Here in the sleepy town of Arlington, WA, the dairies and sawmills may be quiet, but the parking lot of the local Burger King out on Highway 9 rumbles to the roar of old cars every Saturday evening. They call themselves “The Burger King Bunch” and are the closest thing we have here to a car club.
I spent the day pressure washing our back deck, which was filthy with debris and dirt from our very stormy winter. We ate an early dinner and Nick & I took off afterwards in the Jaguar to head to BK to see what was on display this week. The 65E is fresh from the paint shop, looking REAL good again. My self-inflicted clear-coat divot has been fixed, and I even came away with a nice tub of color-matched touch-up paint to take care of the many little chips and dings elsewhere on the car, now and in the future. I am very happy with Steve Velez and his staff at Accurate Lines Collision down in Marysville for the excellent job they did on the repair. Unlike the last paint repair I had done to the Jaguar, everything promised was delivered this time… ON TIME, on budget, and looking great. They even took the time to hit just about every ding and bit of road-rash on the passenger side of the car. If you are anywhere in western Washington and looking for a good body & paint shop I highly recommend them.
Anyway, Nick took a pile of coins off into the Burger King to get a shake, while I wandered off to photograph cars. The turnout was pretty light, as some dark clouds had just blown through (we almost didn’t go, but my weather widgets in my MacOS dashboard told me no rain was aimed at us in the next few hours). There were two cars that really turned my crank though. One was that liquid black, with red highlights ’67 Corvette 427. I own a black car and know how hard they are to keep looking good, and this one looked great.
The other treat was a ’51(?) Nash Statesman. You can’t find a more emblematic “Yank Tank” than this! Big, bulbous and green… just like a Sherman Tank.
You can find all the photos I shot tonight here.
Just wanted to add: due to their fiberglass body construction, C2 Corvettes are probably an order of magnitude more difficult to get a decent finish with a black paintjob than the average metal-bodied car. Nearly all C2’s tend to start showing their seams between the body panels as they age, and black corvettes, because of the higher heat absorption properties of the color, are much worse about showing those seams earlier in life. Additionally, for the same reason, the fiberglass body panels tend to expand and contract more than with other colors when the car is left parked in the sun for any period of time, which leads to cracks in the finish and other paint issues.
I’ve seen several C2 Corvette restorers/painters on various webboards try to discourage people from painting their C2 black (unless it came that way from the factory) for that very reason. That does look like a well-finished ’67 coupe.
THAT’S IT? A “Piggue of Plastique” and a Nash?
I see someone beat me to the comment about this *clearly* not being a stock ‘Vette! They didn’t come from the factory that smooth! I love the looks of the “Sting Ray,” though..despite it being a Corvette!
Nice fotos, as always, chuqqie!
No, there were a bunch of cars there… but I chose these two to photograph in the time I was there.
As for smooth, the panel gaps were off here and there, and the driver’s side door didn’t align to the rear panel very well, so it looked pretty “stock” to me! 😉