Countach Rally Breaks Monterey Car Week 2021 - Part 2

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so kundash rally part two and this is probably the most emotional uh i would say part of the rally and part of our video series because there was a lot of stress and a lot of emotions and a lot of passion into the days before the rally and the actual first day of the rally itself and i think it all started friday uh as i was packing i had not yet flown to san francisco and i look at my wife and i'm like what did i do um obviously a dream come true to be organizing this uh but we had never done anything like this and imagine we were essentially managing 29 cars 12 of the cars coming from miami these are temperamental cars and there were so many moving pieces now we had the most incredible team uh trevor and his team from luxury rally club who were organizing the details uh in california and with the event and dinner ex you know the laguna seca raceway et cetera but we were essentially managing all the cars and the clients and i don't think it occurred to me how many moving pieces that were happening and i was replaying all these details in my head and going over everything you know we had to get parts and tools and all these things to half moon bay we had to do all this in preparation and wow um i was freaking out i'm not gonna lie so ended up that weekend was very very tough replaying all the details in my head and monday morning i fly out to san francisco make the trip into half moon bay and that day for me was going to be a relaxing day try to get sort of my my uh you know my feelers out understand the local area and start to prepare for shipments that were coming in of parts and tools and all these different things because we were essentially setting up a curated in west coast of the u.s and somehow i guess it was it was great luck but also at the time very stressful all of the cars started to arrive early so our two six-car haulers 12 cars total arrived a day early and i was the only person on the ground at the half moon bay at that point and listen i felt this huge responsibility that either myself or someone from my team would personally unload the cars uh we had you know a a great client brian um his beautiful silver low body was joining us from kansas city uh we had jaime whose diablo svr joined us from spain we had um jc who's white countach joined us from mexico so we have all these cars from around the world um and they're passionate owners who not only sent their cars to celebrate the countach but sent their cars to support me and the stress level just went completely through the roof i started unloading the cars luckily slowly as the day went on i had a few of the curated team members started to join us there were flight delays there were traffic delays and you know one at a time pulling the countaches off uh pulling the myriad of cars off and making sure that they were perfect once they arrived and started to stage all the cars basically that next day owners started to arrive they're arriving from around the country around the world and they're going to grab their jackets and as you can see i'm actually wearing one of the countach rally jackets which will be available i promise you we will be selling these uh probably coming up in the next week or so by september 9th i think we said is the date so these will be available with some other really great stuff but they're arriving they're grabbing their swag they're you know all these things and we start staging all the cars and i don't think it really hit me the presence of the event until we started to stage the cars and you had uh tyler hoover uh join us uh with with a good friend of his and his beautiful bianco prolato 25th anniversary uh you have a beautiful red uh downdraft uh european spec 25th anniversary join us with uk plates and you've got this rame colorado lp 400s low body early early car it was actually one of the original monaco pace cars in addition to the white monaco pace car that joined us and it's this beautiful copper color so you see all these cars start to line up and it was so overwhelming what i started to realize that day as the owners came in and as we you know we had a cocktail event that evening and we had a dinner that evening and what i quickly realized as the owners arrived what this event was not about countaches it was not about guys getting together to go racing their cars around monterey this event was about the people and their passion and i think the best way to describe that is basically what happened the next morning and what happened the next two days so we wake up it's now wednesday early morning our techs have arrived tools have not arrived yet but some parts have arrived and they're finishing all the last minute details on the cars now at this point mr valentino balboni the legendary test driver has arrived so guys are super excited he's going around he's signing people's cars and that was just such an exciting moment uh he's signing people's jackets you know and everybody wants to talk to valentino he's one of the most humble guys uh he is mr countach this is a guy that drove every single countach almost uh during test drives in period and there's no one that spent more time in the seat of a countach and there's no one living today that's probably more important to the countach itself than mr balboni and as you guys know i've known him from my entire life um my dad's known him forever and he's a dear family friend and and really it meant so much to us that he could join us and lead the rally at the same time we have a few cars that are giving issues now uh at this point i think we had about 25 26 cars uh ready to leave that morning uh into monterey and a now a very dear friend um ken uh he's been a countach lover and an owner for a very long time i remember him from forum sites for about 10 years he originally was not going to join us and i thought that of all koondash owners he had to join us because he was such a passionate guy for so many years he bought this car years ago beautiful black on tan european countach downdraft that was brought here many years ago and imagine he ships the car from florida it was a little bit last minute for him he joined i think like a month out before the rally started and his car wouldn't start and all i could say to him at that moment was listen i'm gonna do whatever it takes to make sure we get your car running we are we i promise you i'm gonna get your car running for the rally um and i don't know if he really if he understood my commitment at that moment but i basically told my guys listen um we believe the spark plugs are fouled the uh he had been having issues with the carburetors and uh but i really believe the spark plugs were fouled the car didn't want to start and we sent the guys to go buy tools buy spark plugs buy whatever we needed buy some race fuel buy some octane booster and we were about an hour before we left changing spark plugs on ken's downdraft um we didn't know if that was gonna fix the problem i was pretty confident the guys run to i think it was autozone in half moon bay and uh run back and i've got one guy working on one side i think it was geo working on one side chris working on the other side and miraculously once all the spark plugs were in the car fires right up so at that moment i felt like okay this is going to be an amazing day this sets the tone of the day and at the same time everybody else was trying to finish a few last minute details on the monaco countach our red kundash that was the engine out that we had to change the oil line boom the guys changed the oil line so we have everything ready to go and we are about to pull out prior to pulling out we host a driver's meeting and this is when i would say for me all the emotions started to come together and while this was a celebration of arguably the most iconic supercar of our time and on a car that's important for my dna and the company's dna what i realized standing in front of all the guys and i realized with all the cars lined up was that the countach represented much more than an automobile for many of the guys this was the poster that was on their wall as a kid and when you look at a group of guys that you know to buy a kundash they've been successful and you know whatever whatever they've done in their lives these were guys that the countach represented something more than a car it represented the human spirit it was aspirational it was bold it was designed and created by visionaries who shocked the world in a period of time and i think that the countach had touched each one of these guys lives in so many different ways and they were so passionate that they came from around the world they came from around the country and it sort of embodied everything about the american dream embodied everything about our goals and our visions and it hit me at that moment that this was the most incredible group of guys um i could not thank them enough for supporting me for supporting our company for supporting the rally for supporting the vision and we've got valentino on this side and we've got this group of guys and i was i was ready to cry i mean i had goosebumps uh i can't even begin to tell you and talking to each and every one and guy i realized that this was just sincere people passionate guys and i think that's what's so important about the countach and i think that that after you know watching part two and three you guys will see that's what's so beautiful about this story and this rally was the effect it had on other people and the effect it had on a generation of young people um that that really this car changed their lives and that's to me what this rally was about and we now have a group chat with all the countach owners and essentially you could call it it's it's like a love fest um of people giving people you know uh positive you know reinforcement and and you know just talking and enjoying about life in the car so now we're basically all the guys are starting to pull out engines are running and it is the most incredible sound the most incredible feeling um one by one we're trying to go sort of by valentino's leading the rally in a black black 25th anniversary i think tyler hoover was next uh in his uh 25th anniversary and then followed by sort of a progression of years so 78 79 80 81 through the years of countaches um and you've got uh just some of the most incredible cars you have lp400s we have three i think four lp 400s followed by then uh 5000s followed by a few downdraft cars i think three or four downdraft cars european spec cars then the fuel injected cars and then followed by more anniversary cars and these cars are all just pulling out and you've got the diablo svr you've got a diablo roadster stunning diablo roadster from miami that we had sold to a great client one uh you've got the diablo gt uh my dear friend paulo who came from across the country and shipped his diablo gt you have all these incredible cars and um the lm 02 rally to car car which is a crazy story because the car was probably not ready to be driven in a major rally um we had been going through the car for quite some time and basically the owners and the passionate group that are representing the car mr john culliford is one of the craziest individuals i've ever met but one of the most passionate this is a race car lm that has no ac no lights um this was basically a car that was made to go across the desert uh there are no creature comforts there's no radio there's no cell phone charger this is a full-blown car race car so you have this incredible procession and the cars are pulling out and we make this turn and we go around and we're lining up to make the final run down to monterey and it was a surreal magical experience to hear all the cars running all the doors are up on all the cars and it was just this incredible moment everybody's jumping out of the cars they're taking videos they're taking photos we all have goosebumps guys are freaking out they've never seen anything like it and it was magical it was completely insane so we all start to pull out and we're all driving together and we've got our eures support vehicles we have camera vehicles we have a six-car hauler two six-car haulers following us in case any cars break uh in case any cars break we've got us our techs jumping on them right away we've got support vehicles for the clients i mean we thought of every detail but still it was very stressful because you're worried about the cars and we're off now imagine uh 30 minutes into driving there's no issues all the cars are running perfect i think at this point we had like 26 27 cars with us we were meeting a few more cars in monterey and it sounded insane all you hear going down uh the pch into monterey is you know popping of the cars you hear revving you here accelerating and it was probably one of the most incredible moments um of any car experience that i've ever been on and and now talking to all the countach owners they felt the same and slowly but surely uh we had two issues with two cars uh three issues with three cars uh the diablo gt unfortunately one of the brake calipers seized up so we quickly loaded that car in a truck and miraculously um steve had driven exotics one of probably the best lamborghini techs in the u.s was able to fix that car get it ready for the next morning one of the white countaches out of mexico had an issue with its original magnetic morelli ignition box once it cooled down boom the car was running again so that was back on the road and then one of the other cars someone thought there was an oil leak or something like that ended up the car was fine uh but that car was basically back on the road the next day so we're basically driving into monterey and on the monterey um on the way to monterey we stop at the santa cruz wharf miraculously the lmo to actually blew a coolant line so there was a bunch of steam people thought it was on fire but again mr john culliford i believe one of our our team members helped him fixed it uh and and he he was fine in the end of it but we had the opportunity to shut down part of the wharf and the pier and line up all the cars together and we wanted to create an environment you know we had done these formal dinners and we were going to have these lavish parties but we wanted to create an environment that was really fun so we basically lined up all the cars on the pier basically gathered everyone we had a really fun time sort of an informal uh you know fried seafood and all these things to sort of really experience that portion of santa cruz that portion of california and and give people a taste of the the santa cruz wharf so that was again completely surreal to see all the cars lined up uh on the waterfront and we basically were our last leg into monterey now the last leg in the monterey was probably the most difficult part um we started getting into traffic we started getting into cars potentially overheating and miraculously we only had issues with two other cars we ended up getting both cars fixed on the side of the road uh and we made it down into monterey and i will say that these smiles the the high fives the hugs was just insane for everyone to do a day of driving in countaches for everyone to experience this everyone even just the first day walked away was saying it was one of the most amazing experiences of their lives all of my stresses all of my worries um over how many weeks and days were gone um and essentially we were excited for the next day which was parade laps and our big day at laguna seca um so yeah so that's basically part two um we've got much more coming i i want to say a personal thanks again to all of the countach owners the most incredible group of guys passionate guys um completely love you all you're part of our family forever um don't forget to subscribe don't forget to like um we have a ton more countach rally content coming uh we said part three we would end this but it might roll over into part four we have a ton of footage great stuff coming don't forget puntas rally merch will be coming and uh thank you guys again for watching i love all of you guys and thank you to luxury rally club curated team and all of the incredible sponsors we will feature them in part three [Music] you

Channel: Curated TV by John Temerian

Views: 13,805

Rating: 4.986577 out of 5

Keywords: monterey, car week, 2021, countach, rally, curated, laguna seca, lamborghini, vintage, supercar

Id: 49rLecr0VO8

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021