VINTAGE 1960's Cobra Autocross footage!

[NiceGuyEddie]

https://youtu.be/7vUmHEeuIKM?t=1791

Please ignore the Ken Miles clickbait title, he's in it towards the beginning for a few seconds. This is a brilliant film recently released from The Petersen museum. I watched the whole thing.

At 29:50 they called it "Gymkhana" - looks like autocross to me. I thought that in Gymkhana you're purposely supposed to drift and spin wheels (Re: Ken Block). What's the difference between the two? I also thought both Gymkhana and Autocross were relatively new sports.

Anyway, when they say, "If you could be anyone at any place in time, who would you be?" - I have always said I'd like to be a post-war Greaser living in Southern California and was a part of the early stages of hot-rodding.

[Jeff Kleiner]

Back in the 60s and 70s what we know as autocross was more often than not called gymkhana. Lots of the guys that I run with who've been doing it for 40+ years refer to "pylons" rather than cones---I noticed that the narrator also used the term.

Thanks Eddie!

Jeff

[Derald Rice]

In my mind, an autocross is more like a scaled down racetrack.

Gymkhanas often have gimmicks involved where the same set of cones need to be run one way, then the driver runs the same set of cones in the opposite direction. 360 degree corners are common, as are parking boxes and some reverse gear driving. I remember once, there were bridge planks across a telephone pole that created a 30 foot long teeter totter. Goal was to drive onto the bridge planks, and balance the car before moving on. Some people did it reasonably quickly, and others took 5 minutes or even longer. Clutches were abused.


Here is one example of a mini cooper doing a gymkhana, and he must be from the same genetic pool as Ken Block:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcglWsEco4g

[Avalanche325]

In my mind, an autocross is more like a scaled down racetrack.

Gymkhanas often have gimmicks involved


That's the way I always understood it. Autocross is get through the cones as quickly as possible.
Gymkhana - Had other things thrown in. Parking, reverse, grabbing flags along the way, stopping on a line, etc. My mother-in-law used to do gymkhana in Australia in the 70s, in an e-type Jag.