WORDS: DAVID LILLYWHITE | PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT HOWELL
It’s quite a facility, M1 Concourse. Based around a 1.2-mile private track built on former GM factory land, it’s quickly being turned into an important automotive destination close to Detroit, Michigan for car events. The biggest of these is American Speed Festival, which made its third running at the end of September 2023.
The car line-up for the Festival was nothing short of stunning
The car line-up for the Festival was nothing short of stunning; probably the greatest selection of machinery ever seen at an event this size. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway had brought along its 1965 Le Mans-winning Ferrari 250 LM – the last Ferrari victor at La Sarthe until this year, remember – while Penske had dipped into its amazing collection for the Porsche 911 RSR driven by Mark Donohue, Emerson Fittipaldi and Richard Petty in the inaugural season of the International Race of Champions, or IROC as we now know it. That was just one of several iconic machines brought along by Penske, which also included both Mario Andretti’s and Al Unser’s IROC Camaros plus other examples from Roger Penske’s unfeasibly successful history.
The Vintage Indy organisation pulled together a full line-up of Historic race machinery that included the famous STP turbine car. For 70 years of Corvette, some of the most important examples of the model ever made were on display, including the SR2 concept, the 1960 Le Mans class winner, the 1962, ’64 and ’67 Le Mans entrants and many more. To add to this were no fewer than seven Callaway Corvette race cars, including the company’s much-loved Le Mans entrant ‘Frieda’, for a thunderous tribute to Reeves Callaway, who died in July 2023. It’s the first time so many Callaway race cars have gathered at a single public event.
Many members of the Callaway team attended the American Speed Festival for the tribute, including Reeves’ son Peter, the designer of all Callaway race cars, Paul Deutschman, the head of the Germany-based Callaway Competition race car development and build team, Ernst Wöhr and many more, some of whom last worked for the team in the mid-1990s.
Most of the invited cars at the Festival took place in track demonstration sessions that ran continually through the three days, interspersed with drives of some of the performance cars belonging to the owners of the 255 private garages on site – M1 Concourse has already grown into quite a facility. Its large Event Center housed activities throughout the three days, too, and showcased none other than the Ford Mark IV built to win Le Mans. Driven by Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt, it accomplished that goal in 1967, beating the second-place Ferrari by 32 miles at a record-breaking average speed of 135.48mph. As it’s normally housed at the Henry Ford museum, it was quite something to see the Mark IV so close up. In its honour, other Ford GTs of all ages lined up outside, regularly led onto the track by the famous GT40 Roadster.
There were also crowd-pleasing drift-car demonstrations on track, a parachute drop-in by a husband-and-wife pair who between them have completed more than 10,000 jumps, and kids’ activities. The American Speed Festival is a promising event with a stellar car line-up, at a deeply impressive venue that’s easy to access. It’s been kept relatively low key as the facility and event build up, but now is the time for both to grow visitor and spectator numbers and implement plans for more off-track activities. We reckon 2024 will be the year the Festival makes it big.
More on M1 Concourse and American Speed Festival here.
