love to see you talk about McLarens, Shadows and Lolas too, your videos are always so interesting and I am learning something new every time!

I love this series. First time I got real exposure to it was when my dad got me a DVD called the Can Am the Speed Odyssey. Seeing all these cool cars the rapid changes they went through from season to season with Jim Hall and Chaparral leading the way in outside the box thinking. Shame they didn't have more success. From a financial and safety standpoint I can see why a series like this more than likely will never return since it can get out hand really quickly, but I do wish there was a spiritual successor.

I, like many other youngsters, were doing slot car racing at slot car tracks and I remember the one on College Avenue in Berkeley (California) or Oakland maybe, had a man there running the place who built his own. He put weights on the rear wing so when the car was braking it came up and these little model cars running with metal brushes in a slot in the smooth track would just fly ! Even the Chapparal that I had by Matel or whoever made it, was pretty fast. I think there are actually slot car tracks still in operation somewhere in the usa. Thanks Driver for the video. My cousin and I went to Laguna Seca a time or two, not sure what we watched it's been so long. Can Am cars were always my favorite to watch on tv must have been where I saw them.

The 917 was the most spectacular sports rating car I ever saw. In 1970 as a 17 year old kid, two motor Journalists in a Honda N600 test car took me to Brands Hatch for the BOAC 500 mile race. The weather was atrocious and at the end of the first lap we had to run for cover as a black Lola T70 was spinning towards us as we (journalists) were just leaving the starting line. But to watch Pedro Rodriguez and Leo Kinnunen lap after lap hurtling down the main straight with the car briefly wiggling every time they shifted from 3rd to 4th was an amazing sight. At that time Rodriguez was the world's best driver in the wet. Needless to say they won. The car really was revolution and over time a number of drivers acquired the skill to handle them successfully.

Can-Am really need to come back. Imagine how immense the cars would have been with those rules. I can only imagine ground effects, ABS, TC, DRS, blown diffuser, double diffuser, fan, active suspenion, DAS, X-wing, brake steer, and many more innovations from F1. Not only that, cars can have 3,000 HP, and have the thermal efficiency of V6T power units.

6:35 - That's allot of unsprung weight. Less unsprung weight means faster acting suspension to keep tire in contact with the track over bumps. example - Lotus 72's inboard brakes.

A racing series that actually sounds interesting to watch?! Why is this not a thing now? We have decades of new racing knowledge that we could incorporate into a new series

Those were the days when the rule book said what your car must have or do but nothing about what it could not have or not do. Then in recent years it has turned around completely and frustrated me greatly when I was helping a friend build a car for the MG Trophy Championship in the UK. It was very irritating, I carried many ideas forward from my time as a racer but the modern rules just would not let me innovate. The rules said what the specification of the car must be and what modifications were allowed then ANYTHING WHICH FALLS OUTSIDE THESE STIPULATIONS IS OUTLAWED. It made all the cars the same, there was no place for innovative ideas anymore, no opportunity to experiment with an idea that nobody else had thought of as I used to successfully do. Very disspiriting, it put me right off and I gave up. I sympathise with Jim Hall. I had a motto - "If you do things the same as everybody else you will never be faster, if you do things differently than anybody else then you may well be faster". But if you are slower then it was still a learning point, I knew what didn't work which in itself was an advantage. I didn't ever tell anybody what I was doing and what did and did not work for me and could never leave my car unguarded from prying eyes, I even ground all markings off my tyres except the BS AU153 marking which proved that they were UK road legal (but a very soft rubber mix made for me by a remoulder).

This is awesome with the oldschool racecar version and design's. Really ahead of time and technology, and still used today different

I love how comical he did it 23:32

8:51 look how low to the ground the car is compared to the guy beside it. WOW! I'll never complain about a Miata being too low to the ground again 😅

Born in 57, grew up watching Can-am and Trans-am. Penske Camaros and Halls Chaparrals were my favorites. Started drag racing in 73 with a 69 Z/28 and l'm still building my own 302s. No small block has that sound and nothing will ever sound as powerful as a big block chevy in a Can-am car at full song. Just thinking about it gives me chills. Shame most new gearheads will never know.

I would love there to be a truly unlimited class of road racing, where any type of technology was allowed, and there is no such thing as "too fast". Professional drivers are just that - professionals. If they want to take the risks, that is their choice. Let the engineers run the show!

Imagine what sort of cars we'd be looking on the streets, were there no technical inspection rules 😅

Another interesting tidbit I've heard about the 2j is that it had a 3 speed automatic (at least, I think it was an auto) gearbox to keep the car from pitching back and forth too much when changing gears, which caused it to have crazy long gearing that made its acceleration slower than it could have achieved otherwise As an aside I'd love to see a modern can-am, but perhaps with spending limits on the cars to prevent the sport from spiralling out of control with costs and ensure smaller teams have a better chance of competing, and have modern safety standards of course, but other than that keep the spirit of minimal rules from can-am alive But alas, even if it did happen, I don't think we'd see quite the same level of creativity and madness from that halcyon era, and people like me pining for a return would be eternally disappointed

I super loved this rehashing of the certainly famous CAN/AM racing series. I had lived it with one parent mad about racing. Even very young I was well aware of all the races and most of the cars that participated. Thanks for the revisiting these memories🏎️🏁

I had two friends who ran Can Am. One was Dick Durant and the other Bob Klempel. While the idea of no rules so that the "if you can dream it, you can run it" thought prevails, the cost factors become prohibitive. Eventually, he who has the most money wins. And that is how Porsche won. Dick's wife Judy said that like all their racing venues, they were keeping track of the costs at first, then realized it was so insane, they really didn't want to know. Dick had also said that he realized he needed to up his homeowner's insurance because the night he brought the Lola home, he had doubled the value of his home.

Can-am is by far the greatest racing series of all time. I was lucky enough to get to see 4 shadow can-am cars race at road america last year.

wow do a video on the history of automatics in racing thats mindblowing

Excellent video. I also wanted to chime in and say you and Nate did a superb job at the Off-Road Games. Very capable vehicle, driver, and spotter. It was great to watch you.

The Chaparrals didn't have automatic transmissions, but had a torque converter in place of a clutch. The thinking was being able to use gearboxes with fewer gears. It is correct that they did not have a clutch pedal.

We need more videos on Can Am

Had to stop after 5 minutes. The words "crazy" or "insane" are used in nearly every breath. This repetition rapidly becomes very irritating.

The 4x engine 2-stroke car must have been a nightmare to drive! Saw they used the std belt driven clutches from the snowmobile so imagine if one wheel starts spinning, it would just gear up like crazy. Then add the lack of torque on these old 2-strokes...

Mate, PLEASE give us more of these! I could watch You HOURS going on about these. Very exiting creations. Dangerous, maybe, too but very exiting. Especially the 4 twostroke engine car. I love twostrokes (but not very much two stroke stuffing)

I looked up the engines used in the Mac's IT Special and they made 110 hp, so four of them is a total of 440 and given what the engines in the other cars produced, it was just underpowered. Which is a wild thing to say about a car from 1970 with 440 horsepower. Be interesting to see what it could've done if it actually had enough power to be competitive.

This is a very interesting video of what was going on with the Can-Am racing back in the 60's & 70's... Thank You for posting this...

Mark Donohue said the goal with the 917 turbos was to have enough power to lay rubber all the way from one corner to the next.

Can-Am was the one series I followed as _almost_ photo-journalist. Lots of great memories!

Thanks for making this episode. Legendary class and one of my favorite periods in racing history 👏🏻

so glad the somewhat neglected & forgotten CAN-AM series inspired you to make this video! TOP-SHELF racing history. Many thanks!

My father was a lifelong motorsports fan like me and would tell anyone who would listen that the original CanAm series was hands down the most interesting and exciting form of road racing ever. Thank you for this awesome video!

I’ve seen and felt these cars in action at Silverstone Classic. It is a thunderous spectacle. Can seriously recommend the whole event

Excellent video. I especially appreciate the emphasis on Chaparral. I was a kid when this series was on and I was fascinated by Chaparral. They always had the coolest cars.

Seen a few of these cars up close at Goodwood FOS. They're terrifying standing still! Cannot imagine lamping it round a track in the 60s/70s. The sound is glorious however ❤

Yes more please! I just missed the the Can-Am glory years by just a few years. Being born in 75 by the time I really got into racing in the mid 80s Can-Am was pretty much done. I remember hearing about how bonkers the cars were in the 70s and I wish that I had gotten the chance to see them them in action.

I used to go to Mosport back in the late 60s/early 70s to watch Can-Am. The McLarens were pretty much unbeatable. In 1970 the Shadow made its appearance. I remember it being so tiny compared to the McLarens and it seemed soooo fast but I think it was a DNF. It truly was a great time in motor racing history.

Not to nit pick but I can guarantee that picture of "Orange County Speedway" in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is not where the Mac IT Special was tested. Almost certain that "Orange County Speedway" would've been at the Fairgrounds in Orange County, California in the city of Costa Mesa. It would've been there or at the now defunct Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, California. (Both are/were located in Orange County, California and about 15 minutes apart from each other. These tracks were and Orange County is about 350 miles south of Laguna Seca or about 50 miles west of the former Riverside International Raceway, and about 130 miles Southwest of Willow Springs)

Love your channel and have been watching this channel for years! All your videos are very informative and entertaining! Keep up the great work!

Many thanks for the fine video on the engineering behind these great Can-Am cars. I always thought Jim Hall's cars were amazing even though I was huge McLaren fan. Please make more videos on the Can-Am series. Cheers!!!!

Exceptional idea. Great story telling. Keep up with the technical and the weird. You have created a great format. I love it.

It's the 'creative silliness' that makes Can-Am just so human. Something that is seriously lacking in modern autosports. Slap a massive elevated wing on? Let's try it! Build a petrifying big chonker with 1100 HP? No problem! A spaceship on 4 wheels? We'll roll with it man!

Fascinating stuff, Scott. You need to do another Can-Am episode in the future!

I work at a boat dealership. One of the 4 brands we sell is Chaparral. The logo is the same. I’m guessing it’s the same company

I love your channel & subject matter in this case. During the 1980's I worked for Lee Hurley(HESCO) & Charlie Cook(Southwind Enterprises) At both shops we did quite a bit of "Creative Engineering" and as far as I know it was never discovered by Tech Inspectors. Hidden nitrous, strut tower mods for camber/caster, windshield angles, titanium used in place of chrome moly roll cage,acid dipping,filling driver's helmet with lead to pass post race weight inspection etc..

Glad to aknowledge that Jim Hall is still alive. He's a genius, he was always forward with his beautiful cars. I saw the Chaparral 2F prototype racing in Monza in 1967 driven by Mike Spence and Phil Hill.

I’ve been seeing a lot of videos on Can Am lately. I’ve always assumed that people were just as familiar with these beasts as they were with F1 or Le Mans. Are a lot of people only just now discovering this?

Very good video, nice job. I'm an old guy in his sixties; my childhood and the decade of the sixties are essentially the same time period. I was fascinated by cars as a boy, becoming interested in racing in the mid sixties. So the Can Am series got my attention! I thought it was fantastic, with the awesome cars (too bad the word is overused), and the attraction to the series of the top international drivers of the time. With that, I am stunned seeing the story of the "Mac's IT Special". Aside from being a fantastically unique design, in all the years since my youth and the prime of Can Am, this is the first I can remember ever seeing or knowing anything at all about that car! This is astonishing... not just the car itself, but the fact that in a half century or so, I have never known of this! Of course, that could be a whole weird story, that car. Some things are obvious, like, for one example, how do you deal with trying to somehow synchronize all four engines? Imagine trying to drive a racing car when, at any throttle position, you have an engine attached to each wheel with all four turning at different slightly RPM. Yow! Jim Hall was a boyhood hero, with the story of being an American driver who also designed and built his cars, and then, making those engineering marvels, every step of the way. I was lucky to actually meet him briefly in the paddock after the 1995 CART Cleveland race, finding myself standing face to face with the man himself, just the two of us. Sadly, a real regret, I missed a chance to actually talk a bit, for at least a minute or two, for the simple reason that, finding myself three feet away from him face to face, my mind was swirling with so many things that I kind of stupidly blanked out about what to say, and I just got him to scrawl his name on something (especially stupid, in my mind afterward, as I think autographs are kind of silly and pointless... I have no idea if I still have that somewhere). One minor thing- as there was talk in the video about a car running one time at Laguna Seca (around 12:30), we see old footage of Mid-Ohio in olden days, not Laguna Seca. That was cool, anyway. It's interesting to see that, an old look at what is a favorite track, the closest major road course in my part of the world. (For a bit of perspective for an Englishman, a place I kind of regard as something like the Brands Hatch of America, a great circuit that's kind of like someone laid out a racing track in a park.)

I was born in 73 and all the toy cars I had were of Can-Am cars. While I never got to watch one of their races, the series did impact my youth. What a magnificent era of motorsports.

Very nicely done! At Canepa Motorsports Mark Donohue is quoted saying “the 917-10 is the only car I have ever driven that will spin the tires at 200 mph”

I had the opportunity to see the Can-Am cars and the Chaparrals a few years ago at Laguna Seca. Jim Hall is an unspoken of hero of motor racing, a very creative and innovative mind.!! All these are indeed amazing cars!!

This was a nice walk down memory lane! I grew up watching the can am series... 😂 My dad grew up going to Watkins Glen when F1, can am, and others would race there.... 😢

Thank you so much for creating this video. My dad introduced me to Jim Hall's canam, I remembered being with Dad as a young boy seeing the chaparall 2J and Porsche 917 at Goodwood FOS. Amazing cars, up there with the Lotus 49B for innovation in my opinion. Thanks.

NZ had in the 80s a series call Sports Sedans, or All commers. Almost no rules. If they completed 10 laps it was a miracle

You can see the Chaparral cars at the Petrolium Musium in Midland, Texas. That's where the interviews were done, and they also occasionally run the cars.

I've been lucky to be in my teens, and was a fan when all those things happened. I loved the shape of those cars: in 3rd place the F1, in 2nd place the prototypes, but in the 1st the sports, that became Can Am.

This was such a fascinating video and race. Thanks man!

F1 had one dalliance with negative-pressure fans (well, one fan) with the Brabham BT46 ‘fan car’. Pressure from other teams made sure the affair was short. The principle complaint was that the huge rear fan picked up any debris from the track and hurled it at high speed at any following car.

Their needs to be another racing series like this.. it would draw so much attention. Any design, any size engine & any fuel or electric.. teams just let loose.

Glad to see all this innovation from that era, great video

BRILLIANT! subscribed!! .002 seconds - these cars were all my childhood fantasies - mostly from 1/64th (HO) scale slot cars! They made all of the can am cars in one kit or another - thank you for doing this video and please do more!