Café Racer regular Jon Ford, who runs MDC Engineering, a company that designs and builds packaging machinery for the pharmaceutical industry, built Urciuoli's highly modified, five-speed Mustang. Ford's passion is hot rods, and he has a small shop that creates show-winning specialty vehicles. When Ford needed a high-performance engine for the Mustang, he turned to fellow Café Racer Steve Keech, who built him an aluminum-head 390-cubic-inch Ford V-8.

"Since you have to have lunch, why not eat with people who have like interests and you can have fun with?" asks Bill Tracy, who has been living in Sarasota for almost two decades since retiring as a Captain at US Air. A car guy since he was old enough to drive and a Café Racer

original, he has a penchant for the color red-and Ferraris. He has a half-dozen red classic Jaguars, a red Ferrari 575 Maranello and a red-trimmed, Ferrari-badged black Ford Excursion that he uses to tow his show car trailer. Even his boat, a rare Riva-Ferrari 32-footer powered by twin 400-hp Ferrari-spec V-8s, is red.

Tracy's wife, Jackie, shares his love of cars. "I didn't want another red car at the house," she says. So she opted for silver when it came to ordering her daily driver, a supercharged Mercedes SL55 AMG.

Tracy manufactures and markets restoration parts and accessories for Jaguars and travels extensively, yet rarely misses a car guy lunch. "Lunch is good, but the real kick is the post-lunch show and tell in the parking lot. That's when hoods get popped and we just hang out like a bunch of kids vying for bragging rights," he says.

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LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

Joe and Debbie Angeleri's trophy-winning 289 Shelby Cobra has few peers.

For more than 40 years Ida Angeleri has been sending her son, Sarasota luxury home builder Joe Angeleri, two birthday cards. One celebrates the day he was born (Sept. 9, 1943), the other commemorates the purchase of his prized Cobra (July 22, 1964). Joe Angeleri first saw his Cobra in a Manhattan showroom. "It was a wire-wheeled 1964 289-and I was in love," he says. "The 271-hp Ford V8-powered Cobra was one of the ultimate power symbols of the day."

Angeleri returned to the Ford dealership with a check for $6,700 and his fantasy became reality. His 289 Cobra is one of 453 street models built and the only 1964 Cobra painted green. It is one of six known original-owner 289 Cobras.

Joe Angeleri drove the car every day when he and his wife, Debbie, attended the University of Miami, Coral Gables, and then used it as a second car for years after that. In 1978 he put it in storage, where it remained for 25 years. In 2003 Joe brought the Cobra to one of the country's top restorers, Manfred Krukow in Naples.

Completed in May 2003, the Cobra has won top awards at every show entered, including the Amelia Island, Fla. and Meadow Brook, Mich. Concours. The Cobra has also won the Premier Award, the highest honor presented at the Shelby American Automobile Convention in Nashville, Tenn.

Car guy Martyn L. Schorr, president of PMPR, Inc., a marketing agency specializing in automotive and luxury brands, drives a Mercedes 560 SL and owns one of the first 50 of 412 Iso Grifo GT cars produced by Sarasota's Rivolta family in Italy in the 1960s.