The last Coffee & Classics event of the year was on October 31, coinciding with what was supposed to be a sunny, warm Halloween. I woke up around the 8 AM starting time and noticed the gray skies and persistent, chill drizzle. Deciding that few of the regulars would want to show their prize cars in the rain, I got on my old (and maybe classic) Bianchi cycle to pedal downtown. Halfway there, Paul Schultz passed my bike on Broadway in his Jaguar XK 120 roadster, top down and rooster tails of water shooting off the tires...
The XK120* roadster displays its swashbuckling lines to the hardy crowd that showed up early. Roadsters were the first XK120s, appearing in autumn 1948 at the London's Earls Court show, causing a sensation, and joining Britain's postwar export drive the next year. Soon enough, movie stars were driving them, and Detroit noticed, with Chevrolet launching its Corvette two-seater in 1953, the year of this example, and Ford releasing its Thunderbird for the 1955 model year, the year after Jaguar made the switch from their 120 to the XK140.
The leather-lined cockpit allows little space between the wood steering wheel and the driver. In this case, owner Paul has switched the original wheel for a smaller diameter one with a flat hub, eliminating the bullet shaped hub that he described as "as lance aimed at your chest." Roadsters have this padded leather sill around the cockpit and side curtains rather than windows. Fixed-roof and drophead coupes have roll-down windows, along with wood dashes.
Ron Farina made up the other half of the Jaguar contingent with his 1962 Mark II Sedan, here parked next to a Porsche Boxster which, like the XK120, had its top down.
The surprisingly big turnout also featured plenty of older, air-cooled Porsches, including the red 356 coupe below, and the fleet of 911s flanking the chartreuse 914 and the black Ferrari 328GTS we featured in our photos of the July 25 event, posted July 27...
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This metallic brown example was the previous model, the 308 GTS. The 3 liter, 4 cam V8 engine powered the Dino 308 GT4, the 2+2 Bertone-bodied coupe introduced for the 1974 model year; it was joined by the Pininfarina-styled 308 GTB coupe the next year, and the GTS spider for 1977. Early GTBs featured fiberglass bodies with alloy hoods; PF switched to steel for model year 1977. The 308 series had a long run, staying in production through 1985, and was the most popular series Ferrari had yet made, with over 12,000 sold.
The damp but diverse field included 2 Citroens, Alfa Romeos including the green Giulia 1600 Super Berlina from the Sixties and the red, turbocharged 4C from the recent past.
Those Citroens included the two cars with hoods open below (no, there was no mechanical trouble), the green DS21 on the right below, and the gray Deux Chevaux on the left...
One repeat visitor we covered in our October 17 post on the September Coffee & Classics was this Citroen DS21 belonging to Kevin Roberts. We missed showing two features, though. One feature is the patented hydropneumantic suspension pioneered by Citroen. The photo below (taken at Boulder's NCAR* campus) shows the adjustable-height, self-leveling suspension at its maximun height...
While this photo shows the directional headlights, with the inner light following the front wheels, and heated glass covers conforming to the fender contours. This feature was left off US-bound models because of lighting regulations, but this '72 model has the Euro lights above the US-spec. side markers and bright metal trim.
The CItroen 2 CV (Deux Chevaux, named for its 2 taxable horses), produced from 1948 to 1990, was Pierre Boulanger's idea of a minimal-cost car for everyman, and put French farmers on wheels…the tubular-frame seats could be removed to transport farm animals, and the compliant suspension with its horizontal springs connecting front wheels (the driving ones; it's a Citroen) with the rears, allowed farmers to drive across fields with a basket of eggs without breaking any. This example was built after the 1960 discontinuation of the original 375 cc flat-twin air-cooled engine; it features a 600 cc twin cylinder making 29 hp.
The rear view of the 2 CV shows its folding canvas top, sensibly deployed in the closed postion on this rainy Sunday.
No, that's not a Porsche Type 904 below. Only around 112 were built in 1964 and '65, and that, along with their success on the racetrack, makes them more expensive today than some real estate, even here in pricey Boulder...
It's a Beck 904 replica built in 2017, here flanked by two Porsche 993 coupes which represent the last of the air-cooled Porsches. Together the 904 and those late 911s represent the cleanest and most coherent examples of Porsche body design (Note to irate readers; please use Comment line to disagree).
The Beck 904 has two features in common with Porsche's original; these are a fiberglass body and an air-cooled flat six. Wait, you say, wasn't the 904 a four? Well, most of them featured Dr. Fuhrmann's well-proven but complex 4-cam in 2-liter form, but Porsche built 7 with the then-new, SOHC Type 901 engine from the 911, which was also new at the time. This Beck 904 has a 3.2 liter engine, so it's a real hot rod. The other feature was the fiberglass body; the original 904 with its fiberglass body bonded to the chassis was the first fiberglass-bodied Porsche offered for sale.
Alfa's Giulia Super Berlina (sedan) was a favorite of police and also of a few people who wanted to escape the police, along with rally drivers. Introduced in 1962 and restyled 6 years later for the 1750 Berlina, the upright design hid the potential of the well-proven, aluminum twin-cam Alfa engine, and made the car into a kind of sleeper.
Speaking of sleepers, the 1995 AMG Mercedes C36 qualifies as one, and also as a competitor to the BMW M3.
The C36 features a 3.6 liter twin-cam inline six with four valves per cylinder, and makes about 280 horsepower. The W202 body style was made from 1993-2000.
At least one or two BMC Minis show up every month; our October Mini was a 1988 model imported to the US from Japan, with a 997 cc version of the transverse four. Minis appeared in 1959, and were engineer Alec Issigonis' idea of a minimal urban car, and an interesting contrast to the larger Citroen 2CV, also a front-drive minimalist concept "Original" Minis would be made until October 2000, when the last car, a red Mini Cooper, rolled off the line after an over 40-year run, almost matching the 42-year run of the 2CV.
All the drivers who surprised us by driving to the event with their tops down would wind up leaving the event that way as well. They included the driver of this Triumph TR-6. As more than one spectator pointed out after an unusually dry October in Boulder, this hoped-for moisture provided weather that probably felt like home to the English cars. I'll need to remember that if it ever rains here again. Maybe I'll even have new weatherstripping on my English car by the time Coffee & Classics Boulder resumes next May...
*Footnote: *Footnote: Jaguar's XK120 was featured in "Colorado English Motoring Conclave Part 2: Production Cars and Fast Plastic", posted November 6, 2021, and in "Game Changer: Jaguar XK120", posted July 16, 2017. We featured a photo essay on architect I.M. Pei's National Center for Atmospheric Research on May 26, 2019.
Photo Credits: All photos are by the author.
Coffee & Classics future events: Check online @fuelfedboulder for next season's schedule.
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