As we all know, racing is a very demanding business and it's rare to see any racing car constructor or engine builder survive, let along thrive, for very long.

Once-great Formula One teams from the Sixties and Seventies, like Lotus, BRM, Brabham, Cooper and Tyrrell, are long-gone for example, and production race car manufacturers like March and Reynard are no longer with us.

All American Racers was in business for 34 years from 1966-99, building Eagle F1, Indy and IMSA cars, and probably ranks as the most accomplished American race car constructor. But AAR no longer builds race cars, although the company continues in business building lightweight composite components and devices for the US military, as well as doing motorcycle and special engineering projects.

In fact, it's difficult to find many race car or engine builders with longer lives than AAR. Without doubt, Ferrari sets the standard. The great Italian team's roots go back to before WWII, of course, when Enzo Ferrari started fielding Alfa Romeos in various European races. The first Ferrari F1 car debuted in 1948 and Alberto Ascari scored the marque's first grand prix victory in the 1949 Swiss GP, the year before the first modern F1 world championship was organised.

From 1950 through today, Ferrari's official grand prix record shows 202 wins, 196 poles and 14 world championships, plus 49 non-championship F1 race wins between 1950-79 when those events were allowed to take place. It's a pretty stellar record by any measure, particularly when you add Ferrari's nine Le Mans victories and many other world championship sports car wins from the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

The only other modern F1 teams with serious histories are McLaren and Williams. McLaren was founded in 1966 and has scored 156 wins and 131 poles. Williams started racing in F1 in 1969 and the team has won 113 races and taken 125 poles. In comparison, the remaining F1 teams - BMW, Renault, Honda, Toyota, Red Bull et al - are young pups.

The oldest American race teams are Petty Enterprises and the Wood Bros, both in NASCAR. The Pettys' roots go back to NASCAR's beginnings in 1949 and the Woods have been in action since 1953. Among the more modern NASCAR teams, the oldest is Richard Childress' operation, which he started in 1969. Rick Hendrick started his NASCAR team in 1984 and Jack Roush went NASCAR Racing in 1988 after a number of years in IMSA's GTO category. Roger Penske started his race team in 1966 and Carl Haas started fielding a team around the same time, although the current Newman/Haas team didn't take shape until 1983. And, AAR aside, there are no American race car builders - unless you count Bob Riley's company - which have enjoyed long-term, successful lives.

Again, longevity in big-time racing is a rare thing, so it's both interesting and impressive that Lola and Cosworth share 50th anniversaries in 2008. It's difficult to put into perspective Lola Cars' many achievements over the past 50 years since the company's founding in 1958 by Eric Broadley in a tiny garage in Bromley, Kent, a south-eastern suburb of London.

Lola has been recognised for many years as one of the world's most successful and enduring production racing car manufacturers. It has constructed race-winning cars for almost every major racing category, including F1, Indy/Champ Car racing, CanAm, international sportscar racing and many other secondary formulae and categories around the world. Among Lola's astonishing record of accomplishments are 194 individual Indy/Champ car victories, including three Indy 500s, and numerous CanAm and Formula 5000 wins and championships.

Lola is a rare survivor in a business which tends to feature a steady stream of new names, decade by decade, with most of them falling by the wayside after ten or twenty years.

To read the rest of this Gordon Kirby column and other 'The Way It Is' columns go to www.gordonkirby.com