Sunday, November 3: Caffeine & Carburetors —> VSCCA Fall Rally

What an amazing day this day turned out to be. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do what we are supposed to do and that is find great cars for sale. But sometimes you have to do some mining exploration before you strike gold. We are members of the Vintage Sports Car Club of America and they hosted a Fall Rally through the Connecticut countryside. We had 32 car and all of them were outstanding examples. We started at the simply outrageous Caffeine & Carburetors in New Canaan, Connecticut. Insanity. Some of the greatest cars in the world lined Pine Street in one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. For example, there were 2, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series. We hear tell there are only 60 in the USA. The rally was organized by Santo Spadaro of Dominick’s Foreign Car Service. They are well-known in this part of the world. We played with a Cunningham, an early Lancia B20, a few Jaguar XK120s and one of our favorites, a Jaguar Mark 2 Sedan set up for track work. It was a great day with some terrific folks from the VSCCA. We’ll get back to finding some winners on Tuesday.

Saturday in Connecticut

Sunday is a day of rest for us at Mint. You see Saturday we participated in a 120 mile rally organized by Matt deGarmo, ltd. Matt selected a great route through Fairfield County into Dutchess County, New York ending up in Litchfield County, Connecticut. We began at 8 AM in New Canaan, Connecticut in front of Zumbach’s Coffee. Zumbach’s organizes one of the most tantilizing Caffeine and Carburetors in the country. Along with our Mercedes Benz 230S, there were 2 Aston Martin DB4s, a Ferrari Dino, 2 early 911S Coupes, a Pantera, ’61 Corvette, ’59 Austin-Healey 3000 MK I, a 356SC Coupe and a real Porsche 356 Carrera GT. I’m sure I forgot a few. The end of the rally was a real treat – a catered lunch along the Housatonic River. Perfect weather and some really nice people made for a great day.

Top 10 Car Chases

Classic and Sports Car Magazine published a list of the Top 10 car chases of all time. And yes, the usual suspects were included like Bullitt and The French Connection. But they forgot The Seven Ups starring Roy Scheider released in 1973 and shot in New York City. In case you have never seen it or haven’t since 1973, here it is in all its glory.

Kids: 2013 Lime Rock Historics

Spend a couple of minutes to watch this video by Jim Perry that covers the recent Historic races at Lime Rock Park. There is a subtle thread throughout as the videographer seems to follow a few young boys as they explore the action at the races. Many of us are concerned about where the next group of historic and vintage car fans will come from. Well, it looks like all we have to do is to provide the opportunity for kids to experience events like LRP’s Historics. We’ll let the cars and action take it from there. Click on the image to begin. Thanks, Jim. Great work!

Another Mint: JetBlue First Class

Got a call from my son, Evan and he was excited to tell me about JetBlue’s new First Class service called Mint. I guess great marketing minds think alike however we are happy we got to Mint2Me first. JetBlue may begin using the tagline Mint to be, a name we considered. We thought our readers might be interested in how we came up with Mint2Me. If you aren’t, move along.

We had no working title when we began the process of putting this business on the map. We were waiting for divine intervention and throughout our business careers, we knew it would come – just not how or when. One Thursday evening, we were watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. In this episode, one of the residents, pregnant with another resident’s baby, hears the words she has been waiting for since she was a little girl: let’s get married. She waxes on about her dream plans nurtured and refined over the years. And then she says, “and we’ll have mints that say mint to be written on them.” That was it. We wrote it down and began the process that took us to Mint2Me.

Another Mint Success Story: We can help you too!

We featured this cute Fiat Millecento on September 4th and guess who snapped it up? No, not jay Leno, but Brian Peters from Motoring Investments in San Diego. There’s the little Fiat in good company at Brian’s restoration shop. We have his 450SLC featured today on Mint. We are happy to hear that the Fiat was represented properly and Brian is thrilled with his acquisition. Don’t know if this is a replacement for his 450SLC but we sort of doubt it. This is a good reminder that Mint2me not only features cars that we find, we also feature cars our readers want to sell. In addition, we can find specific cars you are interested in acquiring. Read what we can do and our terms under the tab Get it on Mint.

Clash of the Titans: Rush, the movie.

If you read the reviews of Ron Howard’s new movie, Rush, it is universal; you don’t have to be a fan of motor racing to be enthralled with this movie. We are to congratulate Mr. Howard for avoiding all of the clichés of previous efforts to bring motor racing to the big screen. Yes, I love watching LeMans with Steve McQueen and occasionally, I enjoy revisiting Grand Prix with an all-star cast including real legends of the Grand Prix circuit. Other efforts have been less successful although I haven’t seen Winning in a long time and I do love Paul Newman.  I did some YouTube diving today and found a really well done BBC documentary series featuring the 1976 Grand Prix season titled Clash of the Titans. It features interviews from Lauda, Formula 1 team managers and other surviving racers except for the deceased Mr. Hunt who died of a heart attack in bed at the age of 45. You decide if you want a refresher on that incredible season of racing before or after seeing the movie. Click on the image to go to the documentary…

Click on this image to go to the BBC Documentary

Irv made it!

Our old friend and frequent Mint reader, Irv Gordon, has completed his journey to surpass the 3 million mile mark in his ’66 Volvo 1800S. I can remember when he came to our house for dinner when the kids were little. Irv hadn’t hit a measly million back then. But he had his sights on it. I attended the Million Mile event at Tavern On The Green. It was carefully orchestrated. Irv had to drive around in circles in the parking area until it clicked over. I’m happy for Irv not so much for the 3 million but for all the great people he influenced with his charm and wit. Well maybe not so much on the wit. People have calculated how many times around the earth or trips to the moon 3 million miles represents. I want to know how many waffles at Waffle House it took. Click on the image to go to the Hemmings coverage.

Win lunch with Stu Saffer!

Who the heck is Stu? He is a guy who reports the news in Laguna Beach, California. A frequent reader, Norm M., alerted us to this golden opportunity. All you have to do is name the make and model of 12 of the most prominent cars in this image. Frankly, if you weren’t actually on the street back then taking notes, you’ll never get it right. Click on the image to go to Stu’s News and submit your entry. Or just buy yourself lunch locally.

2013 Radnor Hunt Concours

Michael Tillson had this wonderful concept to stage an elegant invitational classic car event on the spacious, historic grounds of the Radnor Hunt in Chester County. All the ingredients were there and if all went according to plan it would compare to the elegance and quality of national events as the annual Pebble Beach Concours or Amelia Island. The concept of the event was far removed from the typical “car show.” It would be invitational, the cars would be carefully selected and each car would represent both an educational and aesthetic experience for those in attendance. Michael envisioned a balance between historic, classic, sports and performance racing cars.

To pay homage to the great traditions of the classic French Concours d’Elegance originally held in, Paris, there would be automotive art, high-style fashion, and jewelry shows to compliment the latest fashions in motor cars. The Radnor Hunt Concours d’Elegance has faithfully held to those standards. The committee elected to restrict the number of entries to 100 in order to maintain very high standards and to allow the best possible display of each car on the grounds of The Radnor Hunt Club.

Now in its 13th year, The 100 Cars, faithful to the original concept, has become an important player in the world of extraordinary motorcars. This year’s event was exciting and quite diverse. In an effort to satisfy two influential camps in the collector car world, organizers decided to feature Cars of the Art Deco Era and Historic Rally Cars. Clearly there would be something for everyone.

And not one to forget significant birthdays, Aston Martin, celebrating its centennial year, would play a more visible presence in the sports car category.  To add some additional spice, The Simeone Museum in Philadelphia brought their DBR1 that plays an integral part of their Winners Circle display. This car won at Nurburgring in 1959. For their efforts, they would leave Radnor Hunt with the Chairman’s Award. For more on the Simeone Museum, your attention is invited to http://simeonemuseum.org/.

Dr. Simeone

We would be overwhelmed, as would our readers, if we provided an editorial comment on ever classic in the show. But we would be remiss if we didn’t briefly pay tribute to our favorite entry. If there’s one thing the French knew how to do in the 1930s, it was elegance in automobiles.

Figoni et Falaschi was a design powerhouse at this time and this Talbot-Lago was stunning.  Only 14 of these were made during its short production run and this one was hidden from the Nazis during WWII, like so many other important cars. Let our photos do the talking and the Radnor website where the list of all the winners resides.

http://radnorconcours.org/about-us/history-results/2013-results/

And yes, our Mercedes-Benz 230S was invited to the field in the rally car category. We are pleased to announce it was a crowd favorite but alas not a judge favorite and rightfully so. We were outgunned by at least 10 of the other rally car entrants. But we were there and loved every minute of it.

Additional photos can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/101527362@N05/sets/72157635454661101/

The Radnor Hunt Concours

This is an amazing event and we are thrilled to be a part of it. We have been lucky to be invited to a number of really special events and what we have discovered is that they all have their own character. Greenwich is, well, very Greenwich set on a beautiful field along the harbor. Sunday in the Park is unique because it is set on our favorite race track, Lime Rock Park, during the historic race weekend. Radnor is a very selective show in a stunningly beautiful place on Philadelphia’s famed hunt country on the Main Line. The Radnor organizers were buttoned up good and very congenial. And the lunch they provided was the best of all. It is really all about the cars and they were just amazing. We will organize our photos in a proper gallery as soon as we get home. Our Mercedes was a hit but totally outgunned by others in our category. We are still proud of our loyal Colonel and thank the organizers for the opportunity to show him off.

DNS: Radnor Hunt Rally Results

We are happy to report out trusty Mint2Me Mercedes transported us safely to the mainline of Philadelphia without incident. Perhaps the last-minute oil change performed by Auto Turismo Sport helped?  We were so wrapped up in building the Mercedes, we sort of forgot the only oil change we did was back in December when we first acquired the car. And who knows how long it had been before that. We called Steve at ATS in the morning and he was able to squeeze us in. The oil was black so it was a good move on our part. We found a nice cruising sweet spot at around 65mph and without traffic, managed almost 17mpg. Now on to the rally report. Unfortunately nothing to report. As soon as we pulled in the driveway of The Radnor Hunt Club, my navigator felt a sharp pain in her lower back. We were sidelined by a 2 millimeter kidney stone. So we spent the morning in Paoli Hospital. The Navigator is fine now and we look forward to smooth sailing in the Concours tomorrow. BTW, kudos to the staff at Paoli Hospital. It is a beautiful facility staffed by caring and talented people. We wish everyone could experience care like we had.