The Boulder Coffee & Classics began its season on what was supposed to be a rainy day in a very dry April. Fittingly enough, there were plenty of English cars, including this rare Aston Martin DB4 GT once raced by Stirling Moss. Compared with the DB4* introduced in fall of 1958, the GT introduced a year later featured a shorter wheelbase (93" vs. 98"), and a twin-plug version of the DB4's then-new 3.7 liter inline six with its twin overhead cams, aluminum block and heads. Brakes were discs all around, with independent front suspension and a live-axle rear, much like the contemporary Maserati 3500 GT. With over 300 hp, it would enter competition with Ferrari's 250 GT SWB, and at the time was claimed to be the fastest road-legal production car. "Production" meant 100 chassis...
The interior reflected the car's road racing mission; most GTs lacked the rear seats of the DB4, and these cloth seats were lighter than those on the 4-seater car, which Aston insisted on calling a saloon. Thirty of the DB4 GTs were built with left-hand drive.
The side view shows the clean lines, emergency electrical shut-off switch in the rear quarter window, and the air extractor vents in the front fenders that became an Aston trademark. 
Along with the 12 spark plugs and twin distributors, the Tadek Marek-designed engine, also used on the DBR2, featured triple Weber carbs. First examples were released in late 1959, just in time to celebrate Aston's 1st & 2nd place finish in the 1959 Le Mans with the 3 liter DBR1/300; the winning car was driven by Roy Salvadori and an obscure Texan named Carroll Shelby. Owner Terry Hefty confirms the 100 chassis figure for the GT, but says 84 are in this Superleggera style and 16 with Zagato bodies. Most sources say this car is rarer than he thinks, with 75 in this style, 19 Zagatos, 1 car supplied to Bertone (the Jet*), and a handful of cars built decades later by Aston and Zagato as Sanction II cars. In any case, it's a rare visitor from a vanished era when racers could be driven to the track, run a race and then drive home...
Along with the 12 spark plugs and twin distributors, the Tadek Marek-designed engine, also used on the DBR2, featured triple Weber carbs. First examples were released in late 1959, just in time to celebrate Aston's 1st & 2nd place finish in the 1959 Le Mans with the 3 liter DBR1/300; the winning car was driven by Roy Salvadori and an obscure Texan named Carroll Shelby. Owner Terry Hefty confirms the 100 chassis figure for the GT, but says 84 are in this Superleggera style and 16 with Zagato bodies. Most sources say this car is rarer than he thinks, with 75 in this style, 19 Zagatos, 1 car supplied to Bertone (the Jet*), and a handful of cars built decades later by Aston and Zagato as Sanction II cars. In any case, it's a rare visitor from a vanished era when racers could be driven to the track, run a race and then drive home...
The 1949 MG TC below is also a visitor from a vanished era; right after World War II GIs returned Stateside with curiosity about the 2-seater roadsters they'd seen in Britain. The TC offered fun on a budget to a fun-starved population and set off a boom in amateur road racing. 
This was despite the fact that all were right-hand drive. Here, the owner /driver has substituted a smaller-diameter steering wheel for the original.
This red TC, also a 1949, was equipped with the now-rare Shorrock supercharger on the 1,250cc OHV inline four. 
Appropriate to an event welcoming cars from England, there were plenty of canine visitors on Sunday morning. The feline visitor in the background is a 1967 Jaguar E-type fixed head coupe, flanked by a red 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV (more on that later) and a black 1986 Ferrari 328GTS we described last summer. There was a bevy of Porsches, mostly 911s, including the nice silver 993 example in the 2nd shot background below.
John Kelly drove his 1960 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II to the event after organizer Mike Burroughs encountered him while walking his dog. Silver Clouds were made from 1955 to 1966, and the L-type V8 in this example replaced the earlier inline 6 in 1959. The V8 displaces 380 cubic inches and is an overhead valve design, unlike the previous six, which was an F-head (inlet over exhaust) design similar to Rovers of the period. Smoothness and silence were priorities, and power, in the Rolls tradition, was quoted by the factory as "adequate."
The V8 was a mainstay of Rolls and Bentley products for six decades (kind of like a small-block Chevy, only expensive) and was last used in the Bentley Mulsanne in 2020. Each engine took about 30 hours to assemble by hand. The center-hinged hood on the Cloud was designed for accessing the inline 6, but made servicing the V8 a bit of a nightmare. John said that some basic maintenance tasks required removing a front wheel for engine access. He also commented that the car feels big until he parks it next to one of today's gargantuan SUVs, most of which weigh more than the 4,550 pound Cloud II. Still, it's a big car by European standards, on a 123" wheelbase (the limo SCII was 127") and 212" long. For comparison, those are the same dimensions as Elwood Engel's classic "downsized" 1961 Lincoln Continental, which weighed 400 pounds more...
That size allowed driver and passengers to stretch out in comfort, surrounded by polished wood and leather. The wood picnic tables in the rear make it a comfy place to have tea; we somehow missed a picture of those, so here's the pilot's wheelhouse...
Below, a pristine Ferrari 246 Dino from 1968 takes a nap next to a first series MGB with factory hardtop from the '63-67 period. We talked to the Ferrari owner last summer and featured lots of photos of this mid-engined pioneer. The MG owners were nowhere to be found, perhaps they wandered off in search of coffee...or tea.
Alfa Romeos also appeared in impressive numbers for the espresso-drinking crowd. The Milano below is a seldom-seen example of the V6-powered sedan with rear transaxle in 3.0 liter form. The Milano debuted in 1985 in Europe as the Alfa 75 (to celebrate 75 years of Alfas) and was available there with a variety of engines including Alfa's evergreen twin-cam four, but was initially brought to America with the 2.5 liter Busso-desiged V6 in 1986, adding the 3.0 liter Milano Verde the next year. Milanos were essentially sedan versions of the sweet-handling GTV-6 on a slightly longer wheelbase, and they were the last Alfas released before the Fiat takeover, and the last rear-drive sedans until the 2015 Giulia. The Alfa 75 remained in production for Europe through 1991, overlapping production of the front-drive Alfa 164.
There were a couple of nice Alfa GTVs as well, including this 2000 GTV from 1974. The Bertone body, one of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro's greatest hits, has aged well, and this car, restored in the late 90s, features lightly flared wheel arches to clear wider wheels. Bumper regulations meant that 1974 was the last year for the GTV in the US market, and in that year Alfa was able to dodge the 5 mph bumper requirement by classifying the car as a two passenger. Instead of removing the rear seats, they simply applied a sticker notifying buyers that the rear seats were not to be occupied while the car was in motion. The rear seats did have seat belts…but they were there to get the car into the country, not to keep occupants in the car.
The silver GTV below shows off the standard wheel arches and standard wheels, and conveniently provides a size comparison to the adjacent Rolls...
Dave Asbury drove son Jonathan's black Alfa 164 from Fort Collins. This front-driver with transverse 3.0 liter V6 shared a basic chassis design with the Fiat Chroma, Lancia Thema, and Saab 9000, but featured completely distinct body styling by Pininfarina. It was the car Italian police used to catch bank robbers…who drove the same car. The 164 was offered in the US through Alfa's temporary departure from our market in1995.
A 1970 Lancia Flavia 2000 PF coupe matches the size, but not the mechanical design, of the adjacent Alfa GTV. They're both 2 liter fours, but the Lancia is a boxer four driving the front wheels.
Having started this survey with an exclusive road racer designed for drinkers of tea (and it must be faced, warm beer), we finish with Citroen's beloved 2CV, designed by Andre Lefebvre and introduced to war-depleted Europe as "an umbrella on 4 wheels." The flat-twin, air-cooled front-drive Deux Chevaux, named for its taxable horsepower, put a whole nation on narrow, softly sprung wheels.
A Belgian bakery in Boulder once used a 2CV to deliver baguettes to its customers...something wholesome to go with that all that black coffee and red wine. And on a day when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected President of France, the humble twin-cylinder front-driver seems a fitting conclusion to our story.
*Footnote: Previous posts in this blog reference some of the subject cars as follows. Dates are in parentheses:
Aston Martin DB4 GT: "Rescued from Obscurity: Aston Martin in the 50s & 60s (5-11-20).
Aston Martin Jet Bertone: "Cousins Where They Meet the Eye: Aston Martin Jet and Ferrari 250GT Speciale" (12-31-18).
Jaguar E-Type: "Racing Improves the Breed" (8-13-17), and "Boomer's Story: Buy an Old Jaguar; Save a Marriage" (5-31-19).
Lancia Flavia 2000 Pininfarina coupe: "The Car Search Part 2: The Fun Factor (4-24-16).
No comments:
Post a Comment