Hillsborough Concours d’Elegance returns: Brisbane-based restorer Raffi Najjarian to feature six cars at July 21 event

His cars, some of which he owns and some he restores for clients, include a 1951 Alfa Romeo 1900, 1953 Fiat Supersonic, 1954 Siata 208 CS Balbo coupe, 1956 Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing, 1959 Ferrari 250 long-wheelbase California Spyder and a 1962 Ferrari 250 short-wheelbase Nembo Spyder.

The Siata was part of a collection of cars known as “sleeping beauties” because their owner, a French collector, hid them for years in a barn after World War II to keep them away from tax collectors, Najjarian said.  

The 1962 Ferrari is one of only three ever made, the 1956 Mercedes can reach speeds of 145 mph, which was highly unusual at the time, and the Fiat supersonic and Siata were among the first cars to feature four-wheel independent suspension. The Alfa Romero was originally made as a gift to Formula 1 champion Juan Manuel Fangio and features his signature under the hood while the 1959 Ferrari California Spyder was once owned by actor Nicolas Cage. 

Each of the cars initially sold for between $8,000 to $15,000 and are today worth millions.

As one might guess, the experience of driving a vintage car is quite different than driving modern ones.

“In the old cars you don’t have power brakes, power steering, definitely no antilock braking system and no traction control so you’re feeling all the feedback from the road into the steering wheel basically. You’re in total control,” he said. “In the modern car, you’re buffered from all that.”

Najjarian submits vintage cars to a handful of contests every year, and leading up to each event, he and his team work around the clock to ensure every last feature of the car is functional and historically accurate. 

“You’re always striving to repair, not to make new. This is about the car being correct. Each car deserves to be right,” he said.  “I don’t participate [in the concours] for the prize, that’s for sure. It’s for the satisfaction of doing the car the way it should be and the only way to get the satisfaction is to be judged by your peers. The owners spend a lot of money restoring these cars and they want the satisfaction of knowing they spent the money wisely and want something in return, meaning the car is done right.” 

Restorations of a single car can span years — Najjarian’s longest project took six years — but he said the work is never really done.

“You always see things that you missed, you’re always working on the car and one thing leads to another. You think to yourself it’s a simple lock it’ll take two hours to repair, but it ends up taking a week,” he said. 

Najjarian specifically seeks out cars that need significant work and is one of very few who actually get excited when his car malfunctions.

“A lot of the excitement is having a problem and trying to fix it,” he said.

He also used to be a racer, but gave that up because “it’s more challenging to prepare a car rather than the actual driving.”

Hunting down original parts is not easy and the search takes Najjarian every year to a convention in Italy, at which innumerable vintage car parts are sold in a space many times larger than the Cow Palace. Buying parts online rarely works out, he said, as they’re often reproductions or inauthentic in some way.

“You have to see the part and hold it,” he said.

If a part cannot be procured, then it is made in a machine on site with the same materials and welding techniques employed during the period in which the car was originally built. 

For the concours, competing cars of course must be able to start and the trunk must open and close properly, for example, and if even a screw is facing the wrong direction judges will knock a point off of a contestant’s score.

Contestants will even bring historic photographs and documents to make their case if the authenticity of a certain feature of a car is called into question by the judges. Najjarian said he spends roughly 30% of his time researching and collecting historical documentation on the cars. 

Najjarian has been surrounded by cars his entire life. He hails from Lebanon, where his father was that nation’s first importer of Aston Martin, Alfa Romero and Maserati cars.

When he was about 7 years old, he removed the gauge assembly from one of his father’s cars and took it home with him and, as punishment, he had to learn how to put the device back together again. That experience kicked off a career devoted to car restoration and his father still works with him every day.

Najjarian’s family moved to the United States in the 1950s when he was 9 years old and he never lost his affinity for cars produced during that decade.

“I was born in the 1950s so those are the cars I grew up, that I enjoy seeing and have memories of so I’m partial to those years,” he said. 

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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