Search Engines, California Geography, and Racing History

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@xxxxxxxxx>]

AltaVista pointed me here when looking for "torrey pines" +concours:

http://www.scripps.edu/admin/dev/1998info.html

It's got the information you want (though believe it or not, the link to
the 1997 show has more useful stuff, such as phone numbers etc). 
AltaVista is perhaps the one Internet service more useful, if sometimes
even harder to filter, than the Alfa Digest.

Just to save someone a little money on making long-distance calls or
travel arrangements to the wrong part of the state, Torrey Pines is in
the San Diego area.  The Scripps Oceanographic Institute, also in San
Diego, is the regular beneficiary of the Torrey Pines Concours
d'Elegance as well.

The Monterey Peninsula is maybe 450 miles north of Torrey Pines, and is
the home of Laguna Seca Raceway.  Monterey recently split out of the 408
area code to become 831; the phone number for Laguna Seca Raceway is now
(831) 648-5111.

Why the rest of us care: Torrey Pines, in southern California, and
Pebble Beach, in northern California, were the twin cradles of
European-style road racing on the U.S. West Coast in the early 1950s. 
When the original over-closed-public-roads Pebble Beach racecourse
became too hazardous to spectators as well as drivers, the Army Corps of
Engineers was enlisted to create a closed course on unused lands in Fort
Ord, which became Laguna Seca.  The Torrey Pines course was simply
closed, though San Diego remains an active area for racing of both
modern and vintage cars. 

But along with Watkins Glen, Bridgehampton, and Sebring on the East
Coast, Torrey Pines and Pebble Beach were the venues at which postwar
Alfas were first seen stateside doing what comes naturally -- racing.  

- --Scott "whose oldest daughter is named Torrey" Fisher

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