chuck.goolsbee.org

I love this photo. Taken on the Colorado Grand in the San Luis Valley.

Roger should know instantly what this car is, so I’m pre-disqualifying him from guessing. Anyone else wish to take a stab?
IIRC it was the street-legal version of a killer pre-war racer and LSR car. It has always been on my list of “10 cars I’d like to own/drive someday” after I saw grainy period photos of it in a book my dad owned about this particular marque. The idea of achieving it’s theoretical top-speed of around 140 MPH on those tall skinny tires somehow affected me deeply as a boy.

I bet Paul knows too, so go paint your Jaguar Paul! 😉

–chuck

Apologies for dropping the ball on blogging of late… the whole flood thing earlier in the week threw me off schedule. I promise to wrap up my political rant from last week, though election day has come and gone, with precisely the outcome I was looking for (balance, not a D-win/R-lose)… but I still need to say what should be said.

Anyway, on to the CPOTD… I was walking the field of the Amelia Island Concours when the sight above appeared before my eyes. When I was a kid, my dad brought me to the Can Am races at Road America in Elkhart Lake WI. To say that I was blown away was an understatement. The rumble of those machines was sweet music to my young ears. The cars that appealed to me most were Jim Hall’s Chapparals. He was a perennial second or third behind the McLarens everytime we made the drive up to Wisconsin, but I cheered him on nonetheless. It was like meeting a childhood hero to see this car in the flesh back in 2003. Everytime nobody was looking, I touched it. I probably spent 10 minutes just looking at this machine from every angle… gleaming white in the Florida sunshine. I wouldn’t know Jim Hall if he bought me lunch, but I can recognize a Chaparral from a mile away.