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.