Hemings Motor News

Exotic cars take over lawns in Saratoga Spa State Park

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- After working on his red 1985 Alfa Romeo twin turbo for a year, Les Neidell decided it might be ready to travel farther afield than his home in Tulsa, Okla.

"It's her maiden trip," Neidell said Saturday morning at the fourth annual Hemmings Motor News car show at Saratoga Spa State Park. "I got about 22 to 23 miles per gallon."

Neidell was one of about 200 car owners at the show, which focused on sports or exotica cars from Britain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, France, Japan and anywhere else, said Jim Menneto, the publisher of the magazine, which is based in Bennington, Vt.

The show had four classes: Mercedes SL; modern exotica like MG, Lotus, Jaguar; any of the cars that Donald Healey designed between 1940s and 1960s; and Fiat, both older before 1987 and the new 500.

What made Neidell's car so special was not only that he'd driven it from Tulsa - most of the owners came from the East Coast - but that his car was one of only 37 built and one of the 26 retooled by Reeves Callaway - a hot rod specialist from Old Lyme, Conn.

Neidell and his wife, Joan, had been looking for a Callaway for 10 years, he said.

In the 1980s, Alfa Romeo sales were down, so the company turned to Callaway to give the engine more power but still keep it legal and sale-able at Alfa Romeo dealerships.

Callaway was so successful that at one road test, it "blew away" a Corvette, Neidell said. An engineer from Corvette was so impressed that he wooed Callaway to build the engines for Corvette.

"They're still making Callaway-Corvettes," Neidell said.

His Alfa Romeo was the last of the road-tested Callaways and the cover car for Alfa Romeo's advertisements. But Neidell is not a collector or a mechanic.

"We started in 1967 just buying a car, driving it and then selling it when we got bored," he said, adding that over the years he's owned new cars or even rare ones worth millions.

Mike Roth of Clifton Park collects, but he too has little interest in fixing much beyond the occasional polish.

"If you'd asked me six years ago if I'd be a car collector, I'd have said you were nuts," Roth said laughing. "My son-in-law does all the mechanicals."

But he went to a road rally, liked it and found a car he'd been taken with barely a week later for sale at a neighbor's. He currently owns a 1980 gold/black Datsun and a grey 1984 Datsun that he uses only in summer - he has another car he uses in winter.

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