The Carrera Panamericana was a border-to-border rally race on open roads in Mexico in the 1950s. Patterned after Italy’s famous Mille Miglia and Targa Florio, the race featured sedans, stock, touring, and sports cars.
The Mexican road race was one of the most alluring motorsport events on the planet – and one of the most dangerous.
The Carrera Panamericana was a road race conceived by the Mexican government to showcase the opening of the Mexican stretch of the Panamerican Highway.
Photo byMercedes
The race ran for five consecutive years, from 1950 to 1954. It was considered to be the most dangerous race of any type in the world. Some of the original course is used today in classic speed rallies.
The first race began on May 5, 1950, and attracted drivers worldwide. Drivers from every motorsport came to the race: Formula One, sports cars, rally cars, stock cars, endurance racing, hill climbing, and drag racers.
No matter what today’s World Rally Championship competitors face each year, Rally Mexico, they can be sure it won’t be as gruelling as the Carrera Panamericana.
In 1950, competitors raced 2,096 miles from Juarez in the north of the country to Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala in the south.
Professional drivers start competing at the Carrera Panamericana. While that first race in 1950 was an amateur affair, drivers from around the world, hungry for adventure and a government-backed payday, soon got wind of it and began to head to Mexico.
On the second day of the 1951 race, we were in seventeenth and approaching the car of millionaire Carlos Panini and his daughter, Teresita. She was the registered driver. However, Carlos was behind the wheel instead and was in ill health. He shouldn’t have been driving. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. The rules were that the slower car would allow the faster car to pass if it honked its horn. We were in the morning, and I approached Carlos and honked, but he wouldn’t let me pass. Carlos blocked me for ten turns. We were probably doing about 90 miles per hour at this point. The next time I tried to pass him, he bumped my right front fender, which almost pushed me off a sheer cliff to the left that was some 500 to 800 feet down. My left front tire went over the edge, but fortunately, I regained control of the car. Carlos over-corrected his vehicle to the right and went straight into a solid rock wall. The car exploded on impact like an egg hitting a sidewalk. I didn’t know it at the time, but Carlos was killed instantly. According to the rules, it was an automatic disqualification if you stopped to help a driver in trouble. After seeing the impact, I wanted to help, but my Dad told me to keep going. He knew the rules and told me people were there to help. That was hard for me - I slowed to about 15 or 20 miles per hour. He insisted that I keep going, and grimly, I did. - Bobby Unser
By 1954, drivers like Juan Manuel Fangio, Carroll Shelby, and Phil Hill had all competed in the race. Average speeds at the event soon moved north of 100 mph despite the course’s twisty mountain road sections.
Fangio, who grew up racing in similar cross-country slogs in his native Argentina, remains the only Formula One world champion to win the Carrera Panamericana. He won the 1953 race behind the wheel of a Lancia D24.
Photo byCadillac
Danger at every corner
In 1952, Mercedes sent a three-car team of 300SLs to Mexico to try and claim the Carrera Panamericana win against rivals like Ferrari and Lancia.
Team driver Karl Kling won the race, followed home by fellow Mercedes driver Hermann Lang. But the accident that Kling suffered during that year’s Carrera Panamericana became part of a motor racing legend.
Taking a fast right-hander, a vulture smashed headlong into Kling’s windshield, with the glass cutting the face of co-driver Hans Klenk. The pair continued regardless and still managed to win by half an hour.
Others weren’t so lucky. A total of 27 competitors would die in the five years the event ran, a startling amount even at a time when motor racing was notoriously dangerous.
The danger didn’t deter the crowds. It’s estimated that between 1950 and 1954, some two million people lined the Panamerican Highway to watch the racers fly by.
The 1955 Le Mans disaster made the Mexican authorities realize the danger of the Carrera Panamericana, and the organizers duly cancelled the race.
Photo byMercedes
The legacy of the Carrera Panamericana
Against the odds, the race did make a comeback in 1988 and has been running as a historic event ever since, with notable recent winners including rally drivers Stig Blomqvist and Harry Rovanperä.
The name Carrera – Spanish for race – has come to be synonymous with two brands steeped in motorsport history: Porsche and Tag Heuer, whose former boss, Jack Heuer, registered the Carrera name for his company’s famous watch after learning about the race in the early 1960s.
Tragic and exhilarating in equal measure, the Carrera Panamericana has become part of motorsport folklore.
During the years the race was held, race car technology and performance advanced quickly, and racing speeds nearly doubled.
Photo byWikipedia
As speeds increased, safety controls remained static. Danger lurked for competitors, spectators, and safety control personnel, and many became casualties.
One in three entrants typically finished the race. Long-stage sections were difficult to secure, and crashes lingered for several hours before being noticed.
Twenty-seven people died during the five years of the Panamericana, making it one of the most deadly races in the history of motorsports.
The government cancelled the race due to safety concerns and the high running cost.
Douglas Pilarski is an award-winning writer & journalist based on the West Coast. He writes about luxury goods, exotic cars, horology, tech, food, lifestyle, equestrian and rodeo, and millionaire travel.
You’re welcome to share your thoughts or tell me your story. Please email me here.dp1@sawyertms.com
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