Dear Listers,
I had a similar thing happen many years ago at the Hillsborough Concours in
California. A group of Morris Minor owners with real nice cars, especially
one particular Woody, started the win all of the time in class "G" (1946 -
1970 pas car, orig cost under $7,000) and the Jag and Mercedes guys were
just livid about the "cheap but flashy" Minor woddy that kept beating them
so they changed it to between $3,500 and $7,000. You could buy an early
E-type 2+2 for about that and they were in that class. The reasoning was
that it cost so much more to restore a luxury car and it wasn't fair to
make them compete with people who spent so much less. They also refused to
add another class for the under $3,500.
John Voelcker and I had found a very lo mile and original paint/interior
"barn find" 1958 Riley One-Point-Five in Napa, CA that was in amazing
condition, John bought it. We got it running and took it to my friend
Charlie's body shop in San Francisco, where we took it halfway apart,
polished the trim, scrubbed the whole thing inside, outside and under, spot
painted the stone-chipped sill panels and around the grille, painted the
wheels and slipped a new set on Michelins, polished and rubbed the whole
thing out and put it back together. Looked almost like new! But it had no
class to compete in Hillsborough.
While we were detailing and painting under the bonnet, I found a little tag
that said "Body by Fishlow." (No, not Fisher!). Upon a bit of research I
discovered that this was put on some cars that were assembled from body
panels that had been stamped by the firm of Fisher & Ludlow. They also did
stampings for other BMC cars like Austin, Wolseley, and the Metropolitan.
Hmmmmmmmm ..... I thought I'd fool them and at least get great on-field
parking for the day so I entered the Riley as a "Coachbuilt European
Classic" with coachwork by Fisher & Ludlow. Entry accepted!
We got there early on Sunday morning, Touched up the wax job and Armoralled
the tyre treasd. The original tools were displayed with their perfect
factory bag in the boot - I even Armoralled the spare!
Then the other cars started to arrive, a Delehay, a Delage, an Alvis with
Swiss coachwork, then one of those swoopy-doopy, Figoni et Falacci
Delehays, with skirts on all four fenders is dropped from a trailer. It
seems that the owner's restoration team had missed it's deadline and had
been up all night slapping the big red roadster together.
In fact, they were far from finished and trying to get the car somewhat
ready for the judging. By the time the judges arrived, the car was all back
together and looked great but had no working lights and wouldn't stay lit.
By the end of the day, awards were awarded and there was a full sweep of
French deco classics, third taken by the lightless Delehay. One of the
younger judges slid over to us a little later and confided that the Riley
had actually scored higher and should have been third, but the decision was
made that since I filed under "false statements" it would be best that
third should go to the Hillsborough physician who might have even placed
higher if his team had the car finished on time. Politics!
We never fielded a car in a concourse again.
Rick Feibusch
Venice, California
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