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For most of the 20 years this collection has been together it
has been used regularly like any garage full of sports cars.
The lovely folks at the Polo office in New York asked me to
change my title to this piece because they want us to understand
that these are elite cars that belong to a fashion icon.
All that is true, but my original title described the guy who
owns and drives each of these priceless artifacts at least 30
miles every 6 weeks. And he really did buy a Morgan +4 to
use as a regular commuter from Brooklyn into Manhattan
every day. He survived with a vivid memory of Morgan
idiosyncrasies and, with all these additional examples of
ancient cars, he has experienced dozens more. With that he
still comes into a garage, finds something beautiful and fast
and lights it off and goes out to chase the fashion industry
out of his head. That deserves the highest compliment our
culture can bestow on one of our own; Ralph Lauren is a
‘car nut.’
Sure, there are 60 cars in his various garages and most of
them have histories worthy of a film script, but when the
guy who has spent his life making the rest of us look good–
and still look like guys–gets in and checks the gear lever for
neutral, pokes the gas pedal a couple of times and pushes
the obscure, unmarked button that ignites the fuel in those
carefully honed barrels, he does it because he loves the
whole idea. Not because he has checked with his investment
counselor, but because he has checked with Mark
Reinwald, the curator of the collection, and Mark said it’s
full of gas and ready to go.
Listen, I don’t know Mr. Lauren. My best connection
with his car nut credentials is an interview done by Darcy
Kuronen for the introduction to Speed, Style, and Beauty,
the beautifully produced catalog of the new exhibit of these
cars at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibit of 16
cars was also curated by Mr. Kuronen and his twelve-page
Q&A is a most revealing portrait of the guy in the aviator
sunglasses. The questions are simple enough. Most not
more than a two line sentence, but the answers are delivered
from a guy who has been where we have been. He has often
had a better ride, but he loved the trip, none the less. Most
of his bruises have healed just like ours, but he has had his
share of failed starters, flooded carburetors, recalcitrant
brake or clutch pedals and all the other frustrations that we
all face with our old cars from time to time.
Most of our cars have not won ‘Best in Show’ at Pebble
Beach like his have – before they saw the 30 miles of Long
Island two-lane. Many of us have not had the artisans at the
Paul Russell restoration shop hand fit every component to
its original specifications either, and I’ll wager only a couple
of you have someone on staff with as much knowledge,
both historical and mechanical, talent and enthusiasm as
Mark Reinwald. Then, again, most of us aren’t running a
world wide fashion organization created and operated on a
very personal level of quality and taste.
For many years I visited Briggs Cunningham in his
museum in Costa Mesa, California at least once every
month and sometimes every week. It was the finest collection
of enthusiast cars I have ever seen. I have also seen
those same cars in Miles Colliers’ private museum and they
still bring a spark to my nearly unlimited enthusiasm for
this stuff. I got that same feeling visiting the Lauren garages
on a recent frigid January afternoon. He makes the point
very clearly in his interview that he never set out to create a
collection. He simply bought the things he dreamed about
when his business permitted him to do it. He just bought
great cars one at a time. It wasn’t until later that someone
else suggested that he had a wonderful ‘collection.’Well,
now he does. And, bless his heart, he has let us see a lot of
it on the lawns of Pebble Beach over the past couple of
decades. He has now put his most important treasures on
exhibit as the art of our culture in an enormous hall in one
of America’s finest art museums. These are private
machines that one guy loves to walk around, sit in, dream
about, and occasionally drive, but once in a while he will
share with the rest of us. The good news is that Darcy
Kuronen and the staff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
have asked him to do it in their great, protected halls and
more of us will get the chance to dream right along with the
car nut who gets to drive them.
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