All Photos Courtesy of the Petersen Automotive Museum
On the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, at the beginning of Los Angeles’ “Miracle Mile,” sits the Petersen Automotive Museum. Founded in 1994 by magazine magnate Robert E. Petersen, the Petersen Museum rose to become one of the world’s premier automotive museums and today attracts visitors from all over the globe to view the approximately 150 cars on display at any given time. With an inventory ranging from Ferraris to Fords, the Monkeemobile to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s custom 1942 Lincoln and a countless number of rare and classic cars that come through the museum on loan, the Petersen Museum has something for everyone.
Founded with the idea that all the museum’s cars would not be on display at the same time, the Petersen Museum has 8 permanent exhibitions that it compliments with a variety of temporary exhibits. Given the principle of not putting all its cars on display at the same time, the museum rotates cars in and out of exhibits to keep the museum feeling fresh every time a visitor returns. With permanent exhibits including the famed “Streetscape: The Car and the City in Southern California,” “Hollywood Gallery: Cars of Film and Hollywood” and “Discovery Center” as well as temporary exhibits like “Braving Baja: 1000 Miles to Glory” and “Fins: Form Without Function,” it’s lucky for our boss that the Petersen Museum isn’t located in New England, as it’s doubtful CarGurus employees would ever show up to work with such a collection in our backyard.
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Car Lists, Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Domestic Cars, Exotic Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat
If things had been different, I might be living near a Washington State auto production facility today instead of an abandoned aluminum factory.
Washington is home to a couple of automakers, one being SSC North America, the maker of the Ultimate Aero and Tuatara, and the other being Commuter Cars, maker of the tiny-but-crazy-fast electric Tango.
Both companies are vanity automakers, producing a very small number of vehicles per year. What if there was a third Washington automaker? I’m sure many people outside the state couldn’t possibly care less, but if some car concepts from Kaiser Aluminum in the 1950s had gained traction, maybe we’d be talking about Ford, GM, Chrysler and Kaiser as the Big 4 American automakers.
Probably not, but keep reading anyway for a peek into what could have been.
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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Domestic Cars, General Chat
forgotten concepts, kaiser aluminum cars, kaiser cars, kaiser menehune, kaiser pele, kaiser waimea
Could you abandon this?
You missed a car payment.
If you live in the United States, you’ll say some curse words, call the bank, and make arrangements to get back on schedule. Aside from a hit to the credit report, there’s no real harm done. But if you live in the United Arab Emirates, you could go to prison.
There are no bankruptcy laws in the UAE, and not paying a debt is considered a criminal offense. Bottom line, if you take out a loan in the UAE, you either pay, go to prison or flee the country. When the first two options are out of the question and the third becomes reality, whatever possessions you had in the country stay there.
That’s partly the reason behind some high-profile abandoned supercars in the deserts near Dubai. The U.S. has some abandoned cars too, though they tend to mostly be forgotten classics. Keep reading for some pictures that contrast the abandoned cars of the UAE with the ones in the USA.
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Car Lists, Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Domestic Cars, Exotic Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat
abandoned cars, abandoned supercars, Dubai abandoned cars, UAE cars
Irv Gordon’s 1966 Volvo P1800
I found myself thinking about Irv Gordon yesterday.
If you’re not familiar with the name, you will be shortly. I thought of him as I drove my aging 2004 Jaguar X-Type through the pothole-ridden streets of my city. My car has 111,000 miles on it, along with all kinds of suspension/steering clunks and a frustrating occasional loss of power due to a vacuum line problem. On most days, the car purrs like the day she was new, but the old cat has recently shown signs of distress.
Its mileage isn’t terrible for a 10-year-old car, but I don’t know what kind of repairs lie in her immediate future or how much longer we will have together.
That was my train of thought when Irv popped into my head.
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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat
3 million mile volvo, car maintenance, car mileage, high car mileage, Irv Gordon, volvo P1800
A friend in college had an old International Scout. I don’t remember for sure, but I think it was a 1972 model with a V8 engine and a 4-speed manual transmission. I’d probably remember the car in much more detail had I ridden in it more than once. In 3 years of living near this guy, the Scout sat outside his apartment in various states of being, well, assembled. He’d get it running occasionally, but never well enough to take it any farther than the closest Safeway for an emergency PBR run.
I sometimes wonder what happened to my friend and his Scout. As much as he loved that brutish SUV, I can’t imagine he would have gotten rid of it. Assuming a marriage and kids and a mortgage became part of his life, it’s quite likely he did sell it.
I hope he’s held on to it, as its value has risen over the last 15 years. Right along with the demand for other classic SUVs.
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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Domestic Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat
car auctions, classic SUV, collectible cars, collectible SUV, Ford Bronco, International Scout, Toyota Land Cruiser, vintage SUVs
What has happened to car design in modern times?
I’ve been flipping through images of the cars from the Shanghai Motor Show over the weekend, and I have to say, I’m left mostly unimpressed. Where are the cars that drop jaws, increase heart rates and draw humans to them like moths to a flame? Where are the cars that create an obsession at first glance?
Granted, it’s Shanghai, a show known for a certain amount of epic weirdness. Among the cars no one outside of China will ever see outside of gallery pictures on a blog, a few stood out as well-designed vehicles that can be described as sleek, snarling and sexy.
But what about seductive? What about all-out awe inspiring? For that, I had to simply walk through the valet section of a hometown hotel.
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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Exotic Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat
car design, Jaguar E-type, shanghai, Shanghai Motor Show
1962 Ford Cougar!
In 1962 Ford was in pre-production of what would become the Ford Mustang. Rare pictures from those early days of development were posted on the Mustang Facebook page yesterday, along with the disclosure that the original name for the car was the Ford Cougar. Can you imagine, the first of the pony cars carrying a cat’s name? Maybe the entire segment would have taken on the name “kitty cars” had the Cougar name stuck.
Look closely and notice the iconic Mustang logo on the grille is actually a Peugeot-ish cougar scratching at the box it’s enclosed in. The photos are a fun glimpse into the birth of an icon, a car that has carried on for almost 50 years. The official 50th anniversary of the Mustang happens on April 17, 2014, which almost coincides with the coming sixth-generation of the muscle car. Ford has plans, of course, to celebrate its milestone. While we wait for those details, let’s take a look back at some of our favorite ‘Stangs from the last 49 years.
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50 year anniversary, 50 years of Mustang, best mustang ever, Ford Mustang, mustang anniversary
Photo courtesy Lumber Liquidators
Head on down to a major league ballpark today and you’re likely to see an array of Maseratis, Ferraris, Land Rovers and Cadillacs going in and out of the players’ parking lot. Driven by their highest salaries ever, it seems that players, coaches and owners will spare no expense to arrive at the park in style. While it’s certainly a treat for a fan to get an autograph from a player as he pulls out of the lot in his fresh-from-the-showroom Maybach or Lamborghini, the simple fact is that the only thing drawing the fan to that player is his baseball-playing abilities. We here at CarGurus think that’s just wrong.
When seeking out an autograph from a baseball player, coach or team owner, there are many more factors to consider than just how well that individual plays, coaches or watches America’s pastime. Sure, a player could hit 40 home runs in a season, bat .300 and steal 30 bases, but if he arrives at the park in a white Range Rover (a car surprisingly common in baseball parking lots), what does that say about his personality, only desiring to blend in with the crowd like that?
In order to remedy this problem, we came up with a list of the 10 players, owners, managers and organizations with the coolest cars in baseball—cars that say something more about their owner than a car straight from a dealer’s lot ever could. Some of the cars on this list are supercars, others are much more, and yet many are much less.
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Car Lists, Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Exotic Cars, General Chat, Trucks & SUVs
Let’s face it, gearheads are very sensitive people when it comes to cars. Whether it’s a preferred maker, type of oil or tire, opinions abound and arguments fly when it comes to the auto industry and its faithful followers. When I hear someone proselytizing a certain oil weight and viscosity, I often ask myself, “Where is this passion coming from?” Have you ever seized an engine with the oil you’re currently portraying to be the asbestos of the auto industry? No, you probably just found a coupon for the synthetic that’s currently in your engine, and because it’s 5W less than what the manual recommends, you’ve now figured out the meaning of life.
Really want to piss off the ornery oil objector? Ask that person about what they think of the new Dodge Dart compared to what it used to be. Watch out, you might start a fire. The auto industry is all about comparisons and fortunately, we as car fans love to weigh in. With so many classics seeing a resurgence in recent years, it’s only fair that we bring this debate into an open forum and watch the sparks fly.
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Car Lists, Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, General Chat
I once drove my mom’s 1984 Honda Accord into a pole. I was 17. The bumper crumpled a little, but the damage wasn’t easily spotted. Still, I remember being terrified my dad would see it and, to this day, haven’t admitted to him that I caused the damage. (Sorry, Dad!)
Imagine calling the owner of a rare Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing and informing him you’ve just destroyed it. I wouldn’t want to be on either end of that call!
There are only 1,400 of these in existence (or maybe 1,399), and they can sell for almost $2 million each. Wrecking one, especially one that belongs to someone else, would be an incredible stressor in anyone’s day.
Two mechanics in Stuttgart recently took a customer’s Gullwing on a test drive joyride, ran it off the road, rolled it over, and caused over $830,000 in damage.
Then, perhaps even worse, they had to inform the owner.
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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Exotic Cars, General Chat
germany, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing, wrecked gullwing
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