Category: cars

The Car as Art

A 1952 Cunningham race car
The 1952 Cunningham must surely qualify.

Circulating around the Blue Dome Arts Festival this weekend (it’s that thing next to Mayfest where you see artists from Tulsa) we got to see a lot of old friends and meet some interesting and creative people.

When we wandered down to Living Arts it was time to stroll through the vehicles on display for the Art Car Weekend. It reminded me of a meeting several years ago. Steve Liggett and a fledgeling group of organizers wanted to produce an event inspired by the massive Houston Art Car event. Steve asked me to attend because he knew I was a “car guy.” Continue reading The Car as Art

Vintage RVs: Fun with Fiberglass

In the Golden Age of Fiberglass there were a variety of RV manufacturers that took advantage of the light weight and easy to mold plastic to build motorhomes. They borrowed their engines and chassis from Corvairs, Oldsmobile Toronados and everything in between. Many of these efforts were quite forgettable.

The retro styling and mobile party bus aspect of these behemoths has spurred a small boom of RV restorations.

But one of the more noticeable shapes from this period was from a company called Travco. Short for “travelers company,” they used a Dodge truck frame and laid up a ton of ‘glass to produce these land yachts from the mid Sixties up into the Eighties.

Recently I discovered a blog about one Travco that has been lovingly restored by a couple in Canada. Today it travels the country to compete in RV and vintage trailer shows (yes, there really is such a thing). The 1964 example is affectionately known as Myrtle and is a painted aqua blue that immediately reminded me of our local Blue Whale. The blog chronicles the adventures of restoring a blue whale made of fiberglass, wood and steel.

Click here to follow the Adventures of Myrtle…

Image courtesy Myrtle and Me

 

Trunk Hooks for Grocery Bags

Clever hack for making your car’s trunk a kinder, friendlier place for your grocery bags!

trunk-cargo-hook-kitThese hooks hold your sacks or grocery bags suspended so they don’t slide all over the trunk.

During our recent car shopping adventures I discovered a nifty feature inside the trunk of an Audi A4. A pair of flip-down hooks attached to the roof of the trunk allowed you to hang your groceries or a purse. Now instead of letting bags slide around your trunk all willy-nilly you can hang them on these hooks. I wasn’t impressed enough to buy the Audi, but I did buy a pair of those cargo hooks! Continue reading Trunk Hooks for Grocery Bags

Time Capsule in My Car

A recent article from Top Gear magazine caught my eye. Mostly because it pertained to two of my favorite things: cars and photography.

Man Necklace, aka Richard HammondRichard Hammond, or Man Necklace as Jackie refers to him, wrote about the revolution of digital photography. He fancies himself as a pseudo photographer and even used to develop his own film in a home darkroom. But his take on non-celluloid imaging is one I agree with wholeheartedly. Freed of the guilt and/or cost of exposing film we snap photos much more often. Plus the fact most of us always have a camera in our pocket (sometimes mistakenly referred to as a phone) it’s rare that a slice of life passes undocumented.

Quite simply, more people are taking more pictures than ever before. Continue reading Time Capsule in My Car