Concours d'Elegance
My New Screensaver
Aug. 26, 2011 We spotted this Jaguar GX75 in the concept car section on the grass near the front door of the Pebble Beach Lodge at last Sunday's Concours d'Elegance. Unable to afford to buy one at this time, I snapped this picture and it's now the screensaver for my iMac. Nice wheels, dude!
A Website for Those Who Love Cars and Movies
Aug. 12, 2011 If you're ever watching a movie and you wonder about one of the cars shown in it, here's the website for you: Internet Movie Cars Database, or IMCDb.org. Similar to the all-movie site IMDB.com, only about cars, IMCDb.org is an encyclopedic site that identifies cars in the movies, including reader comments that tell you year, make and other features. Last night, as we were watching "The Fast and the Furious" (not the 2001 film with Vin Diesel, but the 1954 black and white "B" movie made by Roger Corman and set at the Pebble Beach Races and Concours d'Elegance, where I'm going next week), my wife flipped over to IMCDb on her iPhone to see what cars we were looking at. IMCDb catalogs most of the cars seen in the movie, including these two fine English sportscar imports.
1953 MG-TD
1953 Jaguar XK-120
Another Cool, Old Pebble Beach Racing Shot
August 3, 2011. A coming highlight for me this month is a research trip to the Concours d'Elegance in Pebble Beach and the car racing at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca earlier that week. The trip is research—and research of the most delightful kind—for the new book I'm writing about imports and an American import car pioneer. As part of this research I've been exploring a photographic archive with great old black and white photos of the early days of the Pebble Beach Road Races, such as the one of Phil Hill a few blogposts below, and this one of a race driver who is not having his best day.
Insight into Car Guys, Circa 1950
July 24, 2011. While embarking on my latest project, a book about an import car pioneer, I stumbled onto this vintage black and white photo of the great race driver, Phil Hill, after he had just won his first major sports car race, the 1950 Pebble Beach road race, the first one ever held there. It's a wonderful, and wonderfully fun, photo because not only is it a portrait of Hill when he was young and just coming into his prime as a driver, but it also provides insight into the minds of men who love automobiles and are passionate about them. Are the fellows here congratulating Hill on his triumph or better still, ogling the comely young lass presenting him with the winner's trophy? Nah, they're studying what's truly important.
Phil Hill, 1950 [end]
