[DeTomaso] Great Italian Show at Griot's Garage Sat, 1/1/12

[Mike Thomas]

Chris, Matt and I attended the Griot's Garage Italian car show today at the
Griot's Garage home office/show room in Tacoma today.  This was #41 in a
string of beautiful sunny days here in the Puget Sound, and we had all sorts
of great cars turn out.

To start with, the first Saturday of every month is Caffeine and Gasoline at
Griot's, and they always have some interesting cars to show off.  The
parking lot is always filled with great stuff, as the video that Chris
Kimball posted attests.  They also have a "special event" display which in
past has included multiple visits by the Fisker Karma, vintage race cars
like Ford GT 40's, F1 Ferraris and McLarens.  Today, they had 4 new Rolls
Royces to show off, courtesy of Bellevue Rolls Royce / Lamborghini.  The new
Series II Phantom was just released, and they had a new Phantom sedan and
Drophead Coupe', they also had two new Rolls Royce Ghost sedans, the "baby"
Roller.  They were letting folks sit in every one of them.  The scale of
these things is increddible.  Sitting in the $500K Drophead Coupe' (mind
you, that's pronounced "coo-pay", not "coop"), you feel like you're in
command of a large ship as opposed to driving a car.  This thing is huge.
The suicide doors are tre chic, and in the door jamb on either side in it's
hideaway receptacle is your own RR monogrammed bumbershoot (that's umbrella
to you and me).

As bookends to the Rollers, they had a light blue Lexus LFA, the first I've
seen in public, and a white Keonigsegg CCX, which I had seen previously at
the LeMay museum opening in June.  Both cars stunning in their own right.
Also, down on the grass with the Italians, we had a new McLaren MP4-12C in
all black.  Wow.

After the Caffeine and Gasoline event wound down at 10:30-ish, the Italians
that were already there began to reposition, and the rest began to arrive
for the Italian Car Show and Exotic Gathering.  We ended up with three
Panteras (Chris Kimball, Matt Hovind and myself), but there were some truly
gorgeous pieces from the rest of Italy.  Of note: a silver 1962 Ferrari 250
barchetta with body by Pinninfarina looking from the back much like the
Ferris Beuller car, a stunning 1966 275 GTS spyder,  two Lamborghini Islero
coupes, one Concours-quality belonging to John Shirley (won Pebble Beach
with his Alfa 8C 2800 coupe a couple of years ago), an all-original '72
Maserati Ghibli coupe and a '71 Mexico, which was essentially a 2+2 Ghibli.
Besides these, there were a number of other Lambos, Ferraris, Maseratis and
a few Alfas and Fiats.

What a perfect day for it all.  Visit my photo album on the POCA website for
shots of the show.

http://poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=37780

There are 3 pages of content, and the scrolling feature of the POCA Albums
seems to be having problems: you have to keep hitting the "First" button to
scroll through each page.  Not sure what the issue is.

Mike Thomas
Panteras Northwest