classic car

As I picked up the duPont Registry I bought while grocery shopping today, I thought the same Asanti ad for its latest ultra-exclusive wheel set, the Asanti Black Series, would appear. As I paged through, I saw the same ad, but something was different. There were three other sets of wheels at the bottom, which turned out to be their uber-ultra-mega-expensive Diamond Collection. The base wheel, made of cubic Zirconium, was priced at $250,000, a quarter of the price of the wheel we all know of, the famous $1,000,000 Diamond/Sapphire wheel set that was displayed at SEMA and comes with a free Bentley. But there was also another wheel on the page, which hasn't gotten any of the attention of its $1 Million brother. The Asanti AFS 103 Series, made of nearly six times as many Diamonds as its brother with 1,200 Rubies sprinkled in, is priced at a monstrous $2,000,000! This is the flagship wheel set of the top series of the most expensive brand of an ultra-lux wheel company. In other words, Lexani makes Asanti which makes the Diamond Series which makes the AFS 103. These wheels eclipse their half-price brother to become the most expensive wheels on Earth. According to many reports, the Diamond Series is dead, but this ad in the January issue of the duPont registry tells otherwise. I wonder if it comes with two free Bentleys...

  I spotted the Porsche Carrera S on a trip to Chicago a year ago.

  This Viper RT/10 was a one-time shower at the Howard, WI A&W Cruisin' Nights.

  If you're not familiar with my story about this car, go to http://bit.ly/grantur

  This Ford coupe, like the Viper, was another local find.

  On a trip to Madison, WI, I couldn't identify this truck at first.

  When the new Bugatti Galibier sedan concept was revealed a few days ago, many people got the origin of its name wrong. They said that it was named after a mountain pass on the Tour De France. Essentially they were right, but what the car really takes its name from is the Bugatti Type 57C Galibier Saloon, basically the four-door version of the renowned Type 57 coupes. This car, though, was named after the pass.

  The similarities of these two cars is obvious. Both were ultra-luxury sedans based on production coupes. Both were less well-received than their coupe counterparts because of styling cues that were completely recognizable up front but were confounding in the rear. They both represented what the maker wanted to be the fastest, most luxurious sedans on the market during their time period. The original Galibier moved away from the sweeping fastback style of the coupes with a bulbous trunk. This style was badly received by the media and masses; many said it was tacky and ugly. The new Galibier isn't with the times, as it seems to be trying to correct the mistakes of the Thirties with the Porsche Panamera-esque rear fastback, which ends up having the same reaction as the conventional-style trunk of the 57C Galibier from the media and masses.  The new Galibier has the signature Type 57 line through the center of the car, which splits the rear window in two, though the old car doesn't, in its effort to keep visual difference from the coupes yet again. The Galibier concept also takes steps away from the Veyron; the lack of giant side scoops is obvious, as well as the rear setup.

  The general idea and reaction to these two Bugattis may be similar, but if you look at the statistics you can see that they are very different cars underneath. The new Galibier is bound to get around 1,000 horsepower from its modified W16, whereas the Type 57C Galibier had 160 from a straight eight. The new Galibier has four big turbos, while the old had one supercharger. The body is also very different. Not having to deal with modern technology like traction control and ABS meant that the Type 57C Galibier Saloon made use of common materials of the time for its body, but the new Galibier concept's body must be made of carbon fiber to keep the weight to under 4,500 pounds.

  All in all, the namesake and general idea for these two cars is the same, as well as the fact that their styling was ridiculed at the time, but they are very different in execution.

  Today I went to the second annual Big 3 Performance car show, which is just a regular thing for me. But when I got there, I knew that I was in for something better than I expected. The posters for the show had shown renderings of the upcoming Jim Wangers Edition GTO, of which only fifty will be built. The Wangers GTO is scheduled for a debut at the next SEMA show, but sitting in the middle of the parking lot under a cover was the unmistakable lines of a muscle car. Could it be?

  I ended up waiting for over four hours at the car show waiting for the reveal, during which I met Jim Wangers, who is touted as the Godfather of the GTO as well as being the inspiration and nameplate for the new car, and visited the guys at Shelby Parts and Restoration across the street. Somebody there remarked that creating a GTO as a tribute to Wangers was like "Creating a Mustang as a tribute to one of Shelby's secretaries", as Jim has been mostly a PR person, traveling the country with the "GeeTO Tiger". Even so, a good car is a good car. At about 11:00 I got impatient and asked one of the Big 3 Performance employees when the big reveal was, and it turned out they were waiting for their camera man to arrive. They said it should be five or ten minutes.

  An hour later the announcement finally came. "Thanks for coming to the Second Annual Big 3 Performance Car Show. We are now going to give you a sneak peek at the new Jim Wangers Edition GTO, so will everyone please make their way to the covered car in the middle of the lot." Everyone rushed over to the car, and some employees went through the whole speech session about how the car was a community effort and what a joy it was to work with Jim. Finally, the covers were pulled off the car to much fanfare, and Jim Wangers was invited to start his car. He then proceeded to rev the wee out of this expensive prototype, and was only stopped from doing a burnout and driving it out by sheer luck. The motor sounded fantastic, different from anything I've ever heard, muscular yet refined, modern yet harkening back to the days of old. I took a video of the unveil, but it doesn't even begin to do justice to the sound of the motor. You can see the video at http://bit.ly/Wangers.

My feet and ankles started aching two hours ago, I'm dehydrated, I've been at this for seven hours and yet I keep going. I've scouted every corner of this property for prizes to behold and oddities not worth mentioning. My camera ran out of memory at three hours in and all I have to convince myself to keep going is the sight around me, which makes it all worth it. I'm not working in a mine surrounded by gold; I'm not running a marathon in California; I'm at Iola Old Car Show in Iola, Wisconsin, one of thousands to come to buy parts at the giant swap meet or just stare at the cars all day long.

I keep getting too many photos to load onto Picasa and keep it free, so I'm doing another account on Flickr. I'll have the link up soon. enjoy!

As I've told you before, Picasaweb has the slowest photo loader on Earth and only lets you load five photos at a time, which is a problem when each five-photo load takes five minutes and you have 270 Photos to load. So you can click on the link at left to go to the photos and see what I have so far. Click on the "NC and VA Trip Cars" album and you're there.

Today we headed to Moyock, NC to visit two locations that had classics and projects for sale (more on that at a later date). It was raining (as you know if you are watching the NASCAR Tuck Series practice right now) and puddling up near the beach road, so we decided to take a shortcut through a neighborhood that was shielded by trees. As we were going through the neighborhood there were tons of large trucks and utility vehicles going around, so when a Freightliner pulled up oppostie us at a light, my insticts were screaming at me but I didn't whip out my camera. I said something like "If this is the SportChassis (the very expensive civilian model), I am never going to forgive myself." And guess what? It was the SportChassis, a humongous pickup truck. This version was one of the P2 or P4 models, which carry a regular-style pickup bed instead of the other models, which come with flat beds and shorter sides. It was Flame Red, and I didn't pull out my camera because most of these Freightliners have strut grilles and this one had a regular one like the one in the photo. So you can't blame me for that, huh? Photo is from the Freightliner website.

I'm on another trip to North Carolina and Virginia like last time with the Maserati experience, and I already have many car stories and photos, even though we've still got a week left of our vacation. I would show you some photos, but I'm on my relatives' computer and they don't have my photo software that I need to download to get my photos on Picasa and eventually the blog. So for now I'll tell you about the cars I didn't get photos of, which in this case are the most interesting so far. So, here goes:
Virginia seems much like Chicago in a sense that there are many luxury automobiles here, but few classics. I've seen many two door Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, along with a light scattering of supercars, like a Bentley Continental Flying Spur (4dr) and a Mercedes-Benz SLR Mclaren. I failed to catch either of these on my digital camera, but they almost stopped my heart when I saw them.
Other notable occurrences were car and accidents I saw on the highway. Once I saw a '65 Mustang coupe, unrestored, sitting facing the highway in somebody's back yard, and I also saw a sad accident in which a trailer carrying a '67 GTO project came unhitched and discarded the GTO, which was crushed in the accident. One thing I did get a photo of though, and hope to post when I get back in a week, was an accident where a Mercedes-Benz C240 was hit on the side by a merging Ford van. You can guess what car had the larger repair bill... More updates coming within the next week!