Thousands of people flocked to the South Lewis County community of Toledo for its Cheese Days Festival celebration throughout this past weekend, including more than 300 entrants in the 24th annual Toledo Cheese Days Car Show, according to emcee Jeff Hillbrook.
“Another packed house here in the field of Toledo Middle School,” Hillbrook said on Saturday.
The car show was organized by the Toledo Lions Club in partnership with Farmers Insurance of Toledo, which helped sponsor this year’s show. Along with being a Lions Club member, Hillbrook is also a part of the Cheese Days Committee.
Proceeds from the car show go to help fund not only next year’s car show and other Cheese Days events, but other Toledo Lions Club events throughout the year.
“That money is going back into our community. We do the (Jim and Penny Lancaster) fishing derby, we do scholarships, food baskets for Thanksgiving and for Christmas, we do the school supply drive,” Hillbrook said.
To learn more about the Toledo Lions Club, including how to get involved, visit https://toledolionsclub.org/, or follow the club on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ToledoLionsClub.
As for the cars at the show, here are a few that caught The Chronicle’s eyes.
The “Ferrari Killer”
Since motorsports’ early days, the Italian car company Ferrari has dominated most professional Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) racing series. But in 1964, American automotive designer Carroll Shelby set out to build a “Ferrari Killer” specifically engineered to beat the Ferrari race cars that had been dominating the FIA’s 250 GTO and GT racing series.
Six Shelby Daytona Spyders were built solely for racing purposes and were instrumental in winning multiple prestigious races in 1964, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and developing Shelby’s famous Ford GT40.
The GT40 would go on to finally defeat Ferrari in the FIA’s fastest racing class — prototype — and made Shelby the first ever American constructor to win a FIA International Championship for GT Manufacturers in 1965.
While only six original Daytona Spyders were made and only one remains today, Daytona Spyder kit cars were produced and sold, enabling gearheads to build their own Daytona Spyder in the comfort of their garages.
Despite being replicas, these kit cars are highly sought after by collectors and can sell for over $100,000, according to classic.com, a website specializing in the sales of classic and exotic cars.
Several companies produced Daytona Spyder replicas, with Factory Five Racing being the most popular, according to Eric Muller, of Toutle. Muller said his replica is one of less than 20 produced by Factory Five Racing known to exist in the world.
“I got it last winter after watching a gentleman build it for 10 years,” Muller said. “He was moving and didn’t have any place to store it, being in Eastern Washington. He had to sell it fast so I got a pretty good deal on it.”
Since purchasing it last year, Muller has enjoyed learning about the racing history and pedigree behind his Daytona Spyder, which is officially titled as a 1965 car. As for how it handles, Muller added he could tell it was developed for racing purposes.
“It’s a dangerous, dangerous car. It’s a race car, on the street, but it’s still fun. It’s not my dream car, but it fell into my lap,” Muller said.
A groovy green camper
While it may not have had the same racing pedigree as the Shelby Daytona Spyder, Centralian Jim Larsen’s 1979 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper was worth saving from the scrap yard.
“I’ve only had it for about a year, but the people I bought it from got it out of a wrecking yard out in Colorado,” Larsen said. “They redid the whole bus, took it down to metal and repainted it.”
The camper’s interior was also made custom by a father-son duo, Larsen added. Eventually, the camper ended up in Port Townsend and was crippled by engine issues.
“It had been parked for a while and they didn’t want to redo the engine again,” Larsen said. “They didn’t want to put anymore money in it, but they couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Finally, they decided to let it go.”
After purchasing it, Larsen and a friend swapped in a working motor to at least get it running while he works on repairing its original engine.
“It’s fun to drive in, just putting around town. I can hardly go a couple blocks without someone honking or waving, thumbs up or whatever. It’s a lot of fun,” Larsen said.
Larsen has added some of his own stickers to decorate his camper, including those featuring his favorite musicians, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.
“I was a big Hendrix fan. I saw him one time in concert actually, about a year before he died in Seattle,” Larsen said. “Had no idea what was going to happen. Nobody saw that coming.”
Putting the compact in subcompact car
A far cry from the Wesfalia Camper or Daytona Spyder, one of the smallest entrants into the Toledo Cheese Days Car Show was Judia Jackson’s 1961 Nash Metropolitan subcompact coupe. While The Chronicle didn’t get the chance to talk to Jackson about her tiny convertible Metropolitan, research was conducted into the car’s history.
Originally assembled in England, Nash Metropolitans were produced from 1953 until 1962 and were built in England. They were designed by the American Nash Motors Company, which merged with the Hudson Motor Car Company in 1954 to form the American Motors Corporation.
While considered a subcompact, the Metropolitan was categorized as a small economy car when originally produced as the subcompact category hadn’t been created yet.
The car’s wheelbase is shorter than that of a Volkswagen Beetle, and the car weighs in at barely 1,800 pounds with a small 1.5 liter engine producing around 70 horsepower.
During the car’s original design, Nash negotiated with the Austin Motor Company in England as the factory where the Metropolitans were actually built, making them the first American-designed car exclusively marketed in North America but entirely built in Europe. Nash went overseas for production as assembly line tooling costs in Europe at the time were a fraction of what they were in America.
The car’s styling was done by Pinin Farina, an Italian car designing firm.
