Museum level cars in the wild

[BruceK]

I was vacationing in Colorado last week and I happened upon the Colorado Grand 1000 vintage car charity rally in progress. Wow! Some incredible cars there. So many gullwing Mercedes, old Aston, Martins, Ferraris from the 1950s. Even a bunch of pre-war Bentleys.

[BruceK]

More

[BruceK]

And more

[BruceK]

A lone Corvette too

[BruceK]

The most beautiful car of them all, IMO, a Lancia Aurelia B24 Spyder

[BruceK]

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[BruceK]

The C-Type and D-Type Jags were particularly impressive

[MiniDave]

Wow, that's some premium stuff there!

Where were the pics taken?

I always wanted to do one of these "Mille" deals, but they don't have a Kansas or Missouri one as far as I know, and I don't know if they'd accept my "72" Mini.....I think the cars are like 1960 and older? I think they're really spendy too...

Audi is doing a run down in far eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas in November, it's only a 3 day event and only $350 and I'm thinking of doing it in the Allroad.

[BruceK]

I encountered the cars randomly in Gunnison CO during a midday stop at McDonald's (across the street in the background in some of the photos). As I understand it the rally does 1000 miles throughout Colorado. The annual rally has been going on for decades and the cars had what looked like specially issued state license plate plates just for the rally. I bet some of the cars aren't even road legal normally.

[Jims5543]

What a crazy event to stumble upon.  There is a lot of $$ floating around the lot. 

1000 mile rally is pretty serious too. So many beautiful cars in those pics, thanks for sharing that. I am on my POS work computer locked into Win7 for software reasons, clicking on this thread sent it into dial up mode. LOL!

[94touring]

Funny because sometimes massive uploads cause my end to fail or go dial up. I have to wait a bit for the host server to catch up or something.

[scooperman]

In the early 2000s I married a lady whose parents were many-year participants, my new in-laws invited us to join them and we drove one of their vintage cars on this event in 2004.  What a blast.  The event is shepherded by the bike troopers of the Colorado Highway Patrol,  we called them The Motors, I think those guys might have been having as much fun as the vintage car geeks.  These cars, in many cases, are stuck in museums, never get out and stretch their legs any more.

I had done some racing in Minis in the 70s, figured I could pedal an old sports car and not embarrass myself.  I remember thinking we were doing good, were in the lead group, not flat out but yeah fast through the mountain bends. High altitude, cold at that time of the year.  Suddenly a couple of Trooper bikes soundlessly zoomed past like we weren't even there, then OMG a pre-war Alfa, driver and riding mechanic wearing leather helmets with ear flaps flopping like Rocky the flying squirrel in the wind, grinning like idiots, came roaring past us on the inside with an exhaust sound like an overreving tugboat, laughed and gave us a cheery wave as they blasted off into the distance, bikes leading the way.  Tried to keep up, yeah, not. Somebody invites you to this event, do it.