This year I really had a real scheduling conflict. Saturday of Monterey week was usually when I went to Concorso, and I had bought a ticket to attend, but I was planning on spending some time with Steve Hill shuttling a couple of Ferraris to the lawn for the Casa Ferrari event. Casa Ferrari is an area on the entrance to Pebble Beach that Ferrari has taken over to display customer’s cars and new cars in their current line up. It’s a free display with a very impressive collection of cars, but also with an special admittance section for all day food and drink. Last year I was able to pop into Concorso, and still make it over to Pebble Beach on Saturday to drive the cars onto the lawn. This year, they wanted us to be ready with the cars a little earlier, and I just couldn’t be at two places at the same time, so I had to scrap Concorso plans!

I love going to Concorso, but the choice to see Concorso or a chance to drive a LWB Alloy bodied Cal Spyder was probably an easy one to make!

Steve had two cars to bring to the Casa Ferrari event, and his ride was a 1959 TR, so I got the keys to the Cal Spyder.

We met a couple of young Ferrari enthusiasts at the staging for the drive onto Pebble Beach, so we offered shotgun seating to the two brothers. Jack rode with Steve and Blake rode with me in the Cal Spyder.

Blake and I were having a glorious drive along 17 mile drive in the middle of all the Ferraris heading to Casa Ferrari for our entrance when something fell out from under the car and started dragging on the ground. I was mortified with all the people watching on the side of the road when our 18 million dollar car drove by dragging part of its exhaust pipe! I had to decide if it was worth me pulling over to check what was dragging, or just push through the mile or so we had left to get to Casa Ferrari! I soon decided it was too risky to keep driving and pulled over into someone’s driveway. What I found was the rear pipe section had broken clean off the muffler flange. There was nothing to slip the pipe back onto to hang the pipe back into place. I didn’t have tools, or anything to tie it up. The only thing I found in my bag was a lanyard from RM Auctions to tie the pipe high enough off the ground to stop it from dragging.

With my emergency fix installed, we quickly fired the Cal Spyder up and caught up with the rest of the group! I couldn’t believe my luck, first the bad luck, then the good luck!

You really get a sense of how this disaster was averted in the video. Looking back, I made the right decision as the fallen pipe was pointing in the direction of travel, so if it caught on a manhole cover, or driveway curb, it could have catapulted the car, ripped off the back of the car, or punched a hole in a gas tank! Any of these scenarios would have been bad, so I’m glad there was a happy ending to the story!