As you can imagine, I saw plenty of interesting cars while at Monterey Car Week, which makes sense, given the name of the week. It’s right in there: Monterey, which I believe is Old Dutch for “place of the automobile.” There were many beautiful cars there, many fascinating ones, rare ones, and I’d like to think all of them are harboring some little detail, some little secret, just hoping to be found.
I think I found a good one of those, and it’s one I really can’t quite figure out, so I do what I always do when baffled: write it up as a Cold Start and ask all of you for help. Then I get an idea for a Cold Start and hopefully an answer! We all win!
Let’s get to it; the car is a really lovely one, too, this 1935 Aston Martin Mark II Bertelli Sports Saloon:
Stunning car, right? They only seem to have built 24 of these, as they cost about £700 pounds back in the day, which would be around $86,000 today, so they weren’t cheap. They were quite elegant and fast, with a 1500cc engine that made between 84 and 100 horsepower, depending on the tune, which was pretty spectacular for the mid 1930s.
They had no running boards, those wild separate front fenders, and a very stiff chassis for the era, making them quite capable driving machines, a genuine four-seat sports car. But here’s the detail I don’t understand:
This thing. What is this thing?
It’s not unique to this car, as I can see it on other examples, like this one, if you look carefully at that corner of the roof.
Oh, while looking to confirm other Mark II Sports Saloons had this detail, I found a picture of this car prior to restoration, and, wow:
It looks like the chrome part may be missing there, but I think I see the little hole where it was mounted?
It’s just aft of the A-pillar on the roof, right above the leading upper corner of the front door. Is it a vent of some kind? If so, why? I’ve never seen a vent like that, and it looks like if it was that, it would be to expel a bit of air rather than intake any. But it’s so tiny; how much air would that thing even move? And, again, why?
Could it be a connector for something? Something maybe snaps into that little slot? If so, what? And again, why?
This is a remarkable and fantatasic-looking car, but I can’t get past that little chrome whatever screwed onto the roof. What is it? What does it do?
Help!
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