By Paul Pfanner - Dec 18, 2019, 11:15 AM ET

Today is the 40th anniversary of the company that publishes RACER, SportsCar and Vintage Motorsport

On December 18, 1979, the company that would eventually publish SportsCar beginning in 1984, create RACER magazine in 1992, launch RACER.com in 1997 and acquire Vintage Motorsport in 2019 was founded by Paul Pfanner, Suzette Catheron-Smith and the late Geary Brown. It was then known as Pfanner+Catheron+Brown, Publications, Inc. and was based in Santa Ana, Calif.

The company’s first office was adjacent to Interscope Racing, the fabled Ted Field-owned race team that won the 1979 24 Hours at Daytona with Field and lead driver Danny Ongais. Not coincidentally, the new company’s first project was the creation of livery illustrations and collateral materials for the original Interscope-entered Porsche Indy car that sadly never raced due to a last-minute rules change by USAC prior to the 1980 season. The car shown in the poster (above right) is the venerable Parnelli VPJ chassis that Ongais drove to multiple USAC Indy car victories in 1978 and had been updated with Porsche’s six-cylinder turbo engine that had been evolved from the Porsche 935 and 936 prototypes.

Pfanner+Catheron+Brown Publications, Inc. was created to attract custom publishing opportunities so that the company could eventually launch a great American racing magazine. Within a month of its founding the company, the trio produced their first issue of the monthly magazine for the Cal Club region of the SCCA. Six months later the young company began producing its second monthly title, for the Alfa Romeo Owner’s Club. During the summer of 1980, Pfanner was contacted by his friend Skip Barber about designing a new logo and overall corporate identity for the Skip Barber Racing School. Today the school is under new ownership but the iconic logo (pictured at left, above) remains in use.

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Paul Pfanner

Paul Pfanner is the founder, President and Executive Publisher of RACER magazine and RACER.com and is also the CEO of the Racer Studio creative services and branded content agency. Pfanner began his career in racing media as an art director for FORMULA magazine and later, SportsCar magazine before failing spectacularly as he attempted to become an editor. All of this was a transparent ploy to fund Pfanner’s desire to race but after he proved to be unemployable, he had no choice abandon his racing ambitions so he started his own publishing house and creative agency in 1979 which was the forerunner of Racer Media & Marketing, Inc. Pfanner sold the majority of Racer Communications, Inc in January 2001 to Haymarket Media and re-acquired the company with his original partners Rob and Chris Dyson in March 2012 which now operates under the name Racer Media & Marketing, Inc.

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