Category Archives: Cars

2013 Walter Mitty Paddock at Road Atlanta

This past Friday, I attended the 2013 Walter Mitty at Road Atlanta.  The weather was just perfect (although Saturday and Sunday is another story) and the cars were just amazing.  As usual, the first thing to do after arriving is to go through the paddock and see all the awesome cars.

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The picture above shows a very hot Mini owned by John Finger.  John comes by the shop from time to time, and last summer he brought the mini to show it to us.  He offered to take me out for a short spin in it and I can say this car is seriously fast.  Matter of fact, it is scary fast.  :mrgreen:  All the power comes from a front mounted, twin-rotor Mazda rotary engine.  This is a seriously fast car and it is for sale.

I took a huge number of photos.  The following gallery (for those of you on the mailing list, it might not show up so you might want to fire up the browser and see them the old-fashioned way) shows some of the more significant machines in the paddock.  I wish I had more, but the camera operator (that would be me) was shooting in full RAW format and I had the wrong memory chip in.  I’ll have more pictures of the action, but I need to sift through them and pick the best.  I promise I’ll have another photo gallery soon.  In the meantime, enjoy…

If you have never been to the Mitty, you need to go.  Friday is the best day – the crowd is small and you can walk up to the cars in the paddock and take your time looking at them.  There is plenty of action on the track too, and there are some excellent vantage points throughout Road Atlanta.  It is very much worth the trip.

 

Carolina British Car Classics

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The British Car Club Midlands Centre (Columbia, SC) hosts the Carolina British Car Classics show.  This year, the Carolina British Car Classics show was held at the Columbia Speedway in Cayce, SC.  I thought it would be nice to register for the show and see what might turn out.

There were two really nice TR8’s.  One in particular was a late production version with port fuel injection.  Several nice TR3’s too.

There was a very unusual Jaguar XJ6 coupé at the show.  Having owned an 84 XJ6 or many years gave me a good appreciation for these cars and I have always thought the coupé is special.  It is basically the four door car with much larger doors and the distinctive vinyl roof.  My XJ6 had an LT1 from an Impala SS in it; imagine one of these with an LSx! :mrgreen:

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This car show had a gaggle of Sunbeam Alpine cars on display.  Here is a sample of the nicer ones: some with hard tops, some with Ford V6’s, some with the stock engine but all with nice paint jobs.

This pair is of interest.  No, these Sunbeams did not have removable hardtops; these were coupés:

And finally, the Austin Healey…  There were some very nice ones, particularly a 100M.  There were several 3000’s that were also very impressive.

In summary the show was fun.  Having bowtie6 on the open road, doing 75-80 mph is just a delight.  In fifth gear, at 80 mph the revs were just a tad under 3,000 – no worries!  Yes, we had the usual “thumb’s up” from several motorists as well as the “I got you on my cell phone camera” as one goes down the road.  On the way home, a group of 8 leather-clad Harley riders passed me and several gave me the prized “nod” of approval.

The show was pretty cool.  It was a nice gathering of folks, some with really nice cars while others had, some questionable work done.  There were your usual wiring harness nightmares as well as “taking the cheap and easy way out” solutions to problems.  Then there was a poor Sunbeam whose owner hadn’t figured out the secret of using washers between a nut, a bracket and a bolt head.  In that case, the poor bracket holding the alternator tight ended up with gauge marks all over it.  I suppose the owner of the car can’t figure out why the belt tension won’t stay constant…

In closing, I find it very interesting to take my folding chair and park myself a car or two away from mine so I can do some “people watching”.  It is amazing to see how many experts show up, out of the woodwork.  Equally fun is to take one’s “owner badge” off, take a leisurely walk and pretend to go full-retard when it comes to classic cars.  You just never know what kind of answers and/or inaccuracies you will hear from certain owners.  Some will be very informative (i.e.: the owner of the AH 100M knew his stuff), some others will be pricks (oh yes, ran into one of these at the Amelia Island Concours) and then you will have those who just make shit up right there on the spot and act like they have a copy of Google and Wikipeadia in their heads (they are my favorite, especially when you trip them up!).

But it’s all good – that is part of the fun when going to car shows!

 

Ford 6×6 Custom Supertruck

In the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot department today, we have the following Ford 6×6 Custom Supertruck:

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My friend Barry A (who also owns the awesome Chevy Cameo) sent me the above picture via text the other day.  Holy crap on a Ritz!!!  Imagine being at the controls of such a beast.  Barry said he saw this bubba-mobile outside a local SubWay in Simpsonville SC.  This is not the only time this Ford 6×6 Supertruck makes it to the interwebs – there was an article in Jalopnik about it.   Dayum!  I suppose this bad boy won’t make it past 4 or 5 MPG’s.  Imagine the racket those massive tires must make.

1955 Hudson Italia Prototype

The current issue of Hemmings Classic Car magazine (May 2013) has a very interesting article about the restoration of a 1955 Hudson Italia.  I’ll spare all the details about the history of the Italia (click here for that), but basically this car consisted of a Hudson Jet clad with very special superleggera bodywork built by Carozzeria Touring in Milan.  What makes this car so rare the fact that the entire production run consisted of only 26 units.  There was also a 4-door prototype built, but wait…  There is more…

The article in the magazine made mention that there was one prototype built.  Indeed – some time ago, I took these pictures of it at the owner’s garage.  It took me a little time to find the pictures and since this is such a special car, I decided to post them today.

Hudson Italia Prototype

Right off the bat, you can see a couple of things that differentiate this from the “production” model.  The prototype’s grill has a different pattern from the production version.  In addition – as you can see here – the prototype is missing the “HUDSON” lettering across the nose of the car.

Want proof this is the prototype?  A closer look at the center of the grille and you see this special emblem:

Hudson Italia Prototype Grille Badge

Here is another view of the grill this time with the “HUDSON” emblem on the bumper.  This emblem did make it to the production version.

Hudson Italia Prototype Grille Badge

Stepping back a little, the following picture shows just how intricate the front bumper is.  The article in the magazine talked about how painstaking it was to restore the bumpers on the featured car.  Given this is the prototype and it is nearly 60 years old, the chrome is remarkably well-preserved…

Hudson Italia Prototype Front Bumper

Moving back towards the back of the car, this is what the back and interior look like:

Hudson Italia Prototype Door

Hudson Italia Prototype Interior

The red and cream leather interior as well as the carpet don’t look as good as the chrome – they show some wear, but given this is the original prototype it would be really bad (in my opinion) to “restore”.  I suppose to each his own, but this car is just to valuable.

Another difference from the production model is the rear tail light design.  This is what the prototype looks like:

Hudson Italia Prototype Tail Lights

The three “tubes” house the rear tail lights.  In the production model, these three tubes are equal in length – here as you can see, the middle tube is shorter.

I remember when I saw the Italia up close, if you looked hard enough you could see that this car had been “hand-made”.  For example, on the nose of the car are two “nostrils” above the headlights and they were not exactly 100% identical.  I also thought the interior was really special indeed – it looked so “modern”!  Finally, I did not get a chance to take a picture of it but the steering wheel center button read “Alfa Romeo” – I guess that was a extra spare steering wheel at Carozzeria Touring that just happen to make it to the prototype Italia.

Hudson Italia Superleggera Hood Emblem

This car has also been at Amelia Island Concurs D’Elegance back in 2010.  I remember the owner had told me about that, and sure enough…  Amazing thing, Google!  I found the following photos (from supercars.net) and the last one shows that Alfa Romeo steering wheel.

 

Amelia Island Concours D’Elegance 2013 – Part 4

Ford GT40.

In my opinion the most amazing, outrageous, bad-ass machine of all times.  The car that Ford built to give Enzo the finger back in the 60’s when the deal to sell Ferrari to Ford fell through the cracks.  The masterpiece built by Holman-Moody that gave the boys from America the 1-2-3 win at LeMans.

Well, the Amelia Island Concours D’Elegance 2013 had a gaggle of them on display.  Unfortunately, but the time I made it to the green where they were on display many other folks had made it there too and taking pictures became very difficult.  I did get to take a few good shots, however there were just too many folks around these awesome cars.

Not much more to say – these cars speak for themselves!