Coronado Speed Festival
About 50 miles southwest of Phoenix, cruising along highway 238 or dead cow highway as it is known because of the cows’ losing battle between a free range cattle area and big trucks, the speedo in the Ford GT starts acting up. At first it seemed like a minor glitch and popped back to what might have been our actual speed. Then it lost all hope of being called a gauge and danced erratically from 0 - 230mph, not even in time with the music as we were really hoping.
So started the road trip to California to attend the Coronado Speed Festival which took place October 5th - 8th, 2007. This event is an incredibly fun car weekend, featuring vintage car races with some seriously cool and expensive vintage cars and almost as cool and famous drivers. A whole lot of other car people come from all over making the parking lot and vendor area an impressive display of all types of cars and car stuff.
With what could have been the perfect excuse to get out of a speeding ticket, the Ford GT lead the way with a brand new Ferrari F430 Spider close behind. The drive was going great and we were making exceptionally good time until just past Algoddonnes Dunes off of I-8 where we hit a wall of flying sand. The whole interstate came to a crawl as every car was sandblasted. Luckily we cover the fronts of all our cars in a clear bra from Protective Film Solutions which saved the paint. Unfortunately the windshields were not so lucky and came out of the storm heavily damaged with so many little pits it looked like a thick layer of dust. Van Horssen Group quickly replaced the windshields and cleaned up the cars, but had these cars been owned by individuals, they would have had to pay for and deal with these repairs.
Near San Diego we meet up with another member enjoying the Gallardo Spyder and then our whole convoy ditched the interstate for the curves on highway 94. The threesome of the Ford GT, Ferrari F430 Spider and Gallardo Spyder were very impressive and made quite an impression on everyone.
The next day we stretched the legs of the cars even more and drove some fun roads near San Diego. We were not disappointed and found some very exciting roads before ending with a leisurely drive back to San Diego along the ocean. It doesn’t get much better than seeing a Ferrari F430 Spider and Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder chasing each other along the Pacific Highway.
The rest of the time was spent enjoying the races, meeting all the cool people at the event and checking out an incredible variety of vehicles, everything from an extremely old Bugatti to a brand new Audi R8. Each night was capped off with a great meal in Coronado’s nicer restaurants.
The Coronado Speed Festival is definitely something to put on your calendar if you are into cars and racing. We’ll be there next year!
Scott Harrington
Director of Programs
California Dream’in