Category: Cars

The hood ornament of a Dodge Brothers Model 30.

I have been woefully remiss in posting of late, both CPotD and regular updates. Truth is, I’ve been living out of hotels for the past two months plus! I’ve been travelling for work, and moving my household from northwest Washington to central Oregon. Nick & I have been at the latter location for the past two weeks as he’s started school, and I’ve been attending to all those things that setting up a new household takes… first of all being getting the house itself! As many have heard, securing loans these days is damn near impossible, with banks dragging their feet and tracking every penny, both yours and theirs. Sort of the opposite end of the scale from the freewheeling zero-down, credit for anyone with a heartbeat days of not so long ago. Honestly I prefer it somewhere in between, but more on that later. The good news is, we have the house and the movers arrive tomorrow. Stay tuned for details.

Meanwhile here’s a “Name that car” mystery for you all to ponder while I set up power, TV, Internet service, and start unpacking our goods in a new home. I found it in a museum (obviously) and it stuck me as a real oddball in a lot of ways. What oddities can you note about it? Can you identify it? Discuss in the comments…

I saw these devices being carried on a flatbed in Tacoma, WA. Can you identify them?

I’m flying today, so here’s some airplane pictures for you. (though the lead image has a car in it!)

I’m going to be in a 737 from SEA to SFO, but these photos were taken somewhere in between those places, notably the Evergreen Air & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. Chris & I stopped there on our father-son roadtrip last summer. The photo above is the mount of a MoH recipient.

I love this photo of Chris and an early Grumman Navy jet…

Inside the museum you’ll find some iconic American hardware, that when you look at them and realize they are contemporaries of Packards and Pierce-Arrows it sort of blows your mind…

The drop-tank of this ME 109 has an inscription in German: “Return to a Post Office for a 10 RM reward.”

OK, here’s one for the car- er… plane-spotters in the audience…

Everyone recognizes the 1:1 scale Supermarine Spitfire, but what’s that model under its wing? Can you name that plane?

Here is an image taken while poking my head out the top of a B-17. The enormous tail structure is fro this museum’s most famous exhibit…

…the Hughes H-4 Hercules Flying Boat, aka “The Spruce Goose”:

I was very proud of myself for being able to capture the entire wingspan of the world’s largest aircraft.

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…

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

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

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!