The ugly ducklings at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering

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The hottest ticket on the Peninsula every year is The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, a day-long schmooze fest on the The Quail Lodge golf links with awesome collector cars, good food and adult beverages. Obviously, the event is dedicated to the most beautiful, pristinely restored and inspiring motorcars . . . and yet a few ghastly, tragic and homely four-wheelers get in anyway. Below is a quick take on the ugly ducklings of The Quail. Look for our video on Sunday.

1966 Cheetah -- Owned by Californian Mark Boen, who was tragically born without a sense of taste, the Cheetah was designed to go after Shelby’s Cobras. Designed and built by Bill Thomas Race Cars, these cars would have ‘rewritten the record books,’ Boen says, if they had been built in enough numbers to be homologated.

The car’s stupendously weird configuration, which puts the driver’s butt on the rear axle, was intended to give the car better weight distribution. It also gives it the profile of a toothbrush. In any event, the car was fast and evil-handling, says Boen, who quested after this copy for 30 years. When asked why, he could only shrug.

1960 MGA with special ‘Savoy’ body -- The question here is, naturally, what the hell? Someone stripped off the lovely bodywork by Syd Enever and installed sheet allow and wood that looks like it was designed in reform school shop class? There’s sawtooth fins and walnut body pieces and carpet that looks like astroturf and a grille with high-tension wire that looks like a very large cheese slicer. And the atrocious shade of green looks like the rest room in some awful pro shop.

1964 Devin GT prototype -- Bill Devin was famously called the ‘Enzo Ferrari of Okie Flats’ and you cannot deny the man, whose shop was in Los Angeles, built some fast cars, some of which were . . . interesting looking. The GT prototype seen here was a fiberglass concoction with dreams of being a luxury sports car, a Lusso. It wasn’t. That said, the shovel-nosed look was a common solution to aero and packaging issues in GT’s of that era, as we’ll see below.

1967 Ferrari Dino 206 Competizione -- Owned by James Glickenhaus (who also owns the Enzo-based P4/5 custom Ferrari), this Jetsons-y car was the prototype for the Dino. With a crazy greenhouse canopy and tortured fiberglass all the way back to the rear taillights, this car was not Pininfarina’s finest hour, to be sure. Glickenhaus saw the car in the Pininfarina collection and offered to buy it. ‘It will turn to dust if it stays here,’ Glickenhaus said to the Pininfarina official. After 40 years, Glickenhaus is the first owner. Dig that front wing, will you? Downforce on a platter.

2009 Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe -- In DOT yellow. ‘Nuff said.

-- Dan Neil

Photo credits: Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times