Saleen Club of America

2007 New England Regionals

By Dave Gregorie, New England Region Director

After months of working on hosting and planning the 1^st annual SCOA NE Regional the time finally arrived for the long awaited event. With final touches in place our next concern was the weather with it always being the big question mark in New England. We were thankfully treated to delightful sunny skies with no rain in the forecast for both days from old Mother Nature! 

We did not even have to use our favorite local saying “just wait five minutes” for the weather to change. Saturday’s events included the SCOA meet and great being held at the newly renovated Riverside Commons shopping district in beautiful downtown Putnam, CT along the Quinebaug River.  

This event is hosted weekly May- October by the Tri State Cruisers club with all proceeds going to the Hole in The Wall Camp for sick children. This camp was started several years back in Ashford, CT by actor Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward both Connecticut residents.

It has grown into a very special haven for these kids who come from all over to have some fun at the camp. We had a great time enjoying all the cars on hand including a very nice turnout of Saleens including a bunch of early fox body cars and a super nice low mile 95 S-351 car # 05 which was originally owned and driven by Tony Johnson back in the days. It’s always nice to get to see any of the Saleen internal or corporate cars as they are officially known. This cruise night typically draws 200 + cars and was very crowded during the evening with lots of car enthusiasts stopping by to get a closer look at our rare Saleens. Thousands of extra tourists were in town for this evening’s festivity including the Hartford Symphony orchestra concert and River Fire at the nearby Rotary Park. Many of them had never seen our special cars firsthand and were anxious to learn more from the owners. The night seemed to end too quickly for all of us and we headed back home or to the local hotels in the area. It was a great start to the weekend’s event schedule!

The next day was Sunday and the scheduled day of the SCOA big show at beautiful Roseland Park in historic Woodstock, CT. This facility is situated on the shores of Roseland Lake and features a wooded setting with all types of facilities for the little kids and big kids of the family. This show was held in conjunction with our friends at SAAC New England Region so as expected we had a large contingent of Carroll Shelby’s favorite cars in attendance. Some of these cars included a 1967 CSX 3000 series original 427 Cobra and all years of Shelby Mustangs represented. We also had a large group of Cobras from ERA, FFR and Superformance making their way to the park grounds for their annual owner’s picnic. The day featured an awesome group of Saleens coming in for the SCOA event including many fox body cars, S-351 and several newer 2005-2007 cars driving up from New York for the show. One of the highlights for me was getting to meet Tim Cronin from MA who has owned from new 1985 #38 Saleen convertible one of two produced that year and the first Saleen convertible ever manufactured by Saleen! Tim is wealth of early Saleen knowledge and founded a very early Saleen organization many years ago. He was nice enough to bring along a portion of his impressive early Saleen memorabilia collection and great stories to share with all of us lucky enough to meet him.

The day came and went too quickly and now we have the great memories and new friendships that we forged waiting for next years event to come around again. On a personal note I would like to send out a big thank you to the following folks and surely some that I probably will forget to mention not intentionally. Thanks to Jay for his help and especially his generous hospitality and finding this great location for us to enjoy! Big thanks also go out to the SCOA R.I director Bob DeAngelis for all his help with the logistics for the weekend!

And also to Mike and Mari for letting me use all of their wonderful pictures from the weekend as I was to busy to remember to take very many! Tim thanks for bringing out some of your Saleen history for all of us to enjoy! And most importantly thanks to all the SCOA members and their families for making this a truly fun weekend!!!