Category: Car Photo Of The Day

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.

Whaddya think of that?

I’ve often said I’m not really a “Ferrari guy” but that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate them. I just couldn’t see myself enduring the pain of actually owning one. Not that I have to worry about that though, as the IRS will confirm, I don’t have that sort of income. Or anything remotely close to that sort of income.

The thing about Ferrari’s is that Enzo Ferrari, the company founder and its heart and soul, never saw himself as an automobile manufacturer. Enzo saw himself as a race team manager. He built cars to win races, and sold cars to finance the racing program. His cars therefore are like race cars. They are designed to run like stink for X hours and then be completely torn down and rebuilt.

They are beautiful. They make wonderful noises that is in reality some of the most pleasing road music ever created. They have more soul than anything built by any other car maker. They are universally admired, lusted after, and worshipped. They are just so damn expensive.

This photograph was taken at the Kirkland Concours in 2004. That was the year that early morning rain set the organizers into a panic and they shuffled the cars off the Carillon Point and into the parking garage for fear of getting them wet. Of course the Northwest weather worked against them and the day turned out to be brilliant. Oh well. The cars were well arranged at least, with themes and in some cases approachable and informative owners there to talk to. Except of course the Ferraris… at least while I was looking. The most fun guys to talk to that year were the “Classics” folks. Those pre-war palaces of chrome and straight-eights. Great guys. They also were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz 300sl (aka “Gullwing”) so there was probably the largest presentation of 300sl cars that I have ever seen in one spot.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the summer, I highly recommend a visit to the Kirkland Concours. (You will note they host their website with my employer, but that is a coincidence that I have nothing to do with! Really.) They really pull a great collection of cars, spanning a range of eras and interests. Normally they are presented in a stunning location on the shore of Lake Washington, so don’t let the above photo put you off.