An AutoSmith Shares his Love for Cadillac, Jaguar, Caffeine and Octane

Skip Smith leans on his desk, a poker table from the Sahara in Las Vegas. He sits behind a computer monitor that's bigger than my dorm room television. It's hard not to notice everything that surrounds him. Heavily-edited photographs of D-type Jaguars and MGs line the perimeter of the room like 90s wallpaper. In the back corner of the office, a hat rack flowers with dozens of lanyards from Concours events. Most say "Judge."

Smith runs Classic Autosmith in Marietta, a shop that not only meticulously restores vintage British, Italian and American metal, but specializes in the buying, selling and storage of these classic motors as well.

He and I start chatting like old friends, name-dropping cars we love. Soon, he tilts the monitor towards me; starts scrolling through dozens of folders labeled with model names: "Eldorado Biarritz," "XJS Vanden Plas," "Imperial," "Roadmaster," "Super."

These names represented a lifetime of collecting, a hobby whose seeds were sown long before Smith could dream of having the cars in his stable.

"I could never afford those cars when I was young," said Smith, "so when I was finally able to, I picked them up." He showed me photos of a 1960 Eldorado sedan, then a 1959 Eldorado Biarritz convertible; jet-age icons that still represent the finest period of American luxury.

Smith says his love for these stylish Detroit yachts, along with a love for classic British sports cars, began when he was a child growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. There, he started working for a country club at age 12. "I'd scan the parking lot, admiring the new cars," said Smith. Cadillacs, Packards, Jaguars; these were the cars young Skip lusted for. In turn, they became some of the first cars he collected.

When the Kentucky Derby was in full swing, Smith would chase the rail carriages that brought wealthy spectators to town. He'd buy them cigarettes, whiskey, and newspapers at the liquor store across the street from the train station. "Most kept a tab there," he said.

On those runs, Smith would usually stop by a local automotive shop and peek his head in the door. Eventually, the foreman hired him to sweep the shop floors in the evenings, and from there he became a mechanic.

I see a name pop up as he continues to scroll. "Daimler SP250." He owned the British sports car decades ago, but it's such a unique car that both our eyes lit up when I mentioned it.

I'd just watched Jay Leno's Youtube video showing a completed restoration of a Daimler SP250 and could hear the engine note in my head clear as a bell. A 2.5-liter Hemi V8, developed by Daimler himself in Britain in the early 50s, is something you don't easily forget hearing, even over Taiwanese monitor speakers. An aluminum cauldron that sounds like it's just swallowed a box of nails.

"Let me show you something," Smith said.

We walked out of the office and into the depths of a cavernous warehouse. As is the case with places like this, the good stuff is always in the back, and he steers us towards a Mark II Jaguar with the same Daimler V8, hidden in the corner.

Inside the warehouse was a collection of rides ranging from a Ford Bronco II to an Alfa Romeo 164. Some of these are in storage for clients, but most of the cars are part of Smith's personal collection; those sit under layers of car covers against the back wall.

Cadillacs of various vintage are given away by hulking lines underneath fabric, but Smith points me towards a convertible. This one, a Hemi Cuda, is the car he really wants to make a point of. "Look up how many four speed convertibles there are," he said. I wasn't quick enough, so he asked his Siri: How many four speed Hemi Cuda Convertibles were made? Eight. It was an impressive gesture, but then Smith turned around. "It's a fake. A really good fake, but a fake."

The Cuda was originally a coupe, with a different engine and transmission to boot. But Smith said it's virtually indistinguishable from the real deal, and still worth several hundred grand. Does he plan on selling any time soon? Absolutely not.

We walk back to the office and suddenly the skies let loose outside, buckets of rain pouring over the glass door like a waterfall. Smith rushes outside to bring a car in; I'm tempted to follow, but I stay put. When he gets back, he says it's a convertible that hadn't been in the paint booth yet.

This photo was taken at my first Caffeine and Octane in July 2010. Since then it's moved around countless times and grown enough to get its own TV show.

Smith was among the first in a now-elusive group of guys who started Caffeine and Octane, a local car meet that now draws over 10,000 onlookers and participants every month. It's now held at Perimeter Mall, a 1.5-million square foot retail bloc in Dunwoody.

In 2006, when the group first started meeting on Sunday mornings, the event was more of an impromptu gathering. According to Smith, it was a time when metro Atlanta car enthusiasts could sneak out of their homes in the suburbs, leave household chores and work behind to talk about cars for a few hours. It was held at the East Cobb Avenue outside of Panera Bread, and Smith says there was a good relationship between the shopping center and meet patrons. Those car guys and girls would bring steady business to Panera Bread and surrounding restaurants that were open for breakfast, so the shopping center let the show stay even as it started to outgrow the location.

By 2013, Caffeine and Octane had grown to take over this business park in Milton. I'm glad I thought ahead, snapping a photo of the massive crowds for posterity.

By the next year, things were really in motion, and the show continued to hop around various venues until landing at Perimeter in 2015. Smith and his shop became involved around 2012, one of the show's first sponsors. They continue to provide free coffee and donuts to volunteers and those who arrive earliest to Caffeine and Octane to help set up.

As we're wrapping up our conversation, Smith leaves the office to grab something for me. He comes back with a sticker that says "I am the Stig," an homage to my webpage. I thank him for the insight, but most of all for the stories he shared.

At the end of the day, it's not really about quarter-mile times or sky high valuation at auctions. What makes the most impact is sharing stories of why cars are special, why we give a damn. After all, that's led to the success of Caffeine and Octane. At the end of the day, it's as much about the people as it is the cars they love.

French Canada Road Trip: Day Five, Part Three (Mount Royal and Downtown Montreal)

(This post has been in my drafts for many, many months now, but I felt like I had to finish it. It's from my two week trip to Canada last fall, and this bit covers my last day in Montreal. Hopefully I'll ride this wave of motivation and round out the rest of the chapters, which will cover the final leg of the Canadian portion of my trip: up to Quebec City.)

Catch up on Day Five, Part Two here.

Road-weathered Carrera 4S in my parking deck in Old City Montreal, next to a sign urging its clean up.

Needless to say, day five was absolutely packed. Somehow, I put thoughts of my soon to be aching feet behind me and kept hitting the pavement. Most of my walking tour was spurred by Montreal's hodgepodge parking system. The parking decks are the only reasonable way to keep a car here if you're visiting. (if your hotel doesn't provide parking, that is--and most don't) Those parking decks make money as follows: if you park for longer than two hours, the hourly rate maxes out and you're charged as if you'd spent the entire day parked there. At roughly $18, this is a good deal, but only if you leave your car in the parking deck. If you're moving in and out, you could potentially pay two or three times the daily rate in the same time span.

So I decided, rather than throw more cash into that incinerator, I'd continue my trend of walking. I checked the map before leaving my hostel, a bit daunted at the four mile walk that lay between me and the Chalet du Mont-Royal, situated at one of the mountain's multiple peaks.

Mount Royal, to the resounding relief of my aching feet and back, isn't really a mountain. About 125 million years ago, this geological site was part of an active volcanic complex that eventually collapsed, forming the more modest hill we see today. Still, the small mountain attracts visitors and locals alike for its views of the Montreal skyline and Mount Royal Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

I walked Rue Notre-Dame, passing the brilliant Cathedral du Notre-Dame for a third time, and followed it to Rue McGill. By this point, the weather was picture perfect, and I joined a steady wave of foot traffic through town. Montreal is an active city and I discovered, as I have many times before, taking the slowest method of transportation is the best way to take in all the sights.

Soon I reached downtown and was greeted with elegant department stores and tree-lined squares. I headed towards the McGill University campus. McGill, an English language university established by an 1821 Royal Charter, is ranked among the top 30 universities in the world. Its campus is perhaps even more interesting though, as the historic buildings used for student housing and the many colleges within the university line the route up the foothills of Mount Royal's eastern face.

I followed these buildings and the streets that climbed in a steadily vertical direction. Soon, I crossed parking lots that were almost bare, save a few wandering college students. Then I found the dorms, short blocks of buildings shrouded by the colorful trees that made up Mount Royal in the background. Now, my biggest task was finding a trail head.

Classroom buildings give way to dorms, and pedestrian traffic soon shrinks to post-apocalyptic levels.

A couple desolate parking lots later, I found my answer. Out of a heavily wooded bank popped the outline of some concrete steps leading up. I wandered into the brush and soon found a graffitied wall. Hey, it was an entrance, and made for a great picture. I kept going up and soon found the main trail.

In the center of Quebec's largest city, Mount Royal Park offers miles of shaded trails. Professionals have ample space to let off steam above the hustle and bustle of downtown.

Olmsted had a grand and ambitious design for this park. He penned the design for Mount Royal Park in 1874, 17 years after his designs for Central Park in New York City. A seasoned designer by this point, Olmsted came to the project with a set of beliefs that drove his designs. He was very much a Victorian romantic, thus he believed that the beauty of nature had a profound effect upon the people who experienced it, and that effect would ultimately lead them closer to the divine spirit. For city dwellers especially, he believed nature could be an effective means of therapy. His design for the park included an aggressive vegetation revamp, which would exaggerate the mountainous terrain; more lush at the bottom and gradually thinning out towards the summit. At the top, he also envisioned a grand promenade with a reservoir and large shade trees.

Unfortunately, politics got in the way. In 1873, the United States forced a switch to the gold standard, devaluing silver and causing panic in the market place. This caused a shut down of world stock markets and a depression that lasted several years. And, in combination with local politics, this meant that most of Olmsted's design plans were not followed.

This made sense as I followed the winding trail towards the summit. All the way to the top, giant, densely clustered trees lined the paths. These displayed bright, golden leaves that littered the ground, but going up gave you no real sense of how far you were going.

Eventually, I reached my destination, a lodge constructed in 1932 called the Chalet du Mont-Royal. The chalet was a Great Depression project headed by then-mayor of Montreal, Camillien Houde.

Since its opening, the chalet has been used mainly for special events, but its vast belvedere is what I was there for. This vast pavilion overlooks downtown Montreal and 3800-foot Jay Peak in northern Vermont, and dozens of people were walking around taking pictures of the skyline and giving their feet a rest.

After taking a few obligatory skyline shots and buying some souvenirs from the gift shop, I headed to another part of the park. Here, part of Olmsted's reservoir was constructed as a quaint pond with an adjacent walking path around. You can see a bit of connection to Central Park here, but its location is far enough out of the way that not many people were in this part of the park. From here, I decided to head back down the mountain and take the long walk back through downtown.

Sadly, even my walk was hampered by construction, as the most direct path down the west side of the mountain was closed. So I took the trail back up, wound around, and eventually ended up back on the outskirts of the university.

I used a slightly different route to get back to the hostel, which took me through a much busier part of downtown. Past the Modern Art Museum, I ducked into one of the seemingly-ubiquitous indoor malls.

A portion of the Underground City that connects to Montreal's Metro.

This astonishing display of New Deco (a term I just made up) is one of the dozens of modern marvels built for locals to dodge harsh Montreal winters. An entire network, dubbed the Underground City, connects office towers, hotels, malls, apartment buildings, and universities in downtown Montreal. There are no fewer than 120 public access points you can use to get into the Underground City, and its maze of tunnel linkages stretches over 19 miles.

 Back outside the mall, I kept walking toward the hostel and through the Entertainment and Shopping districts. These sidewalks were packed with people and lined with stores like H&M and Cartier.

There was also this multilingual flower shop, housed in a Victorian row house.

Back in Old City, I found this Formula One themed souvenir shop and was tempted to take a look, but also exhausted, so a picture would have to suffice. The Canadian Gran Prix takes place just a few miles away on Ile Notre Dame.

To round out my time in Montreal, there was one more place I had to visit. While walking earlier, I'd come across a sign for a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. As luck would have it, the Montreal Fine Art Museum was open late, so I had an hour and a half to try and take in as much as I could.

Mapplethorpe lived in New York during a landmark time for the city. He came of age in the 60s and 70s, when New York could be called a city in turmoil. In 1977, the city suffered a complete power grid failure, during which gobs of looting took place. Many parts of lower Manhattan featured burned out buildings on every block; a economy meant homelessness was at an all-time-high.

But New York City was also in an artistic Renaissance at the time, with Mapplethorpe as one of its more outlandish characters. While Andy Warhol tried to rub shoulders with pop royalty at Studio 54, Mapplethorpe was developing a form central to his ideas about being a gay man in mid-century New York.

He started with iconography from his Catholic upbringing, using found items to create jewelry and altars, one of which was for his new friend in New York, Patti Smith. Mapplethorpe met Smith at the Chelsea Hotel, a well-established--if not necessarily glamorous--refuge for starving artists. During that time, they met Warhol, along with other rising names like William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg.

Soon, Mapplethorpe turned exclusively to photography, and male subjects became his main focus. He started off photographing friends and lovers, often focusing on the male form, often including the most sexual details of that form.

Every photograph reflected an intense attention to detail, from the pose of the model, to the lighting used, to the wardrobe. Some featured men rejecting stereotypical masculine roles, like "Two Men Dancing," while others featured men embracing them.

Portrait of Deborah "Debbie" Harry of the band Blondie, taken by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Interspersed with this work were his portraits of friends. Given the time period, most of these friends, like Deborah Harry--the Miami-born waitress who'd join the group Blondie--would turn out to be icons in their own right.

In 1979, Mapplethorpe met bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, just after she'd won the first Women's World Pro Bodybuilding Championship. She became his most photographed subject, as Mapplethorpe was fascinated by her blend of masculine and feminine qualities.

Mapplethorpe died in 1989 due to complications from HIV/AIDS. He was 42, and his exhibit The Perfect Moment, was sent around the country posthumously that summer. Controversy would follow him long after his death, with debates raging from outside and within the art community, regarding work that depicted BDSM and other "not-safe-for-work" material.

Montreal is a city I'll miss dearly, mostly because of its focus on art and culture. Yes, the streets are garbage and everything is under construction, but there's so much beauty in the street life, food, architecture, and visual art surrounding it that it's hard to care.

Hopefully I'll be able to finally wrap up this trip coverage, now almost a year (!) later. Life is tough, and it certainly catches up to you, but I'm trying harder than I have before to make a life for myself that I'll enjoy, be it through writing, photography, or something else. I hope you'll stay tuned.

Check out Days 6 and 7, Quebec City.

2017 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

2:30AM at the Hilton Garden Inn, Colorado Springs Airport

Saturday and Sunday blended together. My plan was to lay down at 7PM, so I could possibly get 8 hours of sleep for race day at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. If I played my cards right, I'd be able to get to the highest point allowed for spectators, Devil's Playground. At 13,000 feet, it was a vast, treeless outpost with snow on the ground year-round. On the hill climb's website they warned of extreme altitude sickness, especially for those not accustomed to the mile-high and up altitudes of Denver, Colorado Springs, and the surrounding outdoor playgrounds of the Rocky Mountains.

I came from 800 feet a few days prior. On Saturday, a blinding headache sidelined me for a few hours. Pressure like I'd never felt, the sliver of light that escaped my hotel blinds was a nagging presence as I buried my head in pillows.

The website also warned spectators not to consume alcohol or soda on the mountain, as the carbonation in both would lead to "gastric distress." With that term alone, I decided to stick to water.

In the murky darkness of the renovated hotel room, I tried to figure out how to operate the single cup coffee maker. One cup of water, one bag of coffee, one packet of powdered creamer, one sugar. Downstairs, the front desk guy took one look at my sad cup of coffee and offered the downstairs vat of Kenya blend he'd just brought out.

By 3:00 I was in the car, headed for the shadowy outline of the hills. There's a guy on a motorcycle with Idaho plates, and I follow him from the Springs to the entrance of Pikes Peak Highway. It's a two-lane lined with old diners and souvenir shops; I'd scouted it out the day before.

We're funneled into a holding area, a North Pole-themed amusement park parking lot where dozens of idling cars had already gathered. I killed the engine and fired up my battery-powered radio. A Mazda 3 is parked in front of me and four young guys pile out and light up cigarettes. Most of them are in basketball shorts, the temperature here is around 50-degrees.

Twenty minutes later, our group of six cars is released and we snake up towards the gate. It takes us about six miles to reach the pits, which were assembled ahead of the start line. Driving under the start line, I snapped a picture, then watched as the outside temperature on my digital display dropped into the forties.

On the way up I was stuck behind two wheezing Chrysler products, not to mention I was in one as well. My grandparents were kind enough to lend me their Jeep Commander on short notice and, although it had a comfy ride and some amenities alien to their other Jeeps (two early-2000s Cherokees), it had one major failing.

Jeep, for some reason, had chosen to stick their garden-variety, 3.7-liter V6 into the Commander, a 4600-pound Land Rover Discovery look alike. This meant 210 horsepower at sea level and god knows how many at 9000 feet and above.

Directly in front of me was a Chrysler Pacifica with Iowa plates. The guy behind the wheel was playing an infuriating tap dance with the brakes on the climb up, but it was probably because the car in front of him was a Dodge Neon.

By the time we'd breached the timberline, the sky had turned an inky purple, with wisps of clouds and an eerie, blanketed view of the far horizon that I caught glimpses of out the side window.

That eerie feeling continued as we reached the parking lot at Devil's Playground. Clouds coated the landscape in a thick fog, lights of one police car blocking the road up bounced off as people wandered out of their cars trying to get their bearings.

The quiet at that altitude is jarring. Since there's hardly air for the sound to get trapped in, you can hear conversations happening 50 yards away. As I walk around the parking lot, I peek into cars. most people are asleep, huddled in blankets. Two bodies snugly seated upright inside a 911 Turbo; a guy behind my car sleeps alone in his Lexus SUV, the breaking morning sun illuminates the interior like a floodlight.

And that sunrise. I stood on a hill that overlooks one of the hairpins below our parking area. This area is called the Ws. On the other side of the road, there's a steep dropoff with a matte grey background of clouds. This is where the media vehicles and race officials are parked. The sun rises behind these clouds, spreading a hazy orange light on the martian landscape. I look towards it, then I look back at the people gathered on the hill; a woman wrapped in a Denver Bronco's blanket; a couple setting up a tent; people huddled under awnings in heavy jackets.

It's hard to describe the feeling. Being outside  at the end of June in a Stormtech coat, when it's 40-degrees one minute and sunny the next. Or the fact that it's still a racing event that attracts racing spectators--people were drinking Coors by 10a.m.--but one that almost by design still attracts the diehards.

8:01AM, Time to Race to the Clouds

Motorcycles were the first group to run, starting at 8a.m. It was hard to make out the sequence of cars and bikes running, because there's no qualifying information on the race website. I learned the day before at the Penrose Museum that officials still have issues with timekeeping, thanks to the harsh geographical setting.

An alarm sounded the arrival of Ohio State's electric motorcycle. The thing sounded like a hyperactive go kart as it shot by, giving a little wiggle as it slightly lost traction out of the corner. One of the kids from their team spoke to me at fan fest, telling me they were hoping to break the ten minute mark.

Electric cars and motorcycles have a long history at the hill climb, dating back to 1981, when Joe Ball took 32 minutes to reach the peak after stopping near the finish line to let his batteries cool. 

Tim Eckert, part of a long lineage of hill climb competitors, set a new record for electric cars in 2002 with his Compact Power ER2. The 1300-pound, single seat racer built in Monument, Colorado was powered by a 223-horsepower electric motor and several LG Large Cell lithium ion batteries. 

French rally driver Sebastien Loeb still holds the all-time record of 8:13, but EVs are sure to catch up. Nobuhiro Tajima, already twice a Hill Climb record breaker by 2012, set a blistering sub-9 minute qualifying run in his EV, but the car didn't finish due to a power transfer problem on race day. In 2013, Carlin Dunne won the motorcycle title overall on a Lightning fully-electric motorcycle. By 2015, Rhys Millen had cracked the ten-minute mark with a 9:07 run in a Drive eO PP03.

This year there was only one electric car competing, the Faraday Future FF91. This imitation Model X with a matte black vinyl wrap. It finished with a middle-of-the-field time of 11:25, just ahead of a 2002 Camaro, piloted by hometown favorite Rob Moberly.

Electric motorcycles fared much better, there were three of them. The Buckeye Current finished a minute shy of its goal, while another electric motorcycle ridden by Japanese racer Yoshihiro Kishimoto did a 10:59 run. 

As the day wound on, the weather started to change. The changes got quicker as the temperature down in Colorado Springs got higher. One minute, I'd have my hoodie up to block the sun; the next, I'd have hat and gloves on trying to stay warm. 

People filtered back to their cars to nap, eat, and stay hydrated. During the day I ate three cups of greek yogurt, four giant pieces of fried chicken, half a dozen oatmeal creme pies, a bag of goldfish crackers, three apples, and three bananas. Not to mention drinks. 

Early in the day I had to focus on not winding myself too much by walking around. Later in the day it had gotten better, because then I knew I had enough food to last until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, when the race was over. But it was a weird game of modern, city folk survivalism. I saw several people throughout the day who seemed to be idling their cars the entire time.

By 2PM, the weather had gotten downright dicey. Thunder cracked in the distance. Dark clouds closed in on the picturesque mountain vistas I'd photographed earlier that morning. Now it looked like a Game of Thrones set. Winter was in fact coming.

One of the last drivers to make the summit was Yuri Kouznetsov, driving a Nissan Skyline. Kouznetsov was Jeremy Foley's co-driver in 2012, when his Mistubishi Lancer tumbled over the edge near 16-mile. 

Kouznetsov blasted through thick fog on one of the last straightaways towards the summit, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking of that moment back in 2012. 

Despite a lack of guardrails and general danger inherent to a race like this, only six people have lost their lives during the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Chock that up to strict safety regulations, a mutual respect for the mountain, or luck, but it's probably a combination of all those things. 

Around three, we started seeing quarter-sized hail, and people rushed to their cars for a spot in line to get down the mountain. A guy in a Nissan Xterra raged as another man in an old Suburban came from the far end of the lot and drove straight down the open aisle to the front of the line. 

But the police said it'd be another hour until we even got going, that four more cars were set to run, and officials would wait until 3:30 to call it for weather. 

Those remaining four ended up running only to Glen Cove, several miles down the course. Although the race has never been cancelled, despite fire, hail, wind, rain, and snow over the years, it has been postponed and shortened due to the weather. 

By word of mouth, we discovered that the cars that had reached the summit were coming down for a parade lap. One young kid asked a police officer if his group could walk out to the road, and on the officer's approval, a flood of people walked out onto the Pikes Peak Highway. A line of spectators stretched for a quarter mile as drivers started their way down.

But the good nature of the crowd was short lived. Animal instinct kicked in as people battled to get out of the parking lot first. Near the front of the line, a Ford F150 driver bucked at a Subaru Legacy, boxing him out to get one place ahead in the traffic line. Soon, people behind me started reversing to cut around the outside edge of the parking lot. I was parked in the middle and somehow got out last. 

But those who were so eager to leave one of the most unique spectacles in all of motorsports got their just desserts, as it took everyone two hours to finish their descent. 

As I turned left, away from the snaking line of traffic that continued all the way to Colorado Springs, I thought about the drivers, teams, families that spend all year to get to this perilously long day. 

In 1916, Rea Lentz took home $2,000 and the Penrose trophy at the first running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Today, winners take home even less money. Participants accept that they're probably going to lose out financially, but gain in areas of automotive innovation and fan enthusiasm. 

Even more, they gain something that's virtually gone in modern, professional motorsport: the mythical, local lure of a race so unique that it's yet to be duplicated. In many ways, it can't be.


Here are some more of my favorite photos from the race: