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The Birdcage Maseratis
Ten years with a stable of Tipo 61 vintage racersDecember 16, 2011: During the 9 years and change that I worked at the Corte Madera location of Phil Reilly & Co, I had the pleasure of working on four different Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcages. The two cars in today’s lead image were major players in the success of the model, racing with Team Camoradi…
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Jay Eitel’s 1937 Ford Hot Rod
A Jewel that was Seventy Years in the MakingAugust 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…
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Three Bugattis and a Peugeot
Two Type 57s, a Type 50, and a Nardi PeugeotSeptember 20, 2013: 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 cars were included in…
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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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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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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…
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The Talbot Lago Makes it to Pebble Beach
Overcoming challenges to finish the T26 engineI started working on this project back in 2016 in Colorado, the start of a long and circuitous path. In a previous post, I explained some of the issues that helped make it a five year engine build… One of the few upsides of a worldwide pandemic is that some events get postponed, which gives…