Street Daze

 The Siata is now titled and registered. It sports a current California registration and license plate. 

This is a new change of state for the car. It is the first time it has been “street legal” since some time after the end of its original racing career. Though I can't say for certain when it was “on the road” in Pennsylvania, nor if it was driven on the roads when it went to Europe after Tom Scatchard sold his company and moved there. I don't recall when his wife died, but this might have been during the same period. The photos I have of the car (a contact print of the 35mm negative strip containing these shots) show it with an outsized convertible top and “bumpers” which look, for all the world, like iron bed headboards.

Like Balancing a Matress on a Wine Bottle

Other than what I am about to mention in this piece, with the exceptions I'll mention next, the only time the car has been on public streets was for brief tests to be sure the brakes and clutch were working, to ensure that I could select all four gears, and that there were no glaringly obvious suspension faults.

I did indeed drive it legally on the street on at least four occsions I can recall. Of course these were all officially “parades” under police escort, though it is a stretch to describe two of these that way.

Oh, and I almost forgot. It also was, with questionable legality, of necessity driven on one other occasion, to a tech inspection in downtown Sonoma. In fact, two of these street events involved that town. 

I'm not sure I can acurately recall the precise order of these events, though that really is irrelevant. What matters is that they occurred, and that they provided yet more ounique experiences then few people have ever enjoyed.

So...I'm going to claim that the first time was the least pleasing. 

Sometime in what I think was the mid 1980s, the town of Concord tried to recreate, with an event I think they called something like “Wings and Wheels,” sports car races which took place in the 1950s at the Concord airport, with the addition of a fly in of planes. Some of those might have been antiques but I don't remember that.

The races were pleasant enough. In those simpler vintage racing days, a number of us helped put out hay bales at key turns on the course, which comprised parts of runways and taxiways. Now that I think of it, I believe the event was run twice...once by CSRG, and the second time by Steve Earle's General Racing and HMSA.

The unpleasant part, though I don't recall in which chapter of the event, was a “parade” to display cars in downtown Concord. Was this on a central square? Does Concord have one? Don't recall. What I DO recall was that the escort supplied by the Concord Poolice was woefully inadequate. I might be wrong but I only recall a single motorcycle officer.

Worse yet was that we were told we had to obey all traffic signals. This is inappropriate and dangerous for a group of mostly non-street legal race cars subject to overheating if standing still, and with their low height and race brake materials, hard to stop and control and not exactly visible or expected by normal street traffic.

It was nerve wracking as I tried to keep the Siata from overheating, as well as evidencing, IMO, a lack of effective communication and sensitivity between the race organizers and the Concord Police.

The next such event I remember was a lot more pleasant. At one of his Sonoma Classic race events Steve Earle selected the Siata to join a special group of cars to be displayed “On Courthouse Square” in downtown Sonoma. The cars were to be displayed on the road which went from the nearby public road up to the courthouse and then back to that public road in a “U” shape. Along with the cars there were tents with food samplers supplied by local and quite exceptional restaurants, as part of a charity money raising event.

Unfortunately the first of these races was almost the last, due to the unfortunat decision to hold tech inspection of the cars on that central square. I guess the thought was to allow the locals to see the cars “up close” in an informal setting. What was forgotten was the congestion a few dozen truck and trailer rigs would cause, as well as what that might imply for racers trying to get their cars out of those trailer and to/from the inspection site on the square. The local merchants running businesses around the square were less than pleased. Nor were the Police happy about, of necessity, non-street-legal racers being driven on those public streets, a necessity due to the distance from where we found parking space to the inspection site.

We were escorted to the later late afternoon events on the square by the California Highway Patrol. We had a lead squad car, at least two motorcycles, and a trailing car. One cyclist would race ahead of the group to stop traffic at cross streets, including those controlled by red lights. We started out with both of them leading us, but of course one then stopped traffic at the first intersection and then tagged on to the end of the group, where the second officer did the duty at the next intersection while his partner then raced past the group to again take the lead.

With this tag teaming we proceeded past the vineyards, wineries, and front yards lined with people in lawn chairs and on the fenders of cars and trucks to watch us pass. I figured it was as close as I was going to get to the European road event experience. I felt like I was in France or Italy somewhere.

As the event progressed it eventually got to the point of sunset. Many of us were becoming increasingly uncomfortable as our racers lacked lights (mine were only recently wired to become functional) and having to find our way back to the track in partial or full darkness. The CHP said they were releasing us to proceed back to the track on our own...but were quickly overruled by the senior officer as being potentially unsafe and assigning us an escort back to the track.

I tacked in behind someone with a 1930s Alfa, saying he at least had working headlights. When he said they barely were capable of lighting his front bumper I said I could then simply follow the smell of the alcohol based fuel his car burned.

Both the trip to and the one back to the track wer run at brisk speeds. With the modeest power of the Siata it was, effectively, at full race velocity. Invigorating!

The final (so far) two road experiences were both in New York, at Watkins Glen. This was during the race trek Don and I made back East and documented elsewhere in this Blog (The Long and Winding Road series of entries).

While the track event was poorly run and not a fun experience, this was almost made up for by the street display event between the two days of the races.

I believe only cars which ran one of the first Watkins Glen races, on the street course in town and around Seneca Lake, were selected to be displayed on the main street in downtown. We proceeded under escort from the track into town.

I may have forgotten the exact sequence, but best I recall, before being on static display in town, we did one or more “escorted” laps on the original 1952 street course....a return to that course for my car for the first time in half a century. That run, at much higher speed than I was expecting, is detailed fully in the blog entry called “An Empire State of Mind” so I won't repeat myself here.

Suffice it to say it too was an experience few people have had at the speeds I hdid it as well as the run into town and back to the track, and, once again, with families in their yards waving and cheering as we went by.

I have been lucky to experience much that most car nuts can only dream of. It has exceeded my wildest sports car dreams all those years ago peering intently at the photos and stories in car magazines.