Had a great time this afternoon with my friend Matt at the combined Flying Heritage and Historic Flight “Round Engine Day” at Paine Field. The main event was a series of fly-bys: FH’s P-47 Thunderbolt and HF’s Tigercat and Bearcat. As a bonus, we got to see quite a few more aircraft in the air: B-25 bomber, North American T-6A, A-1D Skyraider and some Chinese-built Yak clones (at least that’s what I think they were). After the flying, we visited the new Historic Flight “Kilo-6″ museum and came away quite impressed. Lots more photos after the jump.
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This is my new favorite car, the 1905 Darracq which took the world land speed record at over 125 MPH. What an extraordinary machine, a car distilled down to its essential elements. I read about it in this month’s Octane and have spent the past few minutes watching clips on youtube. Kudos to Mark Walker for driving it on the road and for restoring an already “restored” car to as original a condition as he could get it.

Went over to watch the Flying Heritage Collection’s Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire fly on their “Battle of Britain” day last Saturday. It was just spitting (appropriate weather for the occasion), but I took the Triumph anyway, to make short work of the long summer ferry lines (motorcycles are allowed to bypass the queue). This proved to be a soggy decision when the skies opened in earnest on the ride back. (“Bah, I won’t need rain gear” was my thought before departing the house. Oops.)
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Had an enjoyable time at the vintage races at Pacific Races on Saturday. I didn’t unsheath my camera all that often but was thrilled with the three vintage Alfas, including the machine Nuvolari drove to victory in the 1935 German Grand Prix, widely considered the greatest drive of all time.
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I came out of the shop tonight and found that spring has brought out the native songbirds, always nice to see an indigenous species doing well. (That’s one of Jim’s Toyota Seras being eyed by said fauna.)

So could I make some pocket money by resurrecting a free Rover Sterling 827 sedan in decent condition but needing tires and a water pump? I’m guessing not. I’ve never particularly been fond of them but from all accounts they’re decent cars. A friend spotted one and asked about it, the owner saying “take it away if you want it.”

The parts themselves aren’t too pricey but looks like the Acura engine uses the cam belt to run the water pump, so there is undoubtedly some fun there. (Looks to be about an eight to ten hour job reading through the procedure, and since it involves removing the timing belt, you might as well do that, too.) The tires are the death knell, really.

I’d be a bit shocked if you could even get $1000 for a decent condition Sterling. So I think I’ll just skip this one unless someone offers me a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Time for another meeting, being the first Saturday of the month. Glorious weather brought out a bunch of cars–”European” in the “club” name is a suggestion only!
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Here’s a short film showing the MG works in 1931, with the proverbial happy couple picking up their new Magna. The spray booth…oy. Word has it paint shop guys never lasted very long, you may get a hint as to why by watching this.

There is no sound, just title cards. The embed code they give doesn’t seem to actually embed the player here (not sure if it is supposed to or if this is just a “quirk”), but clicking on the image above will take you to British Pathe’s page featuring the video.

I went to Bellingham to investigate an MG for sale for a friend today. I discovered the MGB in question was only 8 cars later than my ’63–built on the same day, maybe 60 yards apart on the line. To add to the twilight-zone feeling, the gentleman also had a ’67 GT parts car–painted Grampian Grey (a fairly rare color, for what it’s worth). That car was only a couple of hundred numbers earlier than my Grampian Grey ’67 GT.

The chill did not dissuade me from getting the BSA out of its den and taking it to the first-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the “Whidbey Island European Sports Car Club,” which isn’t really a club at all, just an open gathering of like-minded folks at Gerry’s Kitchen in Freeland, Washington. We had a pretty good turnout of interesting machines, such as…
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