Racing without rules: Once upon a time, it was “anything goes.” Five designers imagine doing that today.

BY JOHN PHILLIPS

In its glory days—from roughly 1966 through 1974—the SCCA’s Can-Am series was the rip-roaringest racing extravaganza in North America, the vehicular equivalent of great white sharks in a goldfish bowl. It was widely perceived as a no-rules, run-what-ya-brung series, but there were always rules, and some of them—that every car should have a passenger seat, for instance—bordered on the absurd. Still, the unrestricted engines—usually big-block Chevy V-8s making 750 horsepower—were, in those days, both deafening and brain-boggling, as were the cars’ speeds. Given the primitive state of aerodynamics, the cars regularly clawed their way into the firmament, as Chaparral founder and stalwart Can-Amster Jim Hall discovered in 1968 at Las Vegas. He limps to this day.