Category: Motoring Events & Shows

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ARA Alameda all Italian car day 2008 this Sunday

ARA is hosting the Alameda All Italian Day car show this Sunday the 12th of October. If you like neat Italian cars and motorcycles (and even occasionally scooters and Italian designed French cars), a good spaghetti feed and an excuse to be out in the waning days of California sunshine before winter sets in, this show is for you. Admission has historically been $5 of which some charitable portion goes to the Special Olympics. If you bring an Italian vehicle whether a Ferrari 250 Lusso or an Alfa Romeo built Renault R4 to exhibit entry is free.

Elvis Costello shows Jack White his 1929 Maserati 24C5400. Sweet!! Actually none of that is correct except perhaps the Maserati part. Look for me and the Wife in the Fiat 124 Sedan Special with a 18″ crack in the windshield.

I added a modest photo set from the 2005 AAICD to the events page if you want to get an idea of what the event is like. I can tell you first hand that it is on a grassy ball field at a school in a quiet neighborhood. The setting is very casual and friendly. I can say without reservation that it is my favorite show of the year, not only for the interesting machinery on display , but for the crowd of local familiar faces inevitably encountered. See you there.

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2008 Andrew Watry Berlina Tour

Andrew Watry, keeper of the Giulietta Berlina, Giulia Sedan and Berlina registers, began putting together a Fall Berlina tour a few years back to encourage local Alfa Berlina owners to hit the backroads and exercise their often overlooked Alfa Sedans.  Well, with appreciation for Alfa sedans at an all time high (especially for the Giulia TI and Super) and Andrew welcoming all comers so long as they’re driving an appropriately interesting or old car, the event has grown.

Stopped for a photo op on Redwood road. 

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Guest blog entry: Concorso Italiano 2008

Giuliettas.com couldn’t make it to the Concorso Italiano 2008, so we asked Hardtuned.com and Sports Car International Magazine’s Jeff Glenn for a full report.  Words and Photographs are his.  Thanks Jeff!

 

 

It was always a bit of a chore getting into the Concorso Italiano when it was at the Bayonet and Black Horse Golf Course on Fort Ord, and the organizers convincingly fixed that by moving the event to the Marina Airport. In the process, they lost a fair amount of cache. At past Concorso’s, I enjoyed sitting in the grass and people watching after checking out an overwhelming number of Italian cars and the club corrals in the outlying parking lots. Trees, fleeting glimpses of the ocean, and a rolling topography that gave you a sense of how many cars and people were there have been replaced by a flat, asphalt and concrete parking lot bordered by vendor tents, chain link fence, and port-o-potties. This year, when we couldn’t stand any longer, we collapsed on the concrete.

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Pixar’s 2008 Motorama

Every Summer Pixar’s in-house car show Motorama takes place on the magnificent Pixar grounds.  Designed as an opportunity for Pixar employees to show off their rides and hang out, the show presents an interesting cross section, as is evidenced in the event photos. 

I really like the free-for-all, run-what-you-brung nature of this show.  Too often I find myself bored at a car show, wondering how many more Corvettes or new Ferrari’s I can look at before I am completely desensitized.  Highlights for me included a Pixar employee owned perfect VW split window camper bus, a Peugeot 402 articulated hard-top cabriolet on loan from Fantasy Junction, a Norton Manx engined Cooper and a gorgeous red and silver Lotus Elite.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures, the rest can be seen here.

BMW /2 in the Pixar atrium.

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Roadside repairs: Motherlode 400 fuel pump failure

I purchased my Sprint Veloce March of this year (2008) .  The car had been gone through mechanically by a local vintage Alfa Ferrari Lancia mechanic who specializes in long involved rebuilds to a high standard.  While great care was taken in the set up of the SV, it had been about 4 years since its mechanical setting-up was completed and it didn’t receive more than a few hundred miles of break-in.  What it did receive is a lot of dis-assembly, rust repair, then reassembly.  No real teething drives were taken after this.  I put the car on the road after a thorough cleaning and reinstalling the interior pieces and spending about 20 hours stabilizing the wiring in the car to fix some little problems like 4 volts at the headlights, brake lights only when the headlights were on and no turn signals or horn or gauge lights… you get the idea. 

Woe is me to be laying in rough gravel under the car roadside in 80+ degree heat sleepy from a belly full of lunch getting grease and gasoline all over my arms.  Why is the fuel pump not in the trunk or under the hood?

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Motherlode 400 June 2008

This last weekend the Mrs. and I drove the Giulietta Sprint Veloce on Josh Prestis’ second annual Motherlode 400. The event officially starts at 9am in the parking lot of the Jackson Lodge, but for me and others in our caravan it was a 6:30 roll-off from Oakland.
Cars in attendance included a 1971 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1600 Super, an Aston Martin DB4 convertible, some Triumph TR’s, various BMW’s and others; all pre-1975 Sportscars. On day one the event explores the Sierra Nevada Gold country backroads that few other than locals, and probably few even among locals are aware of. A full slideshow of the event can be seen here.

Approaching 395 from 108 after the Sonora Summit. Spectacular scenery traversed by sweeping high speed roads.

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2008 Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance

I’m not much of a car show guy, preferring to tear up the back roads on a Sunday afternoon but with Alfa Romeo this years featured mark and a potential meet-up with some friends I couldn’t help but attend the 2008 Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance this last Sunday the 22nd of June at Stanford University.

I spent a few hours in the hot sun taking pictures of interesting cars, talking to old friends and making new ones.  There were some neat Alfas in attendance including an 8C2900, a TZ1, an immaculately restored Giulietta Sprint Veloce and others. 

This 1958 Giulietta Sprint Veloce is the nicest I’ve ever seen in person.  This car was made 38 cars before mine so there may not be any Veloces between this Sprint and mine.

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