The Simoene Foundation, Philadelphia, PA
 

I took a trip up to Philly today with some Miata folks to visit the Simoene Foundation, a collection of pre- and postwar sports cars raced at famous venues like LeMans, the Nurburgring, and the Mille Miglia.

This collection is badass becasue:

1. All but two of his cars are in working condition.
2. He's not afraid to take these cars out of their climate controlled habitat.
3. He doesn't believe in trying to restore these cars to concurs condition. He'll leave it as is, and do only enough to get it back to top mechanical shape.
4. He knows the history not of the model, but of the car itself.
5. He has cars that I thought I'd never be able to see with my own eyes.

Here's a short sample of what he had (and that's not even the good stuff):

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This is one of only two Corvette ZL1's known to be in existence. Many clones are out there, but this is the genuine real deal with paperwork to back it up.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3321/...5146d9da_b.jpg
1958 Aston Martin DBR1 raced by Sir Stirling Moss and Sir Jack Brabham

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3646/...1ea0476f_b.jpg
1964 Daytona Cobra Coupe driven by Carroll Shelby, sold to Phil Spector, and disappeared for 30 years, the history behind that is crazy.

I got a bunch of other pictures taken here. If you're ever in the Philadelphia area, you gotta look this place up.

Some of the pictures came out crappy because I don't know how to take pictures indoors under medium lighting conditions.

Wow, fantastic. Thanks for the pics....and the reminder. This place is 20 min. from my house and I must go there very very soon.

If you get the opportunity, try to arrange a group so you can have the tour led by Dr. Simoene himself. The way he talks about these cars you'd never guess that these are multi-million dollar vehicles he's talking about.