Antique & Classic Cars Blog

One of these years I’d love to put together a classic car for racing and take advantage of a killer track like Brainerd so close to home. The members of the Vintage Sports Car Racing Club do that every year when the snow melts.

I crashed their kick-off party at Mark Brandow’s shop, Quality Coaches, in South Minneapolis. As always, Quality has neat cars in various states of disassembly, repair and restoration to gawk at; add some folks to talk racing with and a little chili for the event and it makes for a pretty good Saturday morning. Better than all the ones spent shoveling combined.

Cars on hand ranged from the relatively common (by classic standards) to the unusual and race-modified.

As an MG owner most of my life, seeing an A with removeable hardtop behind Mark’s B GT with Wabasto sunroof across the street from a right-hand-drive B GT, in front of a drop-top later original-style Mini (not, of course, an MG) is a fine sign of summer’s classic-car pleasures ahead.

One of the rare birds onhand in the shop is this Alvis shooting brake, a woody designed for transporting hunting parties.

The hood ornament stresses the hunting theme with a new spin on the fox and the hound.

For this party, Mark had his MGA race car on hand getting prepped for another season on the track. The key with vintage racing is for the car to be outfitted basically as it was when built, with, of course, various safety features to minimize risks from accidents and fire. This car is obviously an MGA, though the engine has been ramped up for more than sleepy track times. Though I cropped it out, there’s a Chevy 350-powered MGB drag car sitting behind it. It would not be allowed to run laps with the VSCR club.

While I was writing this an unexpected surprise showed up outside my window. An eagle! Looks like a juvenile bald eagle, one of few, I reckon, in South Minneapolis. Unfortunately, I had set my camera to low resolution for internet photos and forgot to switch it back. Had I, this shot out the bedroom window would have been a lot clearer. Still cool though. Hope it returns.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Car stories, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.