This Summer's Little Road Trip: Central Park

Just a few dozen blocks from the overwhelming hubbub of Times Square you can find the peaceful pathways and fields of Central Park. Join us for an August afternoon walk:

Yeah, yeah. Trees and flowers and stuff. Suddenly Henry and Malcolm spotted something of interest: basketball! Soon they got themselves a game of two on two.

Malcolm with the dunk.

Henry slams one down.

Henry dit, "Non!"

Another dunk.

We won't talk about the final score. Henry says they didn't want to embarrass the New Yorkers, and Malcolm assures me that things would've been different had we gone sneaker shopping first.

Monique at a fountain.

Skyline in the background.

At the reservoir.

Monique with a huge branch from her new favorite tree. New York has hundreds of these lovely trees with shedding bark planted all over, but neither of us knew what type of tree they actually are. (More on this when we visit the Statue of Liberty.)

Resting up before our next adventure: The Empire State Building!

This Summer's Little Road Trip: Times Square

Astute readers of the ol' Patio Boat blog may have noticed that our summertime photoblogging skipped the second half of this summer's Little Road Trip, our trip to New York City with Malcolm and Henry. There's a perfectly good reason for that.

Um, I was busy.

Yup, that's why those photos have thus far lingered unseen for the last couple of months. After we returned from the trip I got the first couple of days in Niagara Falls and Glens Falls up on the blog. Then I began sorting out the hundreds of photos we shot in NYC, but life got in the way. This week, however, I've been grounded for a few days by a cold. And while it's severely impeded productivity on the work and village fronts, it's been a positive boon for time spent at home in front of my computer. So, I put my inactivity to good use, got back to sorting out the rest of our New York photos, and we finally have a few posts ready to roll.

Come along with us for the next few days as we visit Manhattan in the summertime.

We start with Times Square, only a couple of blocks from our hotel room:

Times Square beckons. The view from our room at the Radio City Apartments.

Tourist mode: on!

"So, Henry, you know how to do this selfie thing without getting your finger in the way, right?"

Frequent Times Square visitors will start to notice around here that we don't have any photos in this set of the many colorfully dressed street performers who try to make a few bucks in Times Square. Mostly that's just because I didn't want to take any pictures of us with Captain America or the human Statue of Liberty without tossing them a couple of bucks and I'm a cheap bastard. And I'm not sure I could've taken and posted any photos of the lovely young ladies wearing only body paint and a smile without slapping a parental advisory on my blog.

So instead, we move on to Times Square at night.

Well, Times Square in twilight, anyway.

Panorama!

"Hello from Times Square!"

Next stop: Central Park.

2015 Battle of the Brits: Other British Marques

After already posting the most heavily represented marques at the 2015 Battle of the Brits:

MGs

Triumphs

Jaguars

Austin-Healeys

... it's time to look at the other brands I saw. Come take a stroll among some of the best of the rest of Britain.

Here's a 1974 Jensen-Healey Mk II.

After legendary British sports car builder Donald Healey parted ways with Austin after they became part of British Leyland, he tried to rekindle the magic of Austin-Healey with small manufacturer Jensen, who had built the bodies for the Austin-Healey 3000. The Jensen-Healey was sold from 1972 to 1976. It was well regarded and became Jensen's best selling car, but never approached the sales numbers of the Austin-Healey models. The difficult gas prices and economy of the 70s brought an end to Jensen in 1976.


Morgans! Morgans! Morgans!

Morgans are hand-built British sports cars with a long history. The cool thing about them is that it seems they figured once they got a British sports car right, there was no need to muss it up with radical design changes. Oh, sure, they'd upgrade the suspension design on occasion and they eventually moved on from four-cylinder engines to V8s. But Monique and I saw a special recently on how they build Morgans nowadays. They still use the same fender mold that they've used for the last 50+ years.

1963 Morgan 4/4.

1963 Morgan 4/4.

Morgan 4/4.

Here's the 1963 Morgan 4/4 next to a 1947 MG TC. You can see how the Morgans are lower and sleeker by comparison.

The black car is a 2003 Morgan +8. Does that rear fender look the same as the two 1963 4/4s next to it? Damn straight it does.

Next up: an extremely rare 1963 Triumph Moss roadster. Moss only made 130 of them before the factory burned to the ground:

It wasn't in my Triumph post for three very important reasons:

1) It was coachbuilt by Moss, not Triumph.
2) It was entered in the open "other manufacturer" class, not the Triumph class.
3) I forgot.

This funky looking shooting brake is a 1965 Ogle Reliant Scimitar GTS concept car. It was purchased by Prince Phillip after the 1965 London Car Show. Later it was used as the course car at the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.

There was a Sunbeam Tiger at the show:

Sunbeam Tigers were Carroll Shelby's "Ford V8 in a little British sports car" car after the AC Cobra. They're best known for giving Cobra-like performance at 1/20th the price of a genuine AC Cobra. Sunbeam Tigers featured a small-block Ford V8  crammed into an uprated version of the classic Sunbeam Alpine. They were built from 1964 to 1967, but discontinued after Chrysler bought Sunbeam owner Rootes and discovered that Chrysler V8s were too big to fit in a Sunbeam Alpine. Rather than redesign the engine bay or -- Heaven forbid! -- sell a car with a Ford engine, Chrysler just killed it off.

Welcome to Lotusland:

A 1970 Lotus Elan S4 (red) and a 2005 Lotus Elise (orange).

1968 Lotus Elan.

1986 Lotus Esprit Turbo HCI. Its top speed of more than 150 mph made it one of the fastest cars of the 1980s.

Minis:

1968 Austin Mini.

1977 Austin Mini.

2013 Mini Cooper S.

Okay, this isn't a British sports car. In fact, other than its utter lack of a roof this is pretty much the opposite of a British sports car. But this World War II era Ford Jeep was cool:

A London cab!

1964 Austin FX4.

Let's wrap up this eclactic post with a particularly tasty morsel, this 1967 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow Drophead Coupe:

Mmmn ... yummy.

2015 Battle of the Brits: Austin-Healey

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so my 2015 Battle of the Brits photoblogging has lagged. But let's pick it back up with some of the prettiest British sports cars ever made: the Big Healeys of the 1950s and 1960s.

Here's a genuinely early Austin-Healey, a 1954 100 BN1 with only 26,000 miles, still wearing its original paint. The original owner owned it for more than 60 years:

A late Big Healey next to an early Big Healey: a 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 Mk III (left) and a 1955 Austin Healey 100-4 (right):

Notice the fold-down windshield on the 100-4? Sporty!

Pretty soon the Big Healeys gained a large 6-cylinder engine and the 100 line morphed into the 3000 line. The 3000s were more powerful and more sophisticated, but every bit as pretty as the early cars:

1962 Austin-Healey 3000 Mk II.

1964 Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII.

1967 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III.

You can see increasing luxury and sophistication in the dashboards, too. Here's the dash from that 1954 100 BN1:

And here are a couple of dashes from later 3000 models:

Alas, I didn't get any good pictures of Austin-Healey Sprites this year, so that's it for Austin-Healey. And since I didn't win the big PowerBall jackpot last weekend, that might be the last batch of Big Healeys in this neighborhood until next year's Battle of the Brits.

Coming next for 2015 Battle of the Brits photos? The Grand Finale: everything else!

P.S. Links to the other Battle of the Brits posts:

MGs

Triumphs

Jaguars

Austin-Healeys

Other