Most people go to museums to view art, and I am no exception — except that some of my favorite pieces of art of functional, rolling sculptures of steel, vehicles that not only take people from Point A to Point B but do it with style and fun.
Walking around the second floor of the Denver Convention Center, the Denver International Auto Show just felt different than it did in years past. Then it hit me — it was because GM’s floorspace was so small as a direct result of The General shuttering Pontiac, Saturn, and Hummer during the last year. While I certainly shed no tears over the loss of the Humvee, I did feel a tinge of sadness that two of my perennial sports car favorites — the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky — were nowhere to be found.
That said, there were several bright spots among the American Manufacturers’ displays. Continue reading »
There is one weekend each year when downtown Fort Collins turns into a virtual movie set for American Graffiti
— the second Saturday of June when the Old Town Car Show takes place. Notwithstanding the economic recession and recent Seattle-like weather, hundreds of glimmering cars and trucks from decades past stood proud with chrome and lacquer seemingly a foot deep, eager to be admired and, in one or two cases where permissible, touched. Continue reading »
There were aluminum-clad bombers, fighter jets, and WWI-era planes inside the Wings Over the Rockies Museum in Denver, Colorado. But the relic that caught my attention the most was a space vehicle used in one of the original Star Wars movies.
“Somehow,” I mused with my best engineering judgment, “I doubt that could fly…” Continue reading »
“Wow, I didn’t realize that in this day and age it is still legal for new street cars to have exhausts even louder than my old MG‘s,” I thought as a bright yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder positively roared down a busy street in downtown Montréal on a Friday night.
I could get used to seeing all the eye candy here in Montréal. In this city where seemingly everyone is impeccably dressed and the women are (in the words of several friends who were right!) “totally hot,” it comes as no surprise that many of the cars people drive are gorgeous too. Continue reading »
I had just finished eating a scrumptious salad at Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro, Maine, when I consulted Gary McKenchnie’s book, Great American Motorcycle Tours, about the next leg of the White Mountains to Blue Seas drive.
“Hey, what’s this?” I mused after reading a paragraph. “A ‘transportation museum’ just southeast of Camden.” Reading on, I noted something about planes, some vintage Harleys, and even a prototype 1963 Mustang. I think the latter just about did it for me since I was driving (and enthralled with) a 2008 Mustang on this trip. Continue reading »
The 2008 Denver International was a different experience for me than any other car show I’ve gone to prior, but not because there were, say, some wild new cars that I’ve never seen before. Instead, it was because this time I had the opportunity and time to sit in maybe 30 vehicles to tap my fingers on the center consoles, feel the materials of the armrests, and judge the stylistic merits of dashboards.
Why the sudden interest in interiors, you may ask? Blame it on a couple of cars I rented in recent months. Continue reading »
 despite having over 300 horsepower! "The American car companies -- particularly Ford and GM -- are really pushing what's possible nowadays. Example: the 2011 Ford Mustang's base V6 engine gets 31 mpg on the highway (with automatic) despite having over 300 horsepower!")
 Chevy Nova. This one was customized quite a bit. "A first generation (early 60s) Chevy Nova. This one was customized quite a bit.")
