Grand Auto Show-off raises money for Christmas toys

Every kind of beautiful car you could think of, from Honda Civics through to incredibly collector’s cars like the Daytona Cobra could be seen at the Lions Centre on Sunday, for the Grand Auto Show-Off Number Six, an annual car show that helps raise money for good causes. This year they had teamed up with the Lions Club, so that they could use the best venue in Cayman and so that the entrance price donations would all be used for the Lions huge Christmas Party, when more than 400 kids will get lovely toys. If you didn’t have any cash for the entrance fee, well, that was fine just as long as you bought with you a brand new toy to donate.

One of the founders of Cayman’s Grand Auto Show, Michael Webster said: “Over 100 cars are here, and we’ve got four Car Clubs represented: the Minis, the Classics, the Ford Club and then we’ve got the Jeep Club in the back (on the field behind the Lions Club hall).”

Tony Parsons, a member of the Cayman Islands Classic and Hot Rod Association, had a big, long, wide, beautiful 1966 Pontiac Catalina Convertible for people to admire. “I purchased this car two years ago,” he said. I bought it from an old guy in Pennsylvania it was sitting in a garage for 15 years, and hadn’t been touched. So I shipped it down to Florida where my brother lives and went up there and did some work on it; I got it running. I brought it to the Island last year and since I brought it here I did a repaint on it. Now its Citrus Green but it was originally a champagne colour and I didn’t like the colour,” he said.

Renaldo is very proud of his limited edition 1999 Pontiac Trans Am. They only made 613 of them in this configuration,” he said. There are about 320 horses under that long white hood and the car can do a top-speed of 150 miles an hour. Not the kind of car you can really open up in Cayman, unless you want to wind up in the sea, but the best thing is that it only has 940 miles on the clock, “I have always liked Trans Ams,” Renaldo said.

William Nixon likes things to be a bit more compact, and he’s really more of a classic Mini Cooper type of guy. He must like them a lot, because he had two of them in the show: “I’ve got a Cooper RSP 1990 in black and white, and another 1997 in Red and White,” he said, holding the toy he had bought along to add to the Lions’ toy drive. “I always liked Minis from the time I was a teenager I grew up with Minis,” he said.

Bo Hansson is the proud owner of a beautiful Cobra Daytona, from 1964: “it won the Le Mans. They made six of them, and then a continuation. This number is number 27,” he said. In its day, it was the fastest car in the world, and won the World Speed Record at Bonneville, with top speeds of over 200 miles an hour, Mr. Hansson said. “Its engine is 600 horse power so it’s not made for the island. But it they challenged Ferrari and they beat them.”