Today my Google Alert, set for DeTomaso Pantera, alerted me about this article about the Blethering Place Classic Car Festival. Upon reading it I noted the sentence referring to a "total lunatic" and knew immediately that the author must have been referring to my husband.....not sure whether my hubby should take offence with being called a "total lunatic" or whether he should take it as a compliment....what do you think?
Brendan McAleer, North Shore News
Published: Friday, August 21, 2009
Summer is on the wane, and September looms in the distant horizon with its promise of pencils, books and teachers' dirty looks.
Listen kids, I've got a few friends who are teachers and trust me, they aren't that happy about it either.
Still, there are more than a few long, sunny days left to get out and enjoy the sunshine and, for gearheads, that means a few more days before the classic goes back under the tarp in the garage. Unless, of course, the classic isn't running right now, and probably never will, no matter how much time you've spent on EBay with an imaginary budget.
Whether they are buffed to a sparkling sheen or starting to fall apart - like this late 1950s Fiat - every car at the classic show is a labour of love and comes with a story to tell.View Larger Image View Larger Image
Whether they are buffed to a sparkling sheen or starting to fall apart - like this late 1950s Fiat - every car at the classic show is a labour of love and comes with a story to tell.
Not to worry, because summertime is car show season, and it's time to get out there and enjoy the fruits of other people's labour. I recently attended a good one out in Victoria, which had pretty much everything you'd hope to see and more than a few surprises.
Sure, there was the Elvis impersonator and the Shriners, the hotdog vendors and the raffle tickets being sold to win a year-old Prius (Honestly?), but what everybody was really there to see was the cars. Attracting a lot of attention were the usual suspects: 1970s Dodge Chargers and Challengers, Model Ts, hopped-up classic Mustangs and chromed-out hot rods.
For me though, the standouts were easy to spot. There was a semi-decrepit late '50s Fiat, which had never been washed, let alone restored. It looked like one of those old Sicilian women you occasionally see in the vintage National Geographic magazines your dentist keeps in his waiting room: black-clad, wizened and shoe-leather tough.
There was an early '60s Cadillac El Dorado that was so long it had to be parked over four blocks and took a good thirty minutes to walk around. Some bright bulb had parked it next to the Elvis impersonator, and I'd have to say The King was thoroughly checkmated by the chrome leviathan.
Trois Citro?n 2CVs were at the far end of the street, next to a Ferrari Dino (technically just a Dino GT), a rare turbocharged Cord speedster sat across from a creamsicle-orange Corolla station wagon, and some total lunatic had built a twin-turbo V-8 DeTomaso Pantera, which is a bit like putting hot sauce on a Guatemalan Insanity Pepper.
All the people showing their cars were happy to chat, from the guy with the home-built Merlin Speedster to the owner of a Lotus racecar that was so low it could pass other cars by going under them. There were tales of weekends spent sanding and hours lost combing junkyards for the right part. There were stories of stumbling on near-complete cars in forgotten barns and of brake calipers seized beyond the help of even a plasma-cutting torch. Wisely, I opted not to talk to the pale, trembling owner of a pristine Jaguar V-12 E-Type with original Lucas components -- he was clearly suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Then, after the show was done, after we'd all got a bit too much sun and were perhaps regretting that last hot dog, after somebody had "won" that Prius, it was time to go home. The best part: I didn't even drive to the event, just cycled over to take a peek, so I skipped the crowds heading home.But maybe that wasn't the best part of it. Maybe the best part was the fathers and sons, grandfathers and granddaughters, aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces, even husbands and wives (yep, I dragged mine along) all out looking at cars that are neither efficient, nor practical, nor particularly reliable. But every car there had a story and a personality and was a labour of love for someone to build or restore or just keep in barely running order.
It didn't matter that the younger generation there couldn't imagine whole fleets of those Cadillacs cruising the highways like dreadnoughts, and were probably going to see big, simple V-8s and V-12s die out completely in their lifetimes. It didn't matter that most of the people there were driving minivans and compact cars and practical four-door sedans.
They were all there because they understood that cars are more than just cars sometimes. They can be art. They can be desire. They can be soul.
I'd encourage you to get out to see a car show this summer. Most of them support local charities, and there's always more than just cars to look at. If you miss the summer ones, there's always the Langley Good Times Cruise-In on Sept. 12. It's one of the largest shows in Western Canada, and you'll see vehicles there you never knew existed.
Take your kids too. With modern cars becoming more and more similar due to aerodynamics and crash ratings, we may all soon be driving around in appliances that have no more personality than a dishwasher. Show them what cars used to be like.
Mind you, maybe we'll always have classic car shows. We might run out of oil. We'll never run out of barns and tarps.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and automotive enthusiast. If you have a suggestion for a column, or would be interested in having your car club featured, please contact him at mcaleer.nsnews@gmail.com.
© North Shore News 2009
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