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With very little time to do any more work, we also showed it at the Inn at St. Johns concours in Plymouth, Michigan. We were very delighted and excited to have been given one of their "Grand Awards," for "The Spirit of Detroit."

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As mentioned at the beginning of this tangent, my goal was to raise the AACA status of this car to Senior, which would allow us to show at an AACA Grand National Meet at sometime in the future. For that, I had to spend two full weeks under the hood and under the car to clean off the 15,000 miles and some 20 years of driving. Several bolt heads were discovered that had hardening marks on them, which is not allowed. There were several places in the paint that needed touch-up paint, and the wheels were looking very ragged with chipping of several areas around the rim and spokes due to flat tire repairs.

We took it to Iowa for the National Meet in Bettendorf, and were successful in getting an AACA Senior.!! \

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We then took it to the Dayton Concours, and received one of their major awards, "Most Elegant Automobile." Here, I showed the car without any front bumper at all. At the time I was replacing the original bumper for the Bright Bumper, I realized how good it looked. Others have agreed, that it is much sportier looking without a front bumper.

Overall a very good summer, except that I didn't get much of a chance to drive the car, and that is what's most fun about this car. I felt, though, that it deserved to be cleaned up and at least given the chance to reach the AACA Senior status.

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The last show I brought it to was the AACA Eastern Fall Meet in Hershey. No stress, just fun. Afterward, I was asked by a friend at Grundy Insurance if I would take a few photos of the car to be included in an upcoming tour book. The car will be featured in a story in which it was driven almost 10,000 miles during a period of 33 days.

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Thank you for allowing me to share.

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"Thank you for allowing me to share."

West,
Rather, it's our to you for sharing with us!

Following my photo shoot at Hershey, which took me down a rather steep gravel-filled golf-cart path, I had troubles getting back up the hill. After three attempts up the hill, and with the rear wheels spinning in the gravel and hopping as well, I took one last crack at it, built up a head of steam, and finally got up and over. However, within a hundred feet back at the top, the left rear main leaf spring busted.

I quickly called for a friend to bring some ratchet straps so I could pull the rear axle back forward again (the emergency brake cable kept it from causing any damage, but it also locked up the rear brake). Before my straps arrived, Jim Schneider of Vint-Edge Auto in Kannapolis, North Carolina rolled by, asked if he could help, and before I knew it he was under the car with his own ratche straps. He says he's taken care of this type of situation many times. I've only taken care of it once before, when it happened to the right side of this car while participating on the Colorado Grand some 15 years ago. Back then, we had two new main springs made, but only had time to install the broken one so we could get back on the tour.

Within a few minutes, we were able to drive the car back to the hotel and onto the trailer. The spare spring was shipped and put on the car within a week. All is well.

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