out of the past

Last evening several members of our Madison British Car Group were gathering for one of our Wednesday night drives. We had some time before the drive and I was talking with a member that drives a 1964 red Lotus Elan. I was telling him that I once had a new 1964 TR4 and used to run it at a local speedway in gymkhanas. His face lit up and he told me he had purchased his car from the guy that ran it those years ago. It is the same car.

Nice, it's funny how these coincidences happen.

It's a small world. When my brother and I looked all over the country for a good Elan to buy for our father for a birthday present years ago, the best one we found turned out to be about five miles from my brother...and owned by a family whose son was in school with my niece. That isn't even the best small world car story in my family. My wife's great uncle did the interior in my father's Franklin 25 years before he bought it...and the great uncle had driven back and forth from WA to CA two or three times in the early 1970s when it was owned by a friend of his.

Although my fav small world story in my family: I introduced my wife to my dad's first cousin who was up from Palm Springs. When my wife told her that her grandmother had lived in P.S., my cousin asked where. Turned out that my cousin had bought my wife's grandmother's condo after she died.

Hmm. Had a guy up here (north of y'all) who had a Franklin and drove it. Came into the shop once for a re-wire....all done by hand.
Retired big contractor...can't remember his name right now. Had a 20's Chebbie...drove it down for work on the freeway....wood in the driver's door was rotted....skin came off at WOT of 45 MPG......

A pal here is Alexander Winton's grandson. He has a couple of the cars that he restored. He and several other owners drove their cars cross-country on the one hundredth anniversary of the first trip by a Winton. They went from east to west over the same (approximate) route.