Quite probably the best documentary on sports car racing or motor racing in general ever made. As a still photographer in that era I can attest to the accuracy of this film. Well photographed with great attention to detail the film takes viewers into the hearts and minds of the drivers depicted. A couple will be winners, one will retire and a close friend will lose his life. A better script could not have been written by Hollywood. The film also gives you views into places you might not get to see such as the Ferrari factory of 1972, Autodelta garage, the Matra-Simca garage at Le Mans and great film of the Targa Florio. I saw this film at its premier in 1973 at Watkins Glen while shooting the 6 hour endurance race with these same cars and watched it again just recently. It still holds up as a great motor racing film.
7 Reviews
The best racing movie ever made
alisonnic27 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Hollywood hasn't got a real good track record when it comes to racing. Stinkers include Days of Thunder, Bobby Deerfield, and the dreadful Driven.
Grand Prix and Le Mans are probably Hollywood's best; both have excellent racing footage but weak plots. Winning at least had a reasonable plot and decent acting, but it's far from being a world class movie.
The best racing movie ever made, IMHO, didn't come out of Hollywood. This movie, The Speed Merchants, blows the doors off Hollywood's best efforts. It's a documentary of the 1972 season of the world endurance racing championship, and it was made by a race driver/filmmaker named Michael Keyser, who drove in that championship himself while making the film.
Don't let the corny-sounding title fool you. This movie is stunning. It includes some incredibly raw, compelling in-car footage of the Targa Florio - so raw, in fact, that when I saw it in the theater in Watkins Glen after its initial release, I could hear people throwing up! Apparently the big-screen experience of whipping past stone walls and donkeys and little villages right next to the roads in Sicily was a little too real for some people!
Along with lots of footage of the Ferrari 312P (one of the most beautiful - and beautiful-sounding - race cars ever built) The Speed Merchants also has interviews with a number of great drivers throughout the 1972 season, including Mario Andretti, Vic Elford, Jacky Ickx, Helmut Marko, and Brian Redman.
A lot of very interesting things happened during the '72 season - along with a few tragic things. Hearing about them from the drivers' own perspective, in their own words, creates more drama than any fictional racing movie I've ever seen.
The movie ends with one of the most exciting races I ever saw, the 6-hour at Watkins Glen in 1972. The final hour of this race comprised a flat-out duel for the overall win between two of the Ferraris, both of them wounded - and both of them being driven absolutely on the limit, turning laps faster than their qualifying laps, repeatedly breaking the lap record.
I watched this race live, in person, and it was stunning. Keyser captures every bit of the excitement and tension of that race in this film.
Unfortunately The Speed Merchants never got wide distribution in theaters. Apparently someone bought it and used it as a tax shelter, so it was buried, and only hardcore racing fans ever even heard of it.
These days you can get this movie on DVD or VHS, although AFAIK it's still not available from major retailers like Amazon. You have to buy it from Michael Keyser himself. Just Google the name "michael keyser" and look for his autosports marketing company. Believe me, it's worth it!
BTW, Keyser also wrote several books, including a book by the same name.
Grand Prix and Le Mans are probably Hollywood's best; both have excellent racing footage but weak plots. Winning at least had a reasonable plot and decent acting, but it's far from being a world class movie.
The best racing movie ever made, IMHO, didn't come out of Hollywood. This movie, The Speed Merchants, blows the doors off Hollywood's best efforts. It's a documentary of the 1972 season of the world endurance racing championship, and it was made by a race driver/filmmaker named Michael Keyser, who drove in that championship himself while making the film.
Don't let the corny-sounding title fool you. This movie is stunning. It includes some incredibly raw, compelling in-car footage of the Targa Florio - so raw, in fact, that when I saw it in the theater in Watkins Glen after its initial release, I could hear people throwing up! Apparently the big-screen experience of whipping past stone walls and donkeys and little villages right next to the roads in Sicily was a little too real for some people!
Along with lots of footage of the Ferrari 312P (one of the most beautiful - and beautiful-sounding - race cars ever built) The Speed Merchants also has interviews with a number of great drivers throughout the 1972 season, including Mario Andretti, Vic Elford, Jacky Ickx, Helmut Marko, and Brian Redman.
A lot of very interesting things happened during the '72 season - along with a few tragic things. Hearing about them from the drivers' own perspective, in their own words, creates more drama than any fictional racing movie I've ever seen.
The movie ends with one of the most exciting races I ever saw, the 6-hour at Watkins Glen in 1972. The final hour of this race comprised a flat-out duel for the overall win between two of the Ferraris, both of them wounded - and both of them being driven absolutely on the limit, turning laps faster than their qualifying laps, repeatedly breaking the lap record.
I watched this race live, in person, and it was stunning. Keyser captures every bit of the excitement and tension of that race in this film.
Unfortunately The Speed Merchants never got wide distribution in theaters. Apparently someone bought it and used it as a tax shelter, so it was buried, and only hardcore racing fans ever even heard of it.
These days you can get this movie on DVD or VHS, although AFAIK it's still not available from major retailers like Amazon. You have to buy it from Michael Keyser himself. Just Google the name "michael keyser" and look for his autosports marketing company. Believe me, it's worth it!
BTW, Keyser also wrote several books, including a book by the same name.
Speed Merchants
reisertracing2 December 2006
As a race car driver and having lived thru this era, I love the movie. Very nice how they showed personal sides and insight into the featured racers lives. Racing was far more dangerous in those days and these men were the persona of the breed.
Documentary format and moves well. Music/score was well written and very effective. Highly urged for those who want to see the lives and gain insight into this discipline.
As an aside, what is the name of the song that the folk band was playing at LeMans in the scene where the spectators are eating and drinking?
Documentary format and moves well. Music/score was well written and very effective. Highly urged for those who want to see the lives and gain insight into this discipline.
As an aside, what is the name of the song that the folk band was playing at LeMans in the scene where the spectators are eating and drinking?
Touching
KB9MNM28 July 2004
The dangers of motor sports are high, but were especially high back then with the vehicle technology far exceeding driver safety. These gentlemen knew the stakes were high. They drove for the love of driving. However because of the sacrifices made by these men, the level of safety we now have today is at it's best. The film really piqued my interest of that era, and not only documenting Racing history of the late '60s early '70s. This is my target of interest largely because of being raised up in the "Racing Capitol Of The World" during that same time. The director knew exactly what he wanted to record.The personal life of the drivers as well shows how serious each one was about their job, and also added the opportunity of getting to know each one personally.The filmmakers caught all these elements in a most spectacular way.
Real taste of the sport...
cantona71125 February 2006
The Speed Merchants is one of my top three racing films of all time. Simply because its a documentary that pulls no punches and gets to the heart of all aspects of racing. The drivers, their families, the machines and epic circuits. The narration by Mario and Vic is insightful and engaging not to mention the cinematography is wonderful too. Getting to see Jacky Ickx with his lovely wife Kathrine on his new (at the time) home in Belgium was fantastic. Jacky looked so young back then, all of 24 years old and had already won Le Mans! I even liked the funkdafied 70's score in the film, it was great 8-) If you're a casual race fan or a die-hard that hasn't seen this film I highly recommend picking this up. It will give you a real taste of the sport in the 70's, not leaving the newbie behind but not watering it down for the longtime fan.
Hard to beat this film!
sbbrown-5760212 August 2022
This is one of the finest racing documentaries ever put together. Michael Keyser has some very interesting interviews with a group of the best sports car drivers on the planet (Vic Elford, Brian Redman, Jacky Ickx, Mario Andretti, Helmut Marko)- not only racing related, but behind the scenes home life.
Fantastic racing footage, and a super cool original soundtrack.
Every racing fan needs this in their library!
Fantastic racing footage, and a super cool original soundtrack.
Every racing fan needs this in their library!
A great documentary of the high-water mark of sports car racing, BUT...
bbrown95-131 March 2011
This could have been a masterpiece of the final years of the Golden Era of sports-car racing, which reached its glorious but all-too-short culmination in the unintended consequences of the FIA/CSI's typically fat-headed re-write, in an effort to reduce speeds (that had been as high as 215-220mph at high-speed tracks like Le Mans, Daytona, and Spa), of the Group 4 Sports Car and Group 6 Prototype homologation rules, due to take effect in 1970. The CSI believed no team would spend the money to build anything but race-modified production sports cars to meet the 25-car minimum necessary for homologation in Group 5.
This supposition blew up in their faces when Porsche, in March 1969, introduced the most outrageous, esoteric, and glorious sports car of its time, and, perhaps, of all time, the pure-racing-car flat-12-cylinder Porsche 917, and they built the 25 necessary. Ferrari had to follow suit to stand any chance of winning anything, and responded with their ALMOST equally fantastic V-12 512S. The two years these cars ran, 1970 and 1971, that passed before the CSI could implement new rules, still stand as the summit of sports car racing. It is these years, and some of 1972, that Keyser attempts to sketch in 1972's "The Speed Merchants."
While the documentary has much to recommend it, including low-key and intelligent narration by two giants of the period, Mario Andretti and Vic Elford, the movie suffers badly from a couple of dated cinematic conventions of the time: choppy, "hip" montage editing that throws narrative continuity out the window, and the dreaded "French Jazz Racing Movie Soundtrack," which is also the curse of McQueen's contemporary, fictional "Le Mans."
No sports car racing fan should be without this movie, but it could have been SO much better, and should have been completely overhauled, adding footage and ditching the dreary music, during its remastering in 1999. Pity.
This supposition blew up in their faces when Porsche, in March 1969, introduced the most outrageous, esoteric, and glorious sports car of its time, and, perhaps, of all time, the pure-racing-car flat-12-cylinder Porsche 917, and they built the 25 necessary. Ferrari had to follow suit to stand any chance of winning anything, and responded with their ALMOST equally fantastic V-12 512S. The two years these cars ran, 1970 and 1971, that passed before the CSI could implement new rules, still stand as the summit of sports car racing. It is these years, and some of 1972, that Keyser attempts to sketch in 1972's "The Speed Merchants."
While the documentary has much to recommend it, including low-key and intelligent narration by two giants of the period, Mario Andretti and Vic Elford, the movie suffers badly from a couple of dated cinematic conventions of the time: choppy, "hip" montage editing that throws narrative continuity out the window, and the dreaded "French Jazz Racing Movie Soundtrack," which is also the curse of McQueen's contemporary, fictional "Le Mans."
No sports car racing fan should be without this movie, but it could have been SO much better, and should have been completely overhauled, adding footage and ditching the dreary music, during its remastering in 1999. Pity.
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