As I expressed in my previous post about my first-ever visit to Charlotte’s AutoFair, Thursday’s and Friday’s visits disappointed me. The Car Corral was a complete letdown, the Flea Market held nothing of interest, the Car Club area was sparsely populated, and not one person working at the show knew the first thing about the on-site auction.
Saturday mostly made up for all of these issues. As it is officially named, the AACA Southeastern Spring National took place as scheduled, with show cars streaming into Charlotte Motor Speedway starting at 7 a.m. But there was this inaccurate statement in the show handout: “AACA Nationals Field: The show field is inside the Speedway in the Xfinity Garage and it’s totally paved.” Am I the only one who interprets this to mean that the entire show will be in the Xfinity Garage? Because that was not the case. The garage was utilized to hold the pre-war and immediate post-war vehicles, of which there were about fifty. But the remainder (another 100-150 cars) were outside, which was fine; I just wish the show organizers had been more honest.
Let’s put my quibbling aside and talk about the vehicles which were there. As expected, most cars were assigned a Class based on model year and/or make and model. There were also Driver Participation Class (DPC) and Original (formerly HPOF, Historical Preservation of Original Features) Class cars. Domestic vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s dominated, and I saw cars that are infrequently spotted in the Northeast. Examples included a Chrysler TC by Maserati, a 1960 Ford Country Squire wagon, not one but two Mustang IIs, a Willys station wagon, several Toronados, and several Eldorados. Import cars were limited to a late 1990s BMW 3-series, a Ferrari 308 GTS, and a Jaguar E-Type coupe.
The charmers were inside the garage. Two 1911 cars, an Oldsmobile and a Thomas Flyer, both had brass polished to an impossible shine. Several 1930s Cadillacs and a 1940 LaSalle looked great. And there were a number of ’40s and early ‘50s Fords, each one nicer than the next.
The day started with beautiful weather, and as it got warmer, the garage provided some respite from the heat. By 3 p.m., I had taken in all that I could, and my visit to the AutoFair was done. Saturday was an early night because I intended to drive home in one day. Departing the hotel at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning, I arrived home eleven hours later. I allowed myself plenty of stops, and traffic wasn’t bad, but I was beat, and was glad to be home.
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Richard, I’ll always drool at a Jaguar XKE but for me the color doesn’t pop on this one… Their XJS in forest green is my absolute fave (that color and that car are a match), but seeing an XKE in fire-engine red which was parked on the block where I lived as a kid was a thing of beauty and something I always recall. That red, that rocket-like shape… to me it felt like you could see the future. Somehow I never had the curiosity (or the guts) to find out who owned it and meet the owner.
For many Italians the color of the XKE they would imagine would be black, as the one driven by the still-popular comic book character Diabolik, a series created by two sisters in the 1960s and still printed and reprinted to this day. When I first heard about Diabolik and the story plots, I was amazed, having grown up at a time when US comics had to get approved by the Comics Code Authority. In the U.S., the good guys would have to win in the end. Here in Italy, Diabolik is a thief — not the Robin Hood kind who robs from the rich to give to the poor. He is a thief plain and simple with Eva Kant as his partner in crime. And the loser is always the police inspector Ginko. I can’t imagine the Comics Code would have approved. But that black XKE is iconic here.
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