Rhode Island revs

More of what I saw at the Newport Concours d'Elegance...

Shiny happy Newport

Just back from the Concours d'Elegance in Newport, Rhode Island. Oh my. Pour some champagne and I'll be back with more. Much more.

Marlene on 16 cylinders

The lady knew her stuff. The car is a Cadillac. The atttude? All Dietrich.

Let's hear it for matchless glories

From the 1958 Chrysler Ghia limousine brochure: "In one car, the matchless perfection of Chrysler Corporation engineering and the glories of Italian coach and body work." OK, reams could be written about these incredible cars, but I prefer to let the pictures do the talking. (Though I do love how the car is depicted, oriented in the same direction each time. And do you recognize the elegant house in the top photograph? Let's just say it's got a "cee-ment pond" out back — and possibly some possum shanks and pickled hog jowls a-cookin' in the kitchen. Oh yes.)

Dear Bo and Luke: I finally understand

Through a press-vehicle company, I had the chance to spend a week in a Bright Silver Metallic 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8, the one with the 6.1-liter Hemi V8 and the six-speed manual gearbox. Translation? The thing rocked. I prefer European steel almost always — but after seven days of stoplight challenges (not at my instigation, I swear), The Dukes of Hazzard movie soundtrack spinning in the CD changer (like you wouldn't have done the same thing) and rumbling up and down the quiet, mansion-laden streets of Highland Park in Dallas (alarming the locals and their AKC-registered canines), I emerged a changed man. It is the most automotive fun you can have for $40,000. Thumbs went up, valets went wild and normally jaded socialites went faint. There's something utterly naughty about the Challenger — a gas-guzzling guilty pleasure. It is actually quite architectural to look at (the cheap-ish interior being the only letdown in the design department) and much bigger than expected — it's got presence to go with its cojones. And I maintain that if you stripped off the Dodge badges and glued on "Maserati," everybody would be toasting your impeccable continental taste. Unless you got it in the garish Hemi Orange. Which, secretly, I wished I did. Oh yeah, way naughty.  

No more Millennium Falcons. Please.

Silver bullets, chase lights, projector beams, exposed bulbs, chrome rings, speed lines and LEDs: The overwrought tail light has got to go. An unfortunate trend, this need for competing shapes, multiple filaments and graphic trickery, all crammed into one fixture on each side of the automobile or SUV. Let's take a moment and appreciate the quiet, simple form (and execution) of the tail lights of the current Aston Martin DB9, above. Restrained. Organic. Bloody perfect. 

On target

Further to my point that Interceptors were the cars of the swank set: the country house, the gun-toting lord, the Jensen.

Plays well with horses

The stable, the horse, the Jensen. I rest my case that a grand convertible makes for far more exciting tack than any Hermès saddle. When I think of proper 1970s playboys, especially of the European kind, I think of them piloting their Jensen Interceptors — in this case, right up to the thoroughbred. You have to love a big, elegant British touring car that happens to have a thumping American V8 shoved under the hood: For the Interceptors, Chrysler's big-block 383 and 440 supplied the (forgive me) horsepower. In its 10-year run, the Jensen came predominantly as a coupe with an enormous curved-glass rear hatch, but for me, the rarer convertible does it. Just look at that poise, those curves, that taut musculature. I'm not talking about the horse.

Wheel Style, arriving soon...