My Monterey Car Week Adventure

[gswartz]

I am heading down to California on Monday for Monterey week. Just to get to this position has been a year long battle. When I found out that the cobra was going to be featured at the Historic races as part of the 50 year anniversary of the car I knew I had to get my car done and ready for the adventure. At the time my car was just a chassis, no engine wiring, paint etc.

I received my kit as a used kit bought second hand in December of 2010. I was planning on a two or three year build. When the new deadline that ment getting the car done in about a year and a half. I was lucky that my father (who has done body work for over 30 years mostly on corvettes) retired this year and could spend his weekend traveling to my place to help me on the car. Adding to the complexity was a two year old daughter who I love with all my heart and always want to spend time with. Also in April of this year I put my house on the market to move to a new school district for my daughter.

Since August of last year we have put in at least 700 hours to get the car ready. While it is not 100% complete its close enough for us to head on down to Cali.

I sold the wife on the idea of the trip as a car adventure/family vacation. My wifes father lives in Palo Alto area and my brother lives in San Fransico. This is also going to be the first time in over two years that me, my parents and brother have all ben together. With that said we are mixing together car events and family activities. My brother bought me and my dad baseball tickets to the Giants game on Wednesday and Sunday we are having a nice family brunch at our favorite place.

Our Monterey plans include:

Thursday- Pebble Beach Concourse tour

Friday- Concorso Italiano (got the cobra registered in the non-itialan group)

Saturday- Historic race (already have the corral pass).

We are towing the car down to Palo Alto and driving each day from Palo Alto to Monterey (about two hours each way).

This is one of those bucket list once in a live time events. I am so proud to get to share the experience with my family and take the car that I built to the events.

For those of you attending below are a couple pics of the car, keep your eye out for me.

I am going to use this thread to update with pics at the end of each day.

Build Thread:
Progress Pics Unfinished MKII

Pics:

[Gale K]

Awesome!!! Looking forward to the updates. Car looks great!

[Dago]

Greg,
I will be at Concorso (Working for my boss, Heacock Classic!) I'll be sure to walk the field and head over to see your build. Congrats on getting it 95% done!! Awesome build.

Saturday I'll be at the track, so keep an eye out for a guy walking around in a red Heacock Classic Shirt -typical of me to be drooling at vintage race events, so don't point it out!

Be safe heading there and back! Your trip is going to be incredible!

[vnmsss]

Awesome work, Greg!! Kudos to you and to the support you received from your family on accomplishing such a great goal!!! Your car is simply beautiful, and I'm looking forward to seeing it up close.

As an FYI...We're doing an FFR group photo with Peter Brock on Saturday morning in the Cobra Corral....Here's a link to the Monterey thread (post #30):

Roll Call for the Monterey Motorsports Reunion

Karen

[gswartz]

Originally Posted by vnmsss

As an FYI...We're doing an FFR group photo with Peter Brock on Saturday morning in the Cobra Corral....Here's a link to the Monterey thread (post #30):

Roll Call for the Monterey Motorsports Reunion

Karen

We will be there early Saturday morning and will make sure to find everyone for the photo.

[radelow]

I will be showing at Concorso as well. Let's coordinate and try to park together!!! If everyone who is attending wants to send me their email & cell phone I will compile a list of contact info and send it out to everyone else.

Thanks

[2FAST4U]

Beautiful car!!

[luey2009]

that is a very pretty car my friend very clean!!

[gswartz]

Got the car and truck all packed and loaded. Drove to Eugene for the evening to spend the night and pick up my dad. Ready for the 12 hour drive tomorrow.

[gswartz]

The Tour was amazing. I am guessing about half the Pebble Beach De Eleganace entrance cars participate. The cars them selves were unbelievable and the venue of downtown Carmel could not be beat. We got to downtown Carmel about a hour early to find parking and thank goodness we did. I could not beleive the thousands of people who were their. It was packed. You instantly gave up trying to get pictures of cars without others in the way. In fact you were luck if you could gather enough room just to walk all the way around the cars. The number of csx cobras and original AC cars were outstanding. Here are some pics

[gswartz]

This was a lot of fun. My dad is a huge ferrari fan owning both a 308 and 355 spider. I have always loved itilian cars. I was suprised and pleased when I found out they allow in special non itilian cars into the show. We instantly got my cobra registered for its first official car show. It was a real rush driving down the fairway between all the red ferrari's to get to our parking area. The weather was perfect 65 with a nice breeze. Your skin felt nice and cool all day as we were getting a nice sunburn. I am guessing they had over 700 total cars at the event. The number of lambos and ferrari's were a sight to be seen. There was a great cobra turn out as well. I even got interviewed for a small segment from a independent production company on my cobra and the great event.







I will post more pics when I get home on Monday. Now its off to the historic races.

[SeanHM]

SO JEALOUS! Keep the pics coming.

[gswartz]

I will update with a ton more pics later in the week.

I am still trying to recover from the trip. It was so much fun that I don't know if I will ever be able to put it all into words.

Here are a couple of pics:

[radelow]

I was parked next to you at the Concorso (gray car in your photos). What a great weekend!

[68390GT]

Great pictures! Thanks for sharing.