Car Lust

Our Cars Week: "1998 Camaro V6"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader "Sir Danley" [Name withheld to protect the innocent])

"Don't feel bad if the car you'd like to write about isn't a supercar; most of us find everyday cars as interesting, or potentially even more interesting, than exotic hardware." --Lindsay Jacobson, Car Lust Editor

...I learned a gigantic amount of the above by driving an '86 Lotus Esprit for a few years; turns out, no one cares if you're driving a twenty year old, Torrid-sized Toyota MR2. This is especially true when most modern, midsized sedans can eclipse it in performance. Only the most knowledgeable nerds will swoon over that car, dumber girls won't notice you're driving in anything special, and the smart girls just think you're overcompensating.

None of which mattered to me; for less than the price of a new Chevy Aveo (and with just as much Giugiaro style), I enjoyed sublimely weighted steering thanks to the MR configuration, a peaky engine of modest HP, and unloaded it before any major bills really came pouring in.

Driving a three-foot-tall black Esprit in Southern California practically camouflages you as a pavement onramp, and I got near zero compliments on the car, ever.  Aside from Roger Moore era James Bond fans and F1 fanatics, a mid-'80s Lotus Esprit is about as utterly un-relatable as a car can get.

…So heavens no, I won’t talk about that.

Our Cars Week: "The Ford Mustang: Can you go home again?"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader and Carspotting: Auto Archeology Editor Michael E. Gouge)

For my fellow car lovers, there is no need to explain the bond a 16-year-old has with his first car. Mine was a 1966 Mustang in Nightmist Blue, and it opened up a world of freedom, of escapism, of pleasure in the sound of an engine purring along an open road. In other words, this angst-filled teenager discovered a home, a sanctuary, in a Mustang.  Three decades hence, that old pony car--along with my youth and a new-found euphoria for the open road--are but memories.

Our Cars Week: "Oh Camry, My Camry"

(Submitted by Car Lust Reader Karen K from New Haven)

 

"OH, CAMRY, MY CAMRY"

Bruises bashed into my head
From banging on the ceiling
Of my pirhouetting car
As it was sent a-reeling,
Into the woods
Down in the ditch,
I sort of had this feeling
That if I lived to tell the tale,
I’d spend some months a-healing.

1985: It Was a Very Good Year!

It was "Morning in America," a time when men were real men, women were real women, and hair was real big. Ronald Reagan had just been sworn in for his second term after winning one of the most lopsided Presidential elections in American history. and the "national malaise" of just a few years before had been replaced by a mood of confident optimism. Technology was on the march: personal computers now had floppy drives and 12 MHz processors, fully-functional mobile phones were down to the size of a box of Girl Scout cookies, and used DeLoreans were being retrofitted with aftermarket flux capacitors. On the big screen, besides the one with the time machine, we had Out of Africa and Witness and The Breakfast Club and Rambo: First Blood Part II. On the small screen, you had The Cosby Show and Hill Street Blues and MacGyver.

On the radio was Springsteen, Madonna--this was way before Nirvana--there was U2, and Blondie, and music still on MTV. The cars then were old school, and you might think them uncool, but this post will be occupied with cars of Nineteen Eighty-Five.

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.

The Most Famous Tractor In The World. Well, maybe.

You start it up, and pyrotechnics go off that would shame any fireworks display. Point to one of its wheels, and it falls off. Point to a second wheel, and it falls off too. So does the steering wheel. Grab the wiring harness and the gauges fall out, saying you're flying at 3,000 feet. Whatever you do, don't call it any names or it might chase you around the barnyard.

This is a typical day in the life of a Hoyt Clagwell tractor.

We Car Lusters now travel back in time to the mid 1960s, somewhat abandon our senses, voyage about 300 miles from "Chicargo," and take the Cannonball to the town of Hooterville, which is near Crabwell Corners and Pixley. Then let's take a drive down an unnamed dusty county road and enter "The Old Haney Place," home of Lisa and Oliver Wendell Douglas, which has now been renamed "Green Acres."

We find a ramshackled country farmhouse, filled with stylish, modern furniture that looks like it came out of a Park Avenue, New York, apartment, because that's exactly what it did. Out back is gorgeous Lisa feeding Eleanor the cow and Henrietta the hen and her chicks, who also have individual names. In the nearby barn, poor Oliver and hired hand Eb Dawson (No kin to Jack) are hopelessly trying to get their old tractor going. Mr. Douglas is in his plowing suit today, so we know many of his acres need to be tilled.

A Few Cars in 3-D

As they say, "And now for something completely different." I'm not sure if anybody's done a Car Lust post in 3-D or not yet, so now's the time. Please grab your red- and blue-lensed glasses, make sure the proper side is facing the screen, turn up the brightness on your monitor (That seems to help), and away we go!

I've tried to find some good 3-D images; we all know some work better than others. One night our group watched a 3-D movie on TV, "Gorilla At Large." It was a disaster movie in just about every way possible, especially while trying to reproduce a 3-D effect with a weak UHF channel and wabbit ears. Halfway through the movie, we all got up and left the TV.

So hopefully, these images will not be as big of a disappointment as that turkey and evening was:

5th Annual Lincoln Highway Car Show

Saturday, August 13 was a perfect day for a car show in Ashland, Ohio; sunny and warm, but not oppressively hot.
The show organizers had extended a particular invitation to Studebakers, and there were six in attendance: a Golden Hawk, two Gran Turismo Hawks, a hot-rodded "bullet nose" 1950, a mild custom pickup truck, and a thoroughly cuddly Lark VIII convertible.

A Colorful Roundtable

For this meeting of the Car Lust Roundtable™ we'll be putting on our rose-colored glasses--Heather Rose, that is--painting the town Apache Red, and chasing the Powder Blues away as we travel the full spectrum of automotive color, from British Racing Green to Camry Beige and everything in between.

Fasten your seatbelts, 'cause we're going to be using some, *ahem*, colorful language.

The 2011 "FIAT FreakOut" in Nashville, Tennessee

Loyal Car Lust readers may remember the 2010 Nashville British Car Club Show post from last October. Now it's July 23rd, 2011, and I'm back in the shadow of the Parthenon at Centennial Park here in Nashville. But this time it's the Italians who get center stage... presenting the 2011 "FIAT FreakOut," or "FFO" for short.

This was an all-weekend event, four days actually, and the first time Music City USA hosted these friendly folks. They had four days of sightseeing, scheduled driving tours, pool parties, and a car movie. But I don't have an Italian car, so I only wanted to see the car show. And what a show it was!

This was also an international event, as I saw Canadian license plates there. The local TV station said some folks came from England. And from nearby, Jeff Lane of the Lane Motor Museum here in Nashville also brought over a few prized Tuscan beauties.