62 Years of Rose Cup History

In the first months of 1961, the Portland Rose Festival Association partnered with the city’s Jaycees club and Cascade Sports Car Club to launch a new sports car racing event as part of the city’s annual Rose Festival civic celebration. The races were to be held on the abandoned streets of the Vanport neighborhood, a wartime shipyard worker housing development that was destroyed by a flood in 1948. Fences went up, some hay bales were placed, and the word went out throughout the western states: Come to Portland in June for a big race. When the event program was printed, the cover optimistically called the event the First Annual Rose Cup Races.

The organizers didn’t really expect such an enthusiastic response from west coast racers. Drivers came from as far away as southern California to compete, and the first two Rose Cup races were won by noted Indy Car driver Jerry Grant, piloting a now-priceless Ferrari Testa Rossa. From the beginning, the Rose Cup races represented the best in amateur sports car racing.

Throughout the 1960s, the Rose Cup race was mainly contested by notable gentlemen racers running in the best sports cars of the era. But in the early 1970s, the Rose Cup was run with both open-wheel formula cars, and with the Can-Am cars that represented the apex of racing technology in that era. It was then that Portland’s legendary Monte Shelton won the first of his record seven Rose Cup Race Winner trophies.

Then from 1975 to 1983, the Rose Cup event featured the SCCA Pro Racing Trans-Am series. Trans-Am returned for a one-time revival in 2009, and more recently the 2018 and 2019 Rose Cup races were contested by the professional racers of the Pirelli World Challenge and SRA GT4 Americas series.

But even when the pros come to town, the Rose Cup Races are still a venue for local racers to participate in a premier event, and show that they’ve got as much to offer as any professional series.

The Best of Local Racing

One Rose Cup tradition that has now endured into its seventh decade is the commitment to bringing the best amateur racers in the most popular competition classes to Portland for a showdown. This year, the 63rd Rose Cup Races are made up of several exciting racing categories, driven by your friends and neighbors.

The drivers and cars that make up Cascade Sports Car Club, Oregon Region Sports Car Club of America, and the Society of Vintage Racing Enthusiasts (SOVREN) are coming together to make the Rose Cup Races the most inclusive racing event of the year. Now in their seventh decade, the Rose Cup Races are still a showcase of local talent in mostly affordable cars.