Car Lust

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: Chris Hafner

When Cookie the Dog's Owner proposed the $100K Fantasy Garage challenge, I was immediately intrigued. Who among us has not dreamed about which cars we'd purchase if only we had the funds available? This challenge is a license to mentally catalog our old and new favorites, weigh pros and cons, and show our tastes and brand loyalties through the creation of a carefully curated collection.

The genius in this challenge is the $100K value limit. Without that, we wouldn't have anything to keep us tied to reality. After all, why add a Mazda to your list when you could add a Maybach? Why add a CRX when you could add an FXX? But the $100K limit, combined with the requirement to include one brand new car, is almost perfect. A cool hundred grand sounds like a lot of money, but it doesn't go as far as one might imagine. I could easily concoct a scenario in which two very nice but still fairly ordinary vehicles consume the whole budget, so turning this into a true fantasy garage requires some creativity.

I chose to put my own spin on this challenge by laying out a series of tasks that I want the cars in my garage to fulfill, and then picking the cars I thought would best fill those roles. This required a lot of revision, as I shifted resources from one bucket to the next, and leaves me without some of my all-time favorites (omitting the Porsche 928, E28 BMW M5, and GMC Typhoon was pretty painful). Overall, though, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Since in some cases I'm linking off to listings on Craigslist and eBay there's a chance that those links will be dead fairly quickly. My apologies for that, but I'll try to capture some of the pertinent details in the text so that the story doesn't suffer too much.

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: That Car Guy

Let's see... a hundred grand for garage toys. Where to start?

How about our brand new vehicle first. For that, I'd get a 2-door Jeep Wrangler Sport, which is their base model. And from their somewhat limited palette, I'd get this color called Commando Green, which looks somewhat military to me.

I built and priced one; they come standard with tilt, cruise, traction control, steering wheel-mounted audio controls, fog lamps, a 285-hp V-6, a 6-speed manual, and more. Oh yeah, it also has 4WD standard... a Jeep without 4WD? Heresy!

The only options I'd want are air conditioning and a hard top; soft tops are just way too noisy on the highway. Its Grand Retail Total, minus shipping, is $24,085. Not bad.

Why get a Jeep? Well, I've always liked them, they make great service vehicles, if you get stuck it's your fault, and despite new model year updates, I think we know pretty much what the next one will look like.

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:

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:

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.

July 4th Special: The Most Original American Vehicle. Ever.

Can a national holiday fall on a worse day than on Wednesday? The entire work week is disrupted, and there's absolutely no chance whatsoever of a 3-day weekend. But the 4th of July may be the most patriotic day of the year, and it deserves a very patriotic vehicle.

The vehicle that gets my vote here is the original Willys Jeep. And this vehicle is so legendary... where is the place to start?

They were actually called the Willys MB Jeep; there was the Willys MA Jeep, which was an early production run model. But most of us just call them Jeeps. And the 60-hp "Go Devil" engine got all of them through the war.

And though many folks think that the name "Jeep" was derived from "GP (possibly "General Purpose);" others suggest it came from the cartoon character "Eugene the Jeep," from the Popeye series. The debate will continue forever.

But the Jeep was/is truly original, has remained popular to this day, and even with updates, remains true to its original form and purpose. Basic, rugged, simple on- and off-road transportation. They say that, if a Jeep with chains on its tires can't get there, then nothing can. And I can't argue with that.

Exner Simca Special

Are you in the market for a small, light, open-air roadster that would be just perfect for early summer evening ice cream runs through Mill Creek Gorge between Lanterman's Mill and the Goldfish Pond? If so, have I got a deal for you!

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.

Just A Little Neighborhood Car Show

It's the dead of winter here on the North American continent, and most of us are stuck indoors for at least a few more weeks. So what do we do to keep our automotive sanities until the buttercups bloom? How about a very short trip down Memory Lane when the days were longer and warmer?

Bellevue, Tennessee is a friendly suburb of Nashville and once a month in warm weather some local folks assemble at the Bellevue Mall parking lot to display the vehicles they've been waxing and/or working on. I had been wanting to see this car show for a few years, but never seemed to catch it. But as Fate finally dictated, I got the location, time, and date for the event together, and this show just happened to be the last one of the season, held on October 1, 2011.

There was taped music from the '50s, and a live band was making cool sounds. Somebody was cooking hot dogs and selling cold drinks, which greatly added to the spirit. Cars of many nationalities and ages were presented, and there wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

Project Terrapin: a Design for a "Turtle Deck" Roadster

Lately, my design blood has been really bubbling. I guess I'm just anxious to forget playing on my computer and getting back to modeling and twisting a wrench. Here's my latest idea: a "Turtle Deck" roadster which emulates a little more antique version of the 1932 Studebaker two man Indianapolis racer my father once owned.