More than 30 cars and 70 years of automotive history pulled out of the News-Journal Center's parking lot Friday morning.
The classic-car aficionados were driving in the Fields Classic Motorsports Tour, a group drive from Daytona Beach to St. Augustine. The tour marks the start of today's Art of the Automobile -- A Lifestyle Event, now in its second year in downtown Daytona Beach.
"We see it as a nice little kickoff to the event," said Matt Hoffman, organizer of the tour.
Hoffman, of Fields BMW of Daytona, said he hopes to see the tour become an annual car rally.
The cars ranged in age from a 1939 Ford Deluxe, hot-rodded up in red with yellow flames, to the lead car, a sleek 2012 Fisker Karma hybrid. They ranged in muscle from a clutch of burly, candy-colored Corvettes from the '60s through the '80s to a bronze 1976 AMC Pacer.
Gill Pepitone, Coral Springs, said the oft-maligned economy car has only 40,000 miles on it and sees the tour as a shakedown run for a planned summer cross-country trip.
The longest, widest, most-photographed car was a red-and-white 1960 Buick LaSabre convertible belonging to Tony Cassata of Ormond Beach.
"There's more steel in the front fender of this car than there is the whole of a 2012 car," he said. Restoring it was a two-year labor of love.
Cassata said he was looking forward to driving the car to St. Augustine with the top down all the way. "You wouldn't believe how this car drives," he said. "It floats."
After the tour, many of the car buffs dressed up and returned to the News-Journal Center to party with other car enthusiasts at the Thunder Ball gala. A crew from "Muscle Car Workout" was slated to film at the event.
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