Monterey Historics 2019 – 1960s American Cars
Earlier this year, my Dad and I made the trip out to Monterey for the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at WeatherTech Speedway (Laguna Seca). This was a bucket list trip for the both of us and it was really special to use the event to celebrate my birthday as well as an early 70th birthday for my Dad.
I took tons of photos the whole week, but I wanted to start off sharing those related to some of the classic 1960s American cars that we saw during the week with a particular focus on the Trans Am racers.
I’ll get to the photos in a minute, but also wanted to share this video walking through the pits:
This was just sliver of the awesomeness that we saw.
After parking and walking down into the pit area we were greeted by a pair of Cobras and a Shelby GT350R. Fantastic machines!
These cars were cool in the pits, but even better out on track!
No replicas here. Each car was an original. It’s really cool to see these cars run hard the way they were meant to be driven.
The Trans Am field was packed. This Mustang really diced it up during all the races.
While I’m not a Javelin fan, seeing the cars that Mark Donohue and Roger Penske took to a Trans Am championship was something special. These cars ran super hard at the front of the pack, dicing it up with the Mustangs.
Things like this driver cooling vent on the Javelins were neat vintage details.
Another Donohue car, the 1969 Camaro. Unfortunately this car had issues running during the weekend, but was cool to see nonetheless.
Fast fill!
Lots of other Trans Am machinery was on display. The tires might be skinny by modern standards, but they still had some aggressive flares on display!
Different engine bays were neat to see as well. Lots of ram air and individual carburetors.
Not an original sadly, but I did get to see several GT-40 kit cars up close. Owning one of these is a dream of mine, though I have to admit it would probably have to be painted like the Dan Gurney Mark II in red with white stripes. Have to admit I’m pretty excited for the upcoming moving, Ford v. Ferrari!
I didn’t take a lot of photos during the races are I was shooting with my cell phone the whole weekend. Pictures don’t do these cars justice and the video I took was too far away to be much good. Ear plugs were a necessity and the sound of these V8s echoing off the mountains was something I won’t forget.
One last picture for this go-around was a Shelby Coupe replica that my Dad and I found in Pacific Grove during one of the many car shows that you can attend for free. It was great for my Dad to talk to another Factory Five builder and pick up some ideas! I have tons of photos of this car and it’ll be covered in a separate post sometime.
That’s it for now. Work has been progressing steadily on the Mustang and I’ll have several posts coming soon covering the new engine and MS3Pro Evo fuel injection!
GoPro
Red Line Oil
Oversteer Garage 