On February 8th several club members attended the Hagerty Cars and Caffeine Show which is held at the Auto Club Speedway in conjunction with the SVRA Historic Car races. It started out as a cold and foggy drive from the South Bay but cleared up when I reached the Fullerton area and turned out to be a beautiful day in the low 70’s. Club members met at a local Jack in the Box and drove in as a group.
They even had a special area set up for our club with banners on the fence thanks to Toni Strollo of the SVRA. There was a good mixture of cars at the show with everything from Ferrari’s and original Cobra’s to my Sprite. It appeared that we had the largest turnout as a club.
In addition to the car show, which past member Dominic Valentino won the People’s Choice Award with his Snap On Truck, we were allowed to do some parade laps on the course during the lunch break.
They were fast paced, 60 mph with no passing, but some of us were able to get 7 laps in and getting up to over 80 mph on the banked turns during a couple of laps. It was an enjoyable day and a welcome opportunity to “stretch the legs” of your car. All member's cars survived the parade laps except for new member Chris Yushi, whose throttle linkage broke and he had to be towed in. At least it did not get stuck wide open as mine did coming back from Conclave. We all left around 1:30 after sitting in the stands watching the small bore and Bill Wilkman's qualifying runs in his FV racecar. Chuck Lakowski and I had a smooth drive with mild traffic back to the South Bay.
Attending for the club were Don Fisher, Win and Sue Phelps, Ron and Sandy Davies, Jon Halpern and Kertu Palo, Jimmy and Dora Winn, and new member Chris Yushi and family in their Big Healey’s; Chuck and Dawn Lakowski in their Jensen Healey, Jim Cregg in his Mini, Steve Kirby in his Jaguar, Bill Wilkman in his racecar, and me with my Sprite. Also joining us was potential new member Howard W from San Diego in his Healey Nasty Boy.