First, there was the Caffeine and Octane monthly car show, from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. the first Sunday of every month, rain or shine, in Dunwoody, Georgia. It is a wonderful event attracting hundreds of cars and thousands of classic car fans.
Next came the Caffeine and Octane television show on Velocity. It is one of the most entertaining programs on the network and ticks all the boxes for what makes a good television show as it features fun on-air personalities — custom car and motorcycle builder Bryan Fuller, champion motorcycle drag racer Ricky Gadsen, and classic car collector, concours judge, restorer and all-around guru Skip Smith — as well as great cars and great stories about the cars and the people who own them.
But all of that was not enough for Bryan Fuller. So, the weekend after the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, he hosted a three-day car and motorcycle event at Jekyll Island.
Caffeine and Octane At The Beach had a great turnout of cars, custom motorcycles and spectators, and may have been the best-executed first-time classic car and motorcycle event I have attended.
There were hundreds of cars, everything from customs and muscle cars to concours-level full classics and sports cars. But that wasn’t all. Also featured was a display of 18 hand-built motorcycles in the event’s Forged Invitational Motorcycle Builders show.
This grouping of so many different types of collector vehicles, combined with fantastic weather, scores of vendors, and wonderful weather, made for terrific crowds of spectators who attended the event’s many roundtable discussions, demonstrations and tutorials.
Of the cars and motorcycles, there were a number of standouts for me, vehicles I very much wanted in my own garage. The most amazing of them was the custom cafe racer motorcycle called the Zooid built by 13-year-old — yes, you heard that age right — 13-year-old Zeke Dezeeuw. This was a motorcycle that looked as amazing as any of the other custom bikes on display, and the builder started it when he was 12.
Another standout bike was the Buell Blast engine case mated with a Ducati demo belt drive top end custom created by Jeremy Cupp of LC Fabrications. This has to be one of the finest custom bikes I have seen; the engineering chops alone that it took to make this bike work are nothing short of unbelievable.
On the car side, my standout car of the weekend was a gold Bentley S1 Continental. The car was simply stunning in every way.
Another standout was the Bryan Fuller-built Impaler. This car is one of the first custom builds that I saw displayed at The Quail Motorsports Gathering and we were lucky to have it at Caffeine and Octane at The Beach. Powered by an awesome 572 GM Performance Crate motor, the car just sounded awesome. This car was not just about speed though. The detailing on the Impaler was as good or better than cars built by Aston Martin or Bentley. When you combine awesome power, great looks and this kind of build quality, you have what to me is a huge winner.
As I said before, Caffeine and Octane At The Beach in Jekyll Island was a very impressive first-year event that is likely only going to get better over time. So next year, don’t hurry home from Amelia, but stick around for a few days and work your way up the coast to Jekyll Island.
Photos by Andy Reid
