Carrera Panamericana at Elysée Wednesday

Last night's gathering of Elysée Wednesday set an all-time high for a number of reasons. It was, as usual, a great mix of personalities, intellects and interests. Raphael Finn, whose father Jean-Luc Desreumaux markets magnificent vintage era racing posters, made his first appearance with us. Matthew Ettinger was first on the scene and in great form as one would expect. Richard Mitchell entertained us with his "How I spent Memorial Day" with nothing left to the imagination. Martin Mervel debriefed us on his Timeless exhibition currently at the Pacific Design Center and brought with him Roberto Prado of the Ariadne Media Group who, along with me, had an essay included in the exhibition. Jeanetta Dumouchel, Tom Gurnee and Matthew discussed Cuba, its politics and customs and poet/photographer Elena Secota brought some of her captivating moonscapes to share. Roberto explained how news gathering has devolved into an increasingly smaller number of aggregators and speculated on the future of news and journalism--quo vadis. At one point, we left the table to inspect Matthew's Ferrari 550 Maranello and Richard's turbo-charged Bentley coupe both of which looked stunning together under the lights.

The topic of conversation turned to our Carrera Panamericana documentary when Chad Glass, who was under the weather, emailed the lastest evolution of the poster he is executing for us. It looked great and stimulated a lot of conversation about the Carrera which was overheard by someone at the next table. "Are you talking about the Carrera?" he inquired. It turns out his father, Salvador López Chavez raced in all five of the original Carrera Panamericana races. Seen here is a picture of his father in his Porsche 550.


The gentleman, Tomás López Rocha, had himself raced last year in the current retro Carrera winning his class in a Ford Falcon. The lead photo in this post features me with Tomas and Matthew, who ran in the 2000 edition of the Carrera in a 1954 Lincoln that is a replica of the famous Ray Crawford Lincoln.