Car Lust

The First Annual Car Lust Drive-In Meetup and May 6 Weekly Open Thread

We here at Car Lust are a far-flung bunch, typing in our missives from various points in the continental US (and elsewhere), but despite our common devotion to all these Lustable vehicles, most of us have never actually met in person.

And this event probably won't change that.

But I thought I'd toss this out there and see if there's any interest from the hordes of Car Lust aficionados out there who might be in the mood for a road trip of whatever length in order to indulge in our little habit and meet some of the other folks who frequent this blog. Thus, I give you the Greenwood Car Show, coming to a neighborhood near, well, me, this June 29. Yes, it's here in Seattle, far up in the northwest corner of the country, so I don't hold much hope that many of you will drop what you're doing in late June and drive up to our rainy little corner just to see a bunch of cars and meet a couple of the Car Lust staff. But who knows, maybe some of the more local people might take a day out for a little Car Lust interaction.

Feel free to drive your Lustable car and present it; the GCS isn't a terribly formal event and we plan to be showing a couple of our rides, none of them particularly valuable. But if we get at least 10 people to show up we can all park together. So, if you have a mind to come up for a little meet and greet, email the Car Lust staff (contact info off to the right there===>) and perhaps we can arrange out own Car Lust grouping.

And, of course, feel free to discuss anything else auto-related.

Credit: Got the photo from the West Seattle Blog.

Notes From the 2013 Cleveland Auto Show

This year, I scored some free tickets from a salesman I know and attended the exclusive preview the evening before the show officially opened--along with about 5,000 other people. (So much for exclusivity!) Here's some of what I saw:

The 2012 Nashville British Car Club Show

Call this a hat trick if you will. The 2010 and 2011 Nashville British Car Club Shows have been featured here at Car Lust, so now we complete the trilogy with the October 13, 2012 presentation, which included the Sunbeam Alpine Invasion.

The weather for each of these three shows was simply superb... dry October days with temperatures in the low 80s. Quite the contrast from the damp country that built these magnificent automotive specimens, which may explain why many of them are here in the first place.

2010 and 2011 brought a multitude of Triumphs, MGs, Jaguars, and the like. They were lined in rows that seemed almost endless. And there were a number of those roadsters at the 2012 show, but this year seemed to be devoted to the rarest of the species. And that's what we'll concentrate on here... so let's start with the really rare:

Things You Don't See Every Day 2: Eclectic Boogaloo

At this year's Studebaker Drivers Club Ohio Chapter meet in Tallmadge, there were some really unusual cars to be seen. Unusual, that is, even in the context of a meet devoted to Studebakers, Packards, and other "orphaned" makes.

We'll start with this little gem:

Studebaker Drivers Club Ohio Chapter Meet, Tallmadge, Ohio, August 25, 2012

I spent several hours wandering around the Studebaker Drivers Club meet in Tallmadge, just east of Akron, on Saturday, August 25 and came away with a pocket full of dead NiCad batteries and an SD card full of photos. Here's some of what I saw:

Car Lust Culture: Gille's Frozen Custard Drive-In

Ah, the drive-in. . . .a magnificent piece of Americana, highlighted in movies and TV shows as the place to be on a Saturday night. Driving up in the family station wagon or cruising in with your best girl seated next to you in your first car. A friendly carhop taking your order for burgers, fries, shakes, and sodas, good old American fast food and delivered with speed and efficiency -- sometimes even on roller skates. Chowing down, meeting friends, and making plans for later that night, all from the familiar confines of your car. Good times, good times. . . . .

Well, not for me anyway. You might think that this brief reminiscence of a recent trip back to my ancestral homeland of Wisconsin will be another bit of musing on some nostalgic aspect of my childhood when, in fact, that’s not really the case at all: I never visited the establishment in question until about 10-15 years ago. On the other hand, the subject does go back to my childhood years and presents something of a case study in the right way to either “do retro” or at least maintain it.

There's been a lot of retro-styling of restaurants the last few years. Up here in the Pacific NW we (used to) have Ruby's Diner, and nationally there's Johnny Rockets, both capitalizing on the nostalgia of old-timey diners. We also have a place called Burgermasters with some drive-ins, although our favorite is the non-drive-in University location, made somewhat famous by the fact that Bill Gates used to hang out there. Dick's (a rather unfortunate name if you ask me) is the Top Dog in drive-ins for this neck of the woods, but there's also the Triple XXX Rootbeer Drive-In (another rather snigger-producing name, no doubt) which features a lot of classic car cruise-ins as well. And we have a smattering of A&W's in the region as well.

The trouble with all of them -- diners or drive-ins -- is that I have hardly any nostalgia for them, at least not directly. Diners were mostly after my time and, while we had drive-ins while I was growing up, my family rarely went to them for some reason. So, no warm fuzzy memories of either one for me.

There is one, however, which fills me with joy just thinking about it, a true drive-in restaurant straight from the 1940s and largely unchanged since its inception, a staple of my hometown in Wisconsin, a true midwest heartland if there ever was one. And I was just there this past summer.

Wheaton, Illinois, August 17, 2012

My friend Walter Lundby came upon a car show in Wheaton, Illinois last Friday, and got a few pictures with his cellphone.  Here's some of what he saw.

August 20 Weekly Open Thread--The Last Ride of Summer

Summer is almost over. Some of the kids have one more week of vacation, others start class this week; the band kids are finishing up band camp, and the football players have been doing two-a-days for almost a month. There's just enough time for one last ride, one last car show, one last cruise-in--like the one my friend Walter Lundby came across last Friday in Wheaton, Illinois.

We'll have more of Walter's pictures later in the week.  For now, this is the place for your random comments on all things automotive.

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

Show Cars Week--The 2012 New York International Auto Show (And Some Other Stuff)

I had not been to New York City for 32 years, and things there have changed quite a bit since 1980. But the weekend of April 13-15, 2012, was full of events like the 100th Anniversary of Titanic's sinking, the 2012 New York International Auto Show was wrapping up, and I could barely get tickets to the 9/11 Memorial in time. So when the invitation and other events fell into place, plane tickets were bought and bags were packed.

The only non-stop flights from Nashville to New York I could find were on a smaller jet. I had never been on one before, and expected treatment such as the old Southern Airways ad. But I was amazed and surprised at what a smaller aircraft offered, like being able to immediately get off of the plane when we arrived at the gate, and I'll gladly fly on one again.

The Auto Show was held at the Jacob J. Javits Convention Center on the west side of Manhattan from April 6-15. Of course, the weekend was packed with many other things, like seeing where Titanic would have docked, reflecting at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, visiting the Empire State Building, meeting Rupert Jee at Hello Deli, and watching the sun rise on Manhattan.

Notes From The 2012 Cleveland Auto Show

I made my annual pilgrimage to the Cleveland Auto Show on March 3 this year. Here's some of what I saw.