Detroit AutoRama: Bitchin' Camaros and Other Muscle Cars

The other major type of car that you see in droves at a hot-rod and custom-car show like AutoRama are the muscle cars. I could've filled a dozen memory cards with photos of tasty muscle cars, but here are a few that particularly caught my eye.

AC Shelby Cobras new and old, a kit car and an original AC Shelby Cobra:

2006 Superformance Mk III Shelby Cobra kit car, owned by Mark Yagelo of Brighton, Michigan.

1964 AC Cobra-Hawk owned by Bill Darnell of Romulus, Michigan.

Check out the ghostly skulls and flames on this 2012 Chevrolet Camaro pro-modified drag car with a 648 ci big-block Chevy engine. The car is owned by Danny Mastronardi of Farmington, Ontario. It was built by SkinnyKids Race Cars with body and paint by Dimilo Auto Body.

Bitchin' Camaros.

One sweeeeeet green 1968 Mustang GT, owned by Lonnie Grooms of Shelby Township, Michigan.

This 1967 Buick Riviera Sport Coupe owned by Gil Morgan of Dearborn, Michigan, featured one of my favorite paint jobs of the show. I'm not sure the deep blue on this car really pops in this picture the way it did in person, but it was truly striking.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the 2014 Ridler Award winner as the best new hot rod in the show, this 1964 Buick Riviera Concept Custom owned by JF Laurier and built by JF Kustoms. To be honest, I kinda preferred the dark blue Riviera if I had to pick a Riviera to put in my own garage. (Yeah, I know. I'm a heathen.) But this was a truly spectacular build.

Here's a stripped Camaro body shell that one of the restoration companies had on display. (Sorry, I didn't catch whose display this was.) There were quite a few shells on display throughout the show, which made for a great look into the restoration process.

1970 Camaro owned by Robert Eickholt of Troy, Michigan. I loved this brilliant emerald green on this body shape.

Chevicious: a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle pro-tourer owned by Dave and Dianne Jaeger of Oregon, Ohio. That's a 600+ hp supercharged engine in there. Vicious, indeed! This car exuded menace thanks to the dark green paint job, which was another one of my favorite finishes in the show.

A plum-crazy 1971 Dodge Challenger with a white interior, owned by Greg & Marty Lyon of Troy, Michigan. This may be my all-time favorite car and color combination.

Nope, it's not a bitchin' Camaro; it's a bitchin' Firebird! To be specific, this is a 1967 Pontiac Firebird owned by Mark Evans of Chelsea, Michigan. This was another car with a spectacular paint job, in this case a chameleon paint that changes color among browns, golds, and greens, depending on the angle.

And finally, if you don't want to go through all the effort of building your own hot-rodded muscle car, you can just come on down to Richard Petty's place and he'll set you up with this 2014 Dodge Challenger by Petty, with a supercharged Hemi, custom suspension and a full aero package for just $67,995. I love the look of the retro-styled Challengers, and I had a fun time driving one around California last summer. But I think this car scares me a bit.

That might be a good thing.

Tomorrow's post? Super Bees!

Detroit AutoRama: T-Buckets, Roadsters, and Other Hot-Roddy Hot Rods

I have a pretty open mind as far as what can be considered to be a hot rod. To me a "hot rod" might really be any car that has been permanently altered for improved performance or custom appearance and its hot-roddyness is really in the eye of the owner.

But even in the wide world of hot rods, there's a category of cars that I've always thought of as "real" hot rods, and they're generally pre-World War II roadsters and coupes that have had a big ol' V8 engine dropped in them. AutoRama features a truly astonishing variety of cars, but it abounds in these old-school rods.

Here are a few of my favorites from the 2014 AutoRama:

The Speed 33: a custom all-steel Speed33 Convertible body by American Speed Company with a Ford 351 Windsor engine owned by Bob & Connie Gula of Saline, Michigan.

Medusa: a 1926 Ford T-Coupe designed, built, and owned by Dan Dennis.

The yellow paint on this 1933 Ford Vicky owned by Roger Gaynor of Owosso, Michigan, was unbelievably eye catching.

The In"Flame"ous HEMI Coupe: a 1934 Plymouth PF 5-Window Coupe owned by Roger Davis of Chelsea, Alabama.

I didn't catch the info on this lovely grey-green roadster, but I looooooooved this color. The hood badge said Ritzows 32, so I'm 99.9% sure this is the 1932 Ford Roadster shown here on HowStuffWorks as owned by a guy named Roger Ritzow of Franklin, Wisconsin, and built by Troy Trepanier of Rad Rods by Troy in Manteno, Illinois. If so, it was named Goodguys' Street Rod of the Year for 2004.

Did I mention that I looooooooved that color?

Here's another bright dose of yellow, courtesy of this 1928 Ford Model A Coupe with a 355 Chevy V-8.

And finally, let's finish with two beautiful burgundy Ford Roadsters:

1927 Ford Roadster owned by Bud Ransford of Flat Rock, Michigan.

1931 Ford Roadster owned by Roger Holl of Grosse Ile, Michigan.

And that's it for the hot-roddiest of the hot rods. You'll see a few more along these lines mixed in the other posts -- especially when we get to the rat rods -- but if you asked me what I'd expect to see on the cover of Hot Rod magazine, it'd probably be one of these.

Tomorrow? Bitchin' Camaros and Other Muscle Cars.

The 2014 Detroit AutoRama: An Overview

One of the things I'd never managed to get to on the Detroit automotive scene is the annual AutoRama custom and hot rod car show every March at Cobo Hall. I resolved to remedy the omission this year, so get ready for another healthy dose of automotive photoblogging over the next few days as I bring you just a few of the 600+ cars that gathered in Detroit this weekend.

This was the very first car to greet me, an enormously cool lake racer built from the drop-tank of a 1965 Phantom F-4 jet and owned by Chip Gerber and Steve Tracy. It set the bar pretty darn high. The entrants in the Ridler Competition -- the award for the best new custom car -- were all near the main entrances to the show, which made for a truly awesome entry.

AutoRama is huge. It fills the entire upstairs and downstairs of Detroit's Cobo Hall Convention Center with acres and acres of cars. Here's a view from the back corner, where the toy dealers have their booths.

And here's the sort of variety that you see in just a few cars:

A tricked out Corvette with an unbelievable entertainment center built into it.

An old Hudson Hornet, smoothed, dropped, and painted like an old race car.

And a monster truck. Presumably this was here to keep everybody in line. Cross the show judges and they will crush your hot rod.

Here are a few more shots to give you an idea of the scale:

Aside from all the cars, there were also a lot of car- and transportation-related items: custom motorcycles, custom bicycles, custom boats, displays from a variety of automotive programs, and the official AutoRama Model Car Contest:

Keeping all those cars shiny is a lot of work:

Here we see three guys working on Rocky Boler's 1933 Ford Five-Window Coupe. One of the toughest things about taking pictures was finding a car that wasn't being lovingly polished and polished again.

And the final preview of coming attractions: the AutoRama Extreme displays in the basement.

CAUTION: Here there be rat rods!

I'll post another batch of photos each day and link to them below, so the series is collected in one place. I hope you all enjoy them.

Monday, March 10: T-Buckets, Roadsters, and Other Hot-Roddy Hot Rods.
Tuesday, March 11: Bitchin' Camaros and Other Muscle Cars.
Wednesday, March 12: Super-Bees!
Thursday, March 13: Cute-sters.
Friday, March 14: Trucks.
Saturday, March 15: Gremlins!
Sunday, March 16: Smoooooooth and Swoopy
Monday, March 17: Corvettes
Tuesday, March 18: Dragsters and Race Cars
Wednesday, March 19: Station Wagons
Thursday, March 20: Rat Rods
Friday, March 21: The Leftovers - Cycles, Exotics, and Oddities

My Little MGB Project

(What? You thought I meant a little project on my full-size MGB?)

At some point last year I picked up an old Airfix MGB plastic model cheap off e-Bay while I was perusing MGB automobilia.

It's been at least 30 years since I last built a plastic model, but since I was hunkered down and trying to shake the remnants of last week's cold over Presidents' Day Weekend, I thought it would be fun to try to put it together.

There was obviously only one coffee mug I could use for this project.  Notice the unpainted body.

Some models have the pieces cast in the color of the model, including the black and chrome trim parts. This one has all the pieces cast in either plain grey or clear plastic. This sort of model is more work because you need to paint everything, but it also lets you paint everything whatever color you want. In a burst of creativity, I stuck with the cute yellow and black color scheme on the box.

The first pieces painted and in place: the rear springs (left) and the front suspension (right) including springs and disk brakes have been installed on the bottom.

The radiator, engine, transmission, and driveshaft are now painted, assembled and glued into place. I'm particularly proud of having gotten the fan belt, the fan, and the two wee little SU carburetors painted and glued on correctly.

A lot of model cars are 1:24 scale, but this was only a 1:32 scale model. The smaller the model, the higher the degree of difficulty, and this was tricky. Some of these pieces were really tiny. The four pieces above the penny are the spin-off caps for the wheels.

More tiny pieces: clockwise around the penny from the top: windshield, steering wheel, convertible top, rear tonneau cover, dashboard, front grill, seats -- and then the truly tiny parts -- gearshift, trunk handle, two door handles, two headlights, and two vent windows.

What's that you say? You don't see the trunk handle? I'm not surprised. It's the teeny tiniest of all the parts, about the size of the date on the penny.

Wheels and tires on. Interior ready for the seats.

The gearshift, parking brake, and seats are all in.

The steering wheel now painted and in the dashboard.

And now the dashboard and the whole entire inside the car.

The engine is in. This car's a runner!


The final result:

All-in-all, I'd say a fair review would be, "A driver. Paint's a ten-footer, maybe a twenty-footer."

I have to admit that a thirty-year layoff did not improve my model-making skills, but this was a fun project for a quiet February weekend.

It also confirmed that the world didn't lose a great watchmaker when I went into indexing, instead.

Signs of a long, hard winter

A series of wind-blown snowdrifts greeted me at the door Wednesday morning:

I present to you excerpts recovered from the journal of my expedition to fetch this morning's newspaper:

DAY 1: We set out with a snow shovel and a steely-eyed determination to read today's Oakland Press....

DAY 43: Frostbite claimed Hastings last night.

DAY 44: We ate Hastings.

DAY 45: Expedition chef made a rather festive pudding out of the remnants of Hastings. Morale raised all around.

DAY 49: We ate the chef.

DAY 52: We ate the snow shovel.

DAY 56: We ate the photo of Mrs. Hastings....

Important Diet Tip!

Not surprisingly, step one of my 2014 "get back in better health" project involves eating better. To that end I've adopted the one diet that I know generally works pretty well for me: cutting out just about everything with added sugar.  That sounds harder than it is, as long as you're willing to cook for yourself and to read ingredient lists. One thing I always find interesting about this process is that once I cut off the sugar, almost all of the desire for sugar goes away, too.

To that bit of dietetic discipline I've added a pretty significant cutback in my "pure carbohydrate" foods: bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice.  I'm letting in a bit of wheat bread and brown rice for now, but in much smaller quantities than my usual heaping portions.  The idea here is to force my body to start burning down a bit of the massive storehouse of fat that it's built up over the years.

The final bit: cutting way back on the beer. Sigh.  I'm not even going to pretend that I'll cut it out altogether, but it's under huge cutdown until further notice. Sigh.

In general, so far, so good. This is a long-term project.  I will, however, say that these diet decisions may have gotten the best of me Monday night, when I opted for this for dinner:


Chili-Dog "Salad"
-- 2 large bratwursts
-- 2 cups of seasoned chili/taco meat
-- Shredded cheddar cheese. (How much? I dunno ... a lot. Yum!)
-- Too much guacamole
-- A few scattered black beans
-- A wisp of lettuce and a scattering of diced onion, neither of which ever really stood a chance against the rest of it
-- One diced tomato, to beef up the fraudulent "this is good for me" theory
-- Homemade salsa (Yum! And this part really was healthy)

I'm afraid that I must now report to you all that -- much to my surprise -- this concoction was neither dietetic nor was it good for me. (I know. You're surprised, too, right?!)

In point of fact, it caused me to lay semi-comatose on the couch for the rest of the night with a belly full of meat and cheese while watching old "Doctor Who" episodes with Tom Baker.  This entertainment selection may have been provoked by a subconscious to hijack the Tardis, go back in time a couple of hours, and tell myself, "Hey, self! More Lettuce, less bratwurst and chili meat!! Sheesh!!! There's no added sugar in there, but what are you freaking thinking?!"

Other than that incident ... so far, so good. Down four pounds from my shameful Jan. 2 high mark.

Phase Two of the 2014 "get back in better health" project involves dragging my butt back into the gym on a semi-regular basis.  The progress to date ... well, um ... I bought a new combination lock for my locker at the "Y" and a pair of gym shorts.

Still some work to do, I reckon.

2014 Resolutions in Brief

It's my first day back in my cubicle after my lovely two-week holiday staycation, so lunchtime seemed a good time to write down a few thoughts about what I want to do in 2014:

1) Take better care of myself -- For too long I've been treating my body like an old truck, except that I actually treat my old truck better than I treat myself. It finally caught up with me in 2013, especially in the form of three bouts of bronchitis, one of which was severe enough to bring on a ten-day stretch of total silence due to laryngitis.

I could make all the resolutions in the world to do specific things, but I can't actually do any of them unless I start taking better care of myself and get myself into better shape.

2) Unsubscribe -- My personal e-mail has become a horrible junk pile of missives from an enormous variety of organizations. I realized recently that I'm deleting 50 or 100 e-mails a day without reading them just to try to get to the worthwhile stuff.  I've had enough.  I used to be pretty softhearted about e-mails from various political organizations or charities that I like, but no more. If I'm inclined to delete it more often than not, I'm just going to unsubscribe. I need to regain some control.

3) Be more focused at work -- For various reasons my job is the great enemy of focus. I swim in an every-flowing river of instant messaging, e-mails, and meetings. This year I'm going to try to do less skipping about from fire to fire, and more focusing on tasks to completion. I need to do a better job of focusing on the big picture. Focus, focus, focus.


And that's it.  You'll see there's no "write a novel" or "run for office" or, well ... anything too specific there. (Not even, "Finally write that photoblog post with the electric car exhibit from the Concours of America, which was way cool.")

It may or may not be obvious to the casual reader, but those three items are not unrelated. I ran myself into the ground last year. It's not a coincidence that my blogging dropped off hugely last year. I need to rebuild my health, my energy, and my focus in 2014 if I'm going to accomplish any of the million-and-one other things I'd like to do, and that needs to be job one.