The Deering Estate Vintage Auto Show

Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 in Gulfstream Aqua
Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 overlooks the water at The Deering Estate

It’s been a tad quite around here for the last 10 months. We’ve had lots of stuff going on behind the scenes that will be emerging soon.

To make the most of the extra time on our hands we’ve been doing some site renovations and picking up some interesting projects that will be shared in the coming months. Mid last year one of those projects introduced me to The Deering Estate. I had the opportunity to shoot some content on it’s beautiful grounds so when I saw the auto show event pop up I knew I had to go back and check it out.

This time around I had Charlton with me so he could handle stills while I focused on video. Since everyone is still in a state of concern, live events have been kept to smaller groupings which is great for us so the cars aren’t as crowded by people.

As usual Charlton and I arrived extra early but to no surprise at all, there were already a bunch of cars ready to roll in. The interesting thing about The Deering Estate and many homes of it’s era, is that the front of the house is facing East towards the water. I was told that more people traveled by water than road at that time so homes were built to receive guests from that direction.

Since the back of the house is facing the road, all the show cars drove along an access path on the South side of the property where they were directed to their designated space on the front lawn. This worked out really nice since the path has a nice tree canopy along the short drive and it looked like the vehicles were emerging from a jungle.

We captured the cars rolling in as we made our way down the path. That’s were we met up with our contact Jenna, who was organizing the cars as they came in.

We caught up with her in-between arriving cars to get a feel for the event. Jenna told us that usually there are more cars of the earlier eras (10s, 20s, 30s) but due to the obvious circumstances, the turn out here was smaller. Considering everything, the amount of cars and people was just right. There was plenty of space for everyone, which is the name of the game these days.

With the scent of Sports Grill (the food vendor) wafting through the air and the final car parked in it’s place, we headed around the massive front lawn getting to work on all the cars.

I watched this incredible Jaguar XK 120 drive down the access road and park in it’s spot. During that whole time I got this feeling of watching a small boat just effortlessly floating down a river. During the show this car was constantly swarmed with people. Good thing we got some shots of it when it wasn’t too busy.

Another fan favorite was this Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 in Gulfstream Aqua with gold stripes. Quite the color scheme indeed. I can’t say that I have seen many painted this way. It was a beauty through and through. I managed to catch it at the back gate just as it started up and rolled in, it sounded perfect.

As the day went on we covered the grounds several times over. The aroma of food was starting to get to us, so we found Jenna on our way out and thanked her for having us. It was a great experience and I’m looking forward to the next one. The Deering Estate is just beautiful and I highly suggest checking it out, it’s a wonderful piece of Florida history, that should be enjoyed by all.

The rest of the photos can be found in our flickr album.

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