'17 CONCOURS-ON-THE-AVENUE, Carmel, through JZG's lens

[John Z Goriup]

...................and another set.

[Chuck Miller]

John,

So happy you felt up to your usual AMAZING photo coverage.... Always thankful, always grateful.....

Cheers,
Chuck

[silverc4s]

John,
Really appreciate your efforts here. Beautiful photography of some fantastic subject matter. Thanks for sharing with us out here.

[runsub5]

John, thanks for taking me to this wonderful event. I appreciate all of your efforts in taking these beautiful photographs and sharing them with all of us. Hope your health improves.

Cheers

[John Z Goriup]

Gentlemen, thank you all so much for the kind words.

Another set, this one starting with three photos of a '61 Chrysler 300 G.......another one of the many cars I owned, except mine was a '60 and had the horrible faux, chrome festooned 'Continental kit' wheel that looked like a toilet-seat contoured into the trunk lid sheetmetal. It was an option, but the dealership that happened to have the red one with the 413cu. inch 'Cross Ram' motor, which I bought, ordered the car with that option. No matter, even if I had gotten used to the looks, there was no way I could manage a 4000 +pound car with cast-iron drum brakes, soft suspension, and of course back then neither Konis nor Bilsteins for American cars, nor any of the desperately needed, appropriate aftermarket giblets for the suspension were available to make this barge even mildly sporting, so the Chrysler went away, to be replaced by a series of Jim Wanger Royal Pontiacs, followed by Doane Corvettes with every GM 'Blue Page' option.

I took photo #5 to more or less dramatize how Chrysler have always followed their own path, certainly styling-wise with the extreme fins of the 300s, juxtaposed against the 'streamlined' front of the red Charger.

Photo #8 is of an extra-ordinary '58 Ferrari TdF Coupe, owned, raced & driven for 53 years by famed Ferrari collector / expert Charles Betz who has a remarkable history of Ferrari ownership and took home the "Best of Show" award with this car on Tuesday. Congratulations, a well deserved honor.

[John Z Goriup]

..........and another set.

Photo #6 shows a locally owned RS, Serial # 1291 which has been prominently displayed at most C & Cs and northern California car shows lately - a beautiful, clean car.

Photo #3 shows a burgundy one-off '48 Vauxhall Zimmerli roadster, which started out as a standard Vauxhall Velox sedan and then was rebodied by the Swiss custom coachbuilder in 1950, but wasn't actually sold to it's first owner until sometimes in the '60s.

Re photo #7, it was very gratifying to see ol' Ruprecht being driven to its spot in the R Gruppe 'display only' area, something I've very much wanted to do since I built the car, but never quiote accomplished nor had the confidence to attempt. Delighted to see that my first and only 911 really seems to have gone to a good new home.

[John Z Goriup]

Another set, starting with another Italian yellow car, in this instance a spectacularly clean, pristine and low-milage Lancia Delta HF Integrale, pronounced by many an acknowledged and self-appointed expert to be the best-steering and most fun-to-drive modern car ever produced. What a beautiful example. - and very close to the top of my personal list of cars at the Concours I wish I could have driven home.

The elegant Mercedes is a Cabriolet model based on the same chassis as my first ever brand-new M-B, a dark brown SEL 300 6.3 Sedan which was a superb road car and which I really liked, but Alas, this was all before the Germans started galvanizing their cars and it actually rusted through in several spots after it's first Chicago winter. It's propensity for rust notwithstanding, It was the car most responsible for re-directing my allegiance towards German Premium automobiles, because it demonstarted with startling clarity just how important it is to build a car that is engineered through and through to be a great driver that GOES, handles, stops and does everything else one expects from the people who invented the automobile......... haven't owned an American car since.

[evokes]

Amazing photos John! Thank you for sharing! Sharing is caring!

[John Z Goriup]

more from the morning staging exercise, which started half an hour later than scheduled and took a little longer than usual, but with a lot less stress and hassle......it all went very smoothly with a minimum of bitching - highly unusual & unexpected behavior on the part of some of the prima donnas we've been treated to in the past.

[John Z Goriup]

One more set.............starting with a pair oif images of the famous Citroen Traction Avant. This car was referred to by Citroen as an 'Executive' automobile and was produced from 1934 through '57. When first introduced it was a breakthrough design incorporating for the first time ever three revolutionary-for-the-era features in a mass-produced vehicle:

Front-wheel drive

All-welded sheetmetal Unibody ( monocoque ) construction and

4-wheel independent suspension

Photo #2 & 3 show a recently completed black / red Dannenhauer & Stauss Roadster, one of more than a dozen custom-bodied, coach built, VW-based limited production cars that were buil in the early '50s by the likes of Denzl, Rometch, Karmann, Enzmann, Beutler, Wendler, and many more. This is one of the best I've ever seen - beautifully executed.

Photos # %, 6 & 7 show the RS that Scott Hendry retsored & completed in 2011 as his personal car, but has since sold the car to the present owner, who is obviously keeping it in splendid condition.....if memory serves me correctly, the serial # is 280. If you remember, Bert Jayasakera had just purchased his neighbors squirreled away original car that he'd been after for years, which was in this unique color, the year before and debuted it at the last German Auto Fest, where the then-owner of this RS saw this color in the metal for the first time and decided on the spot to finish the RS in that sensational shade. I love closing the loop on stories like that, whn I saw the car years ago, talked to all parties involved and learned from them, photographed and featured it in this forum originally and am now able to shoot & feature it again.

The last photo shows Nick Psyllos's stunning Tangerine '72 S/T recreation. Truly Well Done !