Betcha didn't think we'd run this photo....
Dear Boss,
I took a little trip up the Coast to Monterey, so as promised, I thought I’d drop a note with a few images. I selected a big ol’Chrysler 300 for the trip, and arrived in my secret low cost no-tell motel in five hours.
On Wednesday I set off for the Embassy Suites and set up my booth at Automobilia, a sort of emporium for the flora and fauna of the automotive world– posters, model cars, clothes, old books (and new books). I was pleased to be in a booth next to Mike Rabin who is famous for making wheel discs He had a great sense of humor, especially considering he had to endure hearing my sales pitch at least 100 times. Finally he got to where he would interrupt my pitch to a new client, saying “It’s getting deeper.”
Hugh Ruthven's stand at Automobilia
I wondered over to Logan Gray’s booth and was shocked to see George Stauffer’s book Daytona Cobra Coupe is now $1500 used. I wonder if ol’ George has a warehouse full of new copies stashed away! I was tempted to buy a book about Lloyd Ruby whose name I understand, was to be pronounced correct L-A-W-D ROO-BEE but found it’s too late to include any gems about him in my update of my Shelby book as it’s on the press.
I also met a lady dressed in sort of ‘50s attire, reminiscent of the late great Betty Page (the first postwar glamor girl), selling scarves and such and we talked about how rat rods and ‘50s hot rod culture was always there behind the scenes, but only recently has attracted a following and even has conventions in Las Vegas.
I also sold my two leather jackets, one that said “COBRA RANCH Mendocino” and the other plugging my Ferrari novel (“Ferrari Hunters”). One had fur on it and we were lucky to escape the wrath of the PETAistas.
Off to a wingding at the Monterey airport and, seeing as we love aeroplanes, we went over there and sampled the wine and ogled the glamour girls, and I ran into Mr. Pagani and chatted about this and that until I realized he spoke no English. There were a few Navy men in dress uniform and I am happy to see military guests at these events (I remember when Steve Earle would host the Army to send over soldiers from Ft. Ord to watch his vintage races).
First sign this writer has seen of burgeoning Fiat 500 mania--one tricked out with mags and striping. This proud owner has a business in Signal Hill, CA, trying to meet demand for the Italian challenge to the MINI.
Thenceforth on the following Friday morn we proceeded to the Concours Italiano which had plenty of delights, including a couple unrestored cars—gotta love those rolling barn finds– and a couple of hand-built cars that show incremental improvement from year to year. It was great when concours events finally allowed barn find cars in, because the truth is that some cars never do get finished. Before it was hard to find these diamonds-in-the-rough whereas now you even find them at major auctions like the Gooding (they had a tatty patina-encrusted Alfa). We found a barn find Maserati 3500 covered in 2009 by VeloceToday.
Now there might be those who say 'I pay umpteen dollars to go see a concours and I see old rusty cars...'but you don't understand, a barn find is like catnip to a cat.
Also a brilliant move by Concorso, which has to strive especially hard to combat the Quail event now held on the same day, was a display of Italian bicycles and, though not a bike rider myself (I never got that Schwinn Phantom…) I thought this was the ultimate for bike fans and general spectators because there were probably many brands never seen in the U.S.
At the Quail, an Iso Grifo targa was one of several Iso Grifos honored because it was the 50th anniversary. This is still an open headlight version. After that they went to a covered headlamp
version so as to compete with the look of the new Ferrari Daytona.
Onto Laguna and I headed straight for the Shelby group, who were happy as pigs in mud for being the honored marque. There were dozens of real Cobras (the small blocks were CSX2000 series and big blocks CSX3000 series) and it was great to see some still more or less the way they were 45 to 50 years ago, though one ugly one looked like it was painted with a trowel and I overheard someone berate that owner, telling him, “Your car is lowering the value of all Cobras.”
Because Dr. Ernie T. Nagamatsu races a Cobra 289 with a rare LeMans style aluminum hardtop, he qualified for my team jacket. He has even taken his fastback hardtop-equipped Cobra to Goodwood to race.
As I left the Cobra grid there were some other cars of interest lining up for the following races—someone trying to race a Lusso, and then some brass era cars that were beautifully detailed. In the pits several teams have now gone to painting pictures on their car hauler, scenes from their cars early days of racing. The signs they post showing their car’s history are getting more elaborate—one pit even having oil paintings of the car.
These guys had a whole movie backdrop behind their period racer.
There was a mid-day speech on Shelby and I recognized Pete Brock, designer of the Cobra Daytona coupe, and hot dog driver Bob Bondurant, but they were too far away for me to ask questions, so later I talked to Henry Ford III, a robust young lad, son of Edsel , who is son of HFII, “The Deuce.” I told HFIII that, “If you grew up in Detroit, the Ford family was our royal family.” (My father worked at the Rouge building Model As in the 1930s).
He, Henry Ford III, great grandson of the original Henry Ford, me the guy on the left.
Edsel told me about the role of Carroll Shelby upon his return to the Ford fold. “He was over 80 when he came back,” he said. He also told me Shelby would personally go to the track and test the cars and scare the hell out of everybody.
I took every opportunity to momentarily clutch various long-stemmed beauties hawking chemical cosmetics for cars, telling them that if I take a picture with them, the guys at the Senior Center will get a laugh. It worked better before I shaved the beard.
Somewhere in there we got over to Clint Eastwood’s place (not the Hog’s Breath, that’s old hat) but the Mission Inn Ranch or whatever, an old collection of farm buildings that is about 500 ft. south of the old Father Serra-founded Carmel Mission. There isn’t a more pleasant place to view the ocean than at Clint’s place, which is remarkably free of any reminder that you are in a movie star’s place.
The next goal was to secure visiting privileges to a hospitality suite at Pebble Beach on Sunday. “Hey, you got a press pass, remember?” Well, it is at Pebble you find out that being the member of the press is only slightly more important, and maybe less so, than the person making your cappuccino. Each suite has a beady-eyed person with “The List”. And if you aren’t on it, you’d best be adaptive. I dropped some names until one rang the right bell and thus was in. The sun came out briefly and for one glorious 15-minutes it was “How do you get better than wining and dining at Pebble whilst the best cars in the world are paraded before you?”
I was sad that Shelby missed this honoring of the Cobra by a mere four months, as he died May 10th. Photo by Brian Winer.
Then, braced with food and drink, it was off into the trenches, first visiting the A.C. owners, who proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the 260 Cobra was but a slight modification of the A.C. 2.6 Zephyr and then it was on to the Cobras themselves, including ol’ CSX2000 (the very first Cobra) whose leather hide looked appropriately trashed for a 50-year old car.
Pebble is always an education even for those jaded journalists who think they know of every car. For instance, I saw a Ghia-bodied Chrysler of early ‘50s vintage, nice in the details but looking like they thought of dual headlamps late in the game, jamming them on. Photo by Brian Winer.
Of course you can talk about this famous Italian designer and that one, but me being from the Midwest, the only designers I knew about as a lad were Bill Cushenberry, Dean Jeffries and George and Sam Barris. Well, wouldn’t cha know, I ran into George Barris, as always wearing those gold Cazal wraparound sunglasses. We talked about when the car magazines were printed small so you could hide them in your school books and the teacher wouldn’t know what you were really reading.
I ran into another old name in hot rodding, Terry Cook, at both Concorso and at the Auto Retro (a memorabilia event and art show) at Pebble, the Cookster hawking a sort of ersatz Bugatti type vehicle. Cook, once editor of Hot Rod when I met him almost fifty years ago said he had an epiphany of sorts when he saw a hot rod win the Ridler award at the Detroit Autorama and heard it cost the owner over $2 million. “And yet when you look at it from a distance,” he said “it’s just another ’32 Ford.” Meanwhile he had been exposed to a pre-war classic, probably something by Figoni et Falaschi, and decided to go into the business of making classic styled hot rods. He has made several and even displayed them in Paris, where they aren’t horrified but rather love the idea.
I left the Concours before The Big Crowd and the judging, though I do like to see that confetti shower conferred upon the winners for Best of Show. Photo by Brian Winer.
The way back was the Drive from Hell, with road work on both Routes 5 and 99 forcing me to crisscross the state a couple times in search of an open road south. Then I remembered to check in with the Mecum auction who had auctioned my genuine autographed picture of Der Snakemeister (Carroll Shelby) along with a giclee of my portrait of him, and a ranch jacket plus a book I wrote on GT40. They looked it up and told me to expect a check for a couple hundred, which didn’t quite cover my gas for the trip….
So, boss, sorry you didn’t make it but I’m here to tell ya it was a real toot….
Yer O’bd’nt servant,
Wallace Wyss
