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News from Elmsford Raceway
Leon Mandel III, an influential figure in the auto industry as editor in chief and publisher of AutoWeek magazine, died March 5th, 2002 at his home in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. He was 73.A long time friend of Elmsford Group owners Lou and Barbara Del Rosario, Mr. Mandel wrote and reported about the world of cars for four decades. He became influential in his field because of his expertise and experience and because of the witty, biting way he expressed his views on the global automobile industry in his weekly column, "Jaundiced Eye," in AutoWeek; in books about the world of cars; and in a weekly television program, "AutoWeek on Speedvision."
Mr. Mandel's son Dutch was an active slot car racer at Elmsford raceway. Dutch is currently Editor and Associate Publisher of AutoWeek. Leon will be sorely missed by the automotive world and especially by Barbara, Lou and all the Del Rosario family. The pictures below are of Leon with Lou and Barbara at the New York Auto Show last year.
Below is a great story which sums up Mr. Mandel's love of automobiles:
When Leon Mandel was a college student at Cornell in the early 1950s, he received a modest inheritance. He spent it all on a new Porsche 356.
"Much later, when they were speaking with me again, my parents asked "Why?" and the only answer I could offer them was that I didn't have a choice. My parents, I came to understand, had expected me to invest the sum in something like IBM," Mandel remembered in a keynote speech at last summer's Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Lime Rock. "If I had invested it, in IBM or something like that, I would certainly have been wealthy within a decade.
"Instead, I bought a Porsche...and got a life."