This week we decided to head north, rather than south and check out the Cars and Coffee going on in Montrose. Being 10 minutes from Chez Mad_Science, rather than 45 to Irvine certainly helps. Last night’s rain meant a lot of would-be attendees went to bed thinking they’d just skip it, only to awake to clear skies this morning. Turnout was low, but a few late arrivals picked things up. Hit the jump for lots of pretty pictures.


The first car we spotted on the way in was this Kurtis racer decked out in Carrera Panamericana livery. Based what we can find about it online, it’s probably priceless. Everything about it was serious business.

That said, the Serious Business Award goes to this Rolls. It’s more or less perfectly restored, and has quite the presence.

By any measure, February 20th was Austin Healey Day in Montrose. With the light turnout overall, the five or six Healeys were a force to be reckoned with. The two-tone wins pretties paint job, and the red one blew our minds with its perfect trim and interior.

Why is this Sprite smiling? Because it’s been reinvigorated with a little help from Mazda. The owner was saying the 12A swap required absolutely no cutting, and the car still handles as well as ever. Seriously, it looks like it’s supposed to be there.

This ’64 (?) Fairlane 500 sports a 260 and three on the tree. Squeaky clean interior, purty paint and yellow rally lights for the win.

The Mustang-Maverick juxtaposition was good for a laugh.

Sweet, a Cougar, we thought. Closer inspection revealed it to be a 428 (“7 Litre”)-powered XR-7 in impeccable condition. Rowwwr!

Early Countachs are so much cleaner. Out of the corner of my eye it almost looked like a Pantera. No 351c here: 6 carbs, 2 distributors and 12 cylinders. I almost asked the owner what year it was.

Here’s another car that just got awesomer the more we looked.  It’s an 85.5 SVO in absolutely perfect condition: 17k miles, and not a scratch or crack in any of the plastic. The cool thing was just how proud of it the owner was. He’s a dedicated SVO guy, and bought this car two days after he heard about its existence.
Check out the pictures in the gallery below, or hit them up on our (newly created) Flickr stream.