Monterey 2008 Events

I didn't go in 2007 as my oldest daughter was supposed to get married in August.  By the time the wedding was postponed (indefinitely for now), it was too late to make reasonably priced reservations.

This year, I flew into San Jose airport and rented a car there.  I first stopped at Larry Hernandez's house to look at the documentation he had on 8571 that he used to own in the late 80s.  He had a bunch of pictures in addition to the German Kraftfahrzeugbrief (log book) that was issued when the car was first sold by Auto-Becker.  These provided quite a bit of early history on the car.

Then I had dinner with my daughter (the same one who screwed up the 2007 plans) who now lives in the bay area.  I hadn't see her since Christmas so we had lots to catch up on.  Then it was on down to Monterey.

Thursday is the Pebble Beach Tour of most of the cars in the Concours on Sunday.  I helped out in the sign crew, so we drive the course twice, once before the cars, putting up the direction arrows at each turn and then at the end, taking them all down.  This year, they added a Veteran's tour for the London to Brighton cars as the full tour would be quite taxing on these old cars.  Getting both sets of signs up required some doing since we had to wait 45 minutes for some tools to be found for us to use.

Checkpoint 1 is up in the hills in a gated community partially owned by Clint Eastwood.  This year we were so late that all of the cars had left.  On the way up, we passed Admiral Phillips Ferrari on the side of the road.  I took some time from the break to drive back down and see what happened.  Due to a shift linkage problem, they couldn't use first gear and after getting stopped on the hill, they were just burning up the clutch so decided to save it for the Concours on Sunday.  Smart decision as it worked out well, more on that later.  I took some pictures of it getting loaded on a flatbed, but managed to lose all of the pictures that day when trying to upload them to my laptop.

All of the cars have a lunch stop in Carmel where they are on view for everyone to see.

I talked to a number of owners.  Here I'm pointing out something to Paul Schaefer, the owner of 9629.

After CI, I ran down to The Quail to meet with Tom Shaughnessy and get a few parts for my PF coupe that he brought up.

The horn compressor seemed to give the TSA folks a problem as I found that my bag had been searched when I picked it up from baggage claim in Seattle.  It was probably just a large black blob on the x-ray screen.

On Saturday, I spent about 4 hours under an umbrella by the pool reading a book resting my feet.  The GTE party started in the late afternoon, so I stopped by there for a while.  Many people were there so there were always a number of interesting conversations to chime in on.

Sunday was up early as I had to be at the Pebble Beach Concours by 5:30 for my volunteer duties.  I did get assigned to a host stand between the two Ferrari classes.  This let me meet most of the owners and get a chance to find about their cars.  Here I'm with Jack Thomas, who brought his 1951 340 America Ghia Coupe (0148A) which took 2nd in class.

Here's a smattering of the Ferraris as they are being spiffed up for the Concours.  There was a heavy mist, almost a drizzle until almost time for judging.  That kept people busy trying to wipe the moisture off.

Notice the almost complete absence of people around.  A far cry from later in the day.  By the time judging occurs, there are lots more people on the field.  Here is the one Ferrari judging team intently looking over the owner's documentation.  David Seielstad is in the center with Patrick Otis and Alan Boe on the right.

As you can see, it does get a lot more crowded.

Here's Admiral Philip's first in class winner 500 Mondial Scaglietti Spyder Series II heading up to the staging area.  It also won the Enzo Ferrari award for the best Ferrari on the field.  The Admiral and his son Bryon with help from David Carte did most of the restoration themselves.  It was a good thing that they saved the clutch for the Concours!

There were lots of interesting other cars around, including this 1955 Ghia Gilda made by Chrysler.

My friend Jon Shirley's 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Touring Berlinetta won Best of Show.  This is a picture from a local concourse last year.  I knew that Jon had a reason to move into pre-war cars as no post-war car has ever won best of show at Pebble.

At the end, Tom Shaughnessy was picking up some tools that he traded with one of the owner's.  The owner didn't have a good set for the Concours, so Tom traded a set for the originals that had come with the car.

So another hectic Monterey car week is over for the year.  I hope to have my PF coupe done by next year and drive it down.  My wife has promised to go with me if I do.  I'm not sure that she understands what 4 days and ~2000 miles will be like in a 1960 Ferrari.