Antique & Classic Cars Blog

If you have any interest in vintage racing, either as a participant or spectator, a great way to learn about just how it’s done, by whom, with what vehicles, what costs and at what speeds, is to swing by Quality Coaches at 38th and Nicollet (20 W. 38th St. to be exact) in Minneapolis on Saturday, April 18, between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.

The event is the 15th annual Vintage Sports Car Racing Spring Swap Meet & General Membership Meeting. If you need something for that project in the garage, or have some old parts to move along, come visit to see what you can BUY, SELL, TRADE… or just come to meet the members who have been running their vintage cars over the last 33 years.

Brainerd is on schedule for a variety of races this summer, including the East Meets West MINI Challenge in June. Also, the SCCA has sanctioned Brainerd International Raceway again for Club Racing.  If you like older sports cars going fast, check it out on APRIL 18, 2009.

Everybody knows that automobiles have an enormous impact on the environment. Recognizing that impact and looking for some ways to reduce it is one way auto dealers can challenge themselves and try to set themselves apart.

Walser is opening a new Subaru dealership in Burnsville and invites the public to stop by and share in a variety of activities related to environmental impact and learn about some of the things they and the Subaru company are doing to try to reduce waste and pollution and be good “citizens.”

The activities include:

Monday 4/20: Free car seat safety clinic, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Parents have the opportunity to learn how to correctly install and fit child restraint safety seats. The car seat inspections will be performed by certified technicians from the Safe Kids Minnesota Coalition.

Tuesday, April 21 - Thursday, April 23
Dealership tours led by environmental designers and engineers, who will explain some of the choices the dealership made in focusing on a reduce-reuse format. These include a car wash from refurbished parts, use of phosphate-free soap, a white roof to reduce solar heat gains, and other design decisions.  Guests learn how to implement these initiatives in their homes and businesses.

Wednesday, April 22, Saturday April 25
Drop off used batteries, motor oil, and anti-freeze for recycling.

Also please bring new or gently-used furniture and household items for donation to families in need. Bridging Inc., the organization sponsoring this effort, estimates that this program kept 11 million pounds of household items out of landfills in 2008–and of course all of those items helped out the people who received them.

Also Saturday, free dog wash by Retrieve a Golden of Minnesota with $10 donation. The warm water wash includes local celebrities and earth friendly pet shampoo.

So, if you have old batteries, dirty oil, a spare sofa or refrigerator, or a dog ready for a bath, stop on down…. Beats buying earth shoes.

Snow emergency!!!

If you live in the Twin Cities, don’t forget amid shoveling, ice removal, and finding any pets you may have left outside to PUT YOUR CAR ON THE PROPER SIDE OF THE STREET.

The last snow emergency from a few days ago (see post a few down) cost me–and lots and lots of others–money and time. The tickets on my wife’s and my car were time stamped 8:02 and 8:03.

Money’s tight and the cities are motivated! They’ll be inviting hundreds of people to the impound lot over the next 48 hours. Don’t let your name be on that list!

A few posts down are some model cars from the World of Wheels. Models are fun because you can make them your own. The same applies to full-size cars and motorcycles–part of the reason enthusiasts love them and maybe something those who don’t understand the whole into-cars or into-bikes thing fail to grasp.

The fact that a car is a huge hunk of metal mostly built by multi-million or -billion dollar companies doesn’t mean there isn’t room for unique styling from one or two people with a garage, a torch, a welder, an air compressor, a spray gun.

Here are three totally unique takes on the basic car and motorcycle theme. They look like nothing else on the road and didn’t require Detroit or Japan to handle the details. These machines emerged from their builders’ minds.

For many people, a car or a motorcycle is a way to get to work. For these folks it’s an opportunity to express something unique. Not a bad hobby, eh?

When the aisles get crowded, it’s nice at a big show like World of Wheels to duck into one of the smaller displays. Few in the gearhead camp didn’t build a few models before the bucks and the space came along to wrench full-size.

Here’s a few samples that were onhand in St. Paul. I like the road dust on the windshield of this tow truck…

The old-school design of this hot rod (reminds me of the hobby-store offerings from the 1970s)…

This collection because it’s got a number of nice models within…

And this assortment. (It’s a cool accident of the photograph that the vehicles in the background, left, look like real cars.)

It’s easy to fool the eye with a camera. Toy guns, fake armor, half-cars sitting on flat beds to film actors, gaffer tape holding things on, etc., are commonplace and seldom noticeable. Movie cars–selectively shot, usually moving, cleaned up in post–just don’t need to be that nice. Where a car is featured, the studios will have several to drive, a few to wreck if necessary, and then one or more “picture cars,” which are promotional, kept very nice, and used to pimp the production.

Amidst all the no-dollars-spared hot rods, customs, and restored stock eye-morsels at the World of Wheels, the Mach 5 from the new film looked weak. This presumably was a picture car, one built for display only. Fans who grew up watching the original Speed Racer from the 1960s–which admittedly was from a 2-dimensional cartoon–couldn’t help but be disappointed. The drawn car had flowing lines, sweeping curves, and an interior akin to those of its real-life sports counterparts of the time.

The movie car looked just like what it was–a one-off fiberglass body plopped onto a late-model Corvette. It appears they even kept the Vette windshield, which looked about as classic as, well, a late-model Vette. The interior is busy, packed with air-conditioning vents and other modern features that look neither classic nor cinematic. And the lines just didn’t hold up when the car’s sitting still and you can walk around it like a drill sergeant during basic-training inspections.

There’s no blaming the builders. When crunch time comes, Hollywood car builders work as hard as anyone on the planet, meeting impossible demands on impossible timeframes with every job they take. They can make cars look like anything and do anything, keeping in mind the health and safety of the stunt personnel who climb in and make the money footage possible. The disappointment viewing a car like that up close is just the nature of the beast. A Mach 5 that satisfies the middle-aged kids who grew up with the Trans-Luxe cartoon would need to be manufactured by a top-notch custom coachbuilder on a budget of . . . unlimited. It would have hand-beaten panels, custom everything, gauges and dash and wheel and seats to rival the fastest, sexiest Ferraris and Aston Martins and Jaguars of the day. (I would have started with an E-type Jaguar, not a Vette.) Just building a one-off, polished, period-looking engine would probably run half a million bucks.

When studios are paying human stars 5, 10, 20 million dollars a picture, they’re not investing in hand-shaped aluminum-bodied one-off racers that will win at Pebble Beach and make your jaw fall on the ground and shatter when you see them. Turn off the camera and lights, send the cinematographer and editor home and push a movie car into the middle of a car show and your surprise will be just like seeing a big name actor in person. “Hmm. I thought he’d be taller.”

The metal bodies Chip Foose (P32) and Old Skool Kustoms (chopped ’36 Pontiac 3-window) displayed struck a lot closer to my idea of beautiful coachwork–but then, these are cars built to be seen up close in real life.

Sports Car Market posted on all the big recent auctions in the south, which demonstrate that at least at these venues, prices are holding.

RM attracted record bidders and made over $18 million; Russo and Steele moved $17 million; Kruse saw $4.6 million in action, Gooding $32 million, and Barrett-Jackson had sales of $60 million (according to SCM).

The fact that something in the economy is posting good numbers is encouraging–though it probably means the $10,000 genuine Cobra many of us daydream about…ain’t happening.

Thanks to reader Jerome for sending in this photo of him and his son in their Model A trying–and succeeding!–to balance on a see-saw in a gymkhana event.

Guess they got ‘er balanced by getting the car’s center of gravity as close as possible to dead center over the fulcrum and then leaning back and forth in their seats to fine tune.

You know you’re a car lover when someone asks if you want to play on the see-saw and you reply, “Can I bring my Ford?”

We motorheads have long seen the graceful curves and striking lines designers pen into cars as art. Sometimes the lines are so alluring, the rest of the art world takes notice too.

Fans of the glorious Tatra will be pleased to know the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has included one the Czech-built, air-cooled, single-finned, suicide-doored, rear-engined eye morsels among its exhibit of exceptional modernist works.

For the motor-fluent, we drink in such details even in a roomful of exceptional automobiles. But nothing calls home beautiful form in a car like setting it on its own among other alluringly crafted artworks.

The musuem’s Tatra T87 has a sweeping aerodynamic body that calls the eye back and forth along its length. In an era when the needs inside the car–for headroom and luggage room and crush zone and visibility–often set baselines for the outside design, it’s fun to see a car that looks like it was born on an artist’s canvas and carried to three dimensions by loving sculptors.

If you’ve never seen a Tatra and enjoy modernist art, get over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and check out this spotless example. The museum is free and there is much else to delight you among the many floors and walls.

One of the last beautiful Saturdays of the year played great host to the final Cars & Coffee gathering of 2008. Cars editor, Angelo, and I headed over to take in the sights, the java–and some donut holes, a most welcome addition to any morning activity.

About 250 cars showed up.

The carbon fiber hood on this RX-8 looked rad and fit perfectly. The tuner crowd has fed an elaborate aftermarket with some very nice parts. The gaps around this hood were even all the way around and it took no fussing–just a bolt-on part.

Angelo wanted to rustle up a trailer and make off with this Volvo 1800. More known for safety than hot styling, Volvo made an early styling epiphany with this one–a car fit for a saint, or rather The Saint.

Acura’s NSX (Honda NSX in some markets) was also well respresented. What a sleek, aggressive looking machine–a Japanese Ferrari.

Lotus knows from styling too. My last trip to London, these were popular along the ancient streets. Lots of style and performance, easy to maneuver and park.

This Auto-Motorplex garage has a neon “Man Cave” sign, though the message is already clear–a Vette and a pinball machine.

And this image, which captures the C&C atmosphere pretty well, is not so much an effort at black-and-white artistry as a good way to play down the bright teal biffy at the far end of the shot. :^)