mario laguna
It goes without saying that 2017 was the year of Ferrari's 70th anniversary, since the festivities to celebrate it are still fresh in everyone's memory. 2018 opens on celebrations horizon for another brand entering its XNUMXth year, Maranello's rival Porsche.
From February 7 to 11, 2018, Rétromobile unveiled the official Porsche anniversary logo by blowing out the 70 candles on his birthday cake. A cake that will arrive full of incentives for the followers of the brand. The starting gun was given in Rétromobile by a 356 pre-A and a 959 on loan from the Stuttgart Museum, accompanied by a good selection of 911s.
YEAR OF ANNIVERSARIES
Porsche is not the only brand to reach a venerable age this year, as 120 years of Renault, equally 70 years of Honda, remind us. of the famous Citroën 2CV and his brother 203, as well as the youngest Méhari and 504, who are turning 50. It seems that it was yesterday when we saw the first Méhari arrive on the beaches of Benidorm with their plastic painted green or orange, yellow headlights and black license plates and now half a century has passed.
SOME FIGURES FROM RETROMOBILE PARIS
The hundred thousand visitors (in round numbers) who rush to disembark at the exhibition park at the Porte de Versailles quickly part with 20 euros to enter the room and pay another 2 euros at the locker to leave their coat, to which are added 3 more to deposit a suitcase or backpack. Everyone considers the 25 euros well spent when facing the marathon that represents traveling 68.000 square meters of exhibitions full of incentives even in its small corners, in a single 9-hour day (XNUMX on Wednesday and Friday).
If parking is expensive when it is billed by the hour and not for the full day as is the case in other salons, the full official program, such as a small magazine, is free, while some Rétromobile rivals bill it between five and ten euros.
SOMETHING YOU DON'T LIKE
It would be easier to tell what you dislike in Rétromobile, since what you like is almost everything. What displeases is precisely its great popular success, with a overcrowding in the corridors that resembles a human anthill. In some positions it is difficult to advance side by side, turning around is a laborious task, let alone taking pictures without impediments in front of the lens. Sometimes you have to be patient for more than ten minutes to get a clearing and get a whole car out.
As for the attractions, the tanks are over with its noises and huge emissions of black smoke on the outside and occupying a large exhibition area inside that could be dedicated to cars and not tanks. After all, Rétromobile is a show for cars, not for military trucks and tanks. However, the public enthusiastically applauded the comings and goings of the tanks on the main access road to the room, so it is foreseeable that such parades will consolidate over time.
I am not against, much less, parades and exhibitions of military vehicles, but when they are held in an appropriate place, with the necessary extensions of land to observe their evolution and without suffocating with smoke.
ENCOURAGING
Focusing on the incentives, we necessarily have to summarize and highlight the main thing or that which due to its peculiarity is rarer to admire on other occasions, since it would be difficult to account for the 500 cars exposed by about 550 merchants in different specialties, a prominent section on modeling, a large art gallery grouping painters, photographers, sculptors and antique dealers in collectibles and automobilia, clothing and accessories, not to mention the booksellers with the latest published news as well as with books and magazines from the past.
A separate chapter is made up of the official representations of the major French brands, Renault, Citroën, Peugeot, as well as the auction of Artcurial, in the own room, or those of RM Sotheby's and Bonhams in other places of the capital. Those who want to see it all in one day are great optimists.
AN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Internationally renowned merchants strive to bring a selection of their best merchandise to Paris. HK-Engineering, Movendi, Fiskens, Axel Schuette, JD Classics, to name a few, were present. Our national flagship, Pueche, with a Bugatti, a Hispano-Suiza, a Peugeot from 1928 and a very celebrated Renault with one of the first Tarragona license plates was not missing either. We will mention that Francis Puche He is one of the deans of Europe in the specialty, celebrating 50 years in the profession, which will soon be recognized in a tribute that is planned to pay him.
Ferrari Beverly Hills first came to Rétromobile with an impressive archive of Ferrari production and documentation files, as well as the famous 365 GTB Daytona covered in grime that was sold at auction last year for a staggering 1.800.000 euros. Some owners of old cars may be thinking of never cleaning their cars and possibly leaving them in a chicken coop for a while. It could be that they are revalued in proportion to the accumulated dirt.
LET'S GO TO THE GRAIN
As my grandmother used to say, yep, she was a very practical woman, let's get to the point that the chaff is blown away.
What was not carried the air in Rétromobile, among other things, was the following:
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Twelve Ferraris together in a few meters, including no less than nine 250 GT SWB, with the SEFAC NART of the brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodríquez.
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El Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gull Wing from Paul Newman, who could overshadow, at least in lightness and maneuverability, Robert Redford's Porsche 904.
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The official presentation of the recreation of the Jaguar-D, newly manufactured with absolutely no parts from the fifties, although it seems otherwise. Those who buy it, in addition to a check for more than one million euros, have their merit, being a car without the possibility of homologation and excluded from all use on roads open to traffic.
Starting the engine without moving a wheel in the garage and sporadic outings on the track, necessarily carried in a truck protected from the elements, should be compensations reserved only for the 25 new owners, since production will be limited to that number. Those who think that the car is expensive forget that an original can be worth more than twelve million euros, therefore it is almost a bargain.
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The omnipresence of Renault, with his first car built after the prototype (which has not survived), ancestors of the early twentieth century, as well as an extraordinary quartet of Alpines Le Mans, including the winner of the XXIV Hours of 1978.
RARITIES IN RETROMOBILE
In the chapter of little-seen cars, deserve special mention:
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a SIMCA 8 "Blue Bird" from 1947, unique specimen,
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a Citroën 2CV of the experimental ones that were used before starting chain production,
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a front-wheel drive TRACTA, which took part in the 1928 hours of Le Mans in 1, presented by an elegant young lady who we want to congratulate especially at the time when the withdrawal of young ladies from the starting grids of the Formula XNUMX Grand Prix becomes controversial. .
