2015 Annual meeting in Savannah, Ga.

I just attended the CCCA annual meeting in Savannah that was organized by CCCA President Dave Johnson and Christine Snyder.

What an absolutely amazing good time. There were about 45 or so cars and much to my surprise and delight most were all restored in authentic period color schemes for paint, interior and tops. It made the cars looks so "right". The Peterson clan was out in force and patriarch Don had his beautiful model 734 Packard speedster there for all to enjoy looking over. What a swell group of people to visit with and the sites we saw in the historic town of Savannah were just excellent. One of the highlights was the railway museum with all the brick buildings , round house etc. One afternoon CCCA Director Steve Babinsky of NJ gave a technical talk on how to tune your distributor; and brought (at his expense) all that distance a Sun machine along with a 1931 Cadilloac V12 engine and trans. (all 1.200 lbs of it ) mounted neatly on a stand and running so he could demonstrate how to set up the points in the distributor , not only on the machine but also with just a screw driver and a test light. He had 50 people looking on and explained in easy to understand basic terms what and how to do the job. One of the many personal highlights for me was riding around with Dave Kane in his 1937 Packard V12 Rollston bodied convertible victoria , Dave and I grew up in the same town (I still reside in) and went to high school together. Going down the road in the middle of the night in the dark in a pre war custom bodied Packard has to be one of life's great pleasures . Among the spectacular cars there out for the first time on the East coast was my dear friends Howard and Roz Kroplick's 1937 Chrysler Imperial C-15 town car by LeBaron that was ordered new by Walter P. Chrysler for his wife Della. This car is Streamline Deco styling at its zenith . CCCA is what you want it to be, caravans, Grand Classics, regional get togethers or way cool events like the Annual meeting in Savannah.

Seconded, Walt. What a great time!

I also want to tip my hat to John Kalafonitis, who is the CCCA's head judge and he and his wife completely organized, supervised, and managed the Grand Classic, as well as moving the cars around, the logistics of getting them indoors, and the judging program. I was on the judging team for that stunning Chrysler town car and the restoration is truly spectacular. I don't believe in perfect cars and 100-point scores, but finding fault with that car was virtually impossible. It's also drop-dead gorgeous.

I took my wife and kids, and while we didn't do all the events because we didn't want to inflict the kids on the membership, it was a great experience. A real pleasure to put faces to a lot of the names I see in the club, including my new friend Walt up above. Kudos to everyone involved.