Here's the short piece about the Vintage Triumph Register convention which
I did for the local club newsletter, thought some of you might be interested.
mjb.
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It was pretty amazing. Hundreds of cars, and they were ALL Triumphs! The
only other place I had seen more than a handful of Triumphs was my own
backyard, and that was certainly no comparision to this. Just about every
color and model of TR was there, scattered about the Clarion's parking lot
like brightly colored toys. Yep, pretty amazing for a Triumph lover such
as myself.
Jim Pivirotto, another BMC of Utah member and myself drove to Boulder for
the 1990 Vintage Triumph Register national convention. Brave soul that he
is, Jim drove his Mark I Spitfire all the way there, while I trailered my
white 4A behind my rusty old truck. And Jim's wife Michelle met up with him
in Boulder a day or two later, and they both came home in the little red
Spit. I wonder who that fellow was in the light blue TR-3B with Utah plates,
personalised with, oddly enough, "TR-3B".
Not having made my reservations early enough I had to get a room at the
Holiday Inn just down the street. Not nearly as many cars as the Clarion
lot, but still quite a few, including a well worn but solid TR3 which the
owner had driven all the way from New York. Now that may have been an
adventure!
The convention lasted from wednesday night to sunday morning. Jim and I
arrived a bit late for wednesday registration, but did attend the poolside
party that evening. Jim introduced me to a few of his old friends from
his Texas days, and I was telling one of them that this was my first VTR
convention so I doubted I would know many people there. And of course, about
half a dozen folks I did know, mostly from my computer contacts came by at
just that moment to say hello and prove me wrong. We had a nice sized group
for beer and pizza later on that evening.
The next day required an early start, as it was the autocross and track time
session at Mountain View racetrack, about 25 miles away. I did manage to
pick up my registration stuff at the Clarion and headed for the track. Once
I finally did get there, turns out things were going slowly enough that I
wasn't as late as I thought I would be. Later on in talking to other folks
I find that they too had gotten lost and spent quite some time wandering
around the Colorado foothills. No wonder so many folks were late.
Eventually we did get to go out and get in some runs, in spite of the poor
organization of the event. Not at all what I am used to seeing at local
events. Jim decided that taking his Spitfire for a lap or two might be fun
so he got in line with the rest of us. Most of the folks there were not
at all used to doing such things with their cars, so the group of us who
regularly race our Triumphs were able to post times considerably better
than most folks. As a matter of fact, if I had not hit that one cone I
would have been only half a second off having the fastest time of the day.
Sigh. Jim was a bit worried about what to do, how the car would behave and
so forth. When he came off the track after his second run all I could see
under that helmet was a wall-to-wall smile. I think he liked it. And not
only that, he got a trophy for finishing second in his class!
The next day was set aside for the rally, some tours and the funkhana in
the Clarion parking lot. Team.Net, as those of us on the electronic mailing
list call ourselves, had an impressive entry in the funkhana. My friends Bob
and John both do a little road racing at times, and had brought full safety
gear with them. While waiting in line to run my car in the event, they
decided it would be more fun with driving suits and helmets. I don't know
if it was more fun, but a lot of folks got their cameras out!
Saturday was the big panaromic photo session, where all the cars are lined up
and a special camera pans around getting them all in one picture. I saw a
black and white print of it, pretty neat. About 15" high and around 4 or 5
feet long. Hmm, I think I forgot to order a color print of it. After the
photo session te cars went across the street to the Concours. I hid my
car under a bush somewhere, and just went to look. Oddly enough, there were
cars there that actually looked worse than mine!
After shooting a few rolls of film and wearing out the phrase "Nice Car!"
I finally got tired and went for a beer. It was simply too much to look
at. Around 240 Triumphs were in the show, and they all looked so nice.
The most popular model seemed to be the TR6, with lots of TR3s, not quite
as many TR4s, and few GT6 and Spitfires. 4 Stags, quite a collection of
TR7 and TR8s. Even one quite nice 194? 2000 Roadster. None of the really
rare Italias, though, two Vitesse Sport 6 models. And not a single example
of the car I want as a race car tow rig, a Triumph 2.5PI Estate. Oh well,
maybe next year in Kentucky I'll see one.
That night was the awards banquet, where Jim picked up another trophy for his
Spitfire, this time second in class for the Concours. Maybe next year I'll
at least wash mine... Ken Richardson gave an entertaining talk, and we all
had a pretty good time. Later that night a fellow I know from California
and I were able to get Ken to autograph our autocross trophies, something
I will hang onto for quite some time. For those of who who might not know
who Ken Richardson is, I don't have the space to list his efforts as the one
who developed the TR2 and TR3 models, as well as running Triumph's competitive
efforts for things like LeMans and the Monte Carlo rally. Suffice it to say
it was an honor to get to meet him.
Sunday came a bit too early, but Jim, Michelle and I did manage to get on
the road headed home. The trip back was even less eventful than the trip
there, and we returned to Salt Lake safe, happy, and with all parts intact.
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