Of course you have bought your tickets for next weekend’s Australian Production Cars Championships at Tony Quinn’s Queensland Raceway, where you’ll see 72 men, two McLarens, three Porkers, 11 BMWs and one 1996 Nissan Pulsar (guess who?) and one woman, Renee Gracie, in a Ginetta, running in one-hour races that will favour the older competitors, like 65-year-old former Scotsperson, pet food and chocolate tsar Tony Quinn, (who mistakenly first moved to Perth (WA) from Aberdeen then quickly realised “Perth was full of thieves, vagabonds, wankers and pricks who robbed him of his money and confidence”.
Good, nothing’s changed then, and guess who? One clue. He and teammate Phil Alexander will be the key threat to the McLarens, in the 1996 Nissan Pulsar.
If you aren’t in Ipswich, you’ll be in Monterey, California, for Car Week that kicks off on Friday with, not surprisingly, Monterey Car Week Kick-Off, a classic car show in Downtown Monterey. You’ll be able to see 30 classic race cars lining the 300 blocks of Alvarado St. Hardly wait for that.
Then it’s straight to the Monterey Jet Centre for the ultimate celebration of automotive beauty, exquisite aircraft, and fellow car connoisseurs and aeroplane aficionados at Motorlux.
You and 3000 other VIP guests stroll the array of exceptional and rare vintage race cars, motorcycles and aircraft. World-Class sponsors will also join you and your 3000 besties to show off their latest offerings and wow guests with the first look at what’s coming next in the aviation and automotive world. Noted California chefs will pair gourmet selections with California wines for this exclusive event. Beauty.
One thing worth seeing is Cars of the Mille. Non-electrics from “the most beautiful race in the world”, Italy’s historic 1000 Miglia. You can get up close to cars that participated in the original 1000 mile race from Brescia to Rome and back. This is more like it.
And in a nod to gender equality: the Prancing Ponies Car Show features women-owned exotic, classic, muscle, sport and electric cars. Proceeds support the Prancing Ponies Foundation’s mission to “Create Women Leaders One Girl at a Time”. No doubt Tricia Chant will be there prior to the following weekend’s Leyburn Sprints.
The main event is meant to be the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, but more fun and with better metal are the auctions. Dave Gooding has a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta with Coachwork by Scaglietti for $14m, but before you hand over the black Amex have a squiz at the Ferrari 166 MM/53 Spider, the only car to win all of the three great European sports car races: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Targa Florio and the Mille Miglia. He has it coming up soon in London, a steal at $6m.
RM Sotheby’s has even more Feezers, but do yourself a favour and bid on the 1957 Jag XKSS. “It is utterly remarkable how many of the greatest post-war European sports cars came to be because of the US. Post-war America through the late 1950s saw a new crop of enthusiastic young drivers, flush with money from a booming economy, who wanted the latest and greatest machinery with the sexiest lines and the most powerful engines. The resulting alchemy produced automotive magic, the likes of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Ferrari 250 GT California Spider, and the Porsche 356 Speedster. The epitome of this era was the Jaguar XKSS.”
Jaguar had withdrawn from racing following the 1956 season and was left with a number of D-types remaining unsold in its factory. The cars were to be converted to roadgoing specification and sold into the US market. But nine of the 25 cars to be produced were destroyed by a fire in the Browns Lane factory. Only 16 cars were made.
If you got this Jag for $20m your life will be richer, your wallet in five year’s time will be richer and so what if you have to sell the children to pay for it?
You know there’s insurrection everywhere. Just this week Fitch decided to downgrade the US credit rating because of the January 6 insurrection. Management and political consultant, owner of his own armed forces, hero of the Russian Federation, 62-year-old Yevgeny Prigozhin, had his own insurrection or “March for Freedom” a few months ago. And all these insurrections have given some readers ideas.
Bad ideas. Like requestioning a special meeting of other readers to vote on that important critical corporate governance issue, transparency.
Requisitioning Readers, purporting to speak for greater than 5 per cent of this column’s readers (one), are calling a meeting pursuant to section 168 of the Corporations Act (Cth) 2001 to force the columnist (viz: me) to stop using a photograph of himself from 16 years ago. Naturally I have resisted.
The insurrectionists say unless my photo is changed by today week the meeting will take place in the corner bar of the Kensi (where the special will be the beef porterhouse schnitzel with chips and salad for only $26) and they believe they will have at least 75 per cent of readers (15) voting yes at the meeting. Of course, friends, eldest son and JP, younger reader advisers don’t qualify as readers so I will have to rely on the Sultan to swing the vote for me. Tune in next Saturday.
In other news, F1 is on school holidays, the 199m Panama-registered Fremantle Highway, a cargo ship, carrying nearly 3000 EVs is on fire off the Clog coast. Naturally it was caused by an electric car and many crew members jumped off the ship because they were so happy to have an excuse to not look at 3000 batteries on wheels. In Singers, F1 promoter Ong Beng Seng was arrested by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau. Mr Ong brought F1 to Singapore and is chairman of Singapore GP.
Our car of the week is a one only, road-legal, Mercedes-Benz CLK LM. Mercedes used CLK LMs for the 1998 FIA GT Championship. The two cars shared pole position throughout the season, and won every single race, posting six 1-2 finishes. This is one of four race cars produced and the only one made street-legal. As Pistonheads says: “The interior is pure Le Mans car, with cables, carbon boxes and stickered switches. No leather, no second seat.” At $6m from Joe Macari at JM Performance, London.
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