Epic car race with no rules
QUESTION
Were the Cannonball Run films based on real events?
YES. The race was originally called the Cannonball Baker SeaTo-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash and ran five times across the US in the 1970s, from New York to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California.
It was the brainchild of Brock Yates, the executive editor of Car And Driver magazine, and his colleague Steve Smith.
Yates wanted to prove that a modern vehicle travelling at high speed along the country’s interstate highways could make it to the West Coast at speeds far greater than the law would allow. It was, in part, a protest against strict new traffic laws.
Beginning on May 3, 1971, Yates, his son Brock Jr, Smith and their friend Jim Williams made a trial run in a 1971 Dodge Custom Sportsman van nicknamed Moon Trash II.
The first Cannonball Run took place later that year. Just after midnight on November 15, 1971, the first of eight competing vehicles charged out of the Red Ball garage in downtown Manhattan, heading west.
The only instructions were: ‘All competitors will drive any vehicle of their choosing, over any route, at any speed they judge practical, between the starting point and destination.
The competitor finishing with the lowest elapsed time is the winner.’
Yates won the first race in a 1971 Ferrari Daytona coupe. He was partnered by racing legend Dan Gurney, the first driver to win in sports cars (1958), Formula One (1962) and NASCAR (1963).
The pair took 35 hours and 54 minutes to travel 2,863 miles (4,607km) at an average of 80mph (129kph), picking up just one speeding ticket. They were 53 minutes faster than the second-place finisher, a Chevrolet Sportsvan.
The Cannonball Run was raced three more times, in 1972, 1975 and 1979.
The race captured the public’s imagination and was commemorated in the 1981 film The Cannonball Run, starring Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise and Farrah Fawcett, and a 1984 follow-up.
The extremes to which the Cannonball racers went to in their efforts to avoid police in the films were based on real ruses.
These included a van filled with petrol cans so the drivers wouldn’t have to stop to refuel, and The Flying Fathers, who disguised themselves as priests, as they figured the cops would be too respectful to pull them over.
Yates and his crew famously dressed as medical personnel in an ambulance supposedly transporting organs for transplant cross country.
Dom Baker, London N22.
QUESTION
Winnie-thePooh getting stuck in the entrance to Rabbit’s house upset me as a child. What other disturbing children’s stories are there?
FURTHER to the earlier answer about the bricking up in a tunnel of Henry in the Thomas The Tank
Engine tales, The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real scared me as a child.
The rabbit is at first snubbed by his owner and his new-fangled mechanical toys.
Then, one night, the boy’s nana gives him the rabbit to sleep with, in place of a lost toy, and the two become inseparable.
When the boy contracts scarlet fever, the doctor orders his bedroom to be disinfected and his toys are sentenced to death by fire. The image of the animated toys burning has always stuck with me.
The rabbit escapes and becomes real because the boy truly loves him, and goes off to live with other rabbits in the forest.
Emily Peacock, Charmouth, Dorset.
QUESTION
What are the cylinders or boxes on computing or charging cords?
THESE are called ferrite beads or ferrite chokes. They are placed on the end of cables to reduce ‘noise’ in the form of EMI (electromagnetic interference) and RFI (radio frequency interference).
When a current passes through a cable, it emits electromagnetic waves that can travel into an attached device or computer. Given the intricate nature of electronics and their reliance on wireless frequencies, damping as much noise as possible aids their smooth operation.
Furthermore, electronic cabling and wires are natural antennas. In the presence of high-speed microprocessor signals, cables will conduct, radiate and receive unwanted high-frequency RFI, which can interfere with radios, televisions and mobile phones.
Such interference can be greatly reduced using a ferrite bead, which is a passive electronic part made of semi-magnetic iron oxide compounds with small amounts of nickel, zinc or manganese oxide.
The bead becomes resistive over its intended frequency range and dissipates the ‘noise’ energy in the form of heat.
If you have a device suffering from ‘noise’, you can buy clip-on ferrite beads as a cheap and effective solution.
S. E. Richards, Kidderminster, Worcs.
QUESTION
Is it true that Steven Spielberg helped Brian De Palma direct the final scene in Scarface?
IN SEVENTIES Hollywood, movie brats Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg were close friends. They partied together, bounced ideas off each other and visited each other’s sets.
Brian De Palma’s Scarface was an over-the-top 1983 epic featuring a sizzling performance by Al Pacino as doomed cocaine kingpin Tony Montana.
It is particularly remembered for the violent assault on Montana’s mansion at the end of the film. This prolonged orgy of violence was very much De Palma’s work. However, Spielberg did take the camera for a single scene.
Fresh from the runaway success of 1982’s ET, he visited the set as the cartel’s initial attack on Montana’s mansion was being filmed.
De Palma allowed his friend to direct a low-angle shot where the attackers enter the house.
Simon Demmings, Barnsley, S. Yorks.
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