This year it will not be, as it has been in half a century until 2020, during the Carnival Piñata, but Santa Cruz de Tenerife will be able to enjoy this Monday, May 30, Canary Islands Day, the already traditional Antique Car Contest in Santa Cruz, with a tour of the city center, departing from the García Sanabria Park, exhibition in the Plaza de España and ending at the Real Club Náutico. Some thirty vehicles are expected to participate, all of them registered before 1939, authentic jewels of world motoring.
Thus, 51 editions of the contest will be fulfilled, one less than the number fulfilled by the Tenerife Antique Car Club, as it cannot be held in 2021 due to the pandemic. Of the club’s 52-year history, almost half have been chaired by Abel Feblespassionate about cars from a very young age until it became almost a way of life, receiving several cars as an inheritance and rescuing many others from oblivion until he accumulated, between old and classic, fifteen almost exclusive models, such as the Overland that he usually drives for this occasion .
Fewer vehicles will participate than two years ago in the contest’s 50th anniversary -since they coincide on bridge and very few fleets from Gran Canaria travel-, with passengers dressed in period clothing-between the 1920s and 1930s- when in Tenerife the importation of Vehicles from the United States, for a particular tariff, allowed us to motorize even before the Island was connected by roads. Mayor José Manuel Bermúdez will ride on one of those historic mounts.
The concentration will be at 10:00 am in the García Sanabria Park. The departure is scheduled at 12.00 noon along the Rambla de Santa Cruz to go down San Sebastián Street to La Salle Avenue, cross the Galcerán Bridge until you continue along Weyler Square, Méndez Núñez Square and the Clock of the Flowers, go down the Calle El Pilar, Villalba Hervás and La Marina to Avenida Francisco La Roche, where the cars will be displayed for about half an hour, to continue to the Real Club Náutico, where awards will be given over lunch.
The TF-8, the oldest registered car left on the Island
This Monday we will be able to see great relics of world motoring in the streets of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, vehicles from the 20s and 30s of the last century that are approved as historic and in perfect condition to drive. But it will not be the case of the oldest registered vehicle that still exists on the Island.
It is a Peugeot Lyon Phaeton, from 1908, which has the registration number TE-8, because its predecessors were either destroyed or sold abroad as the TF- (Panhard from 1902). This car was owned by Luis Eduardo Martín Zamorano, owner of the Tabacos Coronas factory and his wife Mariola, both deceased years ago, who appear in the photo.
The car was later acquired by Lorenzo Hernández Pérez and his sister Hortensia, linked to car dealers all her life, pilot and former president of the CIT of Puerto de la Cruz. They are currently buying vehicles for a future Automobile Museum in Puerto de la Cruz.
