Garden State Ferrari Festival

Before September turns into October, here are photos from this year's Garden State Ferrari Festival, held September 14 in Florham Park. We were there (2nd to last photo, lower right; note my new Ferragamo handbag!) with our black 1978 supercharged Euro Ferrari 308GTB (last photo).

There were about 200 Ferraris, from Enzo, to late model and vintage models. The facilities for a show like this are great - 4 tiers of blacktop and good landscaping - all the cars looked their best. The weather was hot for mid September - but better sun than rain.

Despite the allure of marvelously restored older Ferraris (a 1961 250PF Cabriolet took Best in Show and numerous other awards), my personal favorite was a 430 Spyder painted an unusual tropical orange/red. (5th photo) Tamale red? What do I know, I just know what I like!

Note: these photos were posted at the exoticsrally.com forum and reposted here with the photographer's (Brent Mathews) permission. More photos can be found on this thread at Exotics Rally: We didn't bring our cameras, just strolled around enjoying the day. Fun.

Many thanks to Dave North of the Penn-Jersey branch of the Ferrari Club of America for painstakingly organizing once again a hugely successful occasion for Ferrarista.

- posted by Sandy

1952 Aston Martin DB2 hits the road

Aston Martin, the company, has been hand building cars for discerning buyers and winning races since the early twentieth century. The DB models came after World war II when Aston Martin was bought by David Brown. The most famous Aston Martin is probably the DB5 driven by James Bond in the mid sixties.

This beautiful DB2, built in 1952, came to our shop a few years ago needing some repairs but as we started working on it one frightening thing after another was uncovered. Part of the chassis had rusted away, every bearing journal on the crankshaft was a different size, every single spoke in the wire wheels was loose, the bonnet (hood) had been crash damaged and badly repaired several times apparently (requiring extensive aluminum body panel fabrication) and the list went on.


She runs and looks like new now and it's easy to forget the challenges we ran into along the way. For example, this car has 3/16" flat glass in the doors. New windows were required and usually we have flat windows cut from safety glass from a local supplier. Apparently 3/16" safety glass is no longer available. Quarter inch wouldn't fit so we tried 1/8" but as soon as we started road testing the thin glass started cracking. The only other choice was 3/16" tempered glass (like the original equipment) but having tempered glass windows made is a bit more complicated. New windows were cut and sent out to be tempered (for strength) and one exploded in the oven. Later when we finally had the new side windows in our possession, one of them had been made a hair too wide and would not fit. Safety glass could have been trimmed on a special belt sander at the glass shop but that is a no no with tempered glass. It shatters into a million little pieces. Lucky for everyone we were able to make adjustments inside the door.


Radial tires, electronic ignition (Pertronix retro fit kit in the distributor) and a Bosch coil were trade-offs to make this classic more fun to own. The wood rim, aluminum steering wheel is also not original but adds a nice touch to the interior.

The lazy speedometer was fixed with some judicious cleaning and a drop of real whale oil in the right place.

Arnolt Bristol @ Buckingham Auto Show

Here's a few photos of a customer's award winning 1954 Arnolt Bristol last weekend at the Buckingham Auto Show Concours d'Elegance. Here is a blurb about the Arnolt Bristol from Sports Car Market Magazine:

"The Arnolt Bristol was the obsession of engineer, industrialist, importer, and sports car enthusiast Stanley “Wacky” Arnolt. He made his fortune building marine engines during World War II, and, seeing a market for sports cars in America during the early 1950s, cut a deal with Bristol to use an updated version of its 400 chassis, designated the 404, to build a sports car. Bertone supplied the bodies, and the Arnolt Bristol went into production in 1954. The racing version, called the “Bolide,” did not come with a top, carpeting or adjustable seats, and windshield wipers were optional. “DeLuxe” models had all of those features and a different dashboard design with the instruments in front of the driver. A coupe completed the model line-up, though just six were built before production ended in 1961. Only 142 Arnolt Bristols were constructed in total, 12 of which were destroyed in a Chicago warehouse fire. An estimated 75 cars survive to this day...."


Here is the background of the Buckingham Auto Show from their website. This mid-September annual show is worth a visit :

" The Buckingham Auto Show is the brain child of Al Pincus and Ralph Tompkins, who became concerned with the loss of farm land and open space in Buckingham Township.
They presented their idea of an antique auto show and dinner annually to raise funds to purchase farmers development rights to the Board of Supervisors five years ago.
The show has been a huge success, manned totally by volunteers and the Fund has been recognized by both the State and Federal Governments and granted status as a Pennsylvania charity and a Federal 501(c) 3 tax free entity."



Posted by Sandy