This is the most comprehensive history of motor sport from 1902 to 1950s-60s and is widely regarded by some as the best Motor Sport documentary Series ever made.
It's notoriously famous and well worth watching whether you like cars or not as it's extreemely informative and historical. It was made in the 1960's and directed by Bill Mason father of Nick Mason the drummer in the group Pink Floyd. The documentary was available 20 years ago on VHS but it has now sunk into the depths of obscurity and copies now fetch prohibitively high prices due to collectors.
It is a unique chronological history of what was an exhilarating, dangerous, competitive and largely amateur sport until the outbreak of WW2.
It covers the very early days, with superb original footage of the pioneers at venues like the Grand Prix de l'ACF in Dieppe northern France, right the way through to Type 35 Bugattis racing at Monaco, Auto Unions and Mercs of Nazi Germany in action at the original Nurburgring and 250F Maseratis with all the famous drivers.
There is current day (1960s) footage of VSCC racing at Silverstone too with some pretty impressive and rare machinery, much of which is was no longer in competitive use.
It is a shocking but fascinating video from a truly different era of motorsport. As the video keeps saying (as noted by Axis of Oversteer), “no-one was seriously injured”. But of course injury and death was a part of motorsport back then. Indeed it is today, even though great safety improvements have been made in recent decades.
But some of the stuff in these Volumes is shocking. A particular stand-out is the flaming driver-less car free-wheeling around in the pitlane!
You don’t often get the chance to see footage like this, and I find it absolutely fascinating to see the sport as it was so many decades ago.