Sport: Lance’s Legacy

Lance Reventlow, a handsome, mop-headed youth of 22, was born to money and scheduled for regular space in the Sunday supplements. The son of Woolworth Heiress Barbara Hutton and Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow of Denmark, young Lance was the pawn in one of the longest and bitterest custody fights in café society history. During the course of his tumultuously abnormal upbringing, he seemed destined to develop a taste for high life and supercharged women. Instead, he devoted his energies to fast cars. While other rich young men danced and drank the night through, Lance got his regular eleven hours sleep, spent waking moments soaking up know-how from veteran racers.

Last year Driver Reventlow set about something constructive: developing an American sports car that could challenge the long supremacy of Europe’s powerful racing machines.

In a daring gamble, he hired four experts, put them to work in Los Angeles. Using a special fuel-injection system, they developed 361 h.p. in a big (5.5 liters) Chevrolet engine. Double-size drum brakes were another innovation. The result was the Scarab—a low, shovel-nosed racer that quickly won its spurs by outrunning the long-dominant Ferraris, Maseratis and Jaguars produced in Europe.

Last week in Nassau, where the opposition was admittedly not up to that of former years, the Reventlow Scarabs completed a double victory, won the 252-mile Nassau Trophy event to match an earlier triumph in the 112.5-mile Governor’s Cup race. Flushed with success, Reventlow returned to New York and a rendezvous with Starlet Jill St. John, on whose pretty finger he had placed a spectacular ring set with 100 diamonds. There were marriage rumors, but Reventlow declared a more serious ambition: developing a smaller-engined car to compete on the international Grand Prix circuit.

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Last month flaxen-haired Mike Hawthorn, 29, became the first Briton to win the world’s driving championship (by a single point over Britain’s Stirling Moss). Last week Hawthorn announced he was retiring. Saddened by the racing deaths this year of Ferrari teammates Peter Collins and Luigi Musso, Hawthorn decided to devote his energies to his garage in Surrey. Said the champion: “I can’t properly explain all the reasons, even to myself, except that it’s better to get out when you’re at the top.”