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A Lifetime of Cars of a Lifetime: Bugatti T57

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The Bugatti T57 in 1955 beside the Meuse river in Verdun, France.


By Brandes Elitch

“I was fortunate enough to live in a time when, if you were willing to tinker with your car, there was a lot of neat stuff to be had. But you were on your own though.”

Recently, Steve Snyder, a fixture in the American Lancia Club for decades, reprinted the club publication originally published in 1977 as “the Aurelia Issue.” (https://velocetoday.com/lanciana-and-friends/) This year, he added more recent material, which brought it to 94 pages. This would be a must-have for any Lancisti. Steve has a few copies for sale; you can contact him at jsteve34@att.net. Steve asked me to deliver a copy locally, which took me to the residence of Mr. G., who kindly invited me inside his home. When I asked about some pictures on the wall, he related the history of his life with cars, and has agreed to share it with our readers, as follows: [Read more…] about A Lifetime of Cars of a Lifetime: Bugatti T57

The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2014

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'If you can't run with the Big Dogs, get off the road!' A Big Dog with a 1975 Laverda 750 SF2, owned by Jon Martino


By Brandes Elitch
Photos by Petya Elitch

“The world of motorcycles has all the ingredients of a good enriching drama: heroic deeds, political intrigue, design brilliance, cut-throat business practices, quirky characters, national tensions, cultural biases, eros, and thanatos.” – Paul d’Orleans

In previous columns, I’ve covered the Monterey Historics, the week long series of racing, shows, club events, and exhibitions culminating with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. I’ve covered an event called “The Legends of the Motorcycle,” held for 3 years at the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay, CA. In May, I attended for the first time The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, the sixth iteration of this event, which seems to have stepped into the void when the Legends event was unfortunately discontinued. There are many concours events for the automobile, but to my knowledge this is the only world-class motorcycle event. Perhaps someday someone somewhere might try to duplicate it. However, it would be tough to beat the ambiance of the Monterey Peninsula, in this case a luxury resort with a championship golf course set on 850 acres in Carmel Valley. [Read more…] about The Quail Motorcycle Gathering 2014

Brandes Elitch at The Quail

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Story by Brandes Elitch
Photos by Petya Elitch

The Monterey weekend is so overwhelming that it is impossible to capture more than a small part of it here. Two reasonable and sophisticated car collectors might come back with two completely different versions of what they saw that mattered to them, and in listening to them you would wonder if they were in the same place. All of us have our biases and predilections, and oftentimes we just search out what we already favor, without being distracted by something new. This is human nature.
[Read more…] about Brandes Elitch at The Quail

Brandes Elitch at Concorso Italiano

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When you said that your Lamborghini could pull like a tractor, I had no idea....

Story by Brandes Elitch
Photos by Petya Elitch

If you have never attended the Monterey Car Week then you need to know that there are two basic rules: you can’t see everything, so don’t try, and – as we used to say in the Army – “Move with a purpose.”

There are years when I have skipped the races at Laguna Seca, and I stopped going to Pebble Beach after twenty plus years of regular attendance. But one event I don’t miss is the Concorso Italiano – the largest Italian car show in the world.

Let me point out why this is not happening in Italy. [Read more…] about Brandes Elitch at Concorso Italiano

The Alfa Mystique

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License plate gets to the heart of the matter; Alfa owners enjoy their cars.

Story by Brandes Elitch

Photos by Petya Elitch unless otherwise noted

Over 700 people registered for “Alfa California 2013: Sonoma Valley Wine Country,” a joint venture of the National Alfa Romeo Owner’s Club (AROC) and the San Francisco-based Alfa Romeo Association (ARA).

Keep in mind that the last new Alfa was sold here almost twenty years ago. Alfas were never common in the US, and expensive when new. Unlike the owners of some even more expensive Italian marques, Alfa owners are different. For one thing, they drive their cars. For the most part, the cars are not restored to a “better than new” standard for concours judging or evaluation. Many of the cars at the show here were restored to a very high standard, but they are usually driven, not restored and put away to await the next swell in market pricing. They are not so complicated, and the parts are not so expensive, so that a person with normal mechanical skills is able to do lot of the work themselves. But what makes them so compelling? And why do over 700 people attend the conventions for these cars? [Read more…] about The Alfa Mystique

The Art of Francois de la Cloche

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Bugatti Atlantic by Francois de la Cloche. ©Francois de la Cloche

By Brandes Elitch
All art and images courtesy and copyright Francois del Cloche

One of the joys of attending Retromobile (see Art and Retromobile) is that it’s not just a collection of cars, it’s a multimedia experience. There is a whole section of the hall dedicated to artists, sculptors, model-makers, dioramas, jewelry, posters, plaques, automobilia, photographs, mascots, racing trophies, and more. When I first started attending this show, around twenty years ago, it was pretty low-key. Today, there has been enormous price appreciation in the cars themselves, and by association, with the collectibles that seem to inevitably accompany them. I cannot think of a single “car guy” I know whose home does not have a few prints, posters, drawings, or photos on the wall reflecting their passion. The marvelous thing about art is that each piece is original and unique. Art is personal, very personal. [Read more…] about The Art of Francois de la Cloche

The Exner Renwal Revival Cars of 1964

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Catalog courtesy Peter Larsen.

By Brandes Elitch
Photos courtesy of http://www.madle.org/

If you were a teenager in the 1960’s, as I was, you will remember that Renwal made a series of plastic 1/25 scale model car kits of the Revival Cars. Renwal Products was located in Mineola, NY. I have the ’66 Packard model. The box art says, “Modern Version of a Great Classic Car-Advance Showing.” There was even a slot car version, at least according to the assembly instructions. This is the story behind the Exner Revival cars.

In December of 1963 Esquire magazine published an article under the heading “Flights of Fancy.” It was titled “Introducing the 1964 Duesenberg, Packard, Stutz, and Mercer!” and written by Diana Bartley. It describes how the concept of the Exner Revival Classics, in particular the Mercer, Bugatti and Duesenberg designed by Exner with bodies constructed by Ghia and Sibona & Basano was brought to Exner.

Bartley sets the stage:

“Granted that American car design now ranges from acceptable to handsome, still, one of the ways our cars aren’t better than they used to be is that they all tend to look alike…anyone familiar with the individuality of so many of the great American cars of the past does notice – and cares.”

Bartley, who was a well-known automotive writer in the fifties and sixties, was one who cared. More than that, she had a notion and the opportunity to do something about it. She contacted Virgil Exner, recently retired VP of Styling at Chrysler. Exner and his son had a design consultancy business. Bartley broached the idea to them of creating sketches of a “modern parallel” to the great American cars which had what she called “immense marque identity,” but which no longer existed.

Choosing to work with the Exners was a stroke of genius for Bartley. As she relates, “…the Exners still believe that luxury-car buyers would welcome a return to the wide choice of luxury-car makes and models that was available almost until WWII.”

Exner Sr. commented, “We believe not only that greater stress should be put on the development and continuous refinement of a distinctive character for each marque, but also that the market for luxury cars can be greatly stimulated by some real effort to recapture some of the elegance and originality which make many of the old cars so interesting and exciting to us yet today.”

Bartley further comments, “You might think that the Exners are the theorizers…But they are more than that. They’re the doers.” Responding to her guidance, they actually produced four modern versions of the cars in the title for 1964. In creating the cars, Exner assumed that “… each manufacturer had pursued a policy of refinement and modernization of the cars’ identifying characteristics, and that each had decided to resume business after a thirty year lapse. What we are trying to do is to capture the spirit of the older car design and body type in a modern package.”

In the article, the Exners provided pencil sketches of the original cars and their modern version. There were four pencil sketches of each car, two of the front and two of the rear three-quarter views, along with their informative commentary. Above this was a 7-8 inch color rendering of the side view of each car.

Bugatti T101

The Exner Bugatti Revival on a T101 chassis. Now with General William Lyon.

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Replicas, Re-creations, and Fakes

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By far the biggest recreation ever attempted was the Esders Bugatti Royale. The original convertible had been rebodied and was, at the time, in the Harrah collection. The Schlumpf brothers wanted one exactly like the Royale built for the famed couturier Esders, so they secretly constructed another Royale from scratch. It is still in the Cité de l'Automobile Museum. Photo from the book, “The Schlumpf Obsession”, Doubleday, 1978, photographer unknown.

By Brandes Elitch

About thirty years ago, I attended a “Grand Classic,” the judged show that is a regular fixture on the Classic Car Club of America events calendar. I remember seeing a Cord 810 coupe parked under a tree, a little ways from the show. Even from a distance, it was a spectacular car, and I walked over to see it. As I was admiring it, a thought occurred to me like a thunderbolt: Cord never made an 810 coupe!

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A Practical Guide to Monterey: Plan Ahead

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moretti

An original 1955 Moretti 1200 Gran Sport, owned by Mark Brinker. It is seeing rare cars like these that make going to Monterey worthwhile.

Photos by Brandes Elitch and Petya Elitch
Story by Brandes Elitch

“I am completely over the whole self-congratulatory Pebble Beach-Monterey Historics business.”
-Jack Baruth, 8/20/2012, writing in The Truth About Cars.com

Jack is one of my favorite writers, and after another Monterey weekend, you can understand what he means. However, you can avoid a lot of the hassle that accompanies these events with a little prior planning. Here are some suggestions, and no, it is not too soon to begin planning for next year.
[Read more…] about A Practical Guide to Monterey: Plan Ahead

The Constant Search Part 3

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By Brandes Elitch

After reading the first two installments of The Constant Search, my friend Phil Goldberg sent me a seminal article on this subject. The author is Larry Givens, and it is a ten page article called Five Essays on Collecting. Mr. Givens collected mechanical musical instruments. His specialty was the Ampico reproducing piano. While he wrote about that, his focus, clarity, insights, and guidance are so incisive, relevant, and important, that I want to share them with you. We’ll begin with the four phases of collecting.

Phase One
“The early birds in any collecting field catch the fattest worms.”

This Alfa Romeo 2600 Zagato was purchased for the princely sum of $1800 with very low mileage and in excellent condition. But that was in 1971.

That’s because the item being collected (actually, “accumulated” is more accurate at this stage) has been replaced by something newer, and has thus been rendered nearly valueless. This has been the case with almost every car ever made. In many cases, even today, there is a 25 or 30 year cycle before the car is considered “collectible.” Many cars we consider desirable today went through a period when they were scrapped or selling for nominal amounts. Charles Chayne found a Bugatti Royale in a wrecking yard. [Read more…] about The Constant Search Part 3

The Constant Search Part II

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By Brandes Elitch

In the first half of this article, I discussed the early days of automotive literature. Back in the fifties and sixties, there was a dearth of books on automotive subjects. There were some iconic books that most people had on their bookshelves: Ken Purdy’s “Kings of the Road” would have to top that list. But the best automotive writers typically wrote magazine articles, not books. This changed, fortunately, and now it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of newly published books. In this column, I will try to give you something to think about on this subject.

I was going to try to start with a “top ten” list of automotive books that everyone should have in their collection. Then, I read this wonderful quote from Ken Shubert, published in the Wild About Cars website (www.wildaboutcars.com). “We are not in this for the same reason. Sure, we all have “old cars” in common, but what we’re in it for starts to take different direction right from the start. We come from different walks of life. We have varying amounts of time, money, and energy. We have different ideas of what we want to do. We have different priorities. We have different skill levels. We like different eras, different makes, colors, options. Diversity is a good thing. What if we all wanted the same car, year, model, etc.?”

Diverse subjects but excellent topics and top notch authors...

So, there is no magic Top Ten list. You could focus on individual marques (hopefully, ones that are in your garage), racing, engineering, repair and restoration, racecar driver biographies and circuit/race histories, industry analysis, domestic v. foreign, not to mention the triumvirate that seem to dominate bookstores these days: of NASCAR, Harleys, and hot rods (no comment). If you asked a Brit, he would come up with names like Anthony Blight, William Boddy, Doug Nye, William Court Chris Nixon, and Jeremy Walton. A Frenchman or Italian would have different names. It’s a big world, car collecting.

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The Constant Search, Part 1

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By Brandes Elitch

Collecting Automotive Books and Literature

In 1982, a British book dealer named Charles Mortimer published a book called The Constant Search, Collecting Motoring and Motorcycling Books. Mortimer started his business during WWII, and spent half a century doing research for this book. At the time, he believed he had chronicled, in 40 different categories, everything published to that date on this subject. In addition to this bibliography, he included chapters on how to start a collection, whether to specialize or not, and how to store and display printed material. Mortimer started at the dawn of the automotive age, so this was an ambitious project. Today, I wonder if it would even be possible to chronicle all the published material on this subject in just the last 30 years. There weren’t a lot of new books about what we call “automobilia” in the sixties and seventies, but starting perhaps 20 years ago there has been a veritable explosion in published material. In this brief article, I would like to touch on some interesting aspects of automotive journalism and book collecting for the car enthusiast. My sense is that almost every car collector has also built up a book, periodical, manual, and literature collection, at least that has been my experience. [Read more…] about The Constant Search, Part 1

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