In Iran, Hailing Detroit With Vintage V-8’s
Credit: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com)
SAFE PASSAGE A vintage Chevrolet Camaro gets a mullah’s blessing at a recent rally in Isfahan, Iran.
By JIM KOSCS
THE scene has been played out so many times as to border on cliché. It begins with an impromptu meet-up of two Chevy Camaros, each announcing its prowess with a V-8 rumble. Then, despite good-natured banter between the drivers, an unspoken challenge is made. Finally, a tire-smoking showdown ensues.
One big difference this time: the encounter, which took place at summer’s end, did not begin on the main drag of a small Midwestern town and pursue resolution on a deserted country road. Instead, the Camaros, a pair of pumped-up early ’70s models owned by friends, faced off at the Azadi Stadium Race Track in Tehran.
The setting was a gathering of the Tehran Café Racers, but aside from few minor details — Persian lettering on the license plates and on the cans of Coke sipped over lunch — it could have taken place at many racetracks in America. The loose-knit group, an affiliate of a Florida-based club, is part of Iran’s enthusiastic classic car culture. Vintage Detroit models play a big role in the activities, and driving events take precedence — the track session was the group’s first since its founding this year.
“I was expecting a better turnout for the American car contingent,” Ramin Salehkhou, a 44-year-old American-educated lawyer who started the Tehran branch of the club, wrote in an e-mail. “But three of the guys, owners of a 1968 Dodge Charger, a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and a 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, had to bail out.”
A rare high-performance Camaro belonging to Mr. Salehkhou is at the core of the Tehran group’s formation, and Detroit was well represented among the 30 cars at the track. American cars usually account for 30 to 40 percent of participants at club gatherings, he said.
In addition to Mr. Salehkhou’s Camaro and its drag-race rival, other attendees included a restored 1965 Mustang convertible, a ’67 Mustang GT, a ’72 Mustang Mach 1 (also owned and restored by Mr. Salehkhou), a ’71 Dodge Charger and a ’73 Corvette. Also on hand were a Chevy Blazer and a mid-1970s Buick Park Avenue.
Most cars took to the track for hot laps and drag racing. The Buick’s owner entertained the group by doing power slides around the road course, a feat made easier by the 454-cubic-inch Chevy V-8 that replaced the original Buick engine.
Among the 1960s and 1970s vehicles joining the day’s fun were a number of Mercedes-Benz sedans, coupes and SL roadsters; a 1975 Maserati Khamsin that was once part of the shah’s Imperial Garage; MGB and Triumph TR6 roadsters; and even some Volkswagens — a quasi-military Thing and a pair of vintage Beetles.
The Maserati’s owner, Fathali Esfandiari, not only took hot laps, but showed off with a series of tire-smoking donuts. Mr. Esfandiari, who has restored a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, is vice president of a volunteer group, the Classic Car Committee of the Motorcycle and Automobile Federation of Iran; Mr. Salehkhou is the group’s president.
After a morning on the racetrack, the group headed to lunch at an outdoor restaurant in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains overlooking the capital. “In Tehran at least, due to heavy traffic congestion, our trips usually serve as an excuse to take off the covers and exercise our cars,” Mr. Salehkhou said.
Classic-car events attract considerable attention in Iran, which is somewhat surprising even to Mr. Salehkhou, because such a large portion of the country’s population was born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Whenever we do a road trip, people clap and honk their horns throughout the route,” he said. “Most of the interest comes from the young. And most of it is directed toward Mercedes and American cars.”
Last month, a classic-car rally in the ancient city of Isfahan attracted a variety of American vehicles, including Chevy sedans from the ’50s and ’60s as well as Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds.
“Most of the cars had husband-and-wife teams, including one woman who drove a yellow Chevy Blazer while her husband navigated,” Mr. Salehkhou said. A mullah blessed each car at the start of the rally, which was won by a 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix.
There is a logical explanation for the popularity of American cars in Iran: in the 1970s, when tens of thousands of Iranian students were attending American colleges, an Iranian tax exemption let each student ship home a personal car. Not surprisingly, low gasoline prices helped students to rationalize their desire for fast, powerful models.
Mr. Salehkhou’s 1972 Mustang entered the country that way, and although he is not the original owner, Mustangs have had a strong influence on him. It was a ride in a neighbor’s 1969 Shelby GT-500 that hooked him on muscle cars — when he was 4 years old and living in the United States while his father attended graduate school.
As a student at George Washington University, and later Case Western Reserve, Mr. Salehkhou drove a used 1983 VW Rabbit GTI. He would eventually put 200,000 miles on the GTI, driving it all over the East Coast and Midwest.
Firebird Trans Ams, a Main Street mainstay in the United States in the 1970s, accompanied many Iranian college students home. Kamran Alavizedeh, head of the American Car Club, owns three: a black ’73, a red ’76 and a ’78 Gold Special Edition. Mr. Alavizedeh, a dentist, estimated the membership of the American Car Club at 250.
Other ’70s G.M. cars are still seen in Iran, some that were officially imported and others that were assembled in Iran from kits, known as complete knock-downs, shipped from the United States. One of those, the 1976-79 Cadillac Seville, remains a favorite among collectors, Mr. Salehkhou said.
The eight-year war that followed Iraq’s 1980 attack on Iran brought fuel rationing to the country. Owners of thirsty American cars stored them and drove more economical vehicles or used public transportation, Mr. Salehkhou said. That hiatus helped to preserve some cars; others were scrapped.
While many of these cars are hardly fuel-sippers, Mr. Salehkhou noted that owners benefited from subsidies that have held prices for an initial monthly allotment to 10 cents a gallon for regular-grade gasoline and 15 cents for premium; additional quantities can be bought for 45 or 55 cents a gallon. The government is phasing out its subsidies, however, and prices will rise.
With chrome exhaust pipes down its sides, a large air scoop on its hood and a jacked-up stance, Mr. Salehkhou’s Camaro resembles the souped-up cars that prowled America in the 1970s. It is, in fact, muscle car royalty, a rare 1974 Baldwin-Motion Phase III Camaro from a long-defunct collaboration between a Long Island tuner shop, Motion Performance, and a nearby Chevrolet dealer, Baldwin Auto Company. This partnership produced some of the quickest Chevy muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s; the Phase III versions were the most powerful and most expensive.
Mr. Salehkhou authenticated his car with its builder, Joel Rosen, Motion’s founder, who confirmed that the Camaro was built in late 1973 and shipped to its original buyer in Tehran. By then, federal emissions regulations had ended sales of Motion’s superpowered Chevys in the United States.
“When I talked to Joel and told him I had found the car, his reaction was like an artist rediscovering one of his lost works,” Mr. Salehkhou said.
The blue Camaro, which had been the daily driver of a used-car salesman for several years, runs strongly but needs restoration. “My biggest challenge, right now, is finding an original set of Hooker big-block side-mount headers,” Mr. Salehkhou said, referring to the exhaust plumbing. “The originals have been repaired so many times that they’re all patchwork.”
Mr. Rosen referred Mr. Salehkhou to his longtime friend and business associate, Martyn L. Schorr, who was writing a book about Motion Performance. Mr. Schorr featured Mr. Salehkhou’s Camaro in his book, with a photo of the car in Tehran. A friendship developed, and Mr. Schorr helped Mr. Salehkhou establish the first satellite group of the Sarasota Café Racers, a diverse non-club club that started in 2003. Its raison d’être is simple: car guys who lunch.
One difficulty for collectors of American cars is finding repair parts, Mr. Salehkhou said. That is easiest for G.M. models, more difficult for Fords and hardest of all for Chrysler products.
Expertise is available, however. Ali Kalhor, owner of the ’71 Camaro that raced against Mr. Salehkhou at the Azadi track and the holder of two Iranian drag racing titles, runs a highly regarded racing shop.
The Classic Car Committee, a volunteer group headed by Mr. Salehkhou, seeks to preserve and restore classic cars. The group works closely with the National Auto Museum, a collection of nearly 100 cars that remain from a fleet of high-end classics and exotics amassed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the ruler deposed in the 1979 revolution. The committee maintains and restores the cars at its own expense; the museum is working toward establishing a larger facility.
A few years ago, the committee successfully lobbied against legislation that would have required cars more than 25 years old to be scrapped. This fall, Mr. Salehkhou and other committee members assisted with logistics for the Iranian leg of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, a 10,000-mile vintage car rally, helping participants, including several American teams, through customs and border crossings.
Credit: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com)
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