10/16/19

2019 Then & Now Car Show, Lake Forest, IL. - Pt. 2

Here are the rest of the photos from Lake Forest's first annual car show, on 10/13/2019.

It's a strange fact that, at a show with this many super-rare exotics, something as iconic as the
Mercedes 3000SL gullwing can get so little attention.

The one big design problem with a gullwing door is this: If the car somehow winds up upside
down, lying on it' roof, how to you escape the vehicle? Maybe the Mercedes' windows can be
popped out in an emergency or something? I have to assume Ze Chermans thought of a solution.









Disambiguation: This is the now-defunct car maker out of Coventry, England, not to be confused
with the California-based company performing high-dollar restomods of Porsche 911s.

Grille badges are great. Too bad they kind of don't work on modern cars.



I found myself chatting with a 21-year old kid looking at this Ford GT40. He had assumed it was
a replica. I had a hard time convincing him otherwise. At an invitation-only show, a fake GT40 is
unlikely. Plus, the corroded wheel knockoffs, and the wire tying them to the wheel spokes (to
prevent them coming off) are clues to the car's originality. It's probably a three million dollar car.




An Intermeccanica Italia. Whoever they are/were, they have a sense of humor. The grille has a
prancing bull.





1984 Lamborghini Jalpa. One doesn't tend to see these just lying around.









1967 Iso Grifo.



I'm not usually a Corvette guy, but if you add huge tires and a bunch of scoops and intercoolers,
you have me. Spoiler alert: the engine was very shouty.








An Alfa Romeo Montreal. This car had to many cool details, it took a while to shoot them all.










This is a one-off coachbuilt ferrari. What's coachbuilding? That's where you buy a brand new car, and
deliver it to a company that designs and installs a custom body for you. Because a regular Ferrari is
just too ho-hum. The owner opened the trunk to show the underside of the body panels which were
covered with hammer marks, demonstrating that the body was built by Italian guys with a hammer
and a leather bag of sand.





A (or should it be "the"?) 1953 Buick wildcat concept car, built for the 1953 Motorama auto show.
These "Roto-Static hubcaps" on the front wheels are mounted to the axle, and don't rotate with the
wheels. Do they use the air to cool the brakes? No idea. Probably not.





The black car with the red top is the 1948 Hillman Minx I was recruited to drive to the show. Of the
three cars brought by Tim, this is the only one that had the top up. The windows were down,
however. I assume this is because the window mechanism would be so hard to repair should it
break. I like a crisp fall day, but the weather on October 13th was definitely crunchy, with
temperatures hovering in the mid-to-high 40's most of the day.

A Triumph TR6, with it's normal body on... not a fiberglass boutique one.

Did the Triumph have a Ferrari exhaust? No idea. The little stickers had the text "Monza" under
the prancing horse.

1 comments:

Jim Dillon said...

Thank you for your service! I thought the Jowett Jupiter only existed in my imagination . . . I have a recollection that I thought might be false of seeing it advertised in an English magazine from the fifties, part of a stack my dad got at a garage sale in the eighties. Cool beans.

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