How to Cite
Abstract
This article uses the creation of Atlantic Motorsport Park (AMP), the only purpose-built road racing circuit in Atlantic Canada, as a lens to explain the wider efforts to modernize sports car competition in the region. Those efforts paralleled the contemporaneous regional political attempts to embrace industrial modernity that culminated in the illfated Bricklin sports car. Just as major changes in the auto industry helped to sink the Bricklin project, AMP eventually was overtaken by modernizing changes in Canadian motorsport, specifically commercialized professionalism. The voluntary efforts that built the track limited its ability to host the “big-league” races it was designed to attract. Ironically, while professional racing shifted to city-based circuits, the modest scale and the volunteer character of AMP ensured its survival as a club-operated venue for amateur motorsport.
Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the author(s), with Acadiensis being granted a non-exclusive licence to each and every right in the work throughout the world. After publication of the work, the author(s) shall have the right to self-archive the work and to reprint the work in whole or in part in books authored by or edited by the author(s) without the payment of any fee. In these other formats, however, the author or authors are required to acknowledge the original publication of the work in the pages of the journal. In the case of any requests to reprint the work, Acadiensis will require a standard permission fee -- to be divided equally between the journal and the author. In the event that such requests are received by the author(s), the author(s) shall direct such requests to the journal.