chuck.goolsbee.org

Still Life with Odd Panel Gap & Blower.

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks working like a mad man to clean up the property and prepare for selling the house. We’ve cleaned and painted the house and barn. We hired a handyman to rebuild the last un-rebuilt deck. Now we have to paint it. I’m brewing up as much of the remaining WVO into BioDiesel as I can so I can dismantle the brewery and clean and repaint that part of the barn. I’ve basically been running non-stop. Part of the barn-cleaning process involved moving the Jaguar – a drive from the barn to the garage. As I pulled the cover off the dirty car I realized that it has sat unwashed and unused since the Northwest Passage Rally in June(!) I resolved right then to wash the car, and take it for a drive, even if it was just a run into town for the local cruise-in. So yesterday when I finished the runs to the dump and recycling I pulled the 65E out of the garage and gave her a good sudsy washing… and zipped to the Burger King on Highway 9.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I slide behind the wheel of the E-type after a hiatus. It sounds so good, feels so good – in fact it is always better than how I remember it. It isn’t neck-snapping, or awesome… just very very good.

Along the way I saw a pair of Morris Minors driving north – obviously returning home from the ABFM in Bellevue. At the cruise-in was the usual collection of yank tanks and muscle cars, plus a few machines I’d never seen here before. I wandered around, chatted with a few guys, and snapped some photos…

The Arlington, WA BK Bunch cruise-in… an informal car show every Saturday evening all year around.

A blown... Fairlane?

Two for the die-hard CPotD car-spotting geeks:

The only other non-domestic machine this time. Can you name it?

This car was next to mine.

Unfortunately I didn’t see many of the folks I usually run into, so I missed my chance to bid them farewell. Oh well.

Name this car.

I encountered this car in a parking lot in La Canada, California as we departed on the return trip northwards back home on our Father-Son road trip last summer. I don’t think I posted it, or made any reference to it at the time, so it is a newcomer here on the web site. In fact I’ve never seen one of these before or since… it is that rare a car.

Larry Wade was with us at the time, so he’s disqualified from guessing the car as he’s seen it!

Name that car.

This is actually a lousy photo. The depth of field is off – pushed too far towards the lens. Pushed a bit outwards, it would have been a bit better as the window frame and other further bits would have been sharp. Oh well.

However it is salvageable as a CPotD though as the odd view of this car, with a wide lens, and a close perspective on the trailing edge of the window presents a view that few people have really paid attention to. The car itself is somewhat common, and has appeared here before, so don’t go fishing into exotica to name it.

I posted a tight crop of a headlight and partial bonnet of this car a few days ago. I thought I had perhaps posted a real puzzler, but you guys are all too good. It was properly identified instantly! Perhaps my post title was the give-away as I called it a “Secret Weapon” a shortened moniker it received by the occupying Germans during the Second World War, as it had a habit of killing German officers who drove it beyond its performance envelope.

Until I stumbled upon this example I had yet to see a Tatra T-87 in the flesh. This one appeared before me as soon as I stepped onto the show field of the Art Center School of Design’s 2009 car Show. A great introduction to this amazing car as well, as this example is in near perfect condition. I hovered around it for quite a long time – so long in fact that the car’s caretaker noted my minor obsession and opened a door for me so I could photograph the interior.

I’ll just shut up and let the car speak for itself via my photos. Feel free to share observations, obsessions, and/or Tatra knowledge in the comments!

(more…)

This car is steeped in history, and in its day was cutting edge technology. I know at least one of my readers has the car as an minor obsession. Can you identify it?