RROC 2019 - the Rolls-Royce and Bentley Club's National Meet - JE Robison Service - Bosch Car Service Specialists

The 2018 annual meet for the RROC was held at Squaw Creek Resort near Lake Tahoe, California. The setting for the meet couldn’t be beat. We were minutes from the gambling and iniquity of Nevada to the East, with the legacy of cannibalism hanging over Donner Pass to the West. In the midst of that gathered a couple hundred Rolls-Royce and Bentley enthusiasts.

Living in Massachusetts I decided to fly rather than drive. The nearest airport is in Reno, and that was where I went. The Reno airport is distinguished by a wealth of slot machines and gambling devices, enough for all the bored passengers at every single gate of the terminal.

Serious-looking passengers sat before machines pulling the levers and staring glassy-eyed through the windows. Some became so absorbed they missed their flights, and I watched them leap from their seats to claw at closed doors as their airplanes rolled away. I walked carefully around the hungry machines and headed for the Hertz counter.

They did not rent Rolls-Royce or Bentley cars at that particular airport, but I was able to get a white truck. I set out for the resort on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. A short while later I found myself driving into Truckee, California. It seemed like I was in the perfect vehicle for that place but a snooty clerk advised me Truckee was an American perversion of an Indian’s name from the past century. The name of the town had nothing at all to do with trucks.

The central feature of the town was the Union Pacific Railroad. There were two monuments to the railroad a few hundred feet west of the town center. Both were surrounded by electrified chain link fence so I could not get too close, but I was able to get photographs. The first is a rotary snowplow, a 1920s-era monster that remains in winter use today. The other shrine is a railroad crane, capable of lifting the rotary plow back onto the rails after excessively exuberant encounters with snowdrifts.

The resort was south, but I headed west after paying my respects to the Union Pacific. A few miles out of town I passed Donner Lake and the state museum. It was amazing how much had changed there, in 170 short years. The site where starving emigrants ate their young and infirm has been replaced by a vacation paradise. Continuing on, the road began the ascent toward Donner Pass. To the left the original rail line snaked up the hill under the protection of six miles of concrete show sheds. To the right, Interstate 80 climbed its own grade.

I reached the top, where I found traces of the 1914 Lincoln Highway – the first transcontinental road in the United States. I gazed upon Indian petroglyphs thought to be 2,000 years old, and walked reverentially up to the original Union Pacific mainline, devoid of track since 1993, when the summit line was abandoned leaving all traffic to pass through the lower, faster two-mile tunnel through nearby Mt. Judah.

The RROC was waiting. Turning round, I reluctantly descended the mountain and headed for Squaw Creek. Squaw Creek and the adjacent Squaw Valley together comprise one of the largest ski resorts in North America. Built in 1990, the resort offers free local phone calls and has several fine restaurants. A large area of pavement had been cleared in the center, where Rolls-Royces and Bentleys were scattered around.

Over the next day a couple hundred enthusiasts – many armed with Proper motorcars – gathered at the resort. With a dearth of hooting and yelling, and a few stray gunshots, the meet got underway. Bentley hosted the first night’s welcome reception which was held outside on the patio. Hoteliers said it hadn’t rained in three months, but the heavens made up for it right as the reception opened.

Over the next few days we listened to presentations on new motorcars, the transition to electric vehicles, refinishing of woodwork, being a proper chauffeur, and a dozen other topics. John Palma did a series of parking lot inspections; a thing for which he is renowned nationwide. Ronnie Shaver and Simon Curzon talked about maintenance and Will Rau talked about wood. Tony Handler made an appearance while his man Santos remained at the shop, filling orders.

I did a session myself on upkeep and repair of late model cars. All the sessions seemed to be well attended. The highlight of the meet was the concours, held Saturday on the field between the hotel and the mountain. Sixty-two or possibly sixty-four cars were on the field for judging, a lower number than at other recent meets.

As many of these cars as I’ve seen in California, I was surprised we did not have a bigger turnout. I’ve seen a hundred Bentleys on a single trip into LA, and that’s not even counting the Rolls-Royces scattered around.

Richard Vaughn was in Tahoe promising an exciting 2019 meet in conjunction with the Concours of America. He did not get as many meet deposits as Elon Musk got for Model 3 Teslas, but short sellers didn’t pounce on him either. I think we will see close to two hundred cars in Detroit.

The Bentley Boys were there with a blue Continental GT. The car was a pre-production model, not US-certified, but very close to the car that will be on sale in American showrooms next year, in time for Bentley’s 100^thanniversary.