We have been busy preparing for our annual pilgrimage to the Amelia Island Concours. This year, our journey will start early on Tuesday when we load onto our trailer the 1964 Triumph Italia 2000 GT Vignale #295 that was invited to appear on the Concours show field on Sunday, March 8th.  This Italia 2000 GT is the third Italia that we have restored that has been invited to this annual prestigious Concours. As always, this car has been a labor of love and a team effort with our sister shop Pollock Auto Restoration. Since completion, this Italia has been awarded 399.5 points (we have since found the half point) at the 2018 Vintage Triumph Register in LaCrosse, WI and a First in Class at Concorso Italiano in Monterrey, California. It has been fully sorted and runs strong and our client is looking forward to driving his car on the “Porsche Driving Experience” on Friday.

We also plan to attend the Bonhams, Gooding & Company and RM Sotheby's auctions and maybe more. For the past 25 years Bill Warner (Happy Silver Anniversary, Bill!) has invited many of our racing legends to serve as honoree for this incredible event. This year, we will see and hear from Roger Penske, the winner of the SCCA Driver of the Year in 1961. After retiring from driving in the early sixties, he created one of the most successful teams in IndyCar Series and NASCAR racing. The "Captain" has become known as the most successful owner in the Indianapolis 500 with 18 victories. We plan to attend two seminars: Penske Perfect Effort = Results and Team Penske - The Early Years on Friday and Saturday and I expect these seminars to be very informative and entertaining! The Cars & Coffee has become a very popular event on Saturday and has great support from local car clubs. We will place the Italia on the show field Saturday later that afternoon. Stay tuned on Ragtops & Roadsters Facebook page for more updates as they happen. For full schedule of events click on Amelia Island Concours.

SAVE THE DATE! The PA based ABRR is running again this fall on 10/16-10/18.  We are in the planning stages at this time, but we can tell you that we will be running a "cloverleaf style" run,where we plan on staying at the same hotel (in the Gettysburg area) and we will run three loops back to our host hotel. Other ABRR Chapters have done this over the years and found it to be a lot of fun with no packing and unpacking each day. Our runs are planned down south on the great back roads of Maryland and West Virginia.  We will be visiting the Summit Point Motorsports Park and we are working on a couple of surprises, too! We are running for the kids at Shriners Hospitals for Children again this year to support their efforts to treat kids with scoliosis. Keep an eye on our PA website for more details.  We plan to open registration on 6/6/20 at the Cars & Motorcycles of England Car Show.

The Philadelphia International Auto Show has been open to the public since 1904 and it is one of the oldest cars show in the states. Once again it was held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and we here at Ragtops & Roadsters and Pollock Auto Restoration were there on the red carpet to support the largest car club in the world, the  Antique Automobile Club of America. We had more square footage this year, nearly a quarter acre and we displayed 32 AACA show cars that consisted of 23 cars and 9 motorcycles, in our exhibit.

More British, German and Italian classic cars and motorbikes than ever before! An army of nearly 50 volunteers stood watch over the AACA Exhibit for the entire 112 hours of the show and we signed up 50 new AACA members. We kicked off the event with the Black Tie Gala on Friday night and nearly 5000 attendees brought in $500,000 for Children's Hospital of Philadelphia!

It was our pleasure to "poison some young minds" as we answered questions about the classic car hobby! A BIG THANKS to my fellow Delaware Triumph Club Members for putting in so many hours this year!  The over all attendance for the entire week was a little less than last year at 244,912, but it was still the sixth largest show in recent years. Next years' date has been set so that there is no competition with Chicago or Miami and with other national shows. The 2021 dates will be 1/16/21 through 1/24/21.  Andrea Simpson, the Auto Show's  Director of PR and Communication said, "The earlier date was selected so we have a better chance to see debuts of new car launches and more prototypes on the show floor. We expect some new changes in 2021 and we are looking forward to next year!" We also look forward to being there with the AACA exhibit.

We are here to help out with spring projects. Now is the time to take care of the deferred maintenance, restoration, preservation, and upgrade needs that are on your car's 'to do' list! Click here to send an e-mail to dave@ragtops.com or just call us 215-257-1202 to schedule an appointment. We are currently scheduling appointments in late April, so it's not too late to plan for repair or restoration work soon, so that you can be enjoying your classic in 2020!

On our website we have recently listed more of our client's British cars looking for new homes. Click on our For Sale page to see current listings. Click here to see more pictures of this very clean 1966 MGB Roadster with Overdrive (Asking Price Just Reduced to $26,000) looking for a new garage! This well restored MGB was restored with a bare metal respray about 15 years ago by a fastidious English engineer who lived in Canada. Driven only just enough to stay healthy in dry weather and the odometer shows just shy of 19,000 miles since restoration. This car is in excellent shape as it runs cool, shows good oil pressure and drives like new. Ragtops & Roadsters has looked after mechanical maintenance for the last several years and this roadster is guaranteed to pass PA State Inspection. Equipped with Retrosound radio, leather seats, custom steering wheel and shift knob, which were installed at restoration. Bright work is good, with no nicks, dings, chips or scratches in paint. Soft top, full tonneau, restoration photos, spare keys and books included. Contact Dave@ragtops.com or call 215.527.1409