Every year, machinery junkies arrive in Pebble Beach—a private enclave that has banned motorcycles unless you’re staying at one of its pricey resorts—for a much ballyhooed gathering of well-heeled automobile aficionados. (Naturally, Sunday’s Concours d’Élégance features a motorcycle category. Message: You can do whatever you want, as long as you’ve got money.) The week, however, begins in a more ramshackle manner over in Pacific Grove at the Little Car Show, a more proletarian affair filled with magical, small-displacement weirdness.
-For example, we ran across a 1956 Citroën 2CV Camionette, a corrugated van thingy that looks like a Deux Chevaux backed into a small shed. Its engine? A tiny, 425-cc two-cylinder rock-polisher. On the other side of the street, a recent Indian-built Bajaj Ape—a Piaggio-devised three-wheeled coffee cart—makes do with a mere 175 cc.
-At the more sporting end of the spectrum, an OG Lotus Seven showed up. The pre-Caterham machine features a Cosworth plant, and in a fit of Chapmanian excess, weighs a mere half-ton. The 1965 model is right-hand drive, to boot. Though in the cramped confines of a Seven, that may well count as center-steer.
-Our favorite car in the show, however, was the sort of mind-blower one invariably finds during this week in Monterey. It’s a Fiat 850 Spider. Sort of. In the mid-’60s, 80 cars were converted by Giovanni Michelotti, the man responsible for such enduring designs as the BMW 2002, the Triumph TR4, the DAF 44, and the Triumph Dolemite—our own Rusty Blackwell owns an example of the latter. Michelotti’s Shellette was a riff on the Fiat Jolly, a seaside machine with a surrey top and wicker seats. Even better is that its owner, Barbara Major, hauled it down to Monterey from the Sierra foothills on the back of a Ford COE with her husband.
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And with the bite-sized hors d’oeuvres polished off, we’re off to dig into the endless parade of meals offered over the next few days. May they all feature at least one dish as satisfying as the Majors’ Shellette.
-from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1TvSdZ6
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