We were frankly astounded that the prospect of a gutted Tokyo Motor Show didn't get any maker, save one, to trot out some of their historical home runs. Even if they didn't want to go in for a nostalgia-fest, a few brands could have at least peppered the show with some of Japan's seminal machinery. After all, if you're not going to give us anything really new and exciting, you could at least let us have some fun with the past.
But no. The only historic machine at an automaker's booth was a vintage Suzuki Alto near the new Alto Concept. Otherwise, nada. The other vintage machinery – a 1917 Mitsubishi A, a Toyota GT HYBD (a Sports 800 gas-turbine hybrid), and a Honda Accord CVCC – were in the "motor lounge" seating area. A big, fat raspberry is all we have to say to that.
H. B. Halicki was a used car salesman who wanted to make a movie. With a little money, one big idea, and a 1971 Mustang Mach 1, he made Gone in 60 Seconds. And in that particular way that movies, especially '70s movies, can be, it wasn't all that good, but it was awesome. Fast forward to Michael Bay's remake in 2000, and the Mach 1 was replaced by a 1967 Shelby GT500. When we got a call offering us the actual car from that movie for the weekend, we felt obliged to say yes... and then drive it like we stole it. The verdict: Eleanor is the hottest piece of car we've spent a weekend with in quite some time.
As much as we enjoy piloting modern machinery, there's something special about vintage vehicles, and that something is the pure, unvarnished connection between man and machine. But it's not always good. Things get dicey when the driving experience is a little too vintage. Despite our supreme adoration of the racing greats of yesteryear, clawing at the wheel, pulverizing the brake pedal, dumping buckets of sweat onto the leather seat and having our sphincter perform kegels isn't always our preferred flavor of fun. Some days, we're just not that hardcore. So the vintage vehicles we've come to love most aren't genuinely vintage at all – they're classic bodies wrapped around modern mechanicals. The Rizk RA is a prime example, and now there's this: the Superformance GT40 MkI, a car so raw that if it were edible, they'd slap "organic" on it and sell it at Whole Foods.
For its 27th iteration, Orange County's most prestigious classic car show returned to the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, and finally dropped the "Newport Beach" from its name. No longer would it be known as the Newport Beach Concours d'Elegance, instead adopting the Concours d'Elegance at the St. Regis moniker. The title may have changed, but the quality of the entrants hasn't. Still benefiting the Mary & Dick Allen Diabetes Center at Hoag Hospital and the CSP Assessment and Treatment Services Center, the field of classic cars at this concours was once again stunning.
This year's featured marque was Mercedes-Benz, and the automaker was represented by some truly spectacular models, aided in no small part by the show's proximity to the Mercedes Classic Car Center, the factory-backed restoration shop for vintage Mercedes vehicles. Besides the beautiful Benzes, the roughly 3,000 attendees got to see about 300 other classic and exotic vehicles spread out around the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort and the adjacent Dana Point Sea Terrace Park.
As it turns out, "old GM" still matters to someone -- and in this case, we mean really old. The Fairfield County Concours d'Elegance in Westport, Connecticut wanted to include Pontiac in this year's showing, so it went looking for the most ancient example it could find. Of the 12 Pontiacs they tracked down from 1926, the brand's inaugural year, the very oldest resided in Minnetonka, Minnesota: a 1926 two-door coach.
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Real Alternative is an awesome little Windows utility that lets you watch RealVideo and listen to RealAudio files without installing RealPlayer. Although RealPlayer has come a long way in recent years, many people still find it cumbersome and awkward to use.
Real Alternative installs the codecs you need to access much of the content available in RealPlayer using a light weight media player called Media Player Classic. There are also plugins for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome that let you interact with RealMedia content from your browser.
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How many versions and permutations of the 911 can Porsche churn out? Apparently one more, as we discovered this morning with the release of the new, limited-edition Sport Classic.
The 911 SC packs an extra 23 horsepower over stock, retro duck-tail spoiler and carbon ceramic brakes in a body with tone-on-tone racing stripes, classically-inspired Sport Classic wheels, and a special woven leather interior. But with only 250 to be made and a price tag approaching a quarter-mil, the video after the jump may be the closest any of us get to this exclusive sportscar.
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Porsche has been building limited-edition 911s almost as long as it has been building the rear-engined wundercar, and the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show will see the launch of yet another. The new 911 Sport Classic you see before you has been tweaked by Stuttgart's Porsche Exclusive in-house customizing department, and suddenly our upcoming trip to Germany looks a lot brighter.
Fortunately for enthusiasts, when Porsche says special, they mean it – this far more than just a tape and body kit job. Changes to the Sport Classic Grey model start at the nose with a revised fascia and take off from there. Up top, the roof panel receives a double-bubble treatment: a pair of domes above the driver and passenger with a channel down the middle. At the rear, the ducktail spoiler from the legendary the Carrera RS 2.7 makes its first appearance on a modern 911 and is flanked by even wider rear fenders to enclose the SC's extended track.
Porsche has seen fit to include some mechanical goodness as well. Under that charismatic ducktail, a new intake manifold with flaps that control the runner lengths adds 23 horsepower to the normally aspirated flat-six, bringing the headcount to 403. Carbon ceramic brakes are enclosed in special Fuchs-style 19-inch wheels designed that evoke the last 911SC of the late Seventies and early Eighties, and the whole package lurks closer to the ground thanks to the inclusion of PASM sport suspension.
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What exactly determines if a car is a "classic?" That's probably an infinitely debatable subject that could spark any number of answers from a given group of enthusiasts. For the purpose of this post, a classic is anything that came before the 1964 GTO kicked off the muscle car era. Sure, it's an arbitrary definition, but it allows us to create yet another interesting gallery of cool cars that drove up and down Woodward Avenue here in Detroit this weekend. So sit back, relax and enjoy the gallery below of classic cars from the 2009 Dream Cruise.
Besides the gradual thawing of most of the country, March means the beginning of the Formula One season as well as Sebring, the Geneva Motor Show, the Amelia Island Concours, and NASCAR ramping up to full speed. Those events alone would be enough to sate even the healthiest automotive appetites, but there's plenty more going on in the motoring world. As always, we tried to list the highlights as well as a few smaller events that we hope will be of interest to you. Feel free to use the comments section to add or modify listings.
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