The Deutsch Spritz Tour is a gathering for Porsche fans in Northern California. It's a fun event where people can see different Porsche cars and meet other enthusiasts.
Luftgekühlt is a big event for people who love Porsche cars, especially older models that run on air cooling. It's a chance for fans to meet, show off their cars, and enjoy the community.
Porsche is a famous car brand from Germany that makes fast and stylish sports cars. They are well-known for their quality and performance, especially the 911 model.
The Chrysler New Yorker is a big, fancy car that was made in the U.S. for many years. It’s known for being comfortable and having nice features, which is why people often talk about it when discussing classic cars.
Paul Newman was a well-known actor, but he also loved car racing and even owned a racing team. He raced cars in competitions and was very passionate about it.
IndyCar is a type of car racing that takes place on tracks, including famous ones like the Indianapolis 500. The cars are open-wheel, meaning the wheels are outside the main body of the car, and they go really fast.
Grand Am was a type of car racing series in the U.S. where different kinds of sports cars competed. It has now combined with another series to create a new championship.
American Le Mans was a type of car racing in the U.S. that focused on long-distance races, similar to the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. It featured fast sports cars racing for several hours.
IMSA is a group that organizes car races in North America, focusing on sports cars. They manage different types of races and are known for having exciting competitions.
WEC is a racing series where cars race for long periods, often 24 hours at a time. It's known for events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where teams try to see who can cover the most distance in that time.
Formula One is a top-level racing series where very fast cars compete on special tracks. It's known for its exciting races and advanced technology in the cars.
NASCAR is a racing series in the U.S. where cars that look like regular cars race on oval tracks. It's very popular and known for exciting races and close finishes.
Supercross is a type of motorcycle racing that happens in stadiums and features jumps and obstacles. It's similar to motocross but is usually held in a more controlled setting, making it easier to watch.
Motocross is a type of motorcycle racing that takes place on dirt tracks with jumps and turns. It's exciting to watch because the riders perform tricks and race against each other on challenging courses.
Car
Can-Am
Can-Am is a brand that makes off-road vehicles, like motorcycles and ATVs. They are known for being powerful and good for riding on rough terrains.
GTP races were competitions where specially designed sports cars raced against each other. These cars were built to be very fast and were often seen in big racing events.
The Ferrari 365 GTB/4, also called the Daytona, is a fancy sports car made by Ferrari a long time ago. It’s known for being really fast and looking great, which is why many people love it and talk about it, especially collectors.
The Shelby School is a driving school that teaches people how to drive fast and race cars. It was started by a famous car guy named Carroll Shelby, who made some really cool cars.
The Indy 500 is a famous car race that takes place every year in Indianapolis. It's known for being one of the biggest and most important races in the world.
Car
Lancia D50
The Lancia D50 is a classic racing car from the 1950s that was used in Formula One. It had a unique design with tanks on the sides to help it go faster and handle better.
The Maserati Birdcage is a famous race car from the 1950s known for its special design that made it very light and fast. It's a classic car that many racing fans admire.
GTP prototype cars are special race cars built for long-distance racing. They are designed to be very fast and have advanced features to help them race better.
The MG TD is an older sports car from the 1950s that many people find charming. It's a classic British car that was popular for its style and performance at the time.
The Nissan Z is a sports car made by Nissan. It's known for being fast and stylish, and it's part of a long line of Z cars that have been popular for many years.
Air cooled engines use air instead of water to keep them cool. This is common in older cars, especially some Porsches, and gives them a distinct sound and feel.
LIVE
Welcome to Porsche Pattern with Bracken Helms, the show where we hear Bracken and his distinguished
guests from the Porsche community patter on about Porsches and all things automotive.
Porsche Pattern is sponsored by Circuit 6-4.
Circuit 6-4 creates authentic automotive apparel made for like-minded automotive enthusiasts.
The links for Circuit 6-4 are in the shown notes.
Okay, let's get to it.
John Morton, part five.
Okay, what do we talk about in this one?
Oh, he talks about, can you hear my cat?
And I can hear it now that I've listened back, but I couldn't hear it at the time.
And I'm asking him, can you hear the thunder?
He says, no.
It was like shaking my house, but he doesn't hear it.
And I don't hear his cat, but later on, you can hear the thunder in the recording and
you can hear the cat.
So Deutsch Spritz tour was last week, actually not last week, the week before.
That was a good time had by all.
It's a Porsche show in Northern California.
If you live in Southern California, it may be worth your time to come check it out.
Or if you live in Northern California and you've never heard of it, Deutsch Spritz-Toritz-D-E-U-T-S-C-H-E
and then S-P-R-I-T-Z-T-O-U-R if you want to look it up and be ready for next year.
It's put on by Darren Fister that owns FD Motorsports, you know, the Fister Exhaust.
He does the gear shifter and what's it called, Golden Rod.
I don't know, he does a bunch of things, but him and his wife put it on, which it's a pretty
good show.
It's like a winery considering just one guy and his wife put it together.
I mean, obviously he's like paying people and there's people that are probably helping
him a little bit, which is kind of irritating when there's just so many pros.
What do I mean by pro-ho is, me and my friends used to always say it because we got two friends
that are professional snowboarders and we go to like these parties and stuff and it's
not like I'm like thinking the girls are crazy, like people in general are like drawn
to the stars, but we'd always call them pro-hoes because there were those girls
that showed up that were just like, wait, who's the one that's a professional snowboarder
and they, oh, you're so bad.
So we call them pro-hoes.
Like I don't even blame them for that.
I blame a grown man for bringing a pro-ho.
I mean, just think about it.
They announced like luftacult and there's people that are clear up here and they buy
the tickets as fast as they can.
VIP package, like I'm going to show up early and then they buy the hotel and
they stay down there and they make a week of it.
And they're just so gung-ho on it, which I don't blame them.
I go down there too.
Like my friends all go down there.
It's an event, but I also try to support people up here.
It's like you got these people that will like call in to work or do whatever it
takes to get to luftacult.
But then their friend, someone they hang out with, their Porsche friend that
they go to shows with and talk to, he and his wife put on a show of their
own, which is pretty good and you don't show up to that.
The loyalty is just at zero.
I mean, I'm not supportive with everything.
I can think of something that just happened within the last month that I
wasn't very supportive with, but they had set it up a way that I didn't agree
with and so I didn't go.
But I'm not trying to be a jerk here.
I know we all got stuff going on.
We got kids, we got family, I get how that works.
But don't tell me you got stuff going on, but you have no problems
dropping it all and going somewhere that's going to give you clout
will make you look more important or fancy.
Anyway, here is John Morton, part five.
What separates good drivers from novice drivers?
Well, there can be a good novice.
Everybody's a novice when they start.
A lot of people say like it's you're born with it.
You're either your brain's processing it or not.
I mean, someone can like spend all the money, be rich and go racing.
And maybe they don't have that it factor.
Yeah, yeah, it's easier now because they've got vintage racing
and they can live, you know, get rich and then live their childhood dreams.
But they were making money, running a company or singing or acting or whatever.
I think what you're asking is the difference between a driver
who just does it to enjoy it and the driver who wants to make
a living doing it, the two different people.
In your Wikipedia page, when I was looking at it,
it I know you did the commercial for Dotson,
but it said like you were in some TVs, were you a driver or like you were an actor?
I worked on two movies and a few TV shows by accident.
I had I didn't pursue it.
I didn't ever pursue it even after I did it.
I had a friend worked on a movie.
If the first movie was called Gumball Rally and a friend of mine
was hired to double and to train the actors on a racetrack
because they wanted the actors to do some of their driving.
And then they retained him to do double work, you know, stunt double,
but not really stunts, but they had too much to do.
So he said, can I hire my friend, John?
And they said, yes.
So I worked on the movie making New Yorker,
some of which didn't even have a driver's license into fake racecar drivers in the movie.
OK. Did you ever see the movie?
No. Well, check it out.
Gumball Rally. Yeah.
And then the other one was a year later because I had met people
and had some credibility with Gumball Rally.
The same director was doing some of the second unit work, they call it.
And I was hired to double, in this case, Richard Pryor
and do some stunts, stunt double, I guess you'd call it.
And then I did a Rockford file and I did a switch episode.
You're too young to know what these things are.
You probably never even heard of Paul Newman.
Yeah, we went over Paul Newman because he was on the Bob Garrett.
He was one of the principal person in the team that the Andretti
strove for the Haas team, IndyCar team.
That was Paul Newman's team.
OK. Paul Newman and Carl Haas were partners in that.
OK. You raced in Grand Am, right?
Yeah, I. Yeah.
When was that?
Was that had to have been before we were talking about the Porsches from 98?
Like no, it was American Le Mans or no, no, it couldn't have been American Le Mans.
It was the other series, the Grand Am.
Like they changed the names one's color.
They did have a Grand Am series and they had the American Le Mans was later.
OK. So what car were you driving?
Well, in the G3, I drove in what they call the Grand Am, I think.
OK. I don't know when the names changed.
It was all the same. Yeah, it was Imsa type racing.
Do you watch racing today? Yes.
What type of races do you watch?
You said you don't really really watch sports cars,
but sports cars have gotten more interesting lately because they've all
like the new rules where they match with WEC and Imsa.
Yeah, I guess yes.
I watch most of the IndyCar races.
All of them that I can.
I watch most of the Formula One races.
I watch a large percentage of the NASCAR races
and a very small percentage of the sports car races.
And I watch MotoGP a little bit.
I watch Supercross a lot.
Did you watch it last week?
Yeah, with the two Jett and his brother.
You mean that one?
So I normally don't like Jett because I'm tired of the same person winning.
But now last year he was hurt.
Before, you know, a long period of time, he missed a lot of the season.
Right. But since he's been in the 450 class,
he's kind of been making things kind of boring.
Yeah, yeah, in a way.
But so has so did Schumacher and
and so did Hamilton for a long period of time.
I guess it depends on if you like the person to begin with.
Because yeah, I mean, how long have you been watching Motocross, Supercross?
The first one I ever saw, I went to the Coliseum
and the winner was a guy that you never heard of named Jimmy Ellis on a Can-Am.
The second one was Jimmy Weiner won at the second year that I remember.
I saw Johnson win one, I think, at Anaheim Stadium.
So you've been watching for a while.
These are in person, but I don't watch them in person much.
So I trained for a while with Jeff Ward, who was.
Oh, I know that name.
He was a Supercross.
So I got in in like mid 90s because I was like
little kid, but still like my bit.
My first guy I got into was Jeremy McGrath.
Yeah. And then I love James Stewart.
Yeah, I did, too. And I like Stewart because he was a crash or win.
Oh, yeah, he's bonkers.
Like he's even now they're just like he just went like crazy.
Like he invented all this stuff, like the bubble scrub.
Pretty good announcer.
I mean, he he does pretty well.
Yeah. And greatest of all time.
Ricky Carmichael. Ricky Carmichael, right.
But did you see the 250 class with crazy
Yeah, I knew that stupid that that guy will never be a fan of his again.
Or it never was a fan of his, but because he's cocky.
And I don't know, I don't like cocky, but he was not that he was desperate.
He did some stupid things and ended up breaking his own.
I don't know, he broke something, a collarbone or not.
He deserved whatever he got because he was purposely trying to crash Joe.
Joe, most Somali, Samoda or something.
Yeah, Samoda, Joe, Samoda.
For I've never seen any anything more flagrant than that.
Yeah, it was awful.
But I'm like, I want jet to be good now because I want him to beat Deegan.
Deegan's a 250 rider, but he's coming up.
No, he is. He is.
I think next year he's trying it.
I think next year he's going to 450.
I wouldn't be surprised.
OK, um, favorite driver.
My favorite driver.
Yeah, when this could be like even now, like of all time.
Like I don't have a favorite driver now.
If I had to pick somebody, I guess it'd probably be Louis Hamilton.
I've had favorite drivers.
Jimmy Clark was my most favorite driver and Sterling Moss.
OK.
But that was 1958.
My father won the world championship.
Favorite race car.
I don't I don't know.
I have a lot of favorites, the Datsun 510, the 240Z,
that I won a lot of races in both of those cars.
I like the Porsche 962.
I like the the Nissan GTP car.
Did you have a least favorite car or one you didn't like?
Not not that anybody would know about.
Favorite race.
Yeah, I have a favorite race.
OK, what is that?
The Riverside race, the GTP race and the Times Grand Prix.
1987, because it was the last race they were ever going to have at Riverside.
Do you have a favorite race was the Ferrari at Daytona.
This was 1979.
So like what was a 365 or something?
365 GTB4 Daytona, a Daytona Ferrari.
The real name is a 365 GTB4.
OK.
It just sold for over seven million dollars.
Favorite track.
Elkhart Lake, Le Mans.
What can you tell me about Riverside?
Because that was like right close to where you were.
And I had a friend and I go down to California.
I'm always so mad that or Southern California.
Sorry, I'm always so mad that Riverside's not there anymore.
So my friend took me over and of course, it's just like a strip mall or a mall or something.
That's a bunch of stuff, a bunch of malls and.
But like you read all about it and I'm like, I've never been.
I've flown over it and saw it, you know, being dismantled.
That was one of my favorite tracks.
But the reason it was so important to me
not to everybody, but to me was that it was the track.
I came to California to drive on in the Shelby School.
Right. So that's where I really started my racing career in earnest.
I hadn't raced a sports car yet.
I'd been to events and driven on tracks, but I wasn't.
I couldn't have a license till I was 21.
And I was 21.
I did the racing school at Shelby's.
Yeah.
Well, OK, race, you wish you would have won.
You mean if I could add a race to my career, right?
Indy 500.
Race car, you wish you could have drove?
Could have driven.
Yeah, driven. Sorry.
Some of the older cars and I've driven a lot of them.
So I don't I even drove
one of the Collier Collections D 50 Lancia.
You don't even know what it is.
You know, Ferrari, it's the Formula One car
that became a Ferrari, but it was a Lancia
with the side pontoon tanks.
1954, I think it was its first year.
Fonjo drove them and all those guys drove them.
Not all the team, the Lancia team was a Lancia.
And then it was taken over by Ferrari
because Lancia didn't have the money to compete any longer.
And there was somebody pulled the plug
and the cars became Ferraris.
Oh, OK, there be eights.
So is there a race car that you haven't driven
that you wish you could have?
Yeah, a birdcage Maserati.
I never drove one of those.
Did you ever have to deal with politics and racing?
There's always politics and the rules
and I mean, everybody has to deal with it.
But no, like really, like clear cut stories
that really irritated you.
Well, it didn't involve me much.
The separation of USAC and CART
and then what they have now, IndyCar.
They were wealthy people overcome by their egos
in a lot of in a lot of ways.
I didn't like that period,
but I wasn't directly involved in much of it.
I'm not I hadn't done my homework here.
IndyCar racing was USAC,
but CART took over IndyCar racing,
except Indy 500 was still USAC.
And then it was Tony George and his band of Sprint.
Can you hear my cat?
I thought it was an ambulance.
I did hear a cat.
OK, I thought it was here.
Part of your racing that you're most proud of?
I was involved in a number of GTP prototype wins
and I'm proud of those.
The period that I was I was dominant in was the Datsun period.
Is there a race car or a road car that you ever bonded with?
Yeah, well, I bonded with with the Z in the 510
because I did more of the construction
on both of those cars aside from driving them.
I I don't want to say I built them because it was a team.
But I was I did most of the the physical work
on those two cars or a large percentage of it.
OK, what cool cars have you owned?
You mean street cars? Yeah.
I haven't owned any cool street cars.
My MG in high school was pretty cool.
To me, it was as an MGTD.
OK, you have any regret selling or any regret not buying?
No. If you could have any car today, what would it be?
Street car. Yeah.
I'm not into street cars much.
I've got I'm about to take delivery on a really beautifully prepared.
The Z. Yeah.
I don't even have possession of it yet.
I choreographed the restoration of it with my friend's help.
I had the right people working on it and it's a beautiful car.
But it, you know, it wasn't a dream car that I ever had.
I have some porcelain questions, but we're going to skip those.
Why? Because I don't think you have any preferences on them.
I mean, it's like a bunch of them like, are you air cooled or water cooled?
SC or Carrera 996, you know, someone have any of the details.
I enjoyed very much driving the 962 and the 956 at Le Mans and Silverstone.
Yeah, these are all like street car questions.
How do you feel about our hobby on the environment, the car hobby?
I know that to be a purist with the environment,
you have to kind of look the other way when you see cars running 500 miles
that get three miles to the gallon or whatever, you know, that's car.
But I, you know, that's racing.
That's what racing is.
And that's what I love.
So I forgive that interest because I also think that the environment
is extremely important.
And we've got a, this country's in a very precarious position now.
That bothers me.
Yeah, it bothers the hell out of me.
When I first came to California and got my job at Shelby's, I used
to do parts chasing and go go downtown from Venice to pick something up.
And I'd always get a headache when I went downtown.
You can't hear that cat.
She, she's an old little cat that maybe I'll hear it later.
I don't know.
I'm surprised you haven't heard the thunder a few times where it's like
shaking the house.
Haven't heard it.
And now you get days that are clear, you know, nice, beautiful days.
There isn't that I used to describe it when I come in on it, you know,
back into Los Angeles, descending in an airliner from a race felt
like I was descending into a toilet bowl.
Because you could see the ring.
It's like you dipped into a toilet.
I mean, that's the reference I had because it was clear.
And then as you got within, let's say, I don't know, five, five thousand,
four thousand feet of the surface in the basin, LA basin, because
it's a natural bowl that retains smog.
And it did terribly in the sixties.
And it doesn't anymore because of the smog controls.
The rules that are now being dismissed are the reason we have
good air, relatively good air in Los Angeles.
What do you find troublesome in the car world today?
Electric cars.
When I was a kid, I built a model of a car called a Studebaker
Electric, which was like 1903 or some 1905.
It was going to be the next thing, but it wasn't the next thing.
The next thing was internal combustion.
I could tell every year afford through the thirties and forties and fifties.
Now I could care less when I see cars.
They, they, they're ugly.
They're non, you know, most of them are nondescript.
They look like each other.
So I don't have any interest in modern cars.
This town that I've lived in, El Segundo, there are so many white and black Teslas.
You, I mean, if you hit a car in El Segundo, it's probably going to be a Tesla.
Yeah, I have reasons to not care for the
manufacturer of that particular electric car.
Well, I hate, I've hated Tesla and Elon for years.
It has nothing to do with what's happened recently.
I'm not necessarily against EV.
I don't really care.
I just, I just don't like Tesla EV.
The thing that's that I don't like about what's happening with cars is I think
we can almost see the end of racing as we know it.
And a racing electric cars is boring.
I mean, they've got some really good form or formula one drivers running them
in Europe, but I wouldn't turn the television on to watch one.
Thanks for joining us for today's episode.
If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, comment, like and share with your friends.
Feel free to send questions or suggestions to the email in the
description of the show.
Special thanks to our sponsor, Circuit Six Four.
Goodbye for now.
We hope we can get together again for our next episode.
Now get out there and enjoy the cars and the people.
About this episode
John Morton returns for part five, diving into his experiences in racing and the automotive world. He shares anecdotes from his career, including his work on films like Gumball Rally and his thoughts on the current state of racing and electric vehicles. Morton discusses the differences between novice and professional drivers, his favorite cars and tracks, and reflects on the evolution of motorsport. The episode also touches on the loyalty of car enthusiasts to local events versus larger shows, providing a candid look at the community dynamics.
John Morton is a race car driver. He raced with the Shelby, BRE Datsun, Lola, Porsche, Jaguar and Nissan. Then started vintage racing after 2002.
-1971 & 1972 Trans Am Championship in Datsun 510 -1979 class win at 24 Hours of Daytona in Ferrari 365 GTB/4 -1984 class win at Le Mans in a Lola. -1993 & 1995 class win at 12 Hours of Sebring in Nissan 300ZX -1994 winner of 12 Hours of Sebring and class win at Le Mans.
In this episode we talk about: -Being in commercials, TV shows and movies. -Favorite race. -Race car he wished he could have driven. -Race car he bonded with. -Car hobby and the environment.
