2011 Classy Chassis Concours d'Elegance

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Judges decided this 1937 DeLage D8-120 with Letourner et Marchand Aerosport coachwork was the Best In Show. I'm very glad I wasn't on the judging committee, but I'm not going to disagree. One of the prettiest I've ever seen....
Because I could, I grabbed another shot from the same angle so I could compare the pics from the two cameras I was using. There's not a lot of difference between the files.
1967 Corvette Stingray Coupe. Kind of a sentimental starting point; Dad had a `65 for several years, silver/black. After a while the silver started to fade so one day he had it painted this deep green. Got it home a couple of days later, took a few pictures, and that night some $@$!!!! broke into the garage and stole it.
Always liked the rear treatment here... 1963 Corvette Stingray, the "split window" coupe. They only did this the one year, for some reason. I suppose the single-window version was much cheaper to build or something.


1958 Kurtis-Kraft 500S. Odd looking beast with teeth. They were successful racers in their day.
1972 Alfa Romeo Montreal... one of the oddest front ends I've seen. I do like it, though.
For my money the single most "I WANT" car at the show. 1958 Morgan +4 with a one-off envelope body for racing. I have loved this general body contour since I was five or six years old. D Jag, XK-SS, Testa Rossa 250 Ferrari, don't care... When I imagine a classic sports car, this is what I see.
Same Song, Second Verse


Yup. I could be VERY happy here.
One of the original Hertz Shelby GT350H Rent-a-Racers. There were a thousand of these, available only through the Hertz Sports Club ... if you were over 25 and had the green you could go rent yourself a genuine no-kidding bat out of hell racer for a day or a week. I understand a lot of them went out over weekends and came back with fittings for roll bars and 5-point harnesses.
This... this car was a real serious trip back down Memory Motor Racing Circuit. Steve Forristall's 1965 B-Production Shelby GT350. The first time I saw this car would have had to be somewhere in the late 60's or MAYBE early 70's at Green Valley Raceway outside Fort Worth. Those were happy times.
History on the... paw. There's a helluva story behind this badge. Look it up.


Modern front end.. Not real wild about it but it makes a nice graphic.
1932 Ford sprint racer, handbuilt and one-off. This is about as simple as it's possible for an automobile to be and still function.
1932 Ford sprint racer, handbuilt and one-off. It's simple, but even the hood latch is elegant.
And speaking of elegant... 1927 Hispano Suiza H6B with Labourdette "skiff" coachwork. Wood with brass rivets, dual cowl/cockpit and boattail design. Stunningly beautiful. As I said, I have no quarrel with the Delage, but this would have been my other Best In Show pick.


Front view.
Stork mascot and marque badge, a combination of the Spanish (Hispano) and Swiss (Suiza) flags, joined with a pair of wings.
The Office of the Driver (or chauffeur, more likely). In its day this marque was a competitor for the Duesenbergs, Rolls Royces, Bugattis, etc.
And, just for comparison, the driver's office from a 1934 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental Roadster.


Lights and horn, 1935 Pierce Arrow 1245. Just like the aesthetics here.
1931 Bugatti Type 40A roadster. An absolutely magnificent car, which can be seen in the first shots of the Delage; it's the deep green roadster with dual spares and yellow striping. The degree of handwork and detail in this machine is a "see-to-believe" thing - the firewall and the valve cover are actually engine-turned, purely for the ornamental value.
By comparison with the simple elegance of the Bugatti, here's a lovingly cared-for 191 Lincoln Continental. It's a V12; note the airhorns mounted on the underside of the hood. !!!
And if you're a sports car fan in the US, this is where it starts... 1947 MG-TC roadster, product of The MG Car Company Ltd, Abingdon-on-Thames, England. (The electrics are by Joseph Lucas, and a whole lot of OTHER things, including a lot of bad jokes and good stories, start from that.)


This is an immaculate 1910 K-R-I-T Four Model A Runabout. I grew up around sports and vintage cars from before I could walk, so it's not very often that I run across a marque I've simply never even heard of before... but here's one.
1915 Scripps Booth Model C in silver, grey, and black. Beautiful little drophead.
2006 Fort GT-40 (second series). Personally autographed by Carroll Shelby.
1936 Packard 1401-918 Standard Eight 2/4 Coupe. I've never quite gotten the Packard Mystique... but this one's for Dad, who very much did.


I've never been a huge fan of Thunderbirds, but I AM in general a huge fan of cobalt blue roadsters. This 1955 roadster is therefore a very pretty quandary.
And it's a cobalt-blue roadster with a fine-looking mill and a bad pun....
1949 Ford Convertible. For some reason Ford stopped making "Woody" convertibles in 1948, so the owner did his own. The result is... impressive. VERY.
For a lot of years I promised myself that if I ever found one of these with less than a quarter-million miles on it, I was going to make serious efforts to buy it. Unfortunately there's a thing called "economics"....


Ran my first-ever autocross in one of these.... Bright orange, it was, and I learned an awful lot of humility in about 30 seconds. Fortunately we didn't hit anything except bright orange cones. (As I recall we DID hit rather a lot of those....)
PastPresent. 2011 Norwood P4 575 and 1927 Hispano Suiza H6B with Labourdette "skiff" coachwork.