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itsworn · 5 years

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24th Amelia Island Concours & A POSIES Retrospective

Most cars and coffee events across the country (where car enthusiasts of all types gather at some local donut shop parking lot early on a Saturday morning) can easily draw hundreds of vehicles while their owners ogle each other’s rides.

But what if the you wanted to step it up a few levels and have the best of every type of car in one place from across the automotive spectrum—from record-setting NHRA dragsters to LeMans racers, from the lowly Volkswagen to the high and mighty Bugattis and Delahayes, from all sorts of rare Porsches, Ferraris, Mercedes, as well as many different years of American cars that span the wood-spoke era to chrome-heavy ’50s behemoths?

Then you toss in a dream facility, not some corner asphalt parking lot covered in oil stains, but rather the long and carefully manicured fairways of an upscale golf course adjacent to one of the most highly regarded beachfront hotels in the world: The Ritz Carlton. And, for good measure, make this stunning weekend a charitable event. Where could this kind of perfect automotive weekend ever happen? Why in Florida at the 24th annual Amelia Island Concours D’Elegance, of course!

When folks think “concours” they usually have a vision of snobby rich folks in their pressed pants sipping champagne, but the Amelia event isn’t like that. It’s much more down to earth than some of the world’s other d ‘elegance shows but, make no mistake, the cars attending this stellar event are some of the finest (and, be default, the most expensive) in the world.

Nearby several national auction houses concurrently conduct their business, offering truly amazing cars; with some bidding reaching several million dollars apiece. But this event also features more common (or at least better known) manufacturers and, surprisingly, we found many hot rodders sprinkled into the mix.

Well known historic hot rod collector Bruce Meyer had a vehicle in the show, and former Big 3 execs (and longtime hot rodders) Wayne Cherry and Tom Gale were on hand to judge some of the car classes, a job rodding enthusiast, writer, and historian Ken Gross was also on hand for.

Second generation builders Rod Emory (grandson of Valley Custom founder Neal Emory) and Rob Ida (who perfected his trade while working alongside his dad, Bob, at Ida Automotive) were both on hand with their latest work: an Outlaw Porsche 356 for rocker John Oates and a restored ’48 Tucker, respectively. Historic drag cars (Altereds, dragsters, and Funny Cars) as well as road race vehicles were displayed, and we also ran into Larry Griffey (a recent Pirelli Great 8 winner at the Detroit Autorama) who had two restored vehicles on the field.

The event actually covers two days, with the first starting early with an informal cars and coffee type of gathering where 400 or so auto enthusiasts roll in single file by themselves or with their club or friends, then park on the fairways and hob-nob with each other. A contingent of Dodge Vipers drove in, as did a Morgan club and a group of Mustang owners. Model T speedsters were present and, on the other end of the spectrum, a street-driven 917 Porsche motored onto the lawn (Hey! It had license plates, so it was street legal, right?).

On Sunday the field was open for the concours cars to drive in, and all the rare and beautiful cars took their spots for judging. In front of the Porsche booth was a row of 11 962 Porsche race cars. Vintage American race cars (including Corvettes, Cheetahs, Cobras, and Kurtis Kraft) co-mingled with their European counterparts (Peugeot, Stanguellini, OSCA, and Maserati) covering the 10th and 18th fairways of the Amelia Island Golf Club course and, if you appreciate fine automotive design, you had a hard time knowing which way to look next.

The display of dragsters (including Don Gartlits’ Wynnscharger, Tony Nancy’s Sizzler, and the rainbow-colored Dunn & Reath rail) along with a pair of Funny Cars and a pair of Altereds (including Rat Trap and the Bradford Topolino) treated the crowd to an old-fashioned cacklefest on Sunday afternoon; something we bet many concours attendees had never seen (or definitely heard!) before.

Recently the Amelia Island Concours d ‘Elegance Foundation (the charitable organization that has run the annual concours for the past 24 years) has begun inviting handpicked honorees to assemble a retrospective of their work and showcase it in a special class alongside some of the world’s finest examples of rolling automotive art.

This year, the Foundation invited hot rod builder Ken Fenical (better known as Posies) to show a collection of cars he designed and built for customers in his Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, shop over the past 40 years. Though he made his name in the hot rod industry by creating, manufacturing, and selling a line of Super Slider suspension springs for hot rods, his artistic passion gets expressed in the cars he’s built.

As far back as the early ‘80s, Posies got noticed with a yellow 1936 Ford roadster he’d built that not only emulated the padded-top customs he remembered as a kid, but he also advanced the design further by inverting the LaSalle grille and creating his own take on the (at the time) nearly extinct genre. When the mono-chromatic look of the ’90s arrived, Posies took another route and started slicing his scallops horizontally on a 1938 Ford convertible and using multiple contrasting colors to make a statement.

Into the new millennium Posies charged forward with a stretched 1935 Ford roadster called the Aeroliner followed by the Fleetliner, which applied more of his style to a 1947 Chevy Fleetline sedan. Of late Posies has been influenced by the styling’s found in some Rat Rods, but all of his cars are drivers and built to be safely driven down the road. More recently he debuted a 1971 E-type Jaguar with flattened black paint and outfitted it with a 383 Chevy engine, driving it across the country to the SEMA Show in Las Vegas.

At Amelia Island event this year, the special show class highlighted eight cars he’d built that covered a wide stretch of Posies’ history. On one end was the multicolored 1937 coupe with its 7-inch chop and badass blown 427 poking out of the hood. Owned by John Bolkema of Mahwah, New Jersey, the coupe sounds a lot like a funny car pulling up to the starting line when it’s driving down the street.

Next to it was the 1937 International pickup owned by Arnold Gervasio of Ringoes, New Jersey. Unless you know International trucks, you might think it was a nicely restored pickup, but the bed was shortened, rear fenders widened, new bead lines were added to the bottom of the fenders and bed sides, and the bumpers were split in two.

Beside the truck was Joe Mastrangelo’s 1937 Ford convertible (dubbed Flower Child) from Carmel, New York. Built in 1983, the paint on the car was split horizontally (black on top, red underneath) in a style that was not commonly seen on hot rods of the time, but soon would be. The chopped roof was fixed and, though uncommon for the time, the vehicle featured shaved door handles and hinges.

Back in 1997 Posies was the first person to receive the newly-stamped steel 1932 Ford roadster manufactured by Brookville Roadsters. The renamed Phunkie 1932 was powered by a Ford 302 and utilized a set of Posies Super-Slider springs along with subtle changes to the taillights and fuel door.

A 1936 Ford four-door phaeton also got the Posies treatment when a second cowl section was added behind the forward bench seat, to which Posies constructed a second set of wind wings, all outfitted with black chrome hardware; the same finish used throughout the rest of the black-on-black vehicle. Trim pieces found on the hood sides were extended down the side of the body, and Posies designed the unique five-spoke road wheels.

As outrageous as some people find Posies cars to be, most of them have subtle styling cues (but a lot of them). The Orange Crisp (the name derived from the PPG paint color) 1955 Ford long roof Ranch Wagon incorporated a 1958 Edsel roof skin, dual Crown Vic side trim, and extended headlight brows. Always up for more power in his rides, Posies added a Roush supercharged Coyote engine. Built in the late ’90s, Posies still owns this vehicle.

You can see a mix of rat rod and high tech in Scott Whitaker’s five-window 1929 ThunderRoad pickup, but you may not realize the body was originally a Tudor sedan. The truck bed was fab’d at Posies out of aluminum, and the body was chopped and channeled over a unique tubular chassis.

At the other end of the row might be Posies crowning achievement: the 1937 Studebaker custom Extremeliner, built at the end of the last century. Influenced by 30s-era Cords and the overly-exaggerated roundness of Lincoln Zephyrs (as well as Andre Dubonnet’s Hispano-Suiza “Xenia” coupe from 1937) the Extremeliner utilized a one-off tubular chassis (a rarity in 1994, when work on the car started), a fabricated steel body (with aluminum hood and fender skirts), and fiberglass body panels that were initially made of wood but cast in fiberglass and woodgrain. A Corvette LT1 engine resides under the hood, there is heavy use of wicker for the interior, and the car was painted Luminescence Gold Razzleberry; the first time that color had ever been used on a car.

All of Posies creations pull and tug body panels every which way, squishing them down or exaggerating them as he see fits, just like some of those action painters of the ’60s-era wildly splashed paint onto their canvas to create the vision they saw only in their minds eye. But Posies has always been able to make a statement while delivering the goods. Kinda different? Hell yes! But then again this particular Posies has never been a wall flower. SRM

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