The car hobby includes a wide range of car types, from high end, expensive collectible cars, antique cars, race cars, street rods, rat rods, stanced rice rockets, and more. This blog is written to share photos and stories of cars and car events, with a particular focus on British cars (in particular MGs) and road racing, experienced by one couple seeking interesting automobile adventures.
Amelia Island Concours - Historic Fashion
The Amelia Island Concours celebrates many aspects of the car culture, including period dress and fashion matching the vintage of the cars displayed. This family dressed in appropriate golf attire along with their 4.0 Liter, DOHC, overdrive, 1939 Bentley.
An earlier car and an earlier fashion period - 1914 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. This car had been converted into a farm truck in the 1940's. It was found by a collector in 1999 and restored to its original 1914 configuration.
1919 Pierce Arrow 66-A-4. This flashy car has a custom body designed by Harley Earl and was originally owned by silent-movie star Fatty Arbuckle. It has an 825 cubic inch overhead cam engine.
1925 Kissel 6-55 Goldbug Speedster. This car was designed to be a sporting runabout, with rear fender mounts for your golf clubs on both sides.
1951 General Motors LeSerbe prototype, a type of car that General Motors often billed as Dream Cars.
1952 Muntz Jet - A car built by "Mad Man" Muntz as a promotion of his car business rather than a business enterprise as he lost money on every car built. The car was designed by the Indy racecar builder Kurtis.
There are not any descriptions of the fashions, only images for your own analysis. This is a car blog, so the focus, appropriately, is on the cars. But, the fashion aspect is an interesting part of the Amelia Island Concours.
GOF South LIV
The 54th annual Gathering of the Faithful was scheduled to be held April 17 - 19, 2020, at the Mission Inn, Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida. This, sadly, is not a report of an enjoyable car event, as so many of the posts in this blog document. It is a report of what should have been a great event that was forced to cancel due to the Corona Virus Pandemic. There is no way of predicting, but car event cancellations may become the norm for 2020.
The Classic MG Club of Orlando, the founder of this event in 1967, was the hosting organization. Members had been working for over a year to plan the details of this event. A wide variety of ativities had been planned for the weekend event, more than could fit in anyone's calendar. There were workshops, dinners, raffles, silent auction, and a car show. A big car show. Over 100 MGs were registered 6 weeks before the event - the time that the decision had to be made for canceling the event.
The most anticipated activities at the GOF South were the rallyes and drives. Multiple drives. One of which was a drive to a mountain top. Yes, a mountain top . . . in Florida. Sugar Loaf Mountain to be specific. Well, in fact, two rallyes to the mountain top. So many had signed up for the rallye that two different routes had to be planned to reduce the size of the group on the road and to lower head count at the possible restaurants scheduled for lunch. The Rallye de Montagne, with a logo appropriated from the famous French Monte Carlo Rallye, was to be a highlight of the weekend.
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Not far from Howey-in-the-Hills is the quaint town of Mt. Dora. It has become a town of many, quality restaurants and interesting shops. A drive, the Mt. Dora Meander, was mapped out with appropriate rallye-type instructions to take the MGs and their owners from the Mission Inn to enjoy a lunch at the restaurant of their choice. The route home passed through the neighboring city of Tavares, also known as the seaplane city, since they have a seaplane port on the lake right downtown. A full afternoon of driving your MG on back roads, enjoying a meal with your friends, and seeing new sights was on tap.
Many rallyes and drives were planned, more than could fit into the weekend. There was a suggestion offered that participants arrive on Thursday, a day before the official opening of the GOF South, to make one of the rallyes during the extended stay. A new event, the Tweed Drive, a drive to a British restaurant with participants all dressed in tweed or in their British Finest. This event was patterned after bicycling events that have been held across the globe. The links below are to videos of Tweed Runs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qlU7y-LHqc
https://vimeo.com/252362547
There was a drive to the Yalaha Bakery, a popular German bakery and beer garden. Who wouldn't enjoy that? As participants left the GOF South to return home, multiple blueberry farms were mapped out to brake up the drive, enjoy picking blueberries with MG friends, and have some delicious, healthy treats.
Disappointed. As are many who have faced canceled events. There is some hope as we look to the future. GOF South Mk 55, presented by the MG Classics of Jacksonville, is scheduled for April 2021, to be held in Gainesville, Florida. And, the Classic MG Club of Orlando plans to return to Howey-in-the-Hills in 2022. Seems so far into the future.
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