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A Trio of Alfa Romeo Straight Eights
Preserving pre-war supercars for future generations of enthusiastsJune 24, 2008: 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 we see the 8C 2900B…
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Too Damn Hot
A Maserati A6 GCS in the California HeatIt 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 Alfa Romeo TZ2 Restoration
Two years in the life of a team of craftsmenAugust 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…
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Two Hispanos, a Bugatti and a U-16 Miller Walk into a Bar…
The Setup for a Bad Joke, or Another Day in Paradise?May 25, 2012: A typical day at Phil Reilly & Co, on Paradise Drive in Corte Madera, California. The variety of projects under way at any given point in time was remarkable, with this snapshot in time featuring four pre-war powerplants and a hint of the future in the back, the roll hoops of two…
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A Busy March in Norcal
Pre-war Alfa Brakes to BMW M12/14 TurbosIt is a beautiful sunny spring day outside here in northern California, and I need to get out there. So far in 2024, I’ve worked in the shop five days a week and been chained to the computer most weekends. Here’s a few images from the past couple of months… The Alfa Romeo 2500 SS…
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A Post-war Jaguar, a Brass-era Isotta-Fraschini and a Pre-war Bugatti
June 2, 2010: Man, what a place to work. I remember when I first got the job, I couldn’t really get my head around the way that the guys working there were used to it. The types of cars that came in and out, day after day, they were like rock stars. Top level celebs.…
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Bugatti Blocks Balderdash!
Concealing a Row of Hardware for Art's SakeEttore Bugatti came from a family of artists, though he was not himself formally trained as one. He apprenticed at a bicycle manufacturer and began making cars without any engineering education. There are many remarkable artistic details that resulted from this unconventional origin story. One example of Bugatti’s eye for detail are the lovely polished…
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Welcome to One Day in the Shop
A new and recurring post topic: What was going on in the shop that day?Here’s the concept: I pick an image from the archive. It will be an image of some cars that were in the shop at Phil Reilly & Co between 2005-2015, hopefully some interesting cars, and I will write about what was there, that one day in the shop. For readers that are new to travelingwithtools.com,…
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New Parts for Old Bugattis
About ten years ago, while working at Reilly’s old shop in Corte Madera, I had my hands in a particularly interesting 1930 Bugatti Type 35B. This post started off as an attempt to craft a recurring theme along the lines of “On this Day in History”, but I haven’t quite sorted out the format yet.…
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A Ferrari 166 Under the Knife
From a basket of parts to a million Euro auction in MonacoFerraris seem to be all the rage lately, what with the recent film generating headlines. I haven’t seen it yet and probably won’t for some time, as movies about cars and racing have almost always been a vast disappointment. What a letdown “Rush” was, after all the hype. The racing scenes were just as bad…