Fuelfed car show - 10/27/2019 - Part 1

Yesterday (Oct 27, 2019) was the final show of Fuelfed's regular season. As with the Then & Now Lake Forest car show, I was recruited to be one of five drivers, helping a friend drive six of his collection to the show. This time, I got to drive a Morris Minor. Since he prefers convertibles, and for them to be viewed in their natural state with the top down, everyone wisely dressed for the weather. It started at 46 degrees, but eventually warmed up to a terrific 60 degrees. The light was great, the trees were doing their thing, and my 1985 Tokina 28-85 lens with the haze problem once again spent the whole day on the front of my camera. Man, I really love this dirty, slightly broken, not-very-sharp lens. It was worth every penny of the twenty-nine bucks I spent on it.

Part 1 of the photos today. The rest tomorrow. Since this is the internet, I don't need to tell you the rule of pictures, which is click it to big it, baby.

Loads of rain overnight gave it up by 4am, as the weather guy had predicted. Puddles and 46 degrees merited no complaints from anyone.

Thankfully, there was a Dino rolling in. The one-time unwelcome "not a real Ferrari" has finally gotten the respect it deserves. A good design ages well. Everyone who noticed the Dino going by and went "Awwww, the Dino's here!"

Red (orange, actually) car at the the back is a Saab Sonnet. Green one in the middle is a Volvo P1800. The yellow one in the foreground is a Citroen 2CV, or if you want to sound fancy "deux chevaux".

If you can believe it, the 2CV was manufactured from 1948 to 1990. As is
common with French cars, it's quirky, yes, but also terribly clever. You can
do almost anything to the car with only a few hand tools. They were designed
to help motorize those in rural France. So, they were very cheap, very easy
to work on, and had to be able to carry produce to market over roads or across
farm fields.

Long before Volvo decided "Let's make cars that are fuck ugly!", they made the P1800. Originally a coupe, this is a shooting-brake version introduced a little later. They're gorgeous and reliable. A 1966 P1800S holds the world record for longest service life of a car: 1.69 million miles.

Saab has always done their own thing. This is a Saab Sonnett III. Fiberglass body, unique styling,
and nutty colors. This one is orange, but there were other fun colors like avocado green. Why be boring?

A Lancia Fulvia! You don't see these very often. As Mercedes has their AMG, and BMW has ///M, Lancia's performance division was HF. This stood for "High Fidelity", meaning that their cars let the driver feel the road with "perfect fidelity". Their mascot character for the HF cars was a red elephant called "Elefantino", of course. Why an elephant? Lancia was big into rallying, where speed is important, but so is reliability. An elephant may take a while to get running, but can't be stopped until it wants to. ...or so goes the Lancia HF legend.

A dog. Value and collectability varies by whether she is a Very Good Dog and whether or not he has had her shots.

In America, the E-Type Jag was called the "XKE". When it was released in 1961, Enzo Ferrari called it "the most beautiful car ever made".

This Jaguar was sort of a plum purple color, which was a nice change from the typical conservative colors you see them in,

Personal favorite Jag wheels.

A Devon.

Another Volcvo P1800, in coupe configuration.

This is a Delahaye - an American brand famous for it's very swoopy art deco creations of the 1930's. I'm not very familiar, but I think this is a Delahaye 135. Maybe someone will comment and correct me?

Mercedes 300 SL.

A BMW 2002.

A old air-cooled 911 with really interesting Rotiform wheels.