These photos without mercy directed their impact to the part of our sensibility that sees in the car a manifestation of all those things that can be art, magic, surprise, aesthetic enjoyment, vital element, poetry, culture (as a manifestation of men from a certain place at a special moment in time) and many other things.

There was also someone sensitive enough to the car to venture out with a camera crew and shoot a real ballet of Formula 1 cars among the flowers on 70mm color film. Thousands of books dedicated to the car have been written. Books that for their birth "logically" required the dedication of one or more intellects for each case. Intellectuals who delivered many hours of their life when they felt the call of the car. Because there were also "finally" those who devoted their entire lives to the automobile.

In the Argentine Republic there is a club whose founders, moved by the automotive passion, baptized Automobile Club Argentino. From the name, any guesses rightly that the institutional idea was to create an association that nuclee owners and fond of any degree with the car. Over the years, the institution became a true economic power that throws succulent and multimillionaire surplus to the exercise of each year.

Today there is little conceptual difference between the purchase of a refrigerator or a car. And the Club offers service to machines (auto machines, not refrigeration machines). But that's another problem. Let's go to the attitude of the leaders. Of those gentlemen sensitive to the engine that had replaced the horse, very little remained, as the decades became more committed to the new century. The sensitivity of the authorities left room for a bureaucratic administration. The image of the club became by its own merits something evidently "not sensitive". Pluralizing what anyone supposes can be qualifying for a single person. Curiously, the soul of the club grew old and moved to the world division that is generally useless only seen with sensitive eyes.

All these people are directly responsible for the death of a group of cars of great universal value, whose corpses lie today on Velez Sársfield Avenue, within the Technical School of the Automobile Club Argentino. The history of this was a valuable collection of automobiles began before the revolution of 55. Back then it existed in the A.C.A. a group of people who moved. And that took care of joining the cars that the Club received as donations or in some other way. These cars were "if the short memory does not fail" stacked and restored in some floor of the Club's main building. Then came the revolution, the political changes and the changes of authorities that came to reach the Automobile Club. Part of the collection of cars, all or almost all in order of march, went to live in a special room in the Historical Museum of Luján. The rest remained on the same floor of the central building, where they continued to be victims of indiscriminate prey.

The first thing that disappeared was the bronze headlights, board instruments and other souvenirs. Then "almost because" they were transferred to one of the A.C.A. There continued the destruction, due in large part to the proximity of a building under construction. Within the area of influence of rubble, bricks, cement, lime, water, sand and other materials inherent in the construction, old cars were kept. Many of them had come by their own means, but by then they were no more than almost unidentifiable spoils. From there, and by an order of who knows who and for what reason, they were moved to a new cemetery, which is where they are now. The transport from Belgrano to Vélez Sársfield Avenue was made using the Club's cranes. The drivers of these cranes did not have to know the value of what they were carrying in tow, although they did have to know who gave the order. But unfortunately the precautions were not taken, and so could a well-known specialist journalist and great lover of collector cars see before his eyes a Cadillac coupe, prior to the first war, hanging from a truck crane, rolling over the wire wheels without covers. The first thought of the journalist "for a problem of intelligence and sensitivity" was the same that he picked up from others when he related what was seen: "What beasts!".

We know that in some ephemeral moment there was the idea of creating a team of specialized people with the mission of restoring cars that had not traveled to Luján. Although the right thing would have been to integrate a team of people who really know the subject in order to also restore the cars that are exposed in Luján and proudly look under the identification sign (wrong identification in some case) the name of the owner: < / p>

Automobile Club Argentino. Very few lived the shame that for our culture and intelligence we suffered when Lord Montagu de Beaulieu emphasized to the authorities that accompanied him in the visit to Luján that the identification of that car was wrong, because it was not about such a brand but about that. And these people exhibit in the only museum that deals with the car "even in part" in our country. But the noble idea of creating these restorative teams never came to fruition. Some cars were later exposed in the Sesquicentennial Exhibition in the open and without any kind of surveillance. They were simple decorative elements. And the cars finished dying his third death. There, on Velez Sársfield Avenue, anyone can go and see, because they will always be there in the same place, in the central courtyard of the Automobile Club Argentino Technical School corpses imputable to the economically powerful institution of a Mors, a Napier, a Cadillac coupe with a wonderful body, a Renault, a De Dion-Bouton, an electric Krieger from the last century, another Cadillac and more and more skeletons.

There will be thirteen or fifteen cars that once served for someone to live or be moved by their beauty. Today all of them could be magnificent exponents of the first part of the history of the car. But there does not end the inconceivable extermination, because inside one of the sheds where the School operates the bodies of the two Ferraris that made up the Argentine team and defended the Argentine colors against the Europeans (you can still see the Argentine international colors in the body remains). One of the Ferraris is armed, that is, it is on its wheels with some pieces placed on it. The other is buried under a huge pile of furniture, school benches and trash. Of those cars, somewhere in the building there are a lot of spare parts and even one or more complete engines. In that same shed his almost inexorable death agonizes an old Renault pumper that a barracks of Volunteer Firemen, in a gesture of which they must be more than repented, donated a few years ago so that the A.C.A. lose it.

The automobile is our passion and that of many people in the world. Preserving cultural expressions is a feature of intelligence. Of intelligent people or smart people. In Buenos Aires, the capital of South America, the most important automobile institution in the country condemns to death a handful of cars with great collection value. All, representative of their times. All, with universal value (at least 40 million old pesos, making an estimate roughly grosso modo) and some of incalculable importance for our country (the Ferrari of the Argentine team).

We know that there were those who offered to restore ad honórem all those cars. But as it was necessary to make a budget of spare parts and everything else, and as the bureaucracy prevails in the A.C.A., they could never give the cars to anyone to be saved. There was also a group of suitable people who volunteered and were given the no of the children.

That is why we publicly accuse A.C.A. as responsible for the death of these cars, cultural heritage of our country. That is why we propose A.C.A. to call for bids to find the team that will be in charge of saving what is still possible from what was a valuable car collection. That is why we suggest A.C.A. try "within your limitations" rejuvenate your administration and look for who can give the order or put your signature to grant a grant and cars can be restored.

If any of these cars is saved, it may be that we are not all affected "as Argentines" by the same expression of the journalist in front of the crane dragging the piece of collection that was destroyed against the pavement: "What beasts! ".

INCALIFICABLE

The painting is pathetic. For those who find a bronze beacon of those who illuminated by carbide gas is an invaluable finding, seeing lots of loose and rusted elements or sets of shattered pieces is outrageous.

Special bodies with rotten wood and rusted metal parts. Luxurious upholstered period absolutely deteriorated, with the refined velvet of the capitoné or the curtains roldo in criminal form. On the floor, between toilets, garbage and scrap, you can see the bronze nut that covered the rear hub of a Cadillac from the second decade of the century, a twisted and unusable spoke wheel, cast and turned pieces with the unmistakable quality of other times, carved remains of bodies, all elements that will never recover because many of them are unique.

Other things have disappeared forever to go safely to a trash can: board instruments that are non-existent pieces in the world, headlights, horns, shields, mechanical accessories of engines such as magnets, carburetors, spark plugs, starter cranks, et cetera. Valuables delivered to vandalism due to the sole and exclusive fault of the unknown persons responsible for the A.C.A. Inside the main house, scattered on a table, are the pistons of the engine "or the engines" of the Ferrari 1500 cm3; in a corner, abandoned, the block; somewhere, and if it still is, a Maserati 2000 engine; pieces and more pieces that will follow the same path to theft or death. In the same place, and under a pile of furniture, another complete Ferrari is dying without anyone until now having heard his accusing complaints. That is precisely why it is there, drowned forever by those who run the hoax entity of our motorsport. To whom it concerns, that take the necessary measures.

ARTICLES OF VOLUME I