Mid August Monterey Motor Mecca
One of the most important places to be when mid August rolls around is the Monterey Bay area of California. Our company has been actively participating in the events around Pebble Beach some time, especially the adrenaline filled action at Laguna Seca. The Steve Earle family and their company, General Racing Ltd with the help of their friends at SCRAMP (racing group acronym) have done a wonderful job at producing the Monterey Historics for some long time. This year the Monterey Historics celebrated Indy Roadsters. There were so many Offy powered 4 wheeled powerhouses it was actually difficult to count them all.
It was perfect timing since we are now working on re-development of the very same exact sizes most of those Indy Roadsters were shod with originally. Their big 8.00-18 rears and 7.60-16 fronts are coming back soon in original gum dipped fashion so these Hoosier state go fast cars will soon have new shoes! We have the original Firestone mold drawings so the new Firestone Indy tires will have new rubber and modern compounds, but look precisely like they did when the Firestone boys cooked em up there in Akron years ago! We won’t be shaving of half the tread though like the Firestone boys did to get them race ready back in the day.
We set up our big High Tech Race Trailer in the paddock at Laguna Seca, where we mount and balance Monterey Historic racer’s tires. We take a good example of our product offering and always take a good number of orders. This year Coker boys Ricky Howell and Kindall Jolly brought our Race rig crosscoastal to Monterey from Chattavegas. They were joined by ace collector tire experts (from our Fresno store) Hector Moreno and Patrick Zambrano.
Monterey Historics are way cool, but so many other things happen this weekend in the area. Concorso Italiano is a huge one day extravaganza celebration of all Italian wheeled things, oops.. Also a few way cool classic wooden boats like Riva n such. I have never seen so many Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, Maserati’s, in one place.
My friend McKeel Hagarty of Hagarty Insurance has a cool reception at the Lodge at Pebble Beach where the room is packed with automotive legends, big wigs,….and at least one redneck! McKeel invites me anyway. I also enjoy seeing my friend, Keith Crain of Crain Publications in Detroit. His son, KC, now publisher of Autoweek, is about the same age as my daughter Casey, who is also learning our family business. It is fun to see the next generation take hold and lead! Keith showed his newly restored 1939 Bugatti at Pebble on Sunday. It was absolutely stunning!
The creme de la creme (what in the heck does that line really mean?) of concours’s is Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance. Although Warner and crew put on a killer event in the spring at Amelia Island, Pebble is older and bigger. The cars are always awesome, and the experience of Pebble Beach golf course hole 18 with collector vehicles all over it with the beautiful bay for the back drop is amazing! Normally at Pebble, there is a huge hazy, misty fog over the show til noon but this year the skys were awesomely clear. It really is an amazing sight with all the magnificent cars in such a perfect setting.
RM auctions usually sets records with their sale Friday and Saturday at the Portola in Monterey. This year was no different. Although the bidding started slow on a few items, the high end cars were still very strong like one Ferrari brought over 4 million, a 540k Mercedes 3 mil..ish. My buddy Chip Foose and I closed the auction down Saturday night. It was good to catch up on our families n stuff. He told me Discovery Channel was cranking OVERHAULIN back up. Chip is such a class act and pretty darn good designer and car builder too!
Russo and Steele Auctions focus on Muscle Cars and hold their auction on Friday and Saturday too across the street at the Marriott. Drew and Josephine Alcazar are wonderful hosts who really do a great auction. I saw my friend and muscle car aficionado Reggie Jackson. Somebody told me that he did something else before he got big into cars… I am not sure I understand. What could be cooler, bigger, better than cars? I stopped by Reggie’s (he has a home and fantastic collection of muscle cars and exotics in Monterey) famous car builder Roy Brizio prepping a car for Pebble.
Gooding and Co, and Christies both have really good auctions at the polo grounds at Pebble Beach.
There is also an amazing 60 mile Pebble Beach tour around the Monterey Bay area for the cars which will be on display at the Concours Sunday. Quail Lodge n Golf Resort is the site of a separate Italian and Sports car happening this week.
I love it all! Wish you were here!
From the road,
