Star Road

Every weekend there are “cars and coffee” meetups held all over the world. Getting together on a Saturday or Sunday morning with your friends to sip coffee and talk cars has become a staple of modern car communities, with many clubs organizing monthly meets. In major population centers, chances are you can find a car meet every single weekend. But what about a meet that only happens once a year?

Nestled near the foothills of Palo Alto, California, is Ford’s Greenfield Labs. Silicon Valley is a hotbed for automotive research centers like these: Ford, Nissan, Tesla, Toyota, and VW all have engineering centers in the area, just to name a few. Every once in a while, Ford opens their doors and invites the public to show off their cars and check out Greenfield Labs.

I’d heard rumors about the parking lot for this meet being so jam-packed that cars were curated at the gate, with “lesser” vehicles being turned away to park in neighboring parking lots. I arrived at about 8:15 and decided to have a go at the main lot, which turned out to have plenty of space. Being out of production for five years now, I think the first generation 86/BRZ is finally starting to acquire some street cred, especially clean and stock examples like mine.

As you would expect from a Ford meet, there were a ton of Mustangs out there. The middle generations weren’t very well represented, but the first, fifth, and sixth generations seemed extremely popular.

Whoa, here is a rare car. This is my first time seeing a Rossion Q1, a Floridian supercar based on a Noble M400 after Rossion Automotive purchased Mosler Automotive (who made the M400). Like the Noble, it has a 3.0L turbocharged Ford V6 engine mated to a 6 speed manual gearbox.

Oh hey, another World Rally Blue Subaru! It was great to see all the variety at this meet.

Right next to the tuner specials you could find things like this ’34 Ford Tudor boomer special, coming straight out of the 1990’s with big flames, a chopped top, and Cragar wheels. Check out the custom car pillow too!

In a great coincidence, I actually parked right across the aisle from my friend Lee and his Caterham Seven.

His car actually has a windshield, but you need all the PPE when driving a car with no roof or doors.

Sevens are so simple yet aggressive. I love how this example has the beefy air filter poking out of the hood, hinting at what’s inside.

I also saw my friend Jon there in his taxi-spec beige S124 wagon.

Over time, the ubiquitous old daily drivers have slowly disappeared off the face of the earth. People originally only wanted to save the “cooler” two-door and hardtop variants of cars, leaving sedans and wagons as the rarest remaining body styles. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a 1963 Mercury Meteor wagon like this.

This lovely modded ND Miata on TE37’s stood out to me. It’s amazing how much a proper stance, which includes wheels and tires, can do for a car.

This gorgeous little car is a Fiat 850 Spider, which I don’t recall ever seeing before.

This patina’d Abarth-branded steering wheel looked like a survivor from the 60’s.

This Land Rover Defender looked pretty serious, with big tires and the supporting mods to match.

Parked right next to it was this similarly beefy looking Isuzu Vehicross. Apparently these funky things are actually pretty capable.

One of my favorite cars was this low 912.

It was beautifully restored and the color combination was just perfect. I love the vent windows of the early 911’s; they are surprisingly effective.

A very simple and clean E46. This design has aged well, hasn’t it?

I hadn’t really noticed until now that the GR86 headlight shape is very similar to that of the S2000.

Geoff brought his imported Elan. I love how huge the parking space looks with the tiny Lotus parked in it.

It’s a comically small car. I’ve always enjoyed the concept of piloting tiny vehicles, so I think it’s extremely cool.

This BMW 1602 was so clean with the OEM bumper removed and a Kooglewerks (I believe) aluminum air dam. I wish I had taken a photo of the interior too. Here we can see Slonie doing the classic down-on-a-knee tire inspection, scoping out the size of the super cool Pirelli CN36’s.

In contrast to the wildly color-changing Midnight Purple II on the R34 GT-R, the original Midnight Purple on an R33 GT-R is very subdued. It’s generally a fairly dark color but it really pops in the sun.

I’ve seen this RB-swapped S13 a few times over the years. I dig this style of 240SX but it doesn’t seem to be very popular in the Bay Area.

The 458 Speciale is one of the great supercars of all time, and it was interesting to see this one with a unique white on blue color scheme. Also interesting to see the size comparison next to Godzilla, the chonky R35 GT-R.

In the McLaren corner we had some excellent representation of the blue/green side of the spectrum. One of McLaren’s strengths has always been their excellent palette of color choices. It seems like everyone’s McLaren is a different super-cool hue.

Two very different takes on the V8 coupe between the Hellcat and the LC500. Also, look how huge the Challenger is compared to the E34 BMW.

Quite the hood bulge on these GTV-6’s. It looks like someone’s home garage addition but nope, they came like that from the factory.

I love Daytona Blue, which reminds me of similar shades used on the Mustang, Miata, and GR86.

Right behind it was this tasteful GR Corolla.

I found this “double 7” juxtaposition humorous, with a huge Ford 7-Litre next to a tiny Caterham Seven.

This is a 1966 Ford 7-Litre, which was a one-year-only model based off the Ford Galaxie to showcase their then-new 428 cubic inch, or 7.0 liter, V8 engine.

This one had the manual transmission, which was actually the much rarer option: most of them were automatic. Check out the column-mounted Shelby tachometer.

This is a Caterham Seven, specifically a 620R. This is the “pinnacle of the Seven lineup” (according to Caterham) and sports 310bhp from a supercharged 2.0L Ford four-cylinder. Since it weighs “half a ton” (really more like 1200lbs), the 620 is supposed to mean it has 620 horsepower per ton.

Apparently the 620R is only available in right hand drive due to the supercharger equipment blocking where the steering column would go on a left hand drive car.

You don’t see a De Tomaso Longchamp very often. The subtle surfacing on this car is very elegant and shows off this awesome green paint very well.

Out front was the main “exhibit”. At the front of the pack they had this Ford GT being towed…

…by this Raptor.

The GT was open, so you could peek inside the amazing interior.

Then they had a collection of all the other GT’s. First was the incredibly sleek modern road-going version.

Behind that they had the 2005 revival, as well as an original GT.

Imagine going 200 mph through the French countryside in one of these!

I thought these were beautiful when they came out, and they’ve really stood the test of time.

I was pretty excited to see inside their design studio, because photos I’d seen of the past showed all kinds of super rare and special cars in here. Right inside the building was this Bronco Heritage Edition. Neat, but nothing you can’t see down at the dealership.

Around the corner was the main room, and these three vehicles: Mustang GT500, Ranger Raptor, and F150 Raptor R. Keeping the dealership vibe, they all had windows down and doors unlocked, so people got to sit in them and make vroom noises. Not the worst things to see in here, but I was hoping for something a bit more special.

I went back into the lot for one more glance to see if anything else had shown up, and I noticed this McLaren 675LT. I checked the VIN tag and confirmed: I shot this car when it was brand new!

I was the Inventory Manager at this McLaren store, so one of the many things I did was take photos of every car we received, even the sold orders. Here was #208 when it was brand new, with the OEM Pirelli Trofeo R tires. These fat and lovely tires are hard to use on the street and only 60 treadwear, so it’s not surprising the current owner has switched to the normal Pirelli P Zero.

And keeping the orange theme, I also noticed these two Sebring Orange Corvettes keeping their distance a bit. This is a spectacular color but really hard to photograph because of how bright it is.

After this, we cruised out to Woodside for a lovely lunch with friends. Did I have a chorizo burrito with white wine? Of course I did, it’s Northern California. It was a great morning of catching up with old friends and checking out something new. See you next year!