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
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Inside my car is about the only place left where I can find complete solitude and turn off the outside world if choose. I can either play my Korn albums as loud as I want, listen to NPR if I choose or bask in the glory of silence and a pleasing exhaust note.
As Frank Costanza used to say, it’s my “Serenity now!”
Aside from the outdoor advertising along the roads I travel, when I’m in my car I can be completely free of ads from companies hungry for my money. Soon, though, even the sacred space inside our cars may be fertile ground for new advertising opportunities. One of those could be ads built right into the infotainment systems of new cars.
Want to turn up the air conditioning? Doing so could be brought to you by the good people at Jiffy Lube. Changing a radio station could come courtesy of Allstate.
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Car Audio, Car Industry News, Car Minded, Domestic Cars, General Chat
advertising, General Motors, GM, in-car advertising, infotainment system ads
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
I spent the final night of 1989 at a bowling alley. At 12 years old, my parents wanted to make that New Year’s Eve memorable and took my brothers and I midnight bowling.
I remember feeling a sense of awe that the calendar was about to switch the 1990s. It sounded so futuristic and had the potential to be the decade that would bring on the realization of a future I’d seen in the movies. I half expected to see flying cars in the sky on the ride home in those first hours of the 1990s.
Of course, all the 1990s brought us was email, the Internet and Vanilla Ice. Not a single flying car anywhere in the world.
If only the 12-year-old me from 1990 could have seen what Terrafugia has planned in the second decade of the 21st century!
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Car Industry News, Car Minded, Domestic Cars, General Chat, Hybrid Cars
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2009 Jaguar XF
Quick depreciation is a terrible thing. And a beautiful thing.
For buyers of new luxury cars, a sinking value can lead to abandoning a car after just a couple years of ownership. For buyers of used luxury cars, it can lead to some killer deals on cars that would have been unattainable new.
Think about it: If you had the choice between a brand-new, top-of-the-line Toyota Camry or a 3-year-old Jaguar XF, wouldn’t the Jag bring you an exponentially greater amount of happiness? Of course, it might also bring heftier insurance and repair bills, but that’s beside the point. We’re talking image here—and a well-priced used luxury car can provide ample amounts of that!
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Car Minded, Car Shopping, Domestic Cars, Foreign Cars, General Chat, Trucks & SUVs
cheap used luxury cars, depreciation, fast depreciation, used car shopping, used luxury cars, used SUVs
A lot of people in advertising seem to think they can add instant credibility to their marketing message by adding a superlative or two to the copy.
Calling a product or service the “best” or the “biggest” or the “most” is pretty common practice, but this rarely means anything, since such labels are typically subjective marketing speak and used everywhere, all the time.
Tesla Motors posted a piece on its blog Friday announcing the “World’s Best Service and Warranty Program.” Well, that’s a mighty bold statement to make, but then again, Tesla is a pretty bold company and tends to back up what it says.
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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
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If you’re like any other car buyer in America, you’ve probably noticed the wider availability of diesel models in recent months. It seems like everybody is starting to get in on the diesel game, with Volkswagen adding more diesel models after the huge success of its Jetta TDI, Porsche introducing a diesel version of the Cayenne and Ram recently announcing a diesel 1500.
Attracted by higher fuel-mileage ratings, greater reliability and longer-lasting engines, consumers are becoming more and more receptive to the engines that were despised just a few short years ago, when diesel was synonymous with noise, pollution and foul odor. Driven by advances in diesel technology, the new engines have largely wiped away consumers’ bad memories and are now finding their ways under the hoods of sports cars, family cars, trucks and SUVs.
While there is already a large selection of diesels that will appear in the 2014 lineup from the likes of Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Mazda, BMW, Chevrolet, Audi, Jeep, Porsche and Ram, there are still many holes in that line-up that we here at CarGurus would like to see filled. In order help fix this, we’ve brought together the 10 cars we’d most like to see offered with a diesel option in the U.S.
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Car Lists, Car Minded, Domestic Cars, Foreign Cars, Gas for your car..., General Chat, Trucks & SUVs
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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Car Minded, Classic & Vintage Cars, Domestic Cars, General Chat
50 year anniversary, 50 years of Mustang, best mustang ever, Ford Mustang, mustang anniversary
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