2005 British Car Days

Yesterday was the 2005 British Car Days, put on by the Central Virginia British Car Club. For some reason, there was a theme this year: "Tour of Europe". This meant that other European cars were invited to participate.

At first, I wasn't keen on the idea of having a bunch of random German and Italian cars in the mix. But yesterday, when I got to see a 2004 Maserati Coupe next to a Ferrari 360 Modena, everything was OK with the universe.

There were Porsches: 911 RS (American version), 930 Turbo (ah, memories), various Carreras, and fully race-equipped car (that burned a hole in the grass with his exhaust). There were VW's: R32's and Beetles (one done up as a baseball, complete with Rawlings leather seats and a baseball bat e-brake handle). There was a Citroen, a complement of Saabs from every era, a couple of really cool Volvos, and some other cars I simply couldn't identify.

The piece-de-resistance, however, was the 1969 Ferrari Daytona. With the hood open, you could see how spotless each of the 6 2-barrel carburetors were and how perfectly clean the hood-batting fabric was. This thing is well kept. From what I heard from others, it's well-kept for good reason: it's insanely rare. It won for "Best of Italy".

Mr. Kimmelshue took home the trophy for Best new MINI. Rock on! That car was spotless, thanks to Richard's incredible diligence.

I spent a good deal of time hanging around the EuroClassics Lotus Elises. Wow. That orange Elise was just begging me to buy it. The guy let me get inside, which I used as a photo op. I have never fallen more deeply in love with a piece of machinery.



The biggest disappointments of the show, however, were Crown MINI and the food. The food was awful and exorbitantly over-priced. Typical. Crown, though, has no excuse. They put a bunch of money into this thing every year; their ad shows up on the back cover of the program, and they just sat around all day. They didn't set up any signs, didn't hand out flyers, didn't do squat. No, that's not true. They left the cars for a long time and wandered around, then took my seats when they came back. Bunch of clowns. Just to make the disappointment complete, upon closer inspection, their whole-page ad on the back of the flyer was awful. The MINI in the picture looked like it was printed at 72dpi. Very amateur.

Anyway, we all sat in the intense sunlight and 90-degree heat for about 7 hours, taking in all the beautiful machines, and then headed over to Legend to rehydrate.

I had a great time, but wish it could have been about 10 degrees cooler and a little bit cloudy.

I can't wait 'til next year. Hopefully we'll be able to field more than 6 cars, although I was delighted to note that all the MINI's out there were members of RCM. REPRESENT!