Yahoo Autos Two Nice Drives, Then Jim Wangers Steps Out from behind a Potted Palm
A couple of weeks ago, we drove a $153,640 Porsche Panamera Turbo from Ann Arbor to Louisville, Kentucky—nearly a thousand miles—for a meeting at Automobile Quarterly in which we discussed a lot of business details on the Bud Lyon biography I had just finished writing. Bud Lyon has to qualify as one of America’s leading Porsche enthusiasts, so the Porsche people loaned me the Panamera Turbo with which to collect him and his wife, Thelma, at the NetJets terminal. The NetJets people were as accommodating as the Porsche people, and I was waved through the gate and right out to the stand where the Lyons’ chartered aircraft would be parked.
They were surprised and pleased to see the borrowed Panamera Turbo waiting at the bottom of the stairs in dark-blue livery with white upholstery, identical to the Turbo Mrs. Lyon had left at home in Florida. Our meetings were long but successful, and Bud’s Book, as it is called, will be coming off the presses before you read this.
I am one of the original subscribers to Automobile Quarterly, and I once entertained a fantasy about actually buying it. It is now in the capable hands of Mr. Gerry Durnell, but I still sometimes imagine myself at the helm. The folks there do beautiful work. Their automotive books are as nice as their quarterly periodical, and it has been a genuine pleasure doing business with them.
Less than two weeks later, what should turn up in my driveway but a spanking-new Bentley Continental Supersports coupe, black as the inside of a coal mine, with equally black 20-inch wheels and a sticker price of $273,515. This would be our transport to a terrific event called “Ferraris on the Vine,” organized by my old friend and two-time former associate Bob Weber, a car guy of epic enthusiasms. Like the Panamera, the Supersports is a car that will flat knock your hat in the creek.
The VW engineers who reinvented Bentley have done a far better job than their counterparts at BMW with the Rolls-Royce or at Mercedes-Benz with the Maybach. The Rolls is self-caricature, the Maybach answers a question that has never been asked, and the Bentley asks only to be enjoyed by experienced, well-heeled enthusiasts.
Ferraris on the Vine became a sort of Car and Driver celebration at the Williamsburg Winery in Colonial Williamsburg. Dan Gurney, who ran for president as the Car and Driver candidate in the 1964 election, was there with his wife, Evi. Jim Wangers, the go-to GTO guy who suggested that Car and Driver perform a Pontiac GTO versus Ferrari GTO test and then slipped us a totally bogus Pontiac, was on hand, never far away from the exact original cheater Pontiac that fooled us all those years ago in our March 1964 issue. (Its 389-cubic-inch engine had been replaced by the indistinguishable 421 from a Pontiac Catalina.) There was a high-quality replica Ferrari GTO on hand, but the “confrontation that never happened” never happened (again).
I was “honored guest,” after-dinner speaker, and a concours judge. Most of the Ferraris present were late-model cars. The mid-engined Ferrari 355 was built to replace the 328/348 models and seems to have become the ubiquitous “every man’s Ferrari.” My pal Bob Weber told me to select one car that I would most like to drive home that night, to receive my own “Freedom & Whiskey” award, and I was happy to comply.
I tend to get all warm and moist over older front-engined Ferraris. Happily, Gordon and Andy Edwards were there with a very nice 1958 Ferrari 250GT “Ellena” coupe. The Ellena was designed by Pinin Farina but built by Boano. The “Ellena” name honors Mario Felice Boano’s son-in-law, Ezio Ellena. (The Pinin Farina name was changed to Pininfarina in 1961.) This model has become rare because so many of the early Pinin Farina cars have been cannibalized for parts to build replicas of more famous models. The Edwards’s dark-blue Ferrari Ellena 250GT was absolutely the car I most wanted to drive home that evening.
We ate well, drank wonderful wines, and steeped ourselves in a large tent full of Ferraris. The Wedmore Place hotel and Williamsburg Winery complex was a perfect venue. Bob Weber and his boss, Patrick Duffeler, who was director of Marlboro Racing for Philip Morris Europe in 1974 when Emerson Fittipaldi won his second World Championship, worked hard to see that we enjoyed ourselves. I was able to spend more time with Dan Gurney than I have in the last three or four years, and I was face to face with an army of veteran Car and Driver subscribers at every turn. They’re my people, they’ve been my friends and supporters since 1962, and I never tire of these opportunities to know them better.
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