6th Anniversary of Cars and Coffee Irvine and Marconi Open House

Cars and Coffee 10/20/2012 Pics

October 20th was the 6th Anniversary of our favorite weekly car show here in Southern California. Mother Nature didn't seem in a particularly festive mood, but the constant mist didn't seem to keep many people away - by 7 am the lot was about 80 percent full and folks kept trickling in along with the precipitation over the next hour or two.

There was no featured marque this week, but the corral was filled with a random assortment of what has made this show such a treat from the beginning. The eclectic mix included a group of Challengers, some old Jags, Cobras, GT40s, Fiat Dinos, Pontiac GTOs, a Split-Window Corvette, Porsche 356 Carrera 2, Morgan, new Camaros and more.

The Porsche row featured the usual mix of 911s, 356s and Boxster/Cayman models, highlighted by a Carrera Panamericana 356 on semi-slicks, a new 981 Boxster S and a nice 550 Spyder among others.

Walking the rest of the lot, it was more of the same random toy collection on display - Old Mustangs, some tuned Fiat 500s, Audi R8 Spyder, Maserati Bora and Merak, Lotus Cortina, BMW 2002 tii, Citroen 2CV, Datsun 1600, S15 Silvia, some classic Mercedes, a Cobra Jet Mustang drag racer, C-Max Hybrid and an RX-7 Turbo powered Mazda pickup by Racing Beat that had a 4-rotor engine in the bed and a matching license plate to advertise the cargo.

Besides the great assortment of cars, trucks and bikes, there were quite a few interesting people at the show. My buddy Bruce introduced me to a young couple who were first timers - she from Riverside and he from England. Bruce also bumped into a German reporter who was another first-timer, not knowing anyone at the show, he still managed to have a great time it seemed, enjoying the cars and making some new friends.



Marconi Museum Open House with SEMA Preview

After the show we headed over to the Marconi Museum where they were having an open house with a special display of some international customs that are headed to SEMA next weekend. It's always fun to visit the Marconi, with its great collection of Ferrari supercars, customs and F1 cars, Indy cars, vintage racers, muscle cars and assorted European exotics, but throwing in those wonderfully delightful foreign customs made it extra special.

The best part of that SEMA display was the fact that the cars looked like they could have been made right here in the States - from the Swedish '57 Chevy to the Trinidad & Tobago-born Range Rover, from the Mexican '46 Ford to the French (what else?) 2CV, it was cool to see that the hot rodding hobby knows no bounds.

Ted Baker's 356 Restorations, Sacramento.

During my recent visit in the United States I've been lucky enough to stay few blocks away from Ted Baker's garage on 21st in Sacramento. I was a bit intimidated by the gorgeous array of cars always parked outside and the spotless look of the garage. I approached them asking if it was possible to take some pictures and found myself embraced by an incredibly warm welcome and endless competence. Ted Baker has been working on the brand for almost sixty years and focuses almost exclusively on 4 cylinder because "after 1965... we think they were not Porsche anymore". Six cylinders are complicated and not fun to tinker with.

I was welcomed by Carrera Panamericana veteran Paul Frame who literally dropped what he was doing and spent half an hour of his time going through each and every car and engine available in the garage. He also went to the extent of digging out two sets of photographs from his Panamericana's adventures in which, to my surprise, he was focussing mostly on how local people and kids were welcoming them rather than on racing stories. People like him are what classic car's enthusiasm is all about: passion for daring technology and history and other fellow enthusiasts alike. Him and Darrel Bailey compete regularly in the famous race with a 356A that they turned into a replica of the car driven by Salvador Lopez Chavez in 1953. The racer sports a livery of Chavez's notorious shoemaking company Canada based in Gadalajara. How appropriate is that?

Paul kindly showed me every corner of the workshop and uncovered all the "guests" describing all the little details and tiny differences between them. In the pictures you can see a couple of SC Coupe' and also a rare and beautiful Super 90 with sunroof. The cars were all in concourse condition, even those that were still being worked on.

The guys don't like funny upgrades too much and they seem all the more fascinated in preserving the incredible initial design. The only upgrade I could see in that moment in the shop was the cleverly concealed disc brakes instead of the original drums. Paul also showed me the ultimate treasure of the company: a cabinet stuffed with original switches, badges and all sorts of rare parts. "Ted has been savaging them since the fifties" says Paul, a consistency that sure saved a lot of restoration projects from frightening imperfection.

If you have a 356 in needs of attention you might try Ted's garage, but to put it in their own words... "we have 10 years worth of work to deal with" at the moment. If on the other hand, you're a young lad that wants to "go to 356 school" you might be lucky here. Young, talented and hard working mechanics are apparently more rare than old badges these days, and it sure will be a waste of incredible experience when Ted will decide to retire.