The Race Is On!

From July 15-18, you would’ve found Concours stationed happily at Road America in Elkhart Lake. This time, it was for the Kohler International Challenge, an annual event featuring vintage motor sports car races. It’s noted as Road America’s signature event, “a blend of art-on-wheels and great competition between everything from cult favorites to priceless limited production models,” as the brochure states.

Bill Wuesthoff mentions that there were around 450 entries this year, making for lots of good participation and good racing. Two of the featured events were the sports car Concours d’Elegance on Friday and the race car Concours d’Elegance on Saturday.

Our dealership provided a display of many new and Certified Pre-owned Porsche cars for the public to see. Also, the new 2010 Saab 9-3 convertible was there—Saab is officially back with new corporate ownership in place. “This gave additional exposure for these exciting products to a group of very discerning motor sports fans,” Bill says.

On hand to help man the display and communicate with interested parties was our own Chuck Kadonsky from our sales team. He was on deck most of the weekend, and he was joined by Chris Wuesthoff (Karl Wuesthoff’s son), Jerry Zimmerman and Michael Scaffidi (sales managers), and Jeff Sorenson (Porsche and Saab Service Manager).

Traffic flow was good all weekend long. If you were a part of that traffic, we’d love to hear about your experience and perhaps see your pictures and videos! You can view more of our pictures and video on our facebook page, www.facebook.com/concoursmotors.

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

Unusual doors keep opening here at Concours since starting the blog. Interesting stories from both past and present continue to pop up as we look for new and exciting topics. The most recent involves our owner, Karl Wuesthoff, and his latest racing adventure.

As you may already know, the Wuesthoffs have been very involved in the sport of racing for decades. Karl and Lee Wuesthoff both short course off-road for about 5-6 years (Lee continued for another 5 years on his own). They won many races and a number of class championships between the two of them. They also participated in Micky Thompson’s stadium racing series in the 80s, and raced the very last off-road race at Riverside in California, in which Lee finished 2nd in class 1 (unlimited buggies).

And just this past May, Karl participated in the first Vintage Baja 1000 down in Mexico! This event was coordinated by N.O.R.R.A., the same people who put on the original Baja 1000 as well as 4 or 5 subsequent events before SCORE took over. He had received a call from a long-time friend, off-road racer, and bank stock trader Chris Raffo from Chicago. Chris was looking for a driver to help pilot his SCORE class 3 1978 Chevy Blazer full race truck with full-time 4x4 and 550hp.

The race began in rally format in Mexicali near the US border. It involved long off-road stages up to 180 miles each and connecting transit stages that were 20-40 miles each, and it lasted 3 days! The first stop was the Bay of L.A. on the Sea of Cortez, followed by Loreto, and ending in La Paz. The racers slept under the stars in the Bay of L.A.; there were absolutely no hotels, but there was plenty of cold beer…

“The terrain was amazing,” Karl said, “from endless dry lake beds to 6 to 8-foot wide goat trails, up mountains with 1000-foot drops and no guard rail or real road, tricky rock crawling, deep sands, and tens of thousands of acres of dense Saguaro cactus forests!”

Karl was excited because the event was “a virtual who’s who of off-road racing.” Famous names included Parnelli Jones, Walker Evans, Rodd Hall, Bob Gorden (Robbie’s dad), Malcom Smith, and Bruce Meyers of Meyers Manx, the inventor of the dune buggy. (A little Concours trivia: Concours was a Manx dealer for a couple of years!)

Karl was able to swap stories and rub shoulders with many of the other participants, all of whom were total enthusiasts. “The comaraderie was awesome,” he said. Everyone helped everyone else, even teaming up to fix a flat for Parnelli when his jack broke. There was also a volunteer support crew of 6 people and 3 trucks to help keep vehicles fueled and to fix or “MacGyver” broken equipment.

In the end, Karl and Chris came in 25th overall out of over 100 entrants and won their class! So be sure to stop and say congratulations if you see Karl!

If you have any racing stories of your own, we’d love to hear them! Feel free to comment on the blog or visit our Facebook page!