Truth be told, attendance seemed down from last year, both in vendors and in attendees. However, enthusiasm is never down at this event. That is perhaps particularly true if you're a fan of one of the Swedish marques. This event represents one of the largest gatherings I know of for Volvo and Saab automobiles. Even within those marques, there is an eclectic blend of the old and the new. A Volvo PV444 next to a hot rod XC90. I am not sure what it is about Volvo station wagons that make them attractive to tuners, but they were out in force. How about a 2 stroke Saab 95 next to a Viggen 9-3 in that distinctive blue color. I am sure that those cars, along with the flock of Sonnets just got a lot more valuable since Saab is no more.

The French contingent is always out in force as well. If you want to compare a nice example of a Citroen SM with a CX with a DS and then with a GS, this would be the place to do it. Curious about how the 2CV evolved? View examples from the 1950s to the 1970s. Did you know that there is a thriving Renault Alliance community? Remember the Renault Fuego? Seen a Renault 4CV lately? How about a Renault 5 Turbo. Carlisle is the place to see them and to meet their owners and fans.

Unfortunately, the swap meet has been dwindling every year. It is now mostly vendors with a few private individuals sprinkled about. It is still very much worth a stroll through the aisles, but don't expect to find rare and hard-to-find parts spread upon a blanket. There are however, a fair number of parts cars stuck behind stalls and still on trailers off to the side. Prices were often reasonable and the good ones sold quickly. I bought a few books and returned to the car show.

Vintage Japanese automobiles are on the rise in terms of popularity, and the Toyota, Mazda,and Nissan/Datsun fans were there as evidence. I liked the white Mazda RX2, and the clean 1976 Toyota Corolla station wagon. Of course, the Datsun Z armada was present as well.

Fiat may have just returned to the US with new cars, but it never went away at Carlisle. Fiat 124s, 131s, and spiders shared space with the new Fiat 500. There was a lone Maserati Bora near to a De Tomaso Mangusta. Jumping from Italy to England, there was a large section of the showfield reserved for cars from the British Empire. Although I left early this year, I heard that there was a fleet of thirty something minis on their way to the show field. That must've been quite the sight on the nearby roads. Triumph always has a strong showing with spitfires and every version of TR you can imagine. I really liked the dark green Rover 3 litre with tan leather.

Perhaps because there are many other dedicated shows, the Carlisle import show tends not to be the strongest for the German contingent. The BMW 2002 crowd usually has a good presence and there were some nice Mercedes on hand including a beautiful 600 Pullman car. There is usually a small Porsche contingent, but this show is really a strong one for the Porsche replica crowd. No matter what your take is on replica/kit cars, some of these machines are very nicely done. There is similarly a decent VW contingent, it is dwarfed by any modest VW show. The exceptions for the German crowd are Opel, and Audi. This show brings out a stellar group of cars for these brands. It is always good to see examples of models I have recently covered, and there were several nice Opel Kadetts, an Audi 100, and a stunning DKW 1000. This was in addition to a group of Quattros and more modern Audis. It was also in addition to Opel Mantas, GTs, and a nice Ascona.

For $8, you would be hard pressed to find a more entertaining and informative vintage auto show.

The basic premise of the carburetor is that you mix up the fuel and the air in this contraption, and then send the mixture into the combustion chamber where it meets electricity and goes bang. Sort of like a twisted dating game for chemistry and physics...
"Hey Gasser, wanna get together? I know a cool roller coaster ride we could try"
"I'm always up for a ride with you Ariel. Let's go."
"Cool, we can meet Sparky afterward, he's a blast."
The trouble with carburetors is that they are relatively imprecise. They slurp fuel and gulp air. In fact, part of the appeal of the carburetor is that you can hear it slurping and gulping. It is a glorious sound, particularly if you have open bellmouths on Webers. The more you open the throttle, the more menacing the sound, as butterfly valves open and a more voracious appetite is unleashed. But I digress.

The BMW /2 (slash two) series of motorcycles generally do not have open bellmouth carburetors, or a menacing growl from the intake. But they do have carburetors. Bing Carburetors. Bing does not sound like a menacing beast, but it can be just that. The Bings on the /2 are slide carburetors, which use a combination of fuel at the right level in a chamber, and air utilizing the venturi effect to create the right mixture. In order to perform this magic trick, they use jets. Jets come in all shapes and sizes, but the best example is the needle valve that you use to pump up a basketball or soccer ball. It is hollow, and allows a gas or liquid to pass through it in a controlled fashion.

Bings, like other carburetors, have a variety of jets in them to handle idling speed, air, fuel, etc. On the one hand, it is amazing that these devices still work at all 50 years later. On the other hand, small passages in jets are susceptible to even the smallest debris or chemical buildup. People muck about with them to get better performance or to fix other problems. Most old /2s pulled out of a barn will run with the jets out of kilter, but not well. Which brings me to how I spent two entire days getting two /2s to run right.

The R50 did not idle well, while the R60 did not like the throttle open more than about halfway. I suspected carbs needed a good cleaning. I took them apart, and removed the floats and jets. The floats looked new. I left the jets to soak in a chemical bath, and made myself a rum and coke...or perhaps I have that reversed. Next day, I blew everything out with the compressor, and declared them ready for service. Installed back in the bikes, the R50 now had a steady idle. I used the Twinmaster to check the balance of the carbs and all seemed well. I took it for a ride and it seemed to be the soothest that I had ever known it to be, but that could be more in my head that in the bike. I returned victorious.

The R60 was not so easy. The jets looked just as good, the floats were sound, but the wide open throttle issue remained. I ran out of time and decided to order new jets. The very good news is that the Bing Agency exists and you can get most of the parts for these ancient Bing carbs. A few days later they arrive and it seems wrong to pay so much for such a small package, but I wanted this factor off the table. I installed the jets, and it was obvious once the bike started that the problem was solved. To look at them, I had removed perfectly good jets that seemed to pass air through their passages, but the reality is that the new ones have transformed the bike. I have not installed the new idle jets as there is no issue with idle on the R60. Methinks tonight I will raise a chalice to Bing, God of Fuel Delivery, and joust with those jets on the morrow...

The Fastback was, as the name implies, a two door type 3 which was the same as the notchback up front, but had a continuous slope from the roofline to the rear bumper. It looked both roomy and sporty. The car used the same body on frame setup of the other Type3s, and torsion bar suspension front and rear. It had a trunk front and rear, but they were rather shallow. Of course the engine was the same low profile air-cooled horizontally opposed 4 cylinder that served all of the Type 3 cars.IT used a 4 speed manual, although it was joined in the late sixties by an automatic. It appeared that VW had found another way to leverage the platform.

Although you have to put the performance into perspective for the time, the Fastback was not fast. It was light at around 1900 lbs, but it only had 44 bhp, and meandered from 0 to 60 in around 25 seconds. It had a top speed of about 80 mph. For what it was intended, a family car with more room than the Beetle, it was not bad. That was the premise of the TV commercial above featuring a young Dustin Hoffman. The car managed about 27 mpg, which was not great, but not bad either. It also had the same poor heating system that plagued the Beetle, so overall it was not the great successor that Europe had been eagerly awaiting.

In the US, the Beetle was still a very hot selling car, and Volkswagen, which was also facing capacity issues as it brought the new Emden plant online, delayed plans to import the Type 3. Many of the early cars that made there way to the US were gray market cars. In 1966, the Fastbacks arrived, and they did so into a market that seemed to be in love with the fastback concept. Mustangs, Corvettes, and Barracudas were all sporting fastback variations. It is fair to say that the VW was more Slowback than Fastback. In 1968 and 1969, three important upgrades were introduced, an automatic transmission, independent rear suspension, and Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection. This is considered to be the first use of fuel injection in a volume production vehicle. These changes were popular in the US. In 1970 the fastback got some modest revisions to the nose, and then stayed in production until 1973 when the Dasher was introduced.

To begin with, the parking lot is an interesting place. It is an area where a Vespa and a Vincent may be side by side, one rusty one concours-ready. It is where I saw a nice pair of Moto Guzzi Ambassadors, and a Ciccolo. A Wes Cooley replica Suzuki, and a WWII military Harley. All ridden to the event. Speaking of Harleys, the event is mostly centered around American brands like, Harley-Davidson, Indian, and Excelsior-Henderson, but there is plenty of other stuff as well. Nearby is the for sale corral, and there is always something in that area that you wish you could take home. I liked a Hodaka this time around. Elsewhere, I really liked a Victoria Bergmeister only recently featured in in this blog (see The Victoria Ventures)

Oley covers a fairly large area, so one of the other distinctive features is the variety of ways to get around that are used. Small motorcycles, mopeds, and scooters are mixed with large singles and singular oddities. I spied two Honda Trails welded together so that they formed a sort of motorcycle Catamaran. It had been carefully engineered with both clutches operated with the left-most handlebar, and both throttles with the right. Winters are often long and boring in the Northeast. Large men on mini-bikes, and trikes operated by a tiller are also popular.

There is more corrosion per square foot at Oley, than in most junk recycle yards, but in many cases it is attached to very valuable remaing metal. You do not want to judge prices here by the condition of the item. There is a dwindling supply of authentic vintage parts and they are highly valued in this marketplace. I have purchased entire running motorcycles (maybe even cars) for less than the price of a dented old headlight bucket that I saw. However, there were also good bargains to be had. A nice Honda CL175, a BMW R90/6, and more. 

The ultra-rare, the bargains, the eccentric, the crazy, the cool, the collectible. They are all gathered at the AMCA meet in Oley, PA every spring. 

Patient: Doc, it happened again.

Doctor: Relax on the couch and tell me all about it.

Patient: Well, first I had a few restless nights as the time got closer. I called a few of the group members for support like you told me, but they were just like me. Some were even worse.

Doctor: Did you try any of my other suggestions?

Patient: Yes Doc, I got up and wrote a list of the objects of my anxiety. Then I wrote down why they made me anxious. It didn't work, they all seem so, well....rational. Sensible. Necessary even.

Doctor: What about separating things into categories as I had suggested?

Patient: I tried that too, but there was so much to contemplate, and not enough plastic bins. I got analysis paralysis. And then I ran out of time as usual. It's hopeless.

Doctor: I see we have much more work to do in that area. Tell me about right before the event.

Patient: A group of us began emailing and calling each other so that we could support each other. We thought we would leave very early and travel to the site of the incident. We would confront it head on, together.

Doctor: And how did that make you feel?

Patient: Better. The last time I went alone I got hurt bad. I was not strong enough.

Doctor: Does the group make you stronger, or are you simply hiding behind them?

Patient: I don't know, I find comfort in knowing that there are others like me, but they are no help. They may even be making me worse.

Doctor: So you believe the group is responsible for your condition?

Patient: Yes, the group, the gruppe, Butzi, the 550 spider, my father, leaky heat exchangers, the 356 registry, all of them. They did this to me!

Doctor: Ok, calm down. Are there any cigars, hot dogs, drive shafts, push rods, or other phallic symbols at the event?

Patient: Yes, quite a lot.

Doctor: Hhmmm, I see. Is it risky or dangerous in any way?

Patient: Yes. You could get tetanus, or go bankrupt. Back in 03, Claudius ran out of money in Aisle B and was never seen again. And then there are those french fries... 

Doctor: Is there the possibility of great victory over your adversaries?

Patient: Yes, you could beat them in the fierce battle of the concours, or just find the best horn button.

Doctor: Is it conducted in an arena or battlefield?

Patient: Yes. A Giant Arena.

Doctor: Are there chariots?

Patient: Oh yes, there are glorious chariots. And artisans of said chariots, and purveyors of fine conveyance, and fine clothiers, and fine literature, and fine funnel cakes.

Doctor: Funnel cakes?

Patient: Yes, funnel cakes.

Doctor: Well, we are out of time, but I think you have made good progress this session. We are getting close to the source of your anxiety. I will see you again in 2 weeks.

Patient: No need Doc, remember the next Hershey Porsche Swap Meet is not until April 2013.

Doctor: Yes of course. Well, take two Radio Flyer wagons and call me in the morning. 

We had a nice jaunt through some Bucks county roads before making our way to the venue. Machines from everywhere converge on Washington Crossing State Park in PA for gawking and bench racing and bench touring and bench talking and bench concoursing. This year, the threat of rain early may have trimmed the early crowd, but things grew rapidly as midday approached. I bumped into many people not seen since the fall or even longer. New machines had been added to stables, and old machines were present with new owners. I finally met Bob Lonergan who has organized the last several Vintage displays at the BMWMOA Rallies. I have seen his good work in Oregon and Tenessee and Pennsylvania, but it turns out that he lives only a few miles away.

We have covered this event before (see Gathering 2010 and Season Opener), and it remains a favorite. Even digital cameras can run out of disk capturing all of the interesting bikes in attendance. After a few hundred bikes, the parking lot becomes overrun and a few hundred more machines park in the grass and on the surrounding park roads. CLubs and groups come and go, so you need to make many laps of the place to take it all in. Even with plenty of riding early this year, the even somehow still signals the official beginning of the riding season in these parts.

There is a lot more that could be said about this event, but pictures do it better.

New cars are not really the focus of this blog, but I tend to visit the show to see what old things are new again, and what interesting directions are being set among the German automakers in particular. The electric theme remains strong with more cars available for a test drive indoors at the Javits center due to them having no exhaust. It also seems like everyone now has a hybrid model, while Toyota makes the Prius into multi-model brand of its own. But make no mistake, the good old internal combustion engine is what fills the majority of the show. Incrementally better fuel economy is appearing, and styling is actually getting better across all brands. There were no real oddballs making their debut in this year's show. 

So what was the sizzle you ask ? Well for me there were a few items worthy of note. First the BMW I Concept is a great looking sports car period. The fact that it is electric is secondary. Speaking of concepts, the Acura NSX Concept is another beautiful car. Please build it. If you would like to be a little more subtle, then I'd like to introduce you to the Mercedes E63 AMG Wagon. This is a gorgeous car with more than enough "go" to match the "show". Last, but not least the Terrafugia, which is a production flying car that you can buy today for a mere $300K. Now that is a vehicle that would be useful in getting around New York City.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche died yesterday at age 76, which officially ends another great era for Porsche. F.A., or Butzi, as he was known, had a lot to live up to as the grandson of the founder, and the son of another great engineer. However, he quickly emerged as a talented designer. He is responsible for designing the iconic 911 which is still going strong as a design some 50 years later. He was also responsible for one of the most beautiful Porsches ever, the 904. There is no real way to compare the impact of his contributions with those before him, but he is certainly responsible for cars which propelled Porsche from a niche sports car producer to worldwide icon. In that respect, he continued to meet and perhaps exceed the expectations of a legendary family name. More info at NY Times

Volkswagen offers Factory Restoration of Buses

Volkswagen has opened a dedicated facility in the city of Hanover to provide factory restorations of another icon; the VW microbus. So you can now return your bus to the place it was built, and have a fully recorded and factory correct repair or restoration. Of course, VW is simply following in the footsteps of Mercedes Benz Classic and BMW Classic who already offer such services. I wonder what the bill would be for the basket case sitting in a field that I have my eye on...? More info at Hemmings

A few years after assuming ownership, Volkswagen quickly decided that it would revive the Audi brand from amount the many brands within Auto Union. That sounds like a stroke of brilliance today, but at the time it was pretty controversial as other brands such as DKW (see DKW 1000) and recently acquired NSU (see NSU TT) were deemed to be stronger. None the less, they launched the resurrected brand with a new platform dubbed them the Audi F103 series. It went on to include the Audi 60, 72, 75, 80, and super 90 in a run from 1966 to 1972.

Ironically, the new Audis were based on the chassis from the DKW F102, with a new four stroke engine developed with Mercedes during their ownership tenure ! What was certainly new was the styling. The Audi brand had last been seen in the pre-war era, and the new car had its own form of distinctive styling. The F103 series was designed to be a compact executive sedan which by then was chasing the established BMW and Mercedes options in that segment. It was relatively low, relatively sleek, relatively luxurious, and relatively powerful when compared to other offerings from Auto Union. A premium brand had emerged.

The first model was simply called the Audi, but was later renamed the Audi 72. The variants in the F103 series had a variety of engines and body styles. They included a sedan, a coupe, a fastback, and an estate (station wagon). The models were named however for their horsepower ratings. A later generation of the Audi 80 was called the Fox in the USA and Australia. Engines were all inline 4 cylinders with displacements from 1.5 liters on the Audi 60, to 1.8 liters on the 90. the cars had front wheel drive, and weighed 2100 to 2350 lbs, making them fairly good performers and handlers.

The F103 was a strong seller with over 416,000 sold during the 7 years of production. It certainly launched the modern era of the Audi brand, and effectively transitioned Auto Union from two stroke to four. It is also credited in part with propping up an ailing Volkswagen as the Beetle began to taper off, and the Exchange rate made German products less favorable abroad. The highly successful Audi 100 followed, and VW began a long tradition of sharing platforms between the two Marques.