Colorado Grand

[Chris Pomares]

The week long Colorado Grand ended today. About a third of the cars parked in Lionshead for us to look at.
The beer league Vail Car Week started today with a lunch run to Steamboat Springs. Cars and Coffee tomorrow then a Beer League car show in the same place where the Colorado Grand cars were shown.

[Chris Pomares]

Beer League cars including mine.

[Chris Pomares]

Cover of Vail Daily

[Chris Pomares]

The trip back to my shop in Golden went from Vail, to Minturn, up to Leadville, 10,000 feet, down to Copper Mountain, through Frisco, around the south side of the lake, through Keystone, up and over Loveland Pass, 10,000 feet, and down to Golden. The fall color was just starting to turn. Depending how cold it gets at night it should be really nice in the next one or two weeks.
The picture is from 2015. I'll pick a day to do another fun run up there when the color peaks.

[J.Lush]

Great pics Chris - thanks for posting. That looks like a wonderful event and at the perfect time of year! So for the uninitiated what is the "beer league"? Is this a staged rally or??

Cheers,

John

[Chris Pomares]

Tongue and cheek. Any car worth less than a million dollars. The Colorado Grand is a tour of mostly hyper expensive collector level pre 60's cars. They used to show them all after a week of driving in the Colorado mountains. Only a handful stay these days. The event I brought my car to followed right after with a slight overlap. The beer league is mostly newer Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari, BMW, Lotus, Mustang, Mclaren, etc. Usually I have the oldest car in the run to Steamboat. Since most of the roads are very tight curvey roads I can run with them. If they where long strait roads they could leave me behind very quickly. That being said Dean Polopolus and Richard Clewett got my car up to 140 at sea level. I had a longer ZD fifth then. Now a ZA. I've gone to 125 for a couple minutes once here in Colorado. It's a tuna can. My car is a 30 to 90 mph canyon/mountain pass car. That's where it shines.
Anyways it was a fun weekend.

[J.Lush]

Gotcha. Sounds like great fun. I met a cool couple on the Silver Summit Rally this past May that are big in to old British iron and other eclectic stuff. She's from Boulder and I think he's from Carbondale. Great story about piloting an older friend's pre-war Bentley 8 Liter at speed in the Grand. My '70E has a ZD fifth. Nice to have those long legs on an extended trip but takes a bit of getting used to. More like a 4-speed with overdrive than a 5-speed. Anyway, thanks again for the pics.

[Chris Pomares]

V, ZD 4th and 5th where nice in my car at sea level. At 8 to 14,000 feet just a bit too long legged. Now U, ZA. NA cars loose 3% for every 1000 feet of elevation. At 14,000 feet Pikes Peak takes a 42% chunk of power out of the NA cars. Road trips to Cali are a little buzzy. 3750 instead of 32-3300. I'll head to High Plains Raceway this weekend for Porsche's race here in Colorado.