1989 Monterey Historic

1989 Monterey Historics

Sherri has long expressed the desire to reduce clutter around the house. Like most people our age, we have accumulated quite a bit of “stuff,” adding to it year-by-year. People who move about regularly are forced to cull this “stash” at least somewhat each time they relocate, but we have been in this house for two decades and spent even more than that in our home in San Carlos, so the piles are quite extensive.

She has done a bit of work in other areas (and I have been totally AWOL in the activity so far), and a few days ago started to tackle our numerous boxes of photographic prints. It might be hard for millenials to understand in this digital age, but well into the early years of the new century, you took pictures with cameras on film, and had the negatives processed by companies which then gave them back to you along with prints of the frames on special photographic paper. In some cases they provided duplicates of each shot so you could “share” the photo by giving a print to someone else. Of course you could also provide the negative back to the processor to produce additional prints later.

At any rate, like many couples we had accumulated both albums we had made and boxes of prints...most of which then got relegated to a shelf in a closet and were never looked at again. So Sherri started “culling the herd” and gave me a stack of car related photos to go through and do the same.

We actually had reduced the stash of prints we reviewed by about 2/3...which was easy since many were simply poorly shot and others were just duplicates. But a couple of days later, as she continued the process, she gave me two regular envelopes to go through, on which I had written “1989 Monterey,” and which contained color photos I had done at that event.

Like much of my car photos, these were of cars which are unlikely to ever be seen again at a single location and in such great numbers. Many of the cars are now worth tens of millions of dollars each, and even for the “new” “Monterey Reunion” which succeeded the Steve Earle “Monterey Historic” races he created, this is heady stuff and a lot of these cars simply disappeared into collections dispersed all over the world. At least a couple, shown here, were special to me, as they were owned and raced by friends, many of them buddies I met through the old Ferrari Owners Club.

Looks like a "normal" 250 California, Right?
It's Decidedly Not
A very rare, all aluminum competition version
Mike Cotsworth aboard

The Cotsworth 250SWB Cabriolet (“California”) needs a bit of coverage. It's quite a story. Mike and his wife Vicki were at an early Montery event and were looking at a similar car parked in the paddock...a steel bodied road car. A gentleman wearing a hat like the one in the photo of Shelby below stopped and asked them if they liked the car. Who would say “no?”

“Well,” the stranger explained in a soft drawl, “I own one I would like to sell and you can come look at. It's parked under a tree on my property in Texas and needs to be rebuilt.”

Mike and Vicki actually took him up on the offer. The car looked pretty sad, and had been under that tree for years. It did not run, the interior was a mess, and the tree was a plum tree...the fruit had put purple stains all over the car.

Mike wanted nothing to do with it. It was Vicki who had the guts and imagination to see what it could become. They bought the car and, as they started into the restoration of it, found out exactly what they had and how rare and special it was. Even as early as this photo was taken it was worth over a million dollars, an almost unheard of figure in those days.

A Really Brutal Beast....
Despite the classy white walls

The “Carsten” Allard was owned, at the time of the photo, by my friend Dave Brodsky. Dave was not a racer...not even by vintage standards. I could regularly and easily pass him in his Edwards/Blume Crosley special. The Allard is a handful for anyone. This car is quite famous, winning race after race with Bill Pollack behind the wheel. It scared the bejesus out of Dave, and he later invited Pollack to drive it when Allard was the featured marque for the event. And yes, it did race with those white wall tires.

David Love and Mary Ho
One of the most well known Vintage Cars in the World
1958 250TR "Testa Rossa"
Now Owned by Tom Price

But it is the pictures of David Love's 250TR which need the most explaining. You see,

Price's "Other Car"
1963 250GTO

David was my first driving instructor when I decided to join other members of the FOC and go vintage racing. In fact, I spent the first few laps sitting where Mary Ho is in the full shot of the car. I was in awe. I was in heaven. I had no idea where the track went or what David was trying to tell me. I kept staring at the little brass plaque shown in the shot of the car's dashboard. It was from an old pinball machine and said simply...”Insert coin to begin game.”

Coin Slot at Far Right
David did have a sense of whimsy

I said nothing about it and stumbled into my own 2+2 to follow him around. I focused on the “stinger” ends of his tailpipes. They, like the windshield bracket (you did notice the windshield bracket, right?), were works of art, not car parts. Pure jewelery.
When we came in and he asked if I had learned anything I sighed “yeah, that car is just f*ing gorgeous.”

A couple of shots were of famous racers from the 50s and 60s...Sir Stirling Moss and Carroll Shelby in particular...it is shocking to me how young they looked in 1989.

Sir Stirling Moss
I think the lady is his wife
But I'm not sure

World's Shrewdest "Chicken Farmer"
Carroll Shelby
I wonder what he's holding?

But it was the series of photos at the end of this entry which not only brought back memories of that event, but gave me the same “hair on the arm rising” thrill it did when I first saw the display. Somewhere I have a photo as I first saw the display after just arriving for the race, and well before the track was opened to the public. In that shot it is wreathed in and surrounded by fog, and looks as ethereal and surreal as the real scene must have been back in 1959.

In the first 20 or so years of the Monterey Historics, no single sponsor owned the paddock displays. Thus there was not the commercial and unified approach implemented when Rolex became the owner of this area. At the same time, there was actually more creativity and diversity shown in these earlier showings, including, for example, such wonders as a reproduction of a section of a 1920s board track, on a significant slope, complete with a Miller race car strapped invisibly to the track and looking for all the world like it was in full flight.

The Aston Martin display was so authentic it included mannequin gendarmes and mechanics standing behind the cars, and faces of spectators in the stands, including famous figures like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Elvis Presley. The cars were the ones which actually ran that race, which gave the company the world championship for sports cars. I believe the actual car was number 59, and the winner was driven by Salvadori and Shelby.

But even that was not the thing which impressed me the most about the set. At the time Ford was fairly active in the event, mainly through the efforts of a Ford official named Tom Senter. There was a breakfast they hosted in the old and intimate amphitheater area (since gone to build the new, and rather cold, media center), There was also an award for the best Ford powered car, as judged by Tom and later, after he lost a battle with cancer, by his wife and daughters.

At the time Ford owned Aston Martin. You would have expected that to be played up and plastered all over the place in a year when the brand was the featured marque for the race, and where the company had gone to some non-trivial expense to build that wonderful display. But you'd be wrong. There was nothing, and I do mean nothing,mentioning Ford or the link to A-M in that display, or anywhere else at the event. If you did not know that Ford owned Aston Martin, after you looked as closely as you wanted for as long as you wanted, nothing in that display would reveal that fact to you.

It was the classiest thing I had ever seen. It remains that to this day.

The Winning Car
Salvadori and Shelby
History in Motion