Hardtuned.com goes to the Coronado Festival of Speed

Pictures and words By Bill

The Coronado Festival of Speed, brought to you by the Holiday Bowl, Chrysler, HMSA and the US Navy, took place on Oct. 11 and 12 at the naval base on Coronado Island, near downtown San Diego. As hardtuned's southern California correspondent and lifestyle editor, I was compelled to attend on Saturday and check out some vintage racing, as well as report back with crucial details on the local car enthusiast scene…

First off, I have to say that it was a very easy event to deal with. In true Southern California fashion, you just drove right up and parked in a massive lot set up next to some giant aircraft hangars. SoCal isn't the leisure capital of the world for nothing, you know. Parking services provided by the US Navy, and let me tell you, those cars were arranged in a STRAIGHT line. Walk 200 yards to the gate, where there is some serious military security, and you're in. This of course after you pass the display of current military aircraft, including an F-18 and a Blackhawk helicopter. You know, the same ones you've seen on TV blowing the shit out of stuff.

I figure that if I want to see an F-18, I can watch the nightly news, so I kept walking and headed straight to the cars.

Chrysler of course had a massive presence, and were playing up the new Crossfire coupe (very nice) and the next 300 (pre-pro show car). The 300 will look really good assuming that they put reasonable size wheels and tires on it, rather than do the usual Detroit thing and give it massive wheel well clearance for snow chains…

Also in attendance were the usual retail suspects, including the Meguiar's vans (now a semi, but who's counting), a wide range of unlicensed sportswear and apparel vendors, and Cobra and GT40 kits galore, including Shelby, Superformance and the CAV GT, a GT40 knock-off. Shelby's look the best and the rollers are 40 grand, but who the hell would want to buy something from Shelby, who has become a real jerk in the last few years? Even the tone of Shelby's signage and collateral materials came across as pissy, and one wonders if the people from Superformance don't come over and try to pick fights with the Shelby guys just for fun….whatever.

Best news of the weekend - an indoor go kart track is now open in San Diego. Glory be!

As far as the racing goes, a $21 ticket went a long way - a full afternoon of 20 minute races, that were really close and much more enjoyable to watch than any NASCAR, F1, or CART race of recent memory. The track layout was essentially a series of 90-degree turns, and the spectators could see almost the entire track from the grandstands.

The reasonable ticket price, (especially compared to the 55 bucks a head rip-off at Monterey) plus the some decent local promotion of the race meant that there were actually some kids and families there, who most likely had not been to the races before. They were actually excited, and the racing was close enough to get people cheering. The absolute sentimental favorite of the day was Don Racine in the Aardvark, who was on the pole for his race against Corvettes and Allards, and would get dropped on the straightaway and KILL the bigger cars under braking. The driving was HMSA sanitized, but generally good, and most of them were working their cars pretty hard. Also, Jack Chisum and Dick Sisich were the announcers, and it was like being at a Regional at Sears!

Another interesting note is that the base itself has many houses on the nearby hills across the bay, much closer than the houses are to, say, Laguna. And as far as I know, there was no hue and cry about noise pollution or any of the politically correct concerns about a car race that you might experience in Northern California. In this town, the Navy does pretty much what the fuck it wants…end of story.

The cars were all the same ones you've seen before, Peter Giddings in his Alfa, the platoon of Trans-Am cars, including a bazillion GT350 Mustangs, etc. 34 cars started the Trans-Am race…and the bright green Dodge Challenger nearly took out the timing trailer to the amusement of many. Yikes!

But as we know, the best part of being at an event is observing the fine pageant that occurs when people come together. Living history is one thing, but the real action is seeing personal statements of automotive and sartorial style come together before you. These cultural phenomena need to be reported on, and only the unflinching gaze of the hardtuned team can bring it to you. As your correspondent, I spared no effort has been spared in bringing it all to you, and was at the track at the early hour of noon to take it in. So let's break it down, using the photos below as a jumping-off point.

"Leper Colony" click to enlarge

- Car clubs - many in attendance with their own corrals right behind the main grandstand. PCA, and the usual suspects (Ferrari - more on them in a minute) were in attendance. But how about all of those Opel GT's? And parked right next to the Jensen contingent. I snapped the photo and had just one thought, seeing the Opels at the far end of the corral area - "Leper Colony". But anyway.

- R Gruppe - as a subset of the PCA corral, the R Gruppe guys were in attendance, the two nicest early cars being the silver and aubergine RS clones pictured. The black 75 Euro Carrera in the back of the shot was for sale at 28K, claimed to be a "RS" but I am not sure they were made in '75.

The Brumos-liveried 911 pictured was badass, with Fuchs that had been made into (I think) 17-inch modulars with huge meats on them, and the thing had big brakes on it as well. The only feature I was not fond of was the 993 RS style tall wing - but hey, it ain't my car. Other than that, the Porsches were a snoozer - not even a single 930, Twin Turbo or 4 cam car. Boxsters and 911SCs. On to Ferrari.

- Ferrari - the best thing about Ferrari is that everybody loves a winner. With Schumi about to nail down "champeenship" number six, (this was on Saturday) there was electricity in the Ferrari corral. Well, not really - but in addition to the gold Rolexes and surgically enhanced women (I am not complaining about that, mind you) there were a lot of t-shirts and some footwear in evidence. Honestly, there were not a lot of cars, but the best included a 512 BBi (fuzzy picture included), a sick 365GTC/4 in dark blue over tan, and a very cool 330 (?) GTC in silver over lipstick red. And a very cool 308GTB with gunmetal gray wheels and AVS Sports.

is it possible these shoes went with the wheels?

But I have to say that the best fashion statement was the FILA "Ferrari F1" clown shoes illustrated in the stealth photos above. I saw this guy coming in and KNEW that the mission for the day was to get a photo. Using patented hardtuned.com investigative journalism skills, I snapped the picture you see here. His shoes were complemented by a Ferrari F1 polo shirt with all of the sponsor logos - quite a look for a man over 40.

- BMWCCA - a few cars in attendance, including the bloated 8 Series coupes, which actually look really good dumped with massive wheels. A few E30 M3s were there, all about as nice as my old car, and given the Hezbollah-like fanaticism of the M3 crowd, not at all surprising that they were so clean. About six Z8 roadsters were there, looking like the big Germanic Corvettes that they are. One unfortunate Z8 owner had his car backed into, taking out the nose, a headlight and leading edge of the hood. Ouch. I was unable to take a picture due to the limited capacity of my Fisher-Price reporter's camera… The injuries looked like typical damage from an idiot SUV driver, but I did overhear someone say that it was ANOTHER Z8 that backed into it. Some sad irony if that was the case…

click to enlarge

- The all-time best club AND Urban Style award winner has to be the Cadillac Allante club - consisting of two cars, including the coral pink example shown. This was driven by the couple pictured next to the Mercedes SL (another hardtuned spy shot, taken at great personal risk by yours truly) who were attired in matching Allante polo shirts featuring the Cadillac logo and Pininfarina crest, along with some personalizations in a flowing script. A good look overall, when going for the Palm Beach look. His outfit was topped off with FILA shoes as well. Something about those FILAs.

More interestingly, the background of the Allante photo was amusing to me, because you can examples of the failed collaborations between US and European carmakers over the years - Opel (GM), Jensen (Chrysler) and Cadillac (Pinifarina). You'd think these guys would learn….

So, that's it. Coronado Festival of Speed 2003 is in the books. Stay tuned for your next Southern California dispatch from Hardtuned….