2010 Russo and Steele Monterey

[LongRanger]

My camera was sooooo dead, by the time I got here. Concorso sapped it, then Mecum pretty much finished it off.

Only got a few snaps in . . .

1) and 2) I don't know --- maybe it's me but sometimes . . . you can just tell something about the crowd . . . by the way they roll.

3) and 4) Requisite Porsche content

5) Parnelli Jones' '69 Trans Am car. In the street, out in front of the venue. 5-liter, high-HIGH-compression V8, open side-dumps. Ear-splittingly, zipper-rippingly, bra-strap snappinglly annoying. Loved it. Car was immaculate, and I mean spanking. I know these things are dinosaurs, but why the Manufacturers don't build and race cars that look just like the cars they sell, I'll never know.

Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling this car --- rumbling, there on the street. And the theater of it ---- the stickers on the fenders, the meatballs, the mile-wide tires, the totally bad-a$$ way this thing crouches on the ground . . . I remember why I loved V8s so.

And why Ford sold millions of 'Stangs.

And Porsche only a few thousand 911s. Never mind S's.

Get the winningest Rally cars and their drivers, all the Safari and Monte and Targa Guys . . . I'll take Donohue. And Revson. And Gurney.

And most of all . . . Parnelli.

In a stupid push-rod V8.

'Cause growing up? . . . all my heros went to war --- riding dinosaurs.

I'm sure, come Monday morning, every scrap-yard from Monterey to Bangor had phone calls from Guys who heard this car --- or saw others like it run at Laguna Seca over the week-end --- who now wanted to build their own '60s Pony Car Outlaw.

I do.