Category: Cars
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One Day in the Shop… August 25, 2009
A brief look at one of the more unique cars ever to come through the driveway at Phil Reilly & Co, on the day that Jay Eitel brought his Ford hot rod by for the crew to ogle. Jay was an engineer and inventor, best known for creating the cherry picker, those trucks with a…
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A Bugatti Cylinder Block Repair
Working With Iron and a Cautionary Tale Several years ago, I went through a Type 40 Bugatti engine that had had a hard life. Its recent days hadn’t been made any easier by the chap that took it apart, using a dead blow hammer to break free the joint between the cylinder block and the…
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One Day in the Shop: September 20, 2013
Three Big Bugattis and a Little Peugeot Every day at Phil Reilly & Co was something special, some days more so than others. This day was probably just another average one, though a search of the archive contains over 600 photos from that month in 2013, so it could go either way. Two of these…
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One Day in the Shop: a Trio of Alfa Romeo Straight Eights
The shop on Paradise Drive was one of the few places in America where you might find more than one pre-war Alfa Romeo supercar on the same day. Phil Reilly & Co was a specialist in the cars Vittorio Janos designed for Alfa and in today’s image from June 24, 2008, we see the 8C…
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The Old Volvo Chronicles: Origin Stories and Reckless Evading
My evolution as a car guy has taken some twists and turns over the last forty years. I went from being an uninterested teen, to an enthusiastic amateur, to a sometimes racer and then a grizzled old vintage racing mechanic. In the lead image above, I’m sitting in car number 18, on pole position for…
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One Day in the Shop: Too Damn Hot.
It is murderously hot here in the Sacramento river valley. This is all I have for you today, a little bit of Maserati content. Stay cool, friends.
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The Old Volvo Chronicles: Coast to Coast in ’89
I was in Detroit from the Fall of 1987 to Spring of 1989, a student at the Center for Creative Studies. I had decided on a college path I think when I was 16 or so, and I had to work hard to generate an art portfolio that could impress the admissions staff at CCS.…
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One Day in the Shop: June 17, 2009
Today’s image, a Cisitalia D46 in front of an Alfa TZ2, with tons of talent all around. This image features a large chunk of the top talent that was in place on Paradise Drive in 2009, and strikes me as appropriate timing, because I’m currently finishing up some work on an Abarth… a car from…
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The Old Volvo Chronicles: Coast Road
Coast Road, between Bixby Bridge on California Highway One and Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur. Google says that it is 10.1 miles of dirt, but in 1991, there were only paper maps and cell phones were practically still science fiction. Kennedy and I were out for a night run in my ‘71 Volvo.…
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One Day in the Shop… August 12, 2009
The Alfa Romeo TZ2 restoration was finished on this day, a few days after my 40th birthday. This team portrait includes, from left to right, Tom Smith, Ivan Zaremba, me, Chuck Mathewson and Rolly Boorman. Others worked to complete this project too; I think Phil Reilly & Co had around 12 or 13 employees at…
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