June 2007
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We would encourage everyone to become
a POCA member, if you aren't already a member. Your membership in the
national club helps fund your local chapter. You can download a
membership application at http://www.panteraclub.com Please help our club grow.
Capital Panteras donate $300 to
the St. Patrick’s home for children
by John McNamee
Capital Panteras, through their monthly raffle
proceeds, donated $300 to St. Patrick’s home for children automotive repair
program. John McNamee, representing
the capital Panteras, presents a check to Colleen Maloney of St Patrick’s. Ms. Maloney said the money will go buy
parts needed to repair the donated autos, in order to get them ready for
sale. This is a vital program for
the residential treatment for emotionally disturbed teenage females, childcare,
foster family and adoption services.
It was a pleasure to help such a great cause.
Placerville Fun Rally, May 19,
2007
by
Emilia Seiferling
What a wonderful way to spend a beautiful spring day! Jim and I had
an easy drive up to Cameron Park to join up with other Capitol Pantera members
and friends for our Placerville Fun Run. We had a smaller than hoped for
turn out, but that didn't dampen the fun one bit. We had three Panteras:
Lamar & Toni Fairchild, Tom & Kathy Vona, Jim & Emilia
Seiferling. There was one Bricklin: John Worsley. There was one Mustang:
Rich & LeAnn Bettencourt. Rich is Jim's cousin and lives in
Placerville. Also on hand was a Harley-Davidson, with
friends Don & Barbara Dean. Don and Jim worked together, until
Don retired! They also live in Placerville. The smaller group made it a
bit easier to keep the group together. Although we learned later that it
was a good thing that Don knew the area so well, having grown up in the
area. It seems that as the caboose, he didn't make the lights and had to
call on his local knowledge and his memory of the designated route to catch
up to the group. Don & Barbara had company coming later in the day, so
they were only able to do the first leg of the Poker Run. Lamar did a
great job of planning the route, putting together the Trivia Contest for the
passengers and selecting the restaurant for lunch. The drive took about 2
1/2 hours with five stops to build our poker hands. Many of the selected
roads were new to Jim and myself. We have driven in the Placerville area
many times over the years, but enjoyed this different view of a very scenic
area. The drive ended with a much- deserved lunch. We dined out
on the patio at Sweetie Pie's in downtown Placerville. There was a parking
lot right across the street. I think that everyone had a very nice
lunch. There was no room left to enjoy any of the many bakery
items for which Sweetie Pie is known. We awarded the prizes for the
Poker Run at lunch. We had enough prizes for everyone to be a
winner. The best hand was Rich's three kings. The worse was Jim's
pair of nines. The Trivia contest was closely contested, but I won.
Again there were enough prizes that everyone won something! We would
like to give a big thank you to Lamar & Toni for putting together such a fun
day. It is hard to believe that Lamar had never done this before!
Maybe some of our other CP members will put together a drive in their
area.
All British Car Show, May
20, 2007
by Emilia
Seiferling
We had an empty schedule for this Sunday, so we decided to pop over to
Dixon for the All British Car Show. Ken Montgomery had his DeLorean
entered in the event. As it turned out it was the only DeLorean in the
show. That meant that Ken was very busy educating people about the
marque. The Dixon fairgrounds are not a bad place for a car
show. The place could use some more trees to provide some shade on a hot
early summer day. The Solano fairground in Vallejo has a lot more shade
for the all Ford car show. Dixon has free parking across
the street from the event, while Vallejo charges for parking. Both
events are free to the public. The Dixon show gets good marks for diversity of
entries and for ethnic food. I tried a "Banger" for lunch. I don't
know if it was authentic, but it tasted very good.
EuroSunday, May 27,
2007
by Emilia Seiferling
The weather was very nice for our monthly drive up Highway 160 to
Sacramento for EuroSunday. This Sunday the event was being held at The
Towe Auto Museum. We arrived to find CP members Ken Montgomery and John
Worsley already there. We were the first Pantera to arrive. We were
later joined by Tom & Kathy Vona in their Pantera, Karen and Henry Kirk in
Henry's 427 Cobra, and George Potiris in his Jaguar XK-E convertible. We
drank coffee, chatted and viewed the over 90 cars that had gathered for the
event.
Jim and I had decided to join the post-event drive to Napa. We left
with the "Spirited" group, but due to traffic lights, heavy freeway traffic at
the start, and being left behind at the first regrouping stop (I and another
wife were in the restroom when the leaders decided to take off anyway), we ended
up in the "Cruise" group. That would have been fine, since the first group
were really going too fast in these days of double fine speeding tickets!
The bad part of the cruise group was being behind a Triumph TR6 that was driving
way below the speed limit! The traffic was actually quite light for a
Holiday weekend, but his guy drove like my
grandfather!
We had arranged to meet up with PCNC members Mike and Nancy Haney at the
last regrouping stop before the lunch stop. Once we had made contact with
them, the red and white Panteras were off to lunch at a nicer place then where
the rest of the drive ended up. We sat on the patio of the Red Hen
Cantina on Highway 29 and enjoyed a very nice Mexican lunch. When we saw
the cars from the drive go by on their way to the Silverado Winery, we hopped in
our cars and headed out. Since Nancy was raised in Napa, she knew a better
way up to the winery. We arrived after an easy drive and parked in the
upper lot. It was not as scenic for a photo-op as the lower parking
lot, but we got a nice photo anyway. While there, we were approached by
one of the limo drivers who was at the winery. He was quite happy to
see our cars. He knew what they were, calling them by the proper
name, deTomaso Pantera. He said that he had never seen two together
at the same time. After a tasting at the winery, we drove back
to Mike & Nancy's house where we chatted and inspected the work that they
had accomplished on the house remodel since our last visit. They are doing
a beautiful job. Did you guys know that Nancy is an expert cabinet &
woodworker?
We headed out from Napa to go back to Rio Vista. We decided to stop
for a bite to eat. We had an Italian dinner at La Strada in Napa on
Highway 29. The food was very good and we enjoyed it both Sunday and again
on Monday night with the "doggy bags"! The traffic was very light going
home on Highway 12. That made for a pleasant end to another automotive
adventure in the Pantera. And we did it all on one tank of
gas!
Wine Country
Classic, June 2, 2007
by Emilia
Seiferling
We were able to get tickets for the Shelby Coral at the Wine Country
Classic, so I agreed to join Jim for a day at the races. If he had
been unable to get the coral parking, I would have passed on the event. I
remember the hike to the outer parking and was not going to do that again.
Yet another reason to be thankful for the Pantera! The drive over went
very smoothly, even with fact that Highway 12 between Rio Vista and Fairfield is
now double striped, a double fine zone, and a $2,500.00 reckless driving
ticket if caught going over 70 MPH; for our safety! What a
painful drive at 55.
We arrived at the Corral just after Merry & Steve Dalcino, of PCNC,
arrived in their red Pantera. The parking on turn 11 is wonderful.
It has grass, close to bathrooms, and food. Tom Galli and Diane Dean, in
Tom's red Mangusta, later joined us. We reparked the two Panteras to make
room for the Mangusta. That made for better lawn chair arrangements
and photo opts.
We were off to wander the pit lane area. We were looking the find
CP members Carl Stein and Rick Moseley. This was to be the only race
for Carl's Shelby Trans Am Mustang this year. We found them working
to repair a broken transmission vent. We chatted with Lesley and
Diane while the guys finished the car. Then we were off to find PCNC
member Todd Glyer who was racing his 1968 Lola T160 Can Am racecar. We ran
into more Pantera people while looking for Todd. Bob Lucas, of PCNC, and
his friend Steve were also walking the pits looking for Todd. Bob's
Pantera had blown a radiator hose on Thursday while being prepared for the race
weekend drive. It was not yet up and running, so Steve was driving his car
to this event. Bob was disappointed, especially since he had corral pass
for Saturday and Sunday! We met Mike Drew who had actually found Todd's
pit. We were directed there and finally found Todd. At the pit area,
we found PCNC member Bob Benson working as part of Todd's pit crew.
While standing and watch the race preparations, Connie and Darrel Johnson,
of PCNC, joined us. It's nice to see the support that the Pantera
community has for its members. Including ourselves, we had 17 Pantera
folks at the races.
PCNC member Todd Glyer in his "new" Lola T160 Can Am
car
We headed for the grand stands to watch some of the racing. We saw
both Carl and Todd do their practice laps. Then it was time to head for
the gift shop for a book signing. Wally Wyss was there to sign his now
book about Carroll Shelby. Jim has "deTomaso, The Man and the
Machine", by Mr. Wyss, so he brought it to be signed. Jim also bought
a copy of Mr. Wyss's book,"deTomaso Pantera", and had it signed.
Quite a score for Jim! Mr. Wyss only had four copies of the Pantera book
at this signing session. We know that Connie and Merry got two of the
copies. I don't know who was lucky number four.
We then got a light lunch, sharing a taco plate, then went
back to the Corral for a bit before going to the Wine Tent. Our event
tickets got us into the tent. We were given wine and food tickets and
souvenir wine glasses. We were a bit late going to the wine tent and as a
result missed most of the food. The organizers grossly under estimated how
much race fans can eat. What items we did taste; spiced nuts, cheese,
bread and foie gras were all good. There was no shortage of wine. We
were able to taste several wines that were new to us. We enjoyed them
all.
After that, it was time to head back to the coral to watch
some more racing, from the comfort of our lawn chairs. I did some
crocheting and Diane was reading a book for her book club. The guys were
talking cars with each other and with people who stopped by the corral to view
the Shelby's, Tigers, Cobras, Ford-GT's and deTomaso's.
The word at the track says that this is the last year
for our parking on the grass area at turn 11.
A building is scheduled to be put in this area by next
year. :-(
We were invited to join some of the PCNC members for
dinner. It was a joint celebration for Todd's first race and Steve
Dalcino's 60th birthday. We drove over to Novato to Las
Gurtarras. It is a very nice local Mexican/Seafood restaurant.
Everyone enjoyed their margaritas and wine and great food. I was
unfortunately not feeling very well. I ordered only soup and when it
came that was more than my stomach could handle. I think that I got
too much sun and got dehydrated. Guess the sunny, cool, and windy
weather fooled me and I didn't keep my fluid level high enough. So we were
forced to leave the gathering early. We are sure the party went on much
later into the evening. I took a couple of Advil PMs with a glass of
water and went to bed as soon as we got home. The good news, I woke
up the next morning feeling just fine. So other than getting ill at
the end of the day, it was yet another good outing of Pantera related fun.
My First Concours
2007 Shriners Hospital Concours
d'Elegance,
Sunday June 3, 2007
by V. Lamar Fairchild
Early Sunday morning on June 3rd, I set out from
Placerville heading for Mather Field at Rancho Cordova and the
2007 Shriners Hospital Concours d'Elegance. Having never entered a
Concours, I was a little nervous about the name and what kind of car show I
would find. My nervousness was tempered by the knowledge of my "Best
Paint" award at the Annual Old Hangtown Car Show the previous Sunday. One
of my good buddies, Spencer Johnson of Waldport, Oregon, spent two years doing
my look-alike Group IV '72 Pantera in Emerald Fire yellow. The "Mistress,"
as she is affectionately called by my wife, Toni, is powered by a bored and
stroked 427 Windsor called the "Hammer" built by PI Motorsports in Orange, CA.
After a 40-minute cruise, I ended up at the Mather Field Air Base as the
first car in line. To my pleasant surprise, I was escorted and parked on
the green lawn of a beautifully groomed park. During the course of the 85
degree day, the trees provided unaccustomed car show-shade. After getting
my free doggie bag of assorted junk and coffee and donuts, I took a tour of the
arriving cars. What an assortment! Cars I'd never seen before and lots of
older husband/wife teams dressed in appropriate era garb. As much of
a surprise also was the crowd that started filtering into the venue. Most
were well dressed, probably reflecting the $10 entry fee to benefit Shriner
Hospitals. In fact, one well-dressed Realtor was so taken by the
"Mistress," I guess he figured I could afford a 4.6 million estate with a 26 car
garage he was brokering. I declined his offer of a guided
tour!
Now it was time for judging. A three-person
team dressed alike in camel pants and blue blazers introduced themselves.
They were very friendly, asked a lot of questions, and put my Lady, the
"Mistress," under close scrutiny. Later, one of the judges came back to
give me some specific areas for improvement. They included detailing the
battery box, replacing the black plastic tubing for the new driving light wires
and also the original tool kit pouch under the hood. He was very friendly
and informative about what the SCCA judges look for in judging. He even
offered to get me an invitation to the Serrano Concours in October.
Later that afternoon, I came back from one of my
trips to see the other cars and found a card on my windshield telling me the
"Mistress" was an award winner. The instructions were to wait by the
car. Soon, I was directed to drive her to the staging area. The
really fun part was pulling up to the announcement stand as my car was
introduced as the 2nd place winner in Class E for exotics. I was handed an
engraved solid silver platter amid applause and pictures. What a trip for my
first concours! Now,... what will I do with a
silver platter? If might look good with cheese & crackers.
NEXT MONTHS
REPORTS:
Reno-Tahoe Panteras Fun
Rally, June 6-10th.
Arnold Car Show, June 16th
EuroSunday & Thunder Valley Brunch Run, June
24th.
Meeting Notes
- June 12, 2007
The weather was perfect, but we didn't
have better attendance at the Capitol Pantera monthly meeting.
Club cars included two Panteras, a DeLorean, a Cobra, a Ferrari and
the Bricklin. Members present were: Jeff Budelli, Tom &
Kathy Vona, John Worsley, Jim & Emilia Seiferling, Ken Montgomery, John
McNamee, Dennis Gacutan, Henry Kirk, George Potiris. Duane Harlan
Came briefly, but didn't stay due to illness. He just wanted to touch base
on the Arnold car show, on June 16.
There was a raffle since we
were not missing our Treasurer, John McNamee. John brought the
raffle tickets and the raffle prize, a $20 gift card for Kragen's.
Even with the low turn out, we made money on the raffle. Ken won the
raffle. John also reported that the Club would still be solvent
even after all outstanding bills are paid.
Treasurer John will be sending the $100
donation to the Towe Auto Museum to make the Capitol Panteras official
members. Mike Haney is working on the Club banner. He got the
graphics from John M. and is progressing with the project. We have asked
Mike if he could please do two banners, one for display at the Towe and one for
use at Club events. Thank you Mike. Some members also thought they
would like one of their own.
Jim & I were in error at the
meeting. John M. had indeed sent the article and photo to us. We
both missed it in the inbox! We found it when we rechecked last
night. So enjoy the fuzzy good feeling from our Club's good deed while you
read John's article in this month's newsletter.
Duane Harlan couldn't stay for the
meeting, but we remind members about the Arnold Car Show. The show is on
Saturday,
June 16. It starts at 11 AM. It seems that you need to sign
up early to get the better parking assignments. There could be a free car
wash waiting for you in Arnold and maybe a barbeque for the entrants. If
you want to attend and missed the CP meeting, contact Jim or
Duane.
Reminder: EuroSunday on June
24. Gather there and proceed to brunch at Thunder Valley. If you
aren't going to EuroSunday, you can meet us at the casino at 11:30 AM.
John W. is in charge of arranging the parking at Thunder Valley. Remember
some of us can get the senior discount!
John M. announced that he needs several cars for a
display on Saturday evening, July 28. It is in connection with a
Sacramento Capitol's tennis match. It will be in Roseville at the
Galleria. There is free food and free tennis involved with this event. Jim
and I are planning to attend. If you think that you can be part of the
display, please let John know. Hopefully, this event will not go the way
of Derby Days.
After the
meeting ended there was some discussion at one end of the table about borrowing
an idea from PCNC. They had done a "garage tour" to visit members who were
missing in action. They are contacted in advance, asked if it is ok to
come over and visit them and their car and then proceed to the
next garage. The group visits several garages, enjoys the renewed
friendships, the drive and ends up somewhere different for lunch. This
sounds like it could be fun. All we need is a member of "long standing" to
do the calling. We didn't think a new kid should be calling; better a
familiar voice on the phone. Any volunteers?
Wanted: Articles for CP Newsletter
If you have attended a car function of any
type, please write about your car adventures and send it to jes@riverdeltawireless.com to be
included in the next Capitol Pantera newsletter. If
newsletter articles are not received, then it will be more of Jim &
Emilia's automotive adventures or "The Motoring Mouth".
2007 EVENTS
CALENDAR
June
16 Car Show in Arnold,
Ca., Chairman Duane Harlan
June
24 EuroSunday, Sacramento @ The
Pavilions
June 24
Thunder Valley Brunch 11:30 am. Meet at Euro Sunday
July 10
Capitol Panteras meeting at Mimi's
July
22 EuroSunday,
Sacramento @ The Pavilions
July
28 Sacramento
Capitols Display, Chairman - John M.
Aug
5 Festa
Italiana Car Display on Sunday - Chairman, Jeff Bundelli
Aug 14 Capitol
Panteras meeting at Mimi's
Aug
26 EuroSunday, Sacramento @ The
Pavilions
Aug 31 Sept 2 SCCA Regional #7 & #8 -
Infineon raceway. (see note below)
Sept
7-9 Shelby Club, Mini Nats XXIV,
Infineon
Sept. 8 Bodega
Bay Drive, Chairman Tom
Sept 11
Capitol Panteras meeting at Mimi's
Sept
23 EuroSunday, in El Dorado
Hills
Sept 23 Joint Brunch with
Reno - Tahoe Panteras
Oct 7 Italian
Car Show , Alameda. A benefit for Special Olympics. No entry fee for
exhibitors.
Oct
7 Serano
Concours, Sacramento
Oct 9 Capitol
Panteras meeting at Mimi's
Oct
13 17th Annual Car Show, Rio Vista -
Chairman, Jim ( lunch at Foster's Big Horn)
Oct 20-21 Fall Classic, open
track at Thunderhill. Shelby Club.
Oct
28 EuroSunday,
Sacramento @ The Pavilions
Nov 13 Capitol
Panteras meeting at Mimi's
Nov
25 EuroSunday, Sacramento @
The Pavilions
Dec. ? Capitol
Panteras Christmas Party
Note:
The CSRG events are listed because CP member Rick Carlile will
be racing his vintage TVR Vixen in that series. His car is currently
undergoing a total restoration and he hopes to have it ready for the Oct.
event. That is the car featured in the May 2007 newsletter tech
session story.
Try to attend and cheer our racers on! Also note that
both groups will be racing at Thunderhill and Laguna Seca. For the
complete schedules see the CSRG at
http://www.csrgracing.org/index.html and
Suggestions for other activities
in 2007 that are being
planned include;
Great Pantera back road getting there through
the Montezuma Hills!!
Please keep us informed of other dates and
activities.
Jim & Emilia
Seiferling
Panteras #1575 &
#7114
