Wayne Long, Chief Judge and Founder of the Cortile Cup has announced that he has selected a new Judge for the 2017 Cortile Cup Competition.  Tom Bungay will be joining the judging team for the 2017 annual event at the Pittsburgh Golf Club on Saturday July15. 

Tom has been involved with the collector car business for over 40 years.  From racing in the early Monterey Historics, to judging at many West Coast events, Tom has been active in all facets of the hobby.  

Tom is currently an active participant in Historic racing, driving in events from COTA to Lime Rock.  In addition, he owns and operates a Legacy Motorcoars, a vintage car dealership in Jacksonville, Florida specializing in 50’s and 60’s European sports cars.

A native of Sacramento, California, Tom has been part of the collector car business for over 40 years. Starting with a restoration shop in Sacramento in the late 70’s, Tom moved south to Santa Barbara working with the sales and restoration of Lotus automobiles. This association with Lotus also led to participation in the Monterey Historics for several years. The Monterey Historics, ta premier vintage racing event in the United States, is held yearly at Laguna Seca Raceway in California.

In addition to historic racing, Tom has been active in SCCA road racing since 1970, with a few professional outings, including the Can-Am series in 1981 and Pro Sports 2000. Tom also established Bungay Automobile Appraisals over 25 years ago, a very active company in the collector car market.

Legacy Motorcars, LLC. ​was founded by Tom Bungay, a professional in the collector car business with over 35 years of experience.  At Legacy Motorcars they are experts at finding that special collector car that you’ve always dreamed of – and they may even have it in stock!

Their experience in the collector car market will lead to selecting the finest and most suitable vehicle that meets your needs.

Legacy Motorcars also has a pre-owned buyers service, to help you find the exact contemporary vehicle that you want and need, whether it is a slightly used Ferrari or an inexpensive car for your college-bound son or daughter. 

At the 2017 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance tom's 1961 Maserati 3500GT Vignale Spyder was the winner of “BEST OWNER RESTORED” Trophy. 

The 2016 Cortile Italian Car show was quite an event.  

We started things off with a special presentation by Jeff Mahl on Friday evening  about he 1908 New York to Paris Race.  It was a lively and very informed presentation about Jeff's great great grandfather's experience racing around the world over 100 years ago.

On Saturday we had several very special cars show up for the De Tomaso feature as well as a Stanguellini race car!

Take a look at some of the live footage below that we posted on our Facebook Page during the weekend activities for more details.

THE 2016 CORTILE CUP WINNERS CIRCLE

In the Best Italian Speciality Car category that Stanguellini race car took top honors. Our Proiettore Macchina feature winner was a gorgeous white Pantera.  

​The Ferrari and Lamborghini winners added the iconic Italian sports car colors to the Winners Circle and a very very unique Maserati joined us from Erie, PA to take the final spot in the Winners Circle!

THE 1908 NEW YORK TO PARIS RACE. 

Jeff is the Great Grandson of George Schuster, driver of the American Thomas Flyer and winner of the 1908 New York to Paris Race. 

​For his victory, George was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame beside other racing greats including Andretti, Bugatti, Ferrari, and Shelby.

1959 STANGUELLINI MONOPOSTO JOINED US IN 2016!

This car was partially restored in 1970s and spent approximately 20 years in a private museum of an Italian car collector in Miami, Florida.

The current owner purchased the car in 1994 and has spent the last 8 years restoring it to the original racing condition. This was it's first showing since coming out of the garage! ​

NEXT MONTH: ROB STRAW'S NIGHT PHOTO'S!

Make plans now to join us next summer at the Cortile when we will feature Alfa Romeo as our 2017 Proiettore Macchina! 

The major renewal of the Westinghouse Memorial started in 2011 in Schenley Park is now complete!

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy partnered with the City of Pittsburgh in 2009 to renew this remarkable space with the financial help and support from members of the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix's Cortile Italian Car Show participants. The fully restored Westinghouse Memorial includes a reestablished lily pond; renewed memorial sculpture; native plant landscape; new nighttime lighting; and stormwater management and we will be celebrating on the newly completed restoration this July 15- 16! 

Architects Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood designed the monument and the surrounding landscape, including the pond, trees, and location of black granite benches. They chose sculptor Daniel Chester French to design the sculptures, including the bronze “The Spirit of American Youth,” the figure of a young man taking inspiration from the life of Westinghouse, which was described by art critics as “the finest portrayal of American boyhood.” The center portion of the monument depicts Westinghouse between a mechanic and an engineer. The surrounding panels were created by French’s collaborator, sculptor Paul Fjelde, to illustrate Westinghouse’s achievements.  The boy stands facing the wall dedicated to George Westinghouse, and is supposed to take inspiration from the other man's life. The boys carries books in one arm and a hat in the other.

The memorial was originally financed from $200,000 in donations made by approximately 55,000 workers of Westinghouse companies in electricity. It was dedicated on 6 October 1930. There opening ceremony was attended by over 10,000 people, including U.S. Representative James F. Burke and Pittsburgh mayor Charles H. Kline, and a celebratory dinner was held the night before at the William Penn Hotel. The memorial was on the original site of the Pittsburgh Zoo.

The Westinghouse Foundation paid for the memorial's restoration in 1986 in honor of the centennial of Westinghouse Electric.

Bigelow's plans for the park system included a system of boulevards that would link them together, and he began constructing bridges in Schenley Park to make it easier for travelers to reach the park. The first, constructed in 1897, was the Bellefield Bridge, which spanned St. Pierre's Ravine and linked Bigelow Boulevard to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). 

​When St. Pierre's Ravine was filled in around 1911 (providing a solid foundation for what is now Schenley Plaza), the Bellefield Bridge was buried along with it and is today the foundation for the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain. The Panther Hollow Bridge opened in 1897, followed by the Junction Hollow Bridge in 1898.

While two of the three bridges remain, many of the attractions to which they provided access in the 1890s have disappeared. Among them: a 120-foot circular electric fountain on Flagstaff Hill that offered nighttime light shows; the marvelous Schenley Casino (on the site of the present-day Frick Fine Arts Building), which featured Pittsburgh's premier indoor ice skating rink but was destroyed by fire after only a year; and a band shell designed by architects Rutan and Russell on the site of the present-day Anderson Playground.

1907-1909 saw the development of park features that are still present today: the Schenley Oval and racetrack, the tufa bridges in Panther Hollow, and Panther Hollow Lake, which was created from an existing small body of water. 

The park also underwent large-scale planting in its early years. Bigelow's reports indicate that the land was mostly barren when the City acquired it, and he pursued the highest standards of horticulture in hiring William Falconer, who was trained at London's Kew Gardens, to take charge of Phipps Conservatory and of the park's landscape. Falconer's tenure lasted from 1896 to 1903.

Schenley Park underwent a second period of growth in the 1930s and 1940s during Ralph Griswold's tenure as the Director of Public Works. Griswold designed several gardens around Phipps Conservatory, but the park's biggest change was the construction of the Anderson Bridge, which brought the Boulevard of the Allies through the park and linked Squirrel Hill to Downtown. Since then, there have been few major changes to the park as a whole, as certain amenities (like the Panther Hollow Boathouse) have disappeared while others (the ice skating rink) were introduced.
​

George Vosburgh of Pittsburgh, PA is restoring his 1977 Ferrari 308 GTB with NJB Automotive in Columbus, OH.  It's going to be a full ground up restoration and shown for the first time at the Cortile in 2014.

According the George, the paint, suspension are done, the engine is complete.  They've used high compression pistons, steel valves, electronic ignition. 

You can stay up-to-date on George's restoration on Ferrari Chat 77GTB #21039 Restoration

David Adams was of the "Best Lancia 2011" Cortile Cup Awards. This article originally appeared in the August, 2012 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car.

A friendship forged over coffee leads to the heroic 6 1/2-year rescue of a rare, alloy-bodied Lancia Flaminia GTL

Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic CarAugust, 2012 - Words and Photography by David LaChance

Had he lost his chance to buy the car? Dave Adams hadn't been able to make a deal with the owner of the decrepit Lancia when he first saw it; now, a year later, he learned that a group of prospective buyers were flying in from Europe, and were likely to take the car home with them.

But the Europeans lost interest when they saw just how far gone the coupe was. Though it was rare, one of just 303 Flaminia GTLs built, it was literally falling to pieces, and had already been stripped of some of its parts. If Dave had listened to the experts' advice, he, too, would have forgotten about the GTL. But that's not what happened.

When he learned the deal had fallen through, Dave didn't hesitate. "I gave [the owner] what he wanted and brought it home. I didn't know what I was getting into, or I might not have done it."

Dave had first seen the Flaminia in 1999, when he went with a friend to look over a collection of Lancias at the Fiat-Lancia Parts Consortium on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, and the stylish coupe had caught his eye. "It was in very poor condition; most of the controls and the instrument panel had all been robbed out and sold for parts. And the car actually looked beyond restoration--it was buckled in the center and rusted out down underneath and the doors wouldn't open," Dave recalls. "But I'd never had a European car, and I just liked the idea of the aluminum body, the four-speed and three two-barrels."

Yes, you read that right--Dave had never before owned a European car. In fact, he was sitting on a collection of Pontiac GTO project cars when he first saw the Lancia. "My wife fussed because I had so many [GTOs], and I hadn't restored any, because that's what I was going to do when I retired. And she was giving me heck, so I just sold all of them, and bought this one Italian car."

It's also worth mentioning that he had never before restored a car, and that a hand-built car like the GTL, with its Superleggera aluminum-over-steel coachwork by Carrozzeria Touring, would be a challenge even to a seasoned restorer. But Dave had a number of factors in his favor: He doesn't discourage easily. He ran an auto parts store for 20 years. And he had found a mentor in an old-world craftsman named Dick Frye.

Dick and Dave had met at Dave's store in Shelocta, Pennsylvania. "He was down there every morning, drinking coffee. I had free coffee. It drew in a lot of people--they'd stand around and BS. It was kind of a hangout." Dick had earned his skills at a Cleveland-area shop during the post-war years, learning about gas welding, lead filling and other techniques involved in European coachbuilding; he returned to Pennsylvania in 1958 to open his own shop.

"My mentor, Dick Frye, told me that anything that was hand-built can be rebuilt," Dave says. "And these cars were hand-built. They took the frame and hand-bent each panel; a fender might be five or six pieces of aluminum welded together, and formed to create the car."

The Flaminia, first shown as a prototype in 1956 and put into production the following year, was the successor to the successful Aurelia. Like the Aurelia, it was powered by a 60-degree V-6 engine, initially displacing 2,458cc, and growing to 2,775cc in 1962. The clutch and gearbox were rear-mounted, providing excellent balance.

In addition to the Pinin Farina-styled Berlina, four Flaminia variants were produced: Coupes by Pinin Farina, Zagato and Touring, and a convertible by Touring. The GTL, a 2+2 version of the GT with a wheelbase that was 80mm longer, arrived in 1962. Dave has become an unabashed admirer of the entire Flaminia family. "That was like the Rolls-Royce of Italian cars," he says. "They didn't have the power that a Ferrari or a Maserati had, but as far as build quality, they were the best."

Dave trailered the GTL home from the Fiat-Lancia Parts Consortium, but not before thinking to conduct a search of the shop's shelves, which turned up every one of the switches his car was missing. Then, he and Dick got to work.

The aluminum skin was the first to go. "Dick and I cut the body in sections, because it's a one-piece body, and took the body off. I think we ended up with seven or eight pieces," Dave says. They used a cut-off wheel to slice the aluminum, and drilled through the hundreds of rivets holding the body to the steel structure below.

It was at that point that Dave realized just how badly damaged the floorpan was. Had the discouraged Europeans been right after all? Not by a long shot. Dave knew that the Consortium had, among its other cars, a Flaminia Berlina that had suffered an engine fire. The bodywork was ruined, but the floorpan was solid. He bought the Berlina, brought it back to his shop and stripped it down.

Putting the GTL's body on the Berlina's floorpan was no simple matter. The tubular steel frame that supports the coupe's body had to be transferred over, a job requiring a seemingly endless number of measurements. The Berlina was a longer car than the GTL, too, so Dick had to slice 2 1/2 inches out of the wheelbase. The GTL stored its spare tire in a horizontal well in the trunk, while the Berlina's was mounted upright. None of these required changes proved to be a roadblock, thanks to Dick's skill with the oxyacetylene torch. "If you get the right flux and the right torch, oxyacetylene will work," Dick tells us. "I try to put it back together the way it was built."

"This new chassis, in addition to being too long, the inner fender wells were approximately two inches too wide," Dave says. "So we had to cut all of them off, and then Dick re-bent all the lips by hand. He was such a fanatic about it, that when we got to the final installation of the body, we didn't have to re-drill the rivet holes. It was close enough that we could pry or bend, and use all the original rivet holes."

Before they could get to that point, there was much more work to be done. Dave sandblasted the chassis, using fine white sand. "I had a rotisserie on wheels, and I could wheel it in and out of my shop every day I went to work on it," he says. He primed the chassis in Rust-Oleum red oxide primer before applying 3M Body Schutz rubberized coating, for the original factory look, and finishing with black Rust-Oleum semi-gloss paint. "As far as preserving old metal, I feel that [Rust-Oleum] is one of the better products.

"I'd halfway learned to spray-paint--I'm not a professional, but I believe in doing everything I can myself," he continues. What brand of spray gun did he use? "I can't even tell you--it was maybe a $29.95 one," he laughs. "A different body shop owner told me, buy a cheap spray gun to prime; when you're done with it or it acts up, throw it away and buy another one. He said it'll do as good a job as a professional gun. So that's what I did."

Dave and his auto parts employees stripped the aluminum bodywork, using chemical aircraft stripper to avoid damaging the .030-inch-thick skin. They covered the stripper with plastic wrap and let it work for a half-hour or so, scraping off the softened paint with a rubber spatula. Though it's hard to believe from Dave's "before" photos, the paint was the original silver-gray finish. "The only original paint I found that looked good was up in under the dash. There was a little removable panel; I took that out, cleaned it off and that brought out the original color. I had that spectrographed and came up with what I wanted to paint the car."

After Dick had used his hammer and dolly to erase all of the dings and dents in the bodywork, Dave brought the panels to a local shop that specialized in aluminum welding to have all of the small cracks and tears in the bodywork mended. Once the bodywork fit perfectly, the aluminum welder visited Dave's shop to stitch the panels back together again. Then came the final riveting.

More welding was required for the steel frames of the doors, which had rusted away along the bottom. Dick removed the aluminum door skins, fabricated and welded in repair panels for the frames, and reattached the skins, annealing the aluminum with a BernzOmatic torch before hammering the edge around the repaired frame.

Dave brought the Flaminia to Dick's shop for paintwork. It received a coat of etching primer, and small imperfections were filled in with Evercoat's Chrome-A-Lite lightweight filler. "I like the way it works," Dick says. "It doesn't shrink, and it blocks well." Three coats of high-build acrylic polyester primer were applied, followed by much block sanding.

Dick chose PPG products for the basecoat/clearcoat finish. "I like their clears," he says. "They have buffability, and quick turnaround. You can water sand them the next day." He applied three coats of the base finish, and three coats of clear. Although two coats of clear would be sufficient, he likes applying the third coat, so that there's enough depth to allow future damage to be buffed out without having to repaint the car. The paintwork was done with all of the panels--doors, hood and trunklid--on the car.

In the meantime, Dave had carried out whatever mechanical work was needed. He had rebuilt the braking system, as well as the starter motor, carburetors and other ancillaries of the V-6. Parts were ordered from Mike Kristick, an East Coast Lancia specialist. Dave put the engine on a stand and soaked the bores with PB Blaster and kerosene to get the pistons unstuck, but decided not to tear the engine down. "It fired up, and it's been running great ever since," he says. "I've probably only put a total of less than 1,000 miles on it." The gearbox, too, was left as it was, though Dave installed a new clutch kit.

Dave ordered new leather from Hirsch Automotive Products, in the original red. "I told him I wanted the best leather I could get, the softest," he said. The upholstery was done by Larry Learn at Learn's Upholstery Shop in Indiana, Pennsylvania, who had come highly recommended. Though Larry suggested that he could save some money by having the seat covers machine-stitched, Dave chose to have the original hand-sewing recreated. New wool carpeting was installed, as well as new headliner, using matching material Dave purchased from Mike Kristick.

The majority of the car's brightwork is either stainless-steel or aluminum, and could be restored back to its original shine. Dick used an English wheel to remove deep dents from the stainless-steel bumpers, which Dave then spent days sanding and polishing by hand. The transformation is amazing. "Like he said, anything that was built can be rebuilt," Dave laughs. He found a new-old-stock taillamp bezel for the driver's side, and is still looking for a replacement for its pitted counterpart. One of the Superleggera script badges was a Christmas present from a friend.

Six and a half years after he had begun, the Flaminia was completed. Dave first showed it at the 2007 Le Belle Macchine d'Italia in the Poconos; he brings it to Italian car meets, where it's usually recognized for what it is, and almost always brings home a trophy.

Not only does Dave have no regrets about the project, he's since found himself a second GTL, a two-owner car that was in sound running condition when he bought it from a West Coast president of the American Lancia Club. "I'm doing the second one now because I have two granddaughters, and they're both going to have a GTL and a Flavia Pinin Farina coupe," he tells us. "I figure I'll have them done when they're old enough. If they decide to sell, well, they're marketable, and they'll have college money.

"On the second one, I'm being a little fussier. I told my wife, the first one came out good; the second one will be perfect."

This article originally appeared in the August, 2012 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car.