This is car porn. After viewing the video, you’ll need a cigarette.
Barry Wolk is a serious car guy, a regular Motor City Garage reader, and a collector with a unique approach. He and his wife Glynette Wolk pursue rare and beautiful things that have the name Continental. The collection currently includes a 1955 Porsche Continental Cabriolet, a 1956 Chris-Craft Continental power boat, a rare 1933 Continental Flyer sedan, and the stunner you see here: a 1956 Continental Mark II convertible by Hess & Eisenhardt.
Barry created the video himself with Apple iPhoto, using a collection of still images from a shoot in the Latcha + Associates studio in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The photos by Kevin Pearce are flawless, but merged together in this video montage, the visual statement is far more than the sum of its parts. Serendipity, according to Barry.
“The video is really a fluke,” he says. “I let the program make it. I arranged the pictures and turned it into a slideshow. I melded that with the music on ‘random effect’ and ‘random time on screen’ and the computer did the rest, I’m embarrassed to say.” Works for us. Maybe the power of the composition lies mainly in the car itself. After all, the Continental Mark II has often been called one of the most beautiful American cars of the 1950s.
Later this week, the Mark II convertible will be in Monterey, California at the Pebble Beach Concours D’ Elegance in a special feature class for coachbuilt postwar Lincolns. In the meantime, here’s the video. Enjoy.