Gallery Art Center Classic
We have two Voisins and a Delage, along with an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale Bertone Prototipo, but it's not Pebble Beach -- hence the nicely hopped-up 1932 three-window coupe and 1946 Cabover truck with a mid-mounted Keith Black dragster engine. Nor is it the Grand National Roadster Show, judging by the Zagato-designed tube-frame fiberglass Perana Z1 powered by an LS3 engine surrounded by a Pagani Huayra, a McLaren and the original Callaway C16 Corvette convertible.
Just exactly where the hell are we?
The Art Center Car Classic, the annual celebration of all things cool car held every fall at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
You may have heard of the place.
If you look around, the Art Center says in its recruitment literature, most of the cool cars and even many of the more utilitarian ones you see on any given street came from the brains and the pen of an Art Center graduate. And for them, the Car Classic is the equivalent of homecoming. Franz Von Holzhausen was there, as was Freeman Thomas, Henrik Fisker and Chuck Pelley; even Chris Bangle was supposed to be around there somewhere.
That explains the Brubaker Box, the Hot Wheels X-Wing fighter on what looked like a Formula 3000 (or maybe it was an IndyCar) chassis, and the 1936 Scout Scarab.
But it didn’t really explain the helicopter.
“Well, we film a lot of cars for movies,” said Dan Wolfe, president of Wolfe Air Aviation Ltd., which brought the 1995 Eurocopter AS350BA. They landed it the day before the show on the basketball court that is in the center of the sculpture garden where the car show is held. We thought it was cool.
But we also liked the 1967 Citroen DS of Tina Van Curen and Chuck Forward, owners of Autobooks-Aerobooks and the couple responsible for The Best of France and Italy car show coming up Nov. 6 in Woodley Park in Van Nuys, CA. The car is a daily driver that Forward has owned for 32 largely trouble-free years.
“It has its moments,” said Forward. “When you have to nurse it home on the bump stops.”
Hey, we all have those.
We also liked, in no particular order: the Snap-On Tools Metro step van (license plate: SNAPPY), the 1958 Scarab Meister Brauser Roadster, the Brubaker Box, Fiat Multipla, the Petersen Automotive Museum’s Stout Scarab (one of nine built), both of the Voisins and the Eurocopter. Don’t ask us to pick a best of show. OK, the Stout Scarab. Or the Metro van. Or, OK, the Voisin C27 Aerosport. Yes, definitely. Unless it was that Alfa.
