BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Immanuel Anglican Cathedral held its third annual car show on Saturday, October 25.
Pastor Rev. Paul R. Toro, Jr., who is also the presiding bishop of the Anglican Free Communion, said his former church in Middleburg held car shows as part of its community outreach.
He added that Immanuel member Roger Rothwell, Jr. started the event in Keystone Heights and used the Middleburg event as a template.
Toro said attendance for Sunday services has grown from eight, when he first arrived seven years ago, to between 40 and 50.
Volunteer Fred Pittman said the car show had 59 entries. Jim Ranieri, who ran the show while Rothwell was out of town on a family trip, said Gary Bennett won the show and John Wiggins placed second.
Among the 59 entrants were Jeff and Diane Jenkins, who displayed their 1956 Willys 6226 Jeep Station Wagon.
The couple moved to the Indian Trails area near McRae from Eustis about a year ago.
“Too many people in Central Florida,” Jeff said of the move. “What
used to be orange groves are now subdivisions.”
Jeff has the vehicle’s original invoice, which shows the Jeep was first bought in 1956 in West Palm Beach for $2,875.
“I bought it when I was in my 20s and I’m 64 now,” he added.
The Central Florida transplant recalled that on a trip to South Florida with his sister and mother, he located the former site of McCoy’s Garage on North Dixie Highway, where the Willys was first bought.
“It’s an empty lot now with some concrete out there,” he remembered. “It was raining. I pulled over and started taking pictures of this empty lot. My mother and sister thought I was crazy as hell, and I said, ‘This is where the Jeep was born, Mom.’”
Keystone Heights City Council member Dan Lewandowski entered his 1941 Series 6019S Cadillac.
The retired Air Force colonel bought the car from his brother, who has an extensive collection and is a past president of the Southern California Cadillac and LaSalle Club.
“He lives in Los Angeles,” Lewandowski said, “and before that, the car was in Portland, Oregon, so it has spent its entire life on the West Coast.
The brothers named the car “The Goddess” after the iconic hood ornament Cadillac put on its models from 1930 to 1956 and reintroduced in 2022 as a front fender badge on the CELESTIQ.
Cadillac produced 1,400 Series 6091S cars in 1941. The model came with two options: an automatic transmission, which Lewandowski’s car has, and air conditioning, which it does not.
“But there’s no power steering or power brakes,” the city council member said. “In 1941, automatic transmissions were cutting-edge technology.”
