Busy Weekend Part 2

Having got up early yesterday for  the excellent Wheels Day, we were up early again, heading in the opposite direction for the Brooklands "Spring Gathering". The weather had looked iffy, but turned out better than forecast, so another excellent day was had. The variety of cars was again good - though not as "extreme" as Wheels Day & after a while the sun came out - ish. We also had a guided tour of my nephew's girlfriend's car restoration training workshop which was good.

I'll start with this '56 Chevy, certainly a bold colour choice, buy it just worked.

Isn't that lovely? Styling wise I don't think the Americans get it right that often, but when they do it can be very good indeed.

Subtle, well proportioned & easy to live with.

The paint on this was amazing, the sun came out just as we were talking about it & WOW!

You wouldn't want to get even a minor scratch on it though.

Zoom in - go on.

Back in the late '70s you didn't see a V8 Pop because no-one had worked out how to fit one in & keep some space in the inside. This one had a large V8 & four useable seats, which speaks volumes for the quality of the engineering. 

The "quilted" aluminium firewall was a work of art too.

A "Vincent Hurricane" - essentially a new body for a rusty Spitfire. You don't see too many around any more.

VWs & their offspring always feature heavily, & these two Type 2 pick-ups were very nice.

As was this GP Beach Buggy.

And this Nova with a Lotus badge. There were kits available to fit a Ford engine onto the VW transaxle, so it mat be that this car has a TwinCam. There was another Nova with a tube chassis & what appeared to be a mid mounted Alfa Boxer engine.

Classic Model A Hot Rod. It has been racing a Pendine Sands.

I got arty.

There was one of these at Wheels Day & I don't think it was the same one.

Also in the very small but sweet category was this Fiat 500. There seemed to be a great many Fiats in attendance.

Early Corvette was nice, but.....

...not as nice (to my eyes) as the slightly later one. I'll say it again - why doesn't a Cobra manufacturer make an early 'vette shell to fit their chassis?

Another Fiat - not one I was familiar with, I thought it was a Saab Sonnet at first.

Pretty little thing.

Freshly wrapped Haines Roadster looked good, the "wear" & "dirt" is in the wrap.

No manufacturer anywhere has ever made a car that had better styling than the two door MkI Escort. But now they're trying to see you a four door electric Capri.

I rest my case.

Weirdness. I'd guess that an Australian wanted the ultimate in a luxury "ute".

Body panels were perfectly straight & fitted well. Very impressive.

Yellow Tiger was just lovely. there were perhaps four Tigers in attendance. I would imagine some were ex-Alpines.

Representing the exotic end, were a couple of Maseratis, which were pretty stunning.

And finally. A friend sent an ad for this a couple of years ago when it was for sale. Someone thought "what if Lotus had done the Consul Capri instead of the Cortina". So they built one using Lotus Cortina parts & carrying out the same sort of mods - like the extra instruments & the wide steel wheels. It looked REALLY good.