Just a Typical Saturday Morning in Southern California

We hate rolling out of bed before the sun makes an entrance on any morning, let alone a Saturday. But we can hear the car guy's ultimate wake-up call.

That is, if your idea of a wake-up call is the fierce shriek of a 12-cylinder Ferrari, the guttural yowl of a Lamborghini V10, the raspy clatter of a twin-plug, air-cooled Porsche flat-6, the grumble of assorted American V8s, and just about any other mechanical melody played by an internal combustion engine manufactured anywhere or anytime in the last 90 years or so.

Good morning. Welcome to Cars and Coffee.

This Is Fantasyland
Sure, it sounds like we're dreaming, but as far as we know there is only one place in the world where you can hear sounds like this on any given Saturday morning. And it's not some autobahn in Germany, but instead the heart of Orange County, California — a fairytale land of American affluence, where the locals believe that a cool car is a kind of birthright. And that's why there are more than 300 stunning examples of automotive art parked side-by-side in the employee parking lot of Mazda's headquarters in the U.S., right next to the spectacular building that Ford originally built for the Premier Automotive Group.

It's called Cars and Coffee, and it's the world's most diverse automobile museum. Every car runs, and they start arriving about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning — every Saturday morning. Parked fender to fender, you can see (and hear and touch) cars that would be only fables elsewhere.

Just for starters, here's a bone-stock '69 Chevrolet Chevelle SS454 that's next to a '70 Plymouth AAR 'Cuda that's next to a '69 Pontiac GTO that's next to a 1990 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 that in turn is next to some kind of wacky sportified 1960s Volvo PV544. Across the aisle there's a lineup of 1950s Jaguar XKs next to a quintet of 1970s Mercedes SLs, and over there is a restored Ford Model A complete with rumble seat in the shadow of a hulking 1934 Packard Phaeton eight-cylinder touring car that still wears its original paint.

It's too random to be a museum, too wild to be a car club. You might have thought you'd seen it all only to discover a minute later that you haven't.

Here's a 1970s Porsche 914 with totally flared-out fenders and a small-block Chevy V8 stuffed in place of its crappy old VW four-banger. Here's a triple-quirky 1981 Lancia Beta Zagato, and jeez, here's another one, and this one's even for sale at $2,500. Or how about a couple of brand-new, 140-mph
Campagna T-Rex trikes next to a Lotus Exige that seems gigantic in comparison.

You want hot rods? Ever seen a '26 T-bucket with a 1.6-liter Toyota inline-4 and in fact complete Toyota running gear? The retired Toyota mechanic who built it also included parts from a wrecked hang glider and a Toyota-powered Bonneville streamliner.

Here's a Carlson-tuned Mercedes-Benz CLS driven by a guy from the nearby distributor who is clearly trolling for customers. And here's the one-of-a-kind replica of the 1971 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 touring-car racer that made AMG's reputation from the nearby Mercedes-Benz Clasic Center.

A Ferrari Is Just Another Red Car
And the cars are not the only stars. As you walk among the aisles of cars, there's a good chance that you'll be standing next to the people who not only own them, but who also might have designed them or built them. The last time we were there, we bumped into some pretty notable guys working out their addiction to caffeine and high-octane gasoline just like us, including exotic-car impresario Reeves Callaway, hot-rod designer Chip Foose, legendary racer Dan Gurney, sports-car racing champion Steve Millen, Mustang builder Steve Saleen and, of course, Jay Leno.

"You never know who — or what — will show up," declares Reeves Callaway, and the Callaway C16 Speedster behind him emphasizes his point.

"It's the most comprehensive free-form car show anywhere in the world," Callaway continues. "What goes on here goes on in a lot of places, but what makes this unique is that here today you have a 1927 Bentley 4 1/2 racecar that was actually driven here from up in L.A., a 1980 Ducati 900 SS Mike Hailwood Replica complete down to the period-correct leathers worn by its rider, a Porsche 911 racecar driven by 1980s IMSA sports car champion Dennis Aase, and then Steve Millen in the Ford GT that he just drove in the Targa New Zealand Road Rally. These are the genuine articles — totally singular machines. And that's what gets me up at 6 a.m."

Just Show Up and Show
Not that you have to be famous to draw a crowd at Cars and Coffee. Tony Connery, Josh Sistar and their buddies have a flock of people poring over their cars. Here are not one, not two, but six — count 'em, six — Nissan Skyline GT-Rs, two of which are the rare V-spec models. Five of these cars had been bought in Japan while their owners were stationed there in the military, and the guys couldn't bear to leave the cars behind when they returned home.

"It's pretty awesome. I'm ready to trade up," Connery jokes as he looks over a nearby assortment of new and vintage Ferraris. "Nice people, nice cars and no hassles."

Meanwhile, fellow Skyline-owner Sistar has the kind of open-minded enthusiasm for all kinds of different cars that makes Cars and Coffee so special. "I'm a big fan of convertibles," he says, pointing at an early Jag E-Type roadster. "I can see myself cruising down the coast in that. Or that real Porsche 356 Speedster over there."

Finding Your Inner Car Guy
There are show-and-shine car shows on every weekend in America, of course. This one came into being after L.A. sports car guys discovered Donut Derelicts, an institution for hot-rod guys since 1986 that takes place in nearby Huntington Beach. Back in 2003, guys with Ferraris and Porsches began to gather at Crystal Cove Promenade, a shopping strip mall just south of Newport Beach in the heartland of exotic-car territory. But when neighbors began to complain about the exhibitions of speed on adjacent Pacific Coast Highway, the show had to shut down in October 2006.

John Clinard, the public relations director for Ford on the West Coast, persuaded Ford to step into the breech and offer Mazda's employee parking lot as a substitute. Clinard himself has a handful of sports cars, including a 1957 Ferrari 250GT PF Cabriolet Series I that he's owned since the days when it was just a worn-out used car.

"We're car guys, and a lot of us used to go to Crystal Cove," explains Clinard. "When word came down that it was closing, it was a spontaneous decision for those of us at Ford to say we have the room, we're easily accessible and we don't bother anyone because there's no residential housing around."

Clinard has help, of course, as a small group of volunteers helps to open the nearby café in the lobby of the PAG building on Saturday mornings. And he has co-conspirators like Ford designer Freeman Thomas, who helped found the R-Gruppe, a group of Porsche enthusiasts.

The event has become so popular that it's even inspired a similar event on the other side of the L.A. basin, Supercar Sunday.

It's What Car Guys Do
Cars and Coffee is the kind of thing car guys do. Yet Cars and Coffee just happens to be a little special because it's in the middle of a place where everyone is a car guy, and is a home to enthusiasts, specialty shops in the car business, all kinds of automotive media, dozens of design studios in the car business, and more headquarters of car manufacturers than you'll find anywhere else in the world.

If you want to know what's going on in the car business, all you have to do is show up at Cars and Coffee and you'll either see it or hear about it.

Even Ford's John Clinard admits there is something special about it: "We do it because we love cars. There's no corporate agenda, and we're intentionally low-key." Then he grins and says, "Of course, our design staff sure has a tremendous resource for ideas every Saturday."


















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Nice thread, awesome machines ...!

It used to be Crystal Cove(think it was called that) but they were forced to change the location so now it's Cars and Coffee. Seems indeed like an awsome event.