Celebration of the Motorcar - sports cars, classic cars, prestige cars and unique cars

The 2013 Celebration of the Motorcar at the Cottesloe Civic Centre in support of Bridging Communities ( www.bridgingcommunities.com.au ) was a display of 130 invited vehicles showing off a broad range of the history of motorcars in general, never mind Western Australia. The 2013 event had three feature displays, 100 years of Aston Martin, including the oldest Aston in Australia from 1923. There were a couple of DB models (2/4, 4, 6) and the 2013 Vanquish.

50 years of the Porsche 911, including the oldest one in WA and two different production cars released in Australia just 3 days previously.

And 50 years of Bolwell, with every Bolwell car model on display together for the first time. And the model names for the most part are easy to remember, Bolwell Mark 4, 5, 6, 7, Nagari (8), Ikara and (new) Nagari.

This even has been run by Paul Blank from Automotive Events Management since 1993. Below is the 1925 Amilcar and the lavish Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz

Cars that hadn't been put into the area on the Saturday afternoon were lined up before 830 in the morning with all the cars to be displayed organised and in position prior to 10am with the public being allowed in from 1030. Cars included the rare Facel Vega, the exuberant Plymouth Superbird Roadrunner, Alfa Romeo Montreal and the polished aluminum Jaguar XK which is the oldest of its kind in Australia.

Awards were presented about 315 prior to the show concluding. The judging can't have been easy in order to select the cars that took out the trophies.
The winner of the Pre-War Class (presented by Autosculpt Miniatures) was the 1923 Aston Martin Grand Prix car of Peter and Robin Briggs.

The Post-War Sports Car class (by Clockwork Print) was taken out by the 1958 Chevrolet Corvette of Mark Bojanjac.

The Post-War Saloon class (by The Ultimate Grand Prix Experience) was taken by the 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham owned by Ross Morgan.

And finally, the Peter and Robin Briggs Peoples Choice award went to the 2012  McLaren MP4-12C.

The collection of cars on display was amazing and while I have only put a few up (obviously with a slight favoritism to the Bolwells given my club association), I will follow in time with some more images of the event. Below however is the first Bentley to compete in the Le Mans 24-hour in 1923, an original AC Cobra, the only Ford GT in WA, the beautiful Packard Hawk, the only one of its kind in Australia, and a Jaguar XJ13 replica.

Celebration of the Motorcar - Cocktails, Canapes and Campbell

Celebration of the Motorcar is an event bringing together many classic cars with the aim of helping to fund raise for particular charities. In 2013 the charity beneficiary is Bridging Communities ( www.bridgingcommunities.com.au ). The 2013 Celebration of the Motorcar was used to raise funds for weighted blankets which would be provided to children in need who require these for better sleep patterns. The example given was for the autistic children who need the comfort of the weight, but not the extra heat you usually get from having a heavy blanket. So these ones have small stainless steel or plastic beads sewn into them to give the weight.

The Saturday evening prior to the car show itself, a cocktail event was held to help raise extra funds for Bridging Communities. This meant that 30 of the 130 cars would be on display, drinks would be served, and Campbell Bolwell would be in attendance as the special guest of honour. This was due to this years event not only having feature displays for 100 years of Aston Martin and 50 years of the Porsche 911, but also 50 years of Bolwell, to which Campbell was the founder.

Campbell flew across from Melbourne for the event and spoke about the creation of the company, how it's grown and a little on where Bolwell Corporation is heading. Now Bolwell are a composite manufacturing business, but continue to be innovators in their fields, and there are certainly many fields. One of the business arms produces caravans, and the new Nagari is due to Campbells love for motorcars. Which is why he got started with tinkering with cars back before he was 15, managed to turn it into a business at 16 by producing fibreglass car bodies for people to build into their own kit car, and why 7 production models later he's still enthused about cars and spending time with those who also enjoy tinkering with the products. I'm not sure the latest Nagari needs much tinkering, but all earlier models were pretty much built with that in mind as they were mostly kit cars.

After a talk about Celebration of the Motorcar, Bridging Communities and Bolwell, it was time for a short and sweet auction to raise a little more money for the blankets. There was some quality champagne, a night in the presidential suite at the Hyatt, and half an hour in the passenger seat of a Ferrari F40. These items raised over $3500 between them.

Once the official run of formalities was complete, it was back to mingling, be it with other people, the cars, or the bar. It made for a fun combination no matter how they were mixed.

The range of cars covered early classics through to modern supercars, with an interesting mix in between.

Then as the evening drew to a close, the sun dipped behind the Indian Ocean allowing for a great evening at the Cottesloe Civic Centre to come to an end. The up side was that in the morning we would be back for the main day of motorcar celebration.

Wrap Evolution

After a number of years in its current guise, it was time for Bond to have a little bit of a face lift. As much as I like sports cars in a red, sometimes it's good to be a little bit different. Not that the final colour choice will be a one off, but certainly in the Bolwell siblings locally it will be. As for a wrapped Bolwell, of that it will certainly be a first.

Somewhere down the line of the colour update process I decided that wrapping the car was going to be a better option than going for a traditional paint job. A couple of reasons for this. The really useful one is that having the car wrapped is a lot less deadly on the bank than having the car painted to an equivalent standard. The other is I don't have enough space to store an engine if I was to have the engine bay done as well. So a superficial wrap it would be. And having seen plenty of wrappings at different Targa events I knew what the end result could be like (see below, though it turns out I was wrong. I underestimated how good a wrap job could be). The other advantage of the wrap product is that matte colours, chromes, carbon fibre and the like are all a lot easier to achieve this way than with painting. And there are so many effects to choose from.

So homework has to be done to start coming up with colour schemes that are going to work. And while my sketching and colouring in got some evening time, nothing compares to actually seeing colours in the light of day (and then hoping they look good on the car as well as a little patch of card). I thought of the classic Martini and Gulf racing colours, but went with a much simpler pattern. Matte Grey Aluminium and Matte Dark Gray from the 3M range. No chromes or carbon fibres here.

Body preparation is key to getting the final product looking good. This required the numerous fibreglass cracks to be cleaned up, along with stone chips, flaking paint, aerial holes and other slight disfigurements to the body. This explains the case of measles on the car in the below pic. To this end, apologies to Ben who found more issues with the paint then were evident at first appearance.

While we were at it, a nose job was had as well. This involved creating a softer, more rounded shape instead of the existing concave shape. This was easy to do as the bonnet had already been used to create a mould with donor bonnets now being found on another Bolwell Mark 7 and also a Corvette Stingray. Before and after rhinoplasty shown here.

With the conclusion of the fibreglass work, the car was in a position to be wrapped. After searching through a couple of the car wrapping companies I knew of and some I didn't, I decided to entrust Ben Patti of Perth Vehicle Wraps ( http://perthvehiclewraps.com.au/ ) to do a good job with the Bolwell. Having seen some of his work both in person and on line, I was happy with this choice.

Wrapping over decals gives a great visual effect. This detail type also resides within the door sills of the car showing the Bolwell brand.

Part of the service that Ben provided was final detailing of the car in order to wrap it, along with stripping it back enough of door seals, catches, windows and the like to do a top quality professional job.

And then the wrapping was able to commence.
The wrapping process involves rolls of a special vinyl placed over the car (and pre-positioned with a light adhesive) before being smoothed into place and heated where joins and edges exist in order to finish the positioning and stretching of the vinyl. Where particular edges are needed, a "cutting tape" is placed and then lifted through the wrap, giving a clean edge, with the easy removal of the excess then taking place.

The detail to make sure the wrap clings properly in all the right places is critically important, particularly around edges, seams and crease lines of the vehicle. Due to the age of the existing paint, this process ended up taking a little longer than planned as the paint was flaking off under the adhesive when it was being positioned. This involved a lot more work for Ben to get right, but I'm thankful for the extra time and effort he had to put into it in getting the project done properly.
And not just the wrap, but the extra details that went into the car. The time spent to re-colour the brackets and screws from red, wrapping door hinges, the grill surround, re-creating badges. Just so many little things that made a massive difference in the end.

So a couple of weeks later the car was ready for pickup. With much anticipation I went north to Quinns Rocks to pick up the car. Now because of the extra detail that went into the job, the car still required a bit of reassembly upon arrival. To be honest, this was a good thing as it enabled me to see the professionalism and perfection that Ben puts into his work.

So after a couple of hours of reassembly and final touch ups, the car was ready to go. And it looks beautiful.

I would like to thank Ben and Nicole from Perth Vehicle Wraps for the amazing and professional finish they put on the car. For the extra time they took to do the job right, the detailing involved, their frustration with some of the job and especially the final product. It is beyond what I was expecting and the car is a completely new beast because of it.
Now I just wish I could drive it.

Before and after.