2014 356 East Coast Holiday - Fontana Village, NC

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As a follow up to the WCH coverage in this thread and the final post I made, I thought I'd spend a few moments covering the east coast version from a couple weeks ago.

I'll post a few highlights and pictures. It was a very informal, low key event whose centerpiece was the incredible access to absolutely fantastic roads, arguably the best in the Southeast, right at your doorstep.

Several interesting cars. 5 Carreras, handful of Pre As, an America Roadster and some long time ownership stories.

The below video is from a group photo opp Saturday on Fontana Dam.

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Smack in the middle of far western North Carolina, up against the TN border. Backdrop is Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Roads of interest include NC 28, Cherohala Skyway, Foothills Parkway in TN, Hwy 74 thru Nantahala Gorge, and of course, the famous Tail of the Dragon. Let's not forget a quick side trip to Joyce Kilmer, one of the last remaining stands of virgin timber on the East Coast.

I am very familiar with this area as much for the driving roads as the incredible remote, back country hiking and camping. The Appalachian Trail is also close by (it actually crosses into GSNP on the dam in the above video!).

So I was pleased to hear of this year's location

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Map Link

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As I mentioned in the first post there were some interesting, very well done cars there. I am drawn to the Pre A, so that's a great place to start.

This is Steve Harrison's 55 Continental Coupe. He has owned it for 25 years as a non running restoration project, and just a week before the event it was finally road ready! Timing couldn't have been better!
He claims he did all the work himself, and I do not doubt it after speaking with him a number of times during the event. It was clear he was an encyclopedia of pre A factoids and details. Plus he's local in Atlanta, very cool. Equally inspiring is the fact we are similar in age (read on the younger side for this event) and he pulled this off with a young family as his main priority.

The color is Pearl Grey, and this car positively glowed the entire weekend. I love the trick pipes he put out the back. This car was a People's Choice winner in the Saturday evening concours. I may have more pics, but here are three that I found in a quick search.

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Another great car was Rev. Ron Roland's 1953 America Roadster. This is a 1 of 16, aluminum bodied car with a fully documented ownership history. It was originally owned by Briggs Cunningham. Coincidentally, I had packed some evening Porsche lit reading for bedtime and the first night there I opened up a collection of period road test articles on the early 356s. The book sorta broke open magically to the December 1953 Auto Age road test of this EXACT car. The article was written by John Bentley, the second owner.

At any rate, I spoke at length with Ron about this car. Ron is a very well known 356 expert and was part of the panel for the Saturday Tech Session. He's the author of Restored by Hand, a tome of insight into bringing a 356 back from the dead.

The car ran different liveries over its lifespan, including bare aluminum, when it was nicknamed something related to Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. He kept some of the original color on the underside of decklids. Current paint scheme is what was shown in the 1953 article I referenced above.

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Next up is one of the oh so fresh, trailered to the event, restorations. A very very early pre A Carrera Speedster, prototype 14 of 14.

Ben Edwards of CT brought this incredibly sweet Stone Gray example. I think I overhead him say it was the earliest example of a green interior in a 356, I could be wrong. This car was just fantastic, right down to the detail on the roller bearing engine hanging out back. Ben was very proud of it and rightly so. It was beautiful

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And from trailer queen to pegging the needle at the opposite end of the scale (but still pre A folks), is this barn find 52 bumper on body as found coupe. The car is owned by Mike DeJonge from Restoration Design in Ontario. Yes, the same guys doing all the replacement panels for early Porsches.

The "find" was a cool story as told by Mike, including trying to pin the long term owner down on a price over multiple occasions as his health was failing and the price was going up and down and changing by the day. Mike finally got the owner to agree to sell after a long drive shuttling him to the car's storage location (shuttling was part of the deal) to let Mike look it over. His wired deposit was on a Friday and of course over a three day banking holiday in Canada, so he was pleased to find that on the following Tuesday everything was still on the up and up.

I enjoyed talking to Mike and his wife Lucy.

I definitely should have taken more pics of this bad boy. Crusty but incredibly original! Color name escapes me, but a red...

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Another example is this legendary owner and car combo, the Dick Weiss 57 Carrera Speedster. Dick drove this car to the event from Ohio. Dick is in his early 80s. He has owned this car since 1960, driving by it on a used car lot in his other Speedster. It was originally delivered to Caracas, Venezuela, and then three short years later it was a spent race car on a corner lot in the rural Midwest... The rest is history.

That's right, 54 years of continuous ownership. Dick was running what was essentially a pit stop session on Saturday morning as people stopped by the doctor before heading out on their drives. He diagnosed, did some minor fiddling, and sent each of them off.

Dick brought along a three ring binder that contained an incredible ream of history on his car, including black and white pictures of him racing it in the early 1960s, his SCCA racing license, letters from the factory about it, etc.

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In the above photo you see me standing with Dick and another gentleman. The other guy is Bruce Sweetman, a photojournalist whose work has appeared in Excellence, Pano, etc. We had lunch with Bruce and he shared a sneak previews of some upcoming articles on early 911s. One of which is Tim's (71 sixer on Sreg) completely original Viper Green T. I enjoyed talking to Bruce.

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Moving into the As, this example really popped. I was told it was Meissen Blue but don't think I have seen this color show like this before. I would love to own an A coupe like this.

Sorry, not much detail on the car or owner as I never seemed to be around the car when they were.

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This car was unveiled from a trailer on Saturday night for the extremely casual concours. It's a freshly restored black 63 356B Carrera 2 Coupe. Supposedly 18,000 original kilometers...

Even before this weekend, the weekend I became one with the four cam, I have had a special interest in Carreras. A great reference btw is Cole Scrogham's Porsche 356 Carrera book if you can find it.

So this car had paint that was so perfect it made your eyes water. Almost like you could step right through the fender into another world. The car was represented by Carrera Motorsports out of Hickory NC. Kinda confusing who did the work though, but here is a link to some restoration photos:
http://www.carreramotorsport.com/356...a%202000GS.htm

Most of my shots naturally focused on the engine compartment which was impeccable.

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One thing I will say is that this car SMOKED something fierce... At one point during the weekend (before I even knew this car was at the ECH), I was approached by a local saying they saw one of "those cars like yours" (referring to all these little foreign autos everywhere) on fire driving down the road. Her description of the car matched this one, and since there were no reported car fires for the weekend, it has to be a match. I guess I'll chalk it up to four cam engine break in. Seemed a bit excessive, that smoke. And I will spare you a shot of all the smoke lit up by the ball field lights the night of the car show.

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Let's see, what else to cover.

Oh yeah, I fixed the zip out window on the (what has to be close to if not the genuine article) original top of this Speedster. We had dinner with this couple and headed out to the show field only to find their top's zipper was busted. I think they were happy to have a roof over their heads given their return trip back to Massachusetts.

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This rather ingenious beer stein came in handy Saturday night. Very clever use of the ubiquitous 356 oil filter housing.

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It appears the 356 world has a Sheridan WY equivalent of a hoarder, or maybe I am misreading the jabs on the weekend message board

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Here I am talking with Paul Gregor at PCNA. Paul has what I would think is a challenging role, marrying up PAG's messaging and interests with the North American Porsche specific car clubs. He was very candid in describing the challenges. I told him I would like to take my car on the new test track at the PCNA headquarters building in Atlanta when it's finished... unaccompanied of course. A point that didn't get a response from him. Steffan is his understudy, and is on an internship with Porsche. Really nice guy who plans to return to the motherland after his stint in Atlanta. Why am I the only one drinking a beer

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And I would be remiss without pointing out that many of the volunteers that put on the event are Early 911S Registry members as well. Here is our own Jim Johnston and myself. Jim writes for the 356 Registry magazine, has written a few times for ESSES, and is a bona fide great guy that worked very hard over that weekend.

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