I’ll leave it to someone else to suggest that Monterey week be redubbed Hershey West, but I’m starting to seriously think that you can find just about anything there at some point. Here’s an example from Concorso Italiano, which had a class for very high-end bicycles made in Italy. This intriguing delicacy is a 1984 Guerciotti Jet, fabricated in Milan, using some light components sourced from Campagnolo, of Ferrari five-spoke wheel fame. The Guerciotti brothers, Italo and Paolo, built bikes that won 10 world titles in cyclocross, best described as multi-surface road races in which the rider must dismount to carry his bike across obstacles. They’ve since branched out into extremely high-end road bikes, some with carbon-fiber frames weighing less than a pound.
What’s the point? Some guys here blend bicycle and automobile technology quite smoothly. As a case study, here’s some multilateral fun, the 1971 Fiat 500 topped by a pair of two-wheelers and presented by Robert Caccia of San Francisco. That 500 was seriously tricked up. We ran alongside him for a bit on southbound U.S. 101 en route to Monterey while the tiny Fiat barked out all kinds of crazy high-RPM noises.