chuck.goolsbee.org

Here’s a nice shot. IIRC this was the very first time I actually opened the door and stuck the camera out the bottom for a shot. It was taken on the Mille Autunno rally about this time four years ago. In fact I’m pretty sure it was exactly 4 years ago today.

We were driving around the Sierra Nevadas with a group of old cars. I’m pretty sure this was taken as we rounded the west shore of Lake Tahoe.

I’m doing a little lunchtime update of my GTTSR pages and noted this photo in my collection from last week. I remember doing a cartoon character extreme double-take when I saw this car. Can you spot the oddity in this photo (and if you can’t, you’re blind!)

It is still sunny here in the Pacific Northwest, but we can tell the wet season approaches as our mornings are getting foggy. I remember snapping this photo one winter of a beater old Triumph I used to see on my daily commute. It was bondo-ed up the wazoo and I imagine its top leaked like a submarine with a screen door. Yet somebody drove it down I-5 every day through Everett.

Yes, I’m backfilling my 2008 GTTSR stories as fast as I can every night before I go to bed, so expect a summary post with links soon. Meanwhile you can go back and view them if you like via the “2008 GTTSR” link to the right, or just scroll down and go back. Once that’s done I’ll have a whole new slew of “name that car” posts and whatnot coming soon. Thanks for your patience.

OK, not the best of photographs, as the background is way too busy, but I have to admit I still like this shot. Perhaps it is my life-long lust for Jim Hall’s Chaparral Can-Am cars. I saw them in the flesh, being driven in anger at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin when I was a small boy. While Hall was a perennial 3rd place to the McLarens and their Kiwi drivers (as Jerome will no doubt remind us in the comments) the SBC-powered winged white little Texas cars were my heros. Every year something radical and new.

To stumble upon this blast from my past at the Amelia Island Concours was a real treat. I spent easily 30+ minutes staring at it from every angle. I even touched it now and then. I’m sure other people there thought I was some oddball stalker… no… I was just seeing an old and admired friend.

BRG

A legendary Vanwall VW5 F1 car in BRG. The real thing. The “chuck connection” here is the place this car was built: Acton. This is where I worked when in the UK in ‘97/’98.

Now, if you live in the UK and have a huge pile of cash, you can actually buy a street-legal replica of a Vanwall VW5, though with a bit more engine (a Jaguar V-12!) than the original. Check it out on Top Gear:

Another race car from the Indy 500 display at Amelia Island Concours a few years back. Know what it might be?

(should be easy as there’s a couple of badges and labels here. )

Working on the deck today… expect an update about the car show and a reveal of the other British car soon. Keep on guessing in the “going against the grain” post though!

From the days when a padded cockpit served as a driver’s seat. I seem to recall that this car was in a section of the lawn at Amelia reserved that year for Indy cars, but I might be wrong. Do you know what car this is (because I sure don’t!)

Update: I think I found it, via Google. Sounds like this is the car.