The first image of this set features last year's winner of the "America's Most Beautiful Roadster" Trophy - Darryl Hollenbeck's '32 Ford Roadster.
The first image of this set features last year's winner of the "America's Most Beautiful Roadster" Trophy - Darryl Hollenbeck's '32 Ford Roadster.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
Another set of images of various show entrant's cars, including a class-winning Bonneville streamliner ( photos #4 & 5 ) with 388 cid twin-turbo motor that went 416+mph to set a new record, and set a top speed of 442 MPH for a one-way run in '16. Only have the motor compartment and interior shot to show since there was always quite a crowd, and even after waiting for a very long time, I simply wasn't able to get a clear side-view shot of the more than 20' long vehicle. Impressive workmanship and obviously very effective.
Photo #8 shows a young striper practicing for the pin-striping competition later on Saturday of the show. I remember putting myself through two year of college pinstriping and flame-painting cars cars for surprisingly good money during summer vacations until school work got too demanding and I had to devote all my time to my education.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
This set finishes up one building and we enter a different exhibition Hall to view more cars and the relatively small selection of motorcycles on show.................sorry, but they're just not my kind of two-wheelers. I much prefer light, nimble, fast and sporting to engraved, elephantine and pink. Proper motorcycles are built for riding and fun, not trailering to shows and making them so impractical they no longer serve the purpose for which they were originally intended.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
The rest of the bike display and some more entered cars.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
Continuing with images from yet another of the exhibit halls.
Photo #5 shows the original white '58 Impala two-door hardtop featured in George Lucas's seminal "American Graffiti".
The last 4 photos show what started out as a 1950 Ford station wagon but which was converted in 1959 into the "Ranchero" like vehicle and originally finished and displayed for its debut at the Oakland Roadster Show, the event from which the present Roadster show evolved. Thiscar is now undergoing its second 're-imagination'. No Bondo here, as you can see by the varying shades of bare metal, showing the lead work at various points of modification.
Last edited by John Z Goriup; 01-31-2017 at 02:46 PM.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
..........and more still.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
.....and yet another set, this time featuring a '58 Packard two-door hardtop ( photos # 5 & 6 ) made over into an El Camino-like custom, powered by the original but extensively reworked 289 cid supercharged, fuel-injected motor.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
The final set of images from the 'general interest' exhibits. The Show layout had most 'birds of one feather' in a single building, i.e. almost all of the traditional Roadsters were in Building 5, the majority of Coupes and sedans in building 6, etc. etc. with Hall #9 set aside for a very special purpose - coming up later.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
Thanks for sharing John. Great camera work as usual.
Tony
2019 Targa GTS
1974 911 Targa. Lime Green
2018 Macan GTS
'68 912 SWT White (Sold)
'03 Boxster S (Sold)
2013 Cayenne GTS (Deceased)
The last segment of this post concentrates on the Special Exhibit in Building #9, containing only Chevrolets from 1955, '56 & '57, in a varied and far-ranging collection the Show organizers chose to designate "60 years of Tri-Five Chevys" ( '1955, '56 & '57 ) to celebrate quite possibly the most famous and most frequently modified and also sadly, violated model of car to be made into what so often is loosely referred to as a 'Hot Rod'. There were Low-Riders, lightened and radically modified drag-racing cars, Luxury Coupes and convertibles, stock drivers which have been in one family since new and everything in between.
I recall when I first arrived on these shores how popular these cars were - at the University you could always tell the professor's dowdy and utilitarian Chevy 4-doors and wagons clustered in one end in their reserved spots in the parking lots, with the 'cool guys' and their black and red '57 Convertibles and Turquoise & Ivory Coupes with red painted steel wheels, Moon hubcaps, lakes pipes, raised front ends and dual exhausts practically dragging on the ground. Only occasionally would you spy a clean and sparse no-frills two-door with a menacing stance, 'Traction Masters', big, square shouldered black-wall rear tires, some even sporting chalked-on numbers and class designation from their latest drag-strip outing. These 'real' racers would invariably & easily win in the highly illegal and clandestine mid-night drag-fests over the heavy and far less nimble Convertibles with their fuel-injected 283 cid motors that actually made the same amount of horses as displacement - I distinctly recall the intense advertising campaign Chevrolet launched when it introduced the 283 cubic inch engine that made 283 Horsepower - One Horsepower per Cubic Inch they trumpeted - , but the knowledgable guys with their .030 over, 288 cid dual-quad carbureted motors, Heddman headers dumping just behind the front wheels, Isky cams, 4.10 : 1 Posi-Traction differentials, four-speed Borg-Warner transmission would regularly drop into the low to mid-thirteen second bracket and that was all she usually wrote for the poseurs.
The stroll through Building #9 really rekindled all those memories of my youth. I personally never owned a Chevy, opting instead for hot Pontiacs of the 389 and 421 cid. persuasion, some with triple carburetors and later dual four-barrels and lots of internal modifications to create power and torque "little" Chevrolets could only dream about, and I freely admit I had no end of fun with various GTOs and stripped Catalinas and Grand Prix Pontiacs, but all that changed profoundly and my whole outlook on the automobile itself as a life-long obsession underwent a complete metamorphosis when I bought my first Alfa-Romeo in the '60s and got involved deeply and intensly with sports cars.
This entire trip to visit the Roadster show had a more serious and poignant poignant side to it for me. Yesterday, the day after I returned from L.A., a friend, to whom I have sold Ruprecht, my beloved '1970 911T, picked it up and drove it away into the sunset. It's OK, the car couldn't be going to a better home and I have visitation rights, but I'm getting old and am simply no longer capable of enjoying the car / hobby to the degree and at the level I demand from myself............ automotively speaking. it's gonna be a very different life from now on.
I hope you enjoy the next few sets as much as I did taking these images and presenting them here now.
JZG
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Images #2, 3 & 4 are overall views when first entering into Hall #9, and maybe they do not produce quite the same shock effect as seeing three quaters of all the Ferrari GTOs ever produced in a row on the lawn at Pebble Beach, or all the 16 Jag XK-SSs lined up, but most certainly provide a deeply satidfying and nostalgic look back at how things once were.
Last edited by John Z Goriup; 01-31-2017 at 02:58 PM.
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
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