Just returned form the Ohio Concours at Ault Park in Cincinnati. A very classy event, well organized on a proper venue.

After loading up and beginning my trek back to NJ, I stopped by D & D Classic (automobile restoration) in Covington, OH, just north of Dayton. Mark Kennison is one of the three principals of the 25,000 sq. ft, five building complex with 20 employees. Like many other high end restoration shops it was packed with dozens of customer's classics cars, which is not unusual. What is unique is the planning, extreme cleanliness and thought that went into organizing their shop. I'd met Mark at Louis Vuitton in NYC and Detroit Autorama and I never realized how talented he really is. He's an old school metal shaper and after a 10 minute demonstration where he turns a flat hunk of aluminum in one half of a pumpkin seed, I felt my life change, as If I'd passed through an invisible curtain.

I'm a big science ficton fan and recall seeing plot developments where one passenger in a space ship is exposed to some weird ray from outer space and slowly begins a transformation into some other strange mutant being. My evolution in life has lead a strange and fun path, always littered with cars. In recent years I've often felt like I was in outer space, all alone, with the odd cars I create that are not classics and not street rods. I think when I passed through that warp at D&D, I felt my mutant evolution change from fiberglass to metal. Before I never really cared about the difference between fiberglass vs. metal bodies cars. It was a moot question anyway because I could not afford to build metal cars, so fiberglass was the natural path. The Bugatti/Delahaye quest I'm on will be metal bodied cars. But now, with the aid of Mark and D&D, I feel several alloy bodied Foose Boattail are looming on the near horizon. I'm excited.

Stay tuned for PTerrydactyl at the Lincoln Zephyr Owners Club Nationals later this week in Stratton Mountain, VT, followed by the Concours of the Eastern US in Bethlehem, PA on Father's day.

-- posted by Terry Cook at 2:12 PM 0 comments