Known as the industrial backyard of New Jersey, Elizabeth is the last place you’d expect to find a collection of antique cars worth more than the city itself. Nevertheless, my father has contributed a vintage car museum of considerable value to a city that includes parts of Newark Airport and the entire Jersey Gardens outlet mall. At the opening of the appropriately named Oscar Davis Collection, two hundred friends, colleagues, auto mechanics, and family members feasted on such Oscar favorites as stuffed cabbage and champagne. The space itself was soaring and vast. Walls were covered with awards he’d won; automotive paintings he believes are beautiful; photographs of him in rallies all over the world. It’s one luxurious, polished parking lot for forty-three cars that includes an extremely rare 1938 Talbot-Lago, French and considered a rolling sculpture.
