What an amazing show today! True there wasn't the overflow crowd like in recent weeks, but it turned out to be one of those days where the strange and exotic stole the show.
The first thing I saw when I got there was the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss – the final edition of the SLR project between Mercedes and McLaren that was limited to just 75 units worldwide. Love it or hate it styling and a 217-mph top end make this a highlight at just about any show, but this ain't just any show.
Master fabricator, welder and designer, Andrew Buck, of Buckshot Racing pulled in with a Monster-sponsored off-road dune buggy that looked ready to tackle anything from the Baja 1000 to the X-Games. It's called the X.2R and one just like it can be yours. Just contact Buckshot Racing. Best part about it was the fact that it was wearing plates for street use.
Another street/race hybrid was parked across from the coffee tables...and it too was built to race off-road. In this case, on salt. Suzuki handed over a perfectly good Kizashi sedan to the gang at Road & Track and they bolted on a giant Turbonetics turbocharger, added a bunch of safety equipment and a few aero mods and Sam Mitani drove it to a class record of 203.720 miles per hour a few weeks ago. Other than the parachute it looked like it could have been just another tuner car.
When was the last time you saw an Opel Monza GSE? Never? One rolled into the lot this morning looking like it had just come off the showroom floor. Seriously, this car had been restored or preserved to look like it was freshly minted. Who does that? Takes a decent but mostly unheralded sporty car and makes it look better than new? Only a fellow car nut could appreciate that kind of devotion to one of those overlooked and underappreciated vehicles from motoring history.
Great cars all of them, but the highlight of the day for me at least, were the trunk bikes. A group of guys who were definitely a lot more confident in their manhood than the rest of us, came buzzing up on a trio of Honda Motocompo scooters. These 50cc bikes were sold as an accessory on the Honda City overseas, and feature a collapsible handle bar assembly so they can fold up and fit in the trunk of that tiny urban runabout. I've never seen one in person before today and now I've seen three.
Click below to go straight to the gallery that includes all of the above plus a whole lot more.
Cars & Coffee 9/25/10 pics
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