I had a real hard time getting to sleep last night... maybe it was the dinner, or just the mental images of all those incredible cars re-playing over and over in my mind. I don't know. I had a room to myself, as my parents had their own down the hall. I finally just turned on the TV (something I rarely do) and zoned out watching a movie. It did the trick and I awoke at 4am with the TV still on. I slept some more and dragged my butt out of bed when Mom & Dad gave me a wake-up call. Thankfully the rally breakfast was literally across the hall from my room.

Today was to be a transit day, with no timed segments, just lots of driving. Given that we were in a pretty crowded part of the state, that was probably best. We did have a couple of events though, some stops at a couple of car collections.

The first segment was a 110 mile drive to the collection of a guy named Petrik. He collects "supercars". We wished Mom goodbye, and drove off north out of Naples. 80 miles of this was on I-75... with me driving. Nothing really interesting to see there... except another 450sl that played "tag" with us, and getting passed by Richard and Helen Fraser in their stunning 1953 Ferrari 212 Inter PininFarina Coupe:

The navigation to the home of Gerd and Feli Petrik was a little bizarre, as the rally route book specified their address without telling us that the road we were driving up reused house numbers. Thankfully we've been doing these rallies long enough to not navigate by address... we used the odometer and sure enough, found it fine. We left a lot of confused rallyists behind though, and when we arrived it seemed the rally organizers were on the cell phone giving the same instructions over and over. For a while, going up the road there was a Series 2 Jaguar E-type two cars behind us. It was a white roadster. I was hoping it was going to the same place we were, but unfortunately it wasn't... I couldn't document it's dataplate!

We finally arrived and sure enough, you couldn't miss it! The property was liberally sprinkled with very expensive supercars. I swear there were at least 20 Ferraris, and a dozen high-end Porsches. However, in this collection, those are the "pedestrian" cars. Besides, I'm not really a "Ferrari guy" as most of my readers know. I'll share the cars that *did* interest me:

The collection, as seen from the beach.

Three 300sl's. L-R: A 300slr replica, a coupe (aka "Gullwing"), and a roadster.

Even though the SLR was a replica, given that maybe one or two "real" ones exist, I really liked it.

The next car that caught my eye was the Jaguar XJ-220. You can read more details about them elsewhere on the Internet, but I can tell you this, they are rare beasts indeed. The XJ-220 was, after the E-type of course, Jaguar's attempt to build a SuperCar. The original was to have a V-12, but the production machines ended up with twin-turbo V-6's. They were not legal to import into the US until very recently, and even so they carry a proviso of limited milage of public road travel per year. Jaguar made very few of them, all by hand in limited numbers, outside of the home base of Brown's Lane in Coventry. I think they were built somewhere near where I lived in the UK back in '97/98. Anyway, here it is:

Wow. I'll take two please. =)

The next car that sucked me into it's orbit was a real-live Ferrari GTO.
Apparently the legend says that Enzo Ferrari saw the Jaguar E-type, and immediately commissioned a "knock off"... he had been embarrassed over and over by the C-type and D-type, and wanted to stay at least even, and preferably ahead of the competition. hence the birth of the legendary GTO. Very few were made, and they did very well on the racing circuits. In a lot of ways the E-type and GTO were the last "drive it to the track" race cars. From the mid-60's on racing cars began to exponentially change from being "race prepped" to being full-blown, purpose-built machines. Engines moved to the middle, and went off the scale in horsepower and torque. One can imagine driving a GTO or E-type to dinner... not the same in a 917! Anyway, here is the GTO:

The next car that I had to see was of course an E-type Jaguar. It was a Series 3 car, obviously one of the last year made, 1974, due to the large bumper overriders. I asked Mr. Petrik about the car, and he informed me he bought it in Germany, and that it was the very first car in his collection! Cool. I told him about the XKEdata website and asked if I could record his dataplate. He graciously opened the bonnet and let me perform some archiving duties. Here is that E-type:

Interesting how the V-12 Series 3's differ from the early straight-six XK-engined cars. For comparison, have a look at the engine bay of my 1965 E-type:

In the V-12 you can barely see the engine due to all the *stuff* (air cleaners, carbs, emissions, wires, hoses, etc.) all over. Look for the black and aluminum valve covers with the word "Jaguar" on them... those are just the top of the engine. Contrast that with the earlier six. All you see is engine and SU Carbs.

We were served lunch on a terrace in their back yard. It was made of light-colored stone, and to me it felt like being cooked in a rotesserie! Were I live, the sun is never this intense, and I just started to wilt. Thankfully they had iced tea, and I think I downed a gallon of it... two cups at a time. =)

After lunch we had a 20 mile transit to Sarasota, and a car museum. We thanked the Petriks for their hospitality and generousity with their collection. One our way out I stopped and took some photos of the last couple of cars I thought worth looking at:

This is a Mercedes *LK (sorry, can't recall the exact designation) GT car. It is obviously a "homologation" special, as the makers must build some percentage of "street legal" cars to allow their GT racers to compete without being considered prototypes or purpose-built racers. Same goes for this Porsche 911 GT1:

The last car I shot was a Bugatti. Nothing like Dean Edmonds Type 55... this one was pretty recently built. I know nothing more about it. Here you go:

OK, I'm about "supercar'ed out" aren't you? =)

I can't recall now who drove the next short segment, but it was just that... short. The Sarasota Car Museum had the unfortunate situation of being placed after probably the toughest act to follow in the car museum business, since a mere 14 hours before we were strolling the impressive Collier Museum. "Funky" is the best way to describe it. It was obviously a labor of love, but limited funding. There were some very interesting cars though, and the reason we were there was to see the Iso Rivoltas. We were given a signed book all about the little-known marque, which now builds yachts instead of sports cars.

As we entered there was a huge painting of a Jaguar XK-120 FHC, so I had to pose Dad in front of it for a shot. =)

We bee-lined for the Iso Rivoltas. The first was the Varedo, which IIRC was unveiled in 1971. It is years ahead of it's time with regards to styling, looking a lot like the later Lambo's of the 1980s. Next to it was the BMW Isetta, which of course was designed by Iso Rivolta, and the mid-1960s Griffo. A very attractive car, again a few years ahead. It is obvious that Chevrolet picked up styling cues for the Camaro from it.

There were a few other cars there, a replica Ferrari GTO (used in the film "Vanilla Sky"), a replica Jaguar D-type, lots of American Iron. In the back they had a sort of storage area that you could walk through. A few interesting bits were found there, such as:

A Porsche 904, though not as well presented as the ones at Collier's!

A race-prepped Subaru 360, done up in a rising sun motif!

This is a two-cylinder, two stroke, 25 horespower, 3 speed little machine that was imported into the US market from 1968 until 1970. A far cry from the WRX eh?

Finally, there was a 1947 Triumph 1800... a car I didn't know existed until I saw it here. Of course other than the TR's I don't know very much at all about Triumphs.

The final segment of the day was a 180+ mile run up to the "Florida Hill Country" to a nice hotel/resort called the Mission Inn, done up like a Spanish mission/hacienda. I drove, and I really do not recall anything special about the trip.

On to The Final Day of Rallying!