Blast from the Pastat City Place
Blast from the Past
at City Place
As expected, the City Place complex in downtown West Palm Beach provided a fantastic location for this event which attracted over 60 cars of various marques like Rolls Royce, Ferraris, Corvettes, etc... in addition to a selection of Jaguars. After being contacted by City Place, our VP Russel Glace succesfully coordinated with other clubs and private collectors to bring an outstanding selection of cars to downtown West Palm Beach's City Place.
CityPlace is the largest single real estate project in Palm Beach County consisting of 78 stores, 10 restaurants, a 20-screen movie theater, 570 apartments and townhomes, a $6 million 74-year-old restored church, $3 million fountains and ultimately, three office buildings, a hotel and a county convention center on 77 acres in downtown West Palm Beach. The colorful architecture of its main street with upscale stores and boutiques combined with upstairs condomium, was a great backdrop to display the cars and the arcades on one side of the street provided plenty of shade to relax.
Kendall Rumsey and his City Place staff did an excellent job preparing for the show and making sure all entrants were welcomed.
Quality was what this show was all about with some of the best cars in South Florida and sometimes very unique like one of a kind Bentley, Rolls Royce, a 1947 Scitalia Grand Prix racer or a 1934 MG Le Mans race car. A few cars were previous Amelia Island participants like Marjorie Green and her 1927 Austin Seven or Russel Glace and his 74 E-type Roadster.
On the other end of the spectrum, high performance exotics were well represented with Palm Beach Motors bringing a pair of spectacular V12 powered Aston Martin DB7s, an XK8 Convertible and a Lotus Esprit. No less spectacular, and extreme, was the white Lamborghini brought in by Rick Hartwell, but no worry there... our club president is not switching from cats to bulls, he's just keeping the car for the seller...
Most
cars were in place, cleaned and detailed before noon when stores opened and a live band
started playing on the stage; clowns and face painter provided entertainment for the kid
while the big kids, us, were entairtained by our toys...
Judging was by popular vote and results were announced at the end of the afternoon. First went to a 1958 Corvette, second place was an Austin Mini; both received gift certificates from City Place stores. Third place were SFJC members Kaye Kelsin and Jack Williams for their magnificient blue 1947 Rolls Royce convertible (picture to the right). Hard to believe a mere Vette and a Mini would come ahead of this Rolls but Kaye was very happy about her prize, a box of Godiva Chocolates...
This was first show held at City Place and based on its success is likely to be the only the first...
Scroll down for another article on this, by Chris and Pat Canning, and for the entry list, a big thank you to all which made this a fun day !
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The week before the show,
Russell sent us a note suggesting that we enter and, thanks to him giving us one of his
spots, we registered and were accepted just a couple days before the show. City Place
really is a fantastic location for this kind of exhibition. It is right in the heart of
West Palm, just a short walk to the Kravis Center. There were more than sixty cars entered
with everything from the "mighty" Mini to super fast Lamborghini’s on
display.
Excellent restaurants and superb shopping are two things this event had over the typical classic car show. City Place is quite large and has close to 80 shops and stores, ten restaurants, a big movie theater and also has apartments and town houses. We enjoyed the sound of the church bells from a wonderfully restored church while we were doing our pre-show detailing and set up. The architecture, colors and layout reminded us of streets in Florence and Valencia. Bravo City Place!!!
The cars were magnificent. Check out our City Place photo gallery (above), it captures the truly awesome beauty of these rare (and expensive) cars. City Place featured a unique and interesting interplay of automobiles from the USA and Europe, where one could see a "1950 something" Jag and right around the corner compare it to a "1950 something" ‘Vette. We must admit some envy to the simplicity of the engine compartments of the early Corvettes. We are always amazed how much Jaguar people know about Corvettes, especially the early years. We had a number of Corvette owners stop by our car and talk about Jaguars and how they always wanted to own one. In the words of The Duke………No Guts—No Glory
Oscar the Movie Star, owned by Russell Glace, was situated next to us and got lots of attention. We kept telling people it had once been owned by Jimmy Buffett and he lost it in a poker game with Russell. It was interesting to compare the lines of his 1954 XK-120 with our E-Type and chat with folks about the remarkable evolution in design from the early 1950’s thru the early 1970’s. We liked the idea of mixing the Jags, instead of putting all the E-Types in one place, so one could make these comparisons.
We enjoyed seeing all
the exotics like the Aston Martin DB7s, the Lotus Esprit and Rick’s Lamborghini
"loaner". We kept begging for a ride in the white Italian beast but he was
having problems finding a gasoline truck to follow him back to Parkland. The Band was
excellent but a bit loud and we wonder if Don Heim will ever recover his hearing. Don and
his absolutely gorgeous 1962 E-Type Open Two Seater were about 15 feet from the Band. We
got so excited listening to the band perform their oldies but goodies from "Blood
Sweat and Tears" and "Chicago" (originally Chicago Transit Authority for
you trivia buffs), we zoomed home to get out our original 33’s from both groups.
There were literally hundreds of Palm Beaches hot hotties and cool whatevers strolling along Rosemary and Fern streets, many in their Sunday finery. It was fun to talk to some of the older folks who told stories about their Stutz Bearcats, Jag SS-100’s and Dusenbergs. We heard a number of tales by Jag owners from yesteryear and their favorite stories about Lucas—the Prince of Darkness. We wondered if this might be something Steven Spielberg might want to work on in the future. It was a grand afternoon and best of all after an early morning shower (which caused a mad scramble by early arrivers to re-detail their cars), the weather was sunny and no more rain. Rain=Rust and Rust to a Jag is like Kryptonite to Superman.
The show was excellent and there are rumbles that City Place will put on another similar event during Season. Sign us up!!!
Patsy and Chris Canning
1927 Austin Seven Marjorie Greene 1913 Woods Mobilette Tommy Hanson 1947 Rolls Royce 1973 Rolls Royce Bentley 1980 Rolls Royce Stephen Skoronski 1953 Daimler Alu Edsel Pfabe (Ft. Pierce) 1936 Bentley Holmes Richards 1962 190 SL Mercedes Ragtops 1954 Jag. XK120 Howard Bauer 1972 Jaguar XKE Pascal Gademer 1954 XK120 Jag Russell Glace 1973 Jaguar Chris Canning 1969 Jaguar Ragtops 1962 Jag Don Heim 1967 Jaguar XKE Tad Todd 1970 Jag Klaron Grigsby 1973 Jaguar Mark Szafaryn 1974 Jaguar Russell Glace 1947 Cristalia George Shelley 1971 Ferrari Steve Kotler 1988 Testerosa Dr. Mithcell Josephs 1952 Austin Francis Warwick 1958 Austin Louis Fenkell 1959 Austin Jim Tosto 1967 Austin Jim Tosto 1951 Morgan Perry Nuhn 1934 MG George Shelley (Tom Straubinger) 1961 Triumph Tom Willhite 1963 MG Jay Smith 1971 MG Bart Savino 1973 MG Bart Savino 1974 MGB Pete Perez 1974 Triumph George Radelat 1975 Triumph Bill Lyons 1980 TR8 Donny Lang 1958 Corvette Marj Aaron 1965 Corvette Richard Barrett 1967 Stingray Richard Hill 1967 Corvette Paul Sharone 1974 Corvette Rick Crisafulle 1976 Stingray Daniel Robinson 1979 Corvette Tony Bono 1986 Corvette Jim Bezick 1994 Corvette Jeff Stefen 1978 Lotus Dennis Fresch 1989 Lotus Esprit Peter Muir 1987 Porsche 911 Carerra Keith Kennedy 1998 Lamborghiny Carlos Arboleya (Murray Bachus) 1999 Lamborghiny Allan Weitzbaum 1994 Lotus Dean Henning 1991 Lotus William Greulich 1991 Ferrari Marion Ott 1999 Ferrari Steve Marcus 1998 Ferrari Hartmut Grasmann 1958 Alfa Romeo Marc Mosko 1969 Alfa Romeo Richard Stephens (Marc Mosco) 1965 Giulia Spider Veloce Marc Mosko 1974 Alfa Romeo Marc Mosko 1969 Ferrari GT 2+2 Marc Mosko
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