Updated: August 26, 2009, 4:31 pm

International Bricklin Owners Club Bring Their Rides To Westhampton Beach

By Colin M. Graham

Here they come - the International Bricklin Owners Club brought their vehicles to Westhampton Beach for a five-day event. Photos by Joe Strand

Westhampton Beach - Visitors to the Hamptons last week might have noticed a slew of some very interesting looking cars intermingled with the usual array of exotics that dot the roads this time of year.

Joe Vasso organized the event with Hank Beck.

This year, Westhampton Beach was the locale chosen to host the Annual Grand National Meet by the International Bricklin Owners Club. The four-day meet, which consisted of a variety of day events including a Poker run, North Fork run, a parade held on Thursday, July 23 and culminating in a full day of judging and prizes on the Great Lawn in the Village of Westhampton Beach on Saturday, July 25.

Looking something like a combination of a Corvette Stingray with the futuristic lines and gull-wing doors of a Delorean, the Bricklin SV-1 was a car that was somewhat ahead of its time when it was first produced in 1974. "The Bricklin is a wonderful amalgam of engineering," co-organizer of the event Hank Beck explained. "It's made of fiberglass and acrylics bonded together, which made it a difficult thing to make because you had materials that were very dissimilar, which is why production costs were so high because their failure rate was so high."

Despite problems with the body panels and a general mismanagement of the company that led to the car only being produced for three years, the Bricklin featured many innovations in the realm of safety. In addition to having a "five mph bumper," a bumper mounted on shock absorbers to dampen impacts of up to 10 mph without any damage to the car, they also came without cigarette lighters or ashtrays, something unusual at the time, since the car's designer Malcolm Bricklin, believed it was unsafe to smoke and drive at the same time. In fact, the designation SV-1 stands for "safety vehicle-1."

"One of the best looking cars was one of the full-modified's. It had drop side skirts, a spoiler on the rear deck, an air scoop on the hood and it was painted a brilliant yellow." stated Beck.

This year marks the first time the Bricklins have gathered en mass on the East End. "They move the show around every year," said Beck. "Last year I think the show was in Gettysburg, PA, the year before that it was in upstate New York and the year before it was somewhere in Indiana. The International Bricklin Owners Club has two meets a year - a West Coast and an East Coast meet and this was this year's East Coast festival."

In fact, the similities between the Bricklin and the DeLorean aren't merely coincidence Beck points out. "The show they had in Gettysburg was a joint show they did with members of the DeLorean Club. There is a reason why the two cars are so similar: DeLorean bought the gull-wing door design from Bricklin, then they screwed it up but the door design on the Bricklin is wonderful, they always worked and the windows crank down all the way, it was just a great design."

Interestingly, Beck's involvement with the Bricklin meet came about through a chance meeting at the Farmers Market in Westhampton Beach last year. "I ran into Joe Vasso, who is a local Bricklin owner who lives in Quogue, about a year ago at the Farmer's Market in Westhampton Beach," Beck recalled. "We got to talking and he told me that he was going to be the head of the show the next year. He was surprised I knew about the Bricklin and told me he was looking for spaces to have the show, so I told him I'd work on finding him a space in Westhampton Beach."

Approximately 29 cars showed up at the event, coming from all over the country. Beck indicated "We had cars from California, St. John, Nova Scotia, Michigan, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and I think four were from Long Island."

As the former president of the Chamber of Commerce in Westhampton and as the current chairman of the Hamptons Visitors Council, Beck was in an ideal position to help file the necessary paperwork to get the show organized and off the ground. "I went and filed the applications, I got the insurance, got everything cleared with the Chamber and the Village and then worked with Joe on developing the program for the five-day event."

The highlight of the program the two came up with was a fan favorite voting contest that was held on Saturday, which fortunately turned out to be the nicest day of the event. "We let people at the show write the VIN number of their favorite one down on a piece of paper for the fan favorite award to go along with the other award categories, which were stock, semi-modified, modified and full-modified," Beck explained. "One of the best looking cars was one of the full-modified's. It had drop side skirts, a spoiler on the rear deck, an air scoop on the hood and it was painted a brilliant yellow."

Hank Beck was in an ideal position to help file the necessary paperwork to get the show organized and off the ground. "

In all, Beck said that approximately 29 cars showed up at the event, coming from all over the country. "We had cars from California, St. John, Nova Scotia, Michigan, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and I think four were from Long Island. I was amazed how many people showed up to look at the cars on the Great Lawn in Westhampton."

Beck realized something that day that he hadn't thought about prior to the event. "It was funny though about the gull-wing doors on the Bricklin since the official symbol of Westhampton Beach is the flying seagull; it was just a perfect match."

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