The gleam of old wheels
Hundreds of classic-car lovers roll into Sandy Bay each month to show off their vintage wheels, swap stories and celebrate the shared joy of motoring history.
Getting behind the wheel of his 1956 Ford Thunderbird and cruising down to Sandy Bay is a monthly pilgrimage for Hobart vintage car enthusiast Blair Bryant. It’s a chance to rub shoulders with other car buffs, many of whom he now counts as close mates.
“Being able to talk to others who appreciate their vintage car as much as I do makes for an instant friendship,” he says.
He comes for the stories about how others came to own glorious classics from yesteryear. Many have either been purchased after years sitting in a dusty garage, picked up at a mainland auction or imported from overseas. In their day, some of the cars were somewhat unremarkable but to be in working order decades after they were manufactured makes them rare classics.
Blair, 72, often grabs a coffee from a nearby cafe and wanders through the maze of lovingly restored vintage cars. He loves the juxtaposition of an immaculate Jaguar parked right next to a Nissan with the stuffing coming out of the back seat. “Everyone is equal. There’s no hierarchy. Everyone is just there for the cars and the kinship.”
There are such phenomenal resources here in Tasmania to get old cars restored.
Hailing from Orange County in Southern California, Blair bought the 270-horsepower white Thunderbird with black interior when he was just 16 years old for US$700. “When I first bought the car, it had been raced pretty hard, but it was what I could afford.” The Thunderbird has 174,000 miles (280,026km) on the clock these days.
He and his wife moved to Tasmania five years ago, and he had the car shipped to the island state with his other possessions. Blair has even toured Targa Tasmania in the car, but never set out to win. A lifetime of memories comes flooding back when he lays eyes on the car. “I completely rebuilt it about 45 years ago and for a long time in my life it was my everyday car. So if I went to the grocery store, I went in that car,” he says.
A few years ago, the Thunderbird went through another rebuild in Tasmania, stripped back to bare metal, rewired and reupholstered. “There are such phenomenal resources here in Tasmania to get old cars restored,” Blair says.
Blair is one of the many vintage-car owners who gather at Classics on the Beach on the first Sunday of each month in the Beach Road car park. What looks like a car display is in fact a tight-knit gathering built on kinship, shared passion and the ritual of enjoying a mutual love of coffee and cars.
The owners of a range of vintage marques, from rare Porsches to Mini Minors, MGs, Jaguars, Volkswagen Kombis and Nissans, polish their classic cars and head along to the meet to see their mates. The first event was organised by a Hobart man named Michael in May 2000, who has been collecting vintage cars for more than 40 years. Michael asked that his surname not be published because he’s adamant the event now belongs to the community.
While European and British marques are common sights, Michael loves that there’s always a new set of vintage wheels there. “We launched the get-together very casually with about a dozen of my mates, and it’s grown from there. I love that the MG drivers get there early and get the spots they want all lined up together, and then others turn up later in the morning. It’s the highlight of my social calendar.”
With 16 historic cars in his possession, Hobart’s Chris Edwards has been coming along to the Sandy Bay meet for years. Among his vast collection are three vintage Ferraris, a 1970s Maserati, a 1950 Bentley Special, five early Jaguars including a 1962 E-Type, and a 1929 Bugatti.
“I switch around what I bring down to Sandy Bay, but they all get used and driven. I’m not into show ponies.”
Fellow car guy Matt Bartninkaitis, 53, often turns up in his racing Mini with his mates. Next time, he plans to bring his newly restored 1960s split-screen Kombi ute, which has been through an extensive restoration in Hobart.
Matt purchased the Kombi for $9000 nine years ago but has spent an eyewatering $250,000 restoring it, fitting it with a turbo-charged fuel-injected Volkswagen 2.4L motor, a WRX gearbox, Porsche brakes and a Cyclops light at the front. “The Kombi had more rust in it than usable metal when I bought it, but I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like, and I’ve been in the position to be able to build it exactly how I wanted it. I absolutely love driving it,” Matt says.
“Sandy Bay classics is a cool social gathering. Nothing is really organised, it just happens. Everyone is so passionate down there and there’s a cool gamut of cars from the turn of the century right through to modern drives. You get to see some of the same cars regularly, and then there’s always cars you’ve never seen before.”
Blair recalls making a promise with his mate Dave as a teenager never to sell his Thunderbird. “My friend had a 1956 Corvette and we tuned up our cars and would go street racing on Sunset Boulevard. It was so cool. I begged him to agree that we’d never sell our cars.”
While Blair kept up his end of the bargain and never sold it despite several offers, Dave eventually sold his Corvette. “I saw him at a party 10 years later and he’d already sold it. When I told him I still had the Thunderbird, he tried to track his car down, only to discover it had been resold three times and eventually was in a car crash and written off.”
But Blair would never sell the Thunderbird. “The real value of the car is all the memories. Every road trip I took, every date that I had was in that car, not a car like that. It was that specific car.”