Posts Tagged ‘European’
Kia Motors Delivering 61 Fleet cars
As a contribution to the development of European Under-21 Championship of the Union of European Football Associations, the South Korean automaker Kia Motors delivered a fleet of 61 cars.
The delivery took place in the city of Aarhus, the city stadium, which hosted the first match between Belarus and Iceland. Among the cars delivered by Kia Motors, said the presence of the Shortage, Carnival and the Cue’s, which were intended for transfer of players, officials and authorities.
The initiative is part of the sports marketing strategy the company has deployed around the world. A ceremony attended by Line M. Viersen, public relations and marketing director of Kia Import Denmark, Christian Bordinggaard, tournament director and Alexander Huber, chief operating officer of the stages of UEFA Cup.
Known in the transatlantic car collector car world
The summer collector-car season is off to a clutch-dropping burnout of a start. At a Mecum auction in Indianapolis two weeks ago, $50 million in muscle cars changed hands. While there won’t be any Hemi ‘Codas ripping up the pristine lawns at the Greenwich Concourse d’Élégance this weekend, plenty of Chrysler Hemi power and other examples of Detroit V-8 muscle will be present, as the concourse prominently features postwar European cars with American engines.
These transatlantic cars were known in the collector car world as hybrids long before manufacturers appropriated the term to describe their gasoline-electric power trains. Most manufacturers of European-American hybrids were around for barely lunchtime, so success is a relative term, but Face Vega, an expensive French GT of the 1950s and ’60s packing a Chrysler Hemi V-8, was among the few with staying power.
Mark Hyman, a dealer and collector based in St. Louis, has sold many Faces. “Hybrids in general appeal to me because they’re unusual,” he said in a telephone interview. “Small companies thought outside the box more, and Faces in particular were beautiful, unique, well-engineered and fun to drive.”
Mr. Hyman will be at Greenwich this weekend to survey many obscure hybrids from manufacturers like Jensen, ISO and Intermeccanica, and some better known hybrid cars like the Shelby Cobra, a British roadster with Ford V-8 power, and the De Tomas Pant era, a midengine exotic with an Argentinean-Italian pedigree also powered by a Ford V-8.
The concours consists of two shows, with Saturday’s show strictly for American collectible cars and Sunday’s for imports. Bonham’s, as it has customarily done, is holding an auction in conjunction with the event. Fittingly, the featured car is a hybrid of sorts, a 1952 Lazar no sports racer, a Ferrari-like racer built in Argentina with a Ford flathead V-8, whose presale estimate ranges from $125,000 to $150,000.
While the purpose of any concourse is to highlight compelling cars of the past, the 2011 Greenwich show also will be marked by the absence of Genie Wennerstrom, who co-founded the concourse with her husband, Bruce, and who died in May at the age of 80. Ms. Wennerstrom helped to build the concourse into one of the premiere events of its kind in the United States.