ABOUT WILLIAM EDGAR ARCHIVE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
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William Edgar during an article/photo-shoot at California's Sonoma Raceway
Why This Website? Good question. Yes, it's an enterprise. It's also my way to offer quality enlargement photographic prints made from iconic William Edgar Archive images for motorsport enthusiasts everywhere to display in their office, home, garage, shop, car and motorcycle collections, or to give as gifts to family and friends.
William Edgar Archive is the motorsport-themed photograph collection begun 72 years ago in 1948 by my father, John Edgar, when he first entered the post-WW2 racing scene in the United States with his Ernie McAfee-tuned and modified British MG-TC, along with the John Edgar-commissioned Vincent-HRD one-off factory build of the very first Vincent Black Lightning, designed and engineered by Phil Irvine and Philip Vincent in Hertfordshire, England to set a new American Class-A motorcycle land speed record on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. Speed specialist Rollie Free accomplished that by riding "The John Edgar Lightning" flat-out wearing only wind-smoothing swimming trunks and tennis shoes for an official 2-way average of 150.313-mph on September 13, 1948.
This Archive's earliest photographs from that mid-20th Century era are the foundation of what was the John Edgar Collection and, after his death in 1972, the William Edgar Collection, then more broadly the Edgar Motorsport Archive and ultimately today's William Edgar Archive with over 5,000 photographs by father-and-son Edgars along with those that were photographed in period (1948-1960) specifically for my father and his John Edgar Enterprises motor-racing organization. From these collected B&W and Color photographs existing in negative, transparency, and print formats presently held in William Edgar Archive, come the various images exhibited here and offered for reproduction enlargement print purchase, having been selected for this website by merits of interest, historical significance, and pictorial rarity. Many of the images offered here have appeared in my magazine articles and used in books published by others over the past twenty years, while some of the images found in this Archive's nine photograph galleries have not been seen for decades.
William Edgar and John Edgar - Torrey Pines Races, California - July 1952
Prints ordered from William Edgar Archive are for personal display only, and are not to be reproduced in any form of media that would include magazine, book, film, video, or digital use. NOTE: If interested in media use of any of these photographs, please email me, William Edgar, directly (see CONTACT page on this site) .
When viewing these Archive photographs a good way is by clicking on the image expansion tool [i] above the upper right corner of the photograph. Once made full-screen, other images in the selected gallery can be scrolled forward or back in their largest possible viewing form. Each of these sample photographs here are William Edgar Copyright protected and are embedded with the marking words: "William Edgar Archive Photograph".
The Example Photographs on this Website are posted in relatively low-resolution for quick loading when viewed here. All ordered prints will be made as high-resolution unmarked images from William Edgar Archive originals for best possible picture quality.
Photographs from William Edgar Archive have for many years been licensed to illustrate articles, books, films, event programs, private collections, and special projects. That media and personnel are:
American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s, Auto Aficionado, Automobile, Autoweek, Bimmer, Brock Yates, Brown Fox Books, Canepa, Car Graphic Japan, Carmel-by-the-Sea Concours on the Avenue, Cavallino, Checkered Flag 200, Classic & Sportscar, Classic Driver, Classic Motorcycle, Copley Motorcars, Corvette, CSRG, Cycle News, Dalton Watson Fine Books, Excellence, Fabulous Fifties Newsletter, Ferrari, Ferrari: A Champion’s View, Forza, Flat Out, Free-to-Wheel, Gooding & Company, Goodwood Festival of Speed, General Racing’s Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races, HSR West, iMotor UK, Intrepid Motorcar Company, Inside Track, James Dean: Forever Young, James Dean: From Passion for Speed to Immortality, Men’s Journal, MBI Publishing, MG Enthusiast, Museo Ferrari Maranello, Paramount Ranch Remembered, Petersen Automotive Museum, Octane, Porsche Panorama, Rick Cole, Rider, Riverside Raceway, Road & Track, Robb Report Collection, Robb Report Motorcycling, RPM Auto Books, Screen Icons, Speed Age, Spirit of America, SportRider, The Official Ferrari Magazine/Conde Nast UK, The Pebble Beach Insider, The Pebble Beach Company, The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering, The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, The Ultimate Classic, Tom Peck, Sports Car Digest, Sports Car International, The Other Moss, VeloceToday.com, Vintage Motorsport, Vintage Racecar Journal, Warner Brothers Entertainment, Weekend Heroes I & II, Maserati 450S: The fastest sports racing car of the 50’s.
1957 Luigi Chinetti photograph in the Racing Icons Gallery