a rose by any other name

according to my brief “research” on the internet, “the 1954 chevrolet corvette nomad was a concept car built by GM and introduced at the 1954 GM motorama in NYC. the nomad was decidedly a sporty wagon way ahead of its time.” probably should have just taken a close up shot of the descriptive flyers in the window for the history of this baby.

i'm left to wonder why anyone would want to make a corvette into a wagon. bet some dad didn't want to haul the family around in some big ass family wagon, and thought it would be a good idea. i guess it would have been cool enough, but i don't think it really caught on...i've never seen another one like it til this.

playing with fire

so i hit a couple of shows on sunday. stopped first at the big boy show in orange. second time there. big disappointment. didn't even get my camera out. they had several rows of the parking lot blocked off, so they were hopeful, but the security guard started taking the caution tape down before i left.

then drove over to pal joey's show in costa mesa. haven't been to one of these since they were at the santa ana elk's club. decent turn out, but i still expected more. got there late enough that many cars had the hood up, so bye bye to them.

this one was a pretty decent hot rod, as hot rods go. i've never seen slightly rainbow-y flames as these...pinks to greens to oranges to blues. nice big wall•e engines...kinda expect a nickelodeon if you peek into this one.

so basically for the day, i got shots of maybe four cars. whatever. i had fun anyway.

the pointy things on the back

raining off and on all day. went to work for a couple of hours then got my taxes done.

pouring right now, and i'm just sitting here playing with my cars. not quite the same as when i was younger and playing with my bro and his hot wheels. never was much for playing with dolls. i still can't remember why i cut the hair off my sister's dolls, but i'm sure i had a reason at the time. i guess i was a tomboy then, and still a bit of it remains.

i still don't like dolls, and my bro still has his hot wheels. funny that he's never passed them on to his own kids. guess you just gotta keep those childhood memories for yourself sometimes.

anyway, i digress. took this picture last year, when i was just getting started taking pictures of cars. it was going to rain that day, but the guys still brought their cars out to play at this show that only happened once a month. they didn't leave until the sky got much darker and scarier.

i just like the back of these chevys from this angle. makes the fins that much more interesting.

rolling amethyst

i finally got the front of this car.

first saw it at pal joey's show at the santa elks club in march. i shot the back end while my husband did the other side – kind of like a car sandwich. he still wasn't satisfied with his shots, so i continued on to other cars. by the time i came back around for my shot, the owner was in the car and driving away.

and that always has been the case ever since, until last weekend at original mike's. i got there early. the owner was polishing and polishing this 1940 ford coupe. he was still polishing it when i took this shot, but you can't see him from this angle. he stopped long enough to take my card that had the back end shot on it and pocket it.

anyway, its a nice, shiny car. keep polishing...

all that glitters ain't gold

this glittery '53 studebaker custom was at the santa elks lodge in may. pal joey puts on a well-attended once-a-month show, with a live band, food, trophies and raffles...the whole sheebang.

nice orange sparkles, combined with the reddish-orange flames made this a quite striking car. then put it butt up against that sunny-bright car behind it here and my eyes were burning. i don't know if it won anything, but it should have.

orange sherbet

another from pal joey's dream car revue. this was the last shot of the day, while they were doing the awards and raffle.

happily, the owner finally closed the hood and i got the shot i wanted. the colors were so creamy and juicy, i had a craving for orange sherbet after this. i don't think it won anything though.

was all in the family

this packard one-twenty (i think the owner said this was a 1936), at the santa ana elk's pal joey dream car revue, had been in a family for three generations. this owner recently acquired it from the grandson of the original owner, not sure if it was financial necessity, or just that the guy was just more interested in restoring old model t's. anyway, he said it was all original parts, and hadn't been restored yet...he's only had it a few months.

and while shooting this one, finally met the famous dave lindsay, of http://www.socalcarculture.com who introduced himself. nice guy. talked camera tech talk with my husband for a long time.