Saturday, December 16, 2023

one of only 45, front disc brake optioned ,'69 Hemi R/T found in an Indiana storage unit has only 58,165 miles and is a "stripe delete," making it even rare. No power steering though (thank you Mike!)



The original owner bought this vehicle near the end of high school, and then moved to California in 1975. Around 1986, he moved back to New York, and then to Indiana shortly after. This car them sat in storage for the last 37 years

Check out the Roger Ward back tires!





part 1 above, getting it out of the storage unit, and it looks like 85k in cash. That is the right amount for this car with this condition


part 2 starts with 4 minutes of time wasting garbage, then finally catches up with the R/T getting unloaded

notice the hemi air induction on the drivers side of the N95 


high schoolers unfolded this 33 Ford, and made a really cool hot rod


Charlie Hascall, a high-school welding and fabrication teacher in Dayton, Oregon, created this vintage-style drag racer in a single summer from little more than a wad of sheetmetal.

The coupe first came to Hascall’s attention when a friend purchased it for yard art. The car, a Ford from 1933 or 1934, had been burned and bent into a pile of scrap. Everyone else had given up on it; no one even considered the car as a project. Whatever skid steer or tractor had been used to push the burned hulk to its resting place had crumpled the Ford’s original floorboards so much that the rocker panels were touching.

Hascall has taught a welding and metal fabrication class at western Oregon’s Dayton High School for five years. He thought that the car would provide a great lesson on bodywork, allowing him to show the students a practical application of his lessons on cutting and separating spot welds

Hascall and five students decided to spend the summer pounding the beat-up panels back into something resembling a car.

n a matter of weeks, students had cut off the worst of the bashed metal. They used hammers and elbow grease to bang some shape back into them. “The quarters were kind of looking like quarter-panels again,” Hascall said.

Hascall drove south to visit the Pomona Swap Meet and scour the sprawling asphalt bazaar for original parts to complete the project by summer’s end. He was able to secure a frame, a grille, and a trunk lid. He also caught leads on roof pieces, that happened to be located in Oregon, from a two-door sedan of the same vintage.


An Australian Ford Falcon XW/XY GT with just 60,000 miles, has been sitting under a house since 1979 is heading for auction, bought the car in 1972 but parked underneath his house after the owner got a new job and company car, and it didn’t move again until 2023.


An Australian news channel picked up on the story of this Ford Falcon GT, reported that the Falcon went underneath the house in 1979, and it didn’t move again until 2023. 

Now, this incredible car is heading for auction. Gray’s auctions say that this is a one-of-a-kind car and that it could sell for up to AUD 500,000, partly because the it was once owned by Ford itself and used for testing and development

Anderson had lived in the house since the 1960s and had stayed there until he recently decided to move out.



https://www.hotcars.com/story-1970-ford-falcon-gt-barn-find/

the movie Gran Turismo has just been released on Netflix... I'm only 20 minutes in, and it's GOOD!



Gran Turismo tells the “true story” of Jann Mardenborough, the real-life 2011 GT Academy champion. As with most movie adaptations, the truth gets re-worked a bit to make the story fit into its run time.


the Hollywood direction / production over dramatized how scared the kid was at every minute of every race, in every scene he's on screen racing, and that gets real old real fast, but the track scenes outside the car are great, the helicopter shot of Du Bai's skyscrapers under construction is superb, and though no one will probably admit that this movie is in the same category as Gran Prix, and LeMans, it is. 

Just more realistic for the current race environment, of billionaires funding their spoiled kids racing program, and the high winds catching under the cars going over the hill at Nurburgring, and kids on games with ambitions to go pro who parents aren't ready to be mentors or supportive of their kids far out unrealistic dreams. 

The scene at 1:33 where the old driver relates his life story of crashing, to the young new driver who has a pivotal decision to make about bailing out of the dangerous sport, or accepting that the career of a race driver has horrible days and people die. 

The actor that plays the asshole driver for Team Capa, in the gold lame Lambo, shows the acting trick of taking on such a different role from what you're familiar seeing them in that you forget it's an actor instead of a spoiled asshole kid. 

The writing and script has some exceedingly lame and predictable lines, and they too are as ridiculous as nearly everything that David Harbour's character is given to state as if it's not nauseatingly obvious

Friday, December 15, 2023

I have found and posted some pretty fantastical vehicles that were made by carnival troupes, Burning Man creators, etc, but this might top the all... the Gremlins Traveling Show parade float


The Gremlins Carnival Club from Bridgewater, this float is named the Traveling Show



this and about 8 other themed parade floats compete in seven of the Somerset County Guy Fawkes Carnival Processions, in England, over the course of 7 consecutive nights, so each town gets a nice long look at the procession

An annual celebration features a parade of large illuminated floats, which are driven through various towns in Somerset. Click on https://www.somersetcountycarnivals.com to see full screen terrific photos of the others 

The parade always starts in Bridgwater but will also travel to North Petherton, Burnham-on-Sea, Glastonbury, Wells Shepton Mallet and Weston-super-Mare. The series of parades in each town now form a major regional festival.

The Carnival's purpose is to raise money for local charities from money collection carts in the procession. 2023 saw an estimated 400,000 people watching the carnivals, with nearly £110,000 raised from the town street collections and shared between good causes, local charities and the carnivals themselves.

the only painting from Robert McGinnis that I've found so far with a vehicle... 1971 Fistful Of Dynamite.



trust me, if you like pin ups, and campy 1960s paintings of lingerie wearing playboy bunny shaped women on detective novel covers... you ought to click the above. Enjoy! Happy Friday! 

And the book covers https://www.flickr.com/groups/544453@N25/ as the art without the words of the book all over it are just paintings... with the words, it's a book cover

but with far more art, and damn, this guy was GOOD! https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/robertmcginnis and the book titles are a hoot. 

Sunbathers Diary
Carter Brown The Deadly Kitten
Murder is A Package Deal
The Burning Air
The Flagellator
Blonde on a Broomstick

Damn, they really cranked out a ton of these books in the 60s as soon as paperbacks were the easy cheap way to get some fast entertainment

McGinnis is known for his illustrations of more than 1,200 paperback book covers, and over 40 movie posters, including Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barbarella, and several James Bond

Ford Performance team made a documentary on the process of preparing a Mustang GT3 for the Rolex 24 at Daytona.


In this 5-part series chronicling the journey of all the key players from the drivers and crews whose job it is to get the Mustang GT3 to the top of the timing charts to the engineers, designers, engine makers and technicians whose work is so crucial to make the magic happen. 

A train manufacturer in Poland, seems to have coded it's trains to brick (shut down and be as useless as a brick) if it entered geographic areas that corresponded to GPS coordinates for an independent repair shop

Members of an ethical hacking group called Dragon Sector, including Sergiusz Bazański and Michał Kowalczyk, were called upon by a train repair shop, Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych (SPS), to analyze train software in June 2022. SPS was desperate to figure out what was causing "mysterious failures" that shut down several vehicles owned by Polish train operator the Lower Silesian Railway, Polish infrastructure trade publication Rynek Kolejowy reported. At that point, the shortage of trains had already become "a serious problem" for carriers and passengers, as fewer available cars meant shorter trains and reduced rider capacity, Rynek Kolejowy reported.

Dragon Sector spent two months analyzing the software, finding that "the manufacturer's interference" led to "forced failures and to the fact that the trains did not start," and concluding that bricking the trains "was a deliberate action on Newag's part."

According to Dragon Sector, Newag entered code into the control systems of Impuls trains to stop them from operating if a GPS tracker indicated that the train was parked for several days at an independent repair shop.

The trains "were given the logic that they would not move if they were parked in a specific location in Poland, and these locations were the service hall of SPS and the halls of other similar companies in the industry," Dragon Sector's team alleged. "Even one of the SPS halls, which was still under construction, was included."

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Disney and Muppet parade cars


https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/2001?file=Muppetcarparade.jpg





https://www.flickr.com/groups/donaldanddaisy/pool/with/4675040525


https://defunctland.com/archive/lilo-and-stitch-car-in-disney-stars-and-motor-cars-parade/


https://www.pinterest.com/pin/23432860538438217/



https://www.pinterest.com/pin/485896247268946157/







in 2023 the Piston Foundation engaged more donors, raised more money, and helped 23 students begin their classic car career and launched the Piston Academy apprenticeship program.



Franko Montoya had a budding interest in cars while in his teens, but his true passion for working on them didn’t surface until he began attending McPherson College, known for its outstanding car restoration curriculum. He didn’t realize that his passion could turn into a career. Today, at the age of 25, he is The Piston Foundation’s first Piston Academy apprentice.

Starting after high school as a history major in a community college in California, he bought a used Miata, found that drifting was a LOT of fun, was recommended by a friend to try out McPherson, then found a job with a racing shop, but he decided his passion lay in restoration cars, painting the classic cars. 

He continued to look for a job with a company where he could pursue his dream of working as a painter of classic cars. He was then offered a job at Paul Russell and Company in Essex, doing what he is passionate about, and applied for an apprenticeship with The Piston Foundation, and was accepted as the Piston Academy’s first apprentice.

The Piston Foundation awards grants to qualified candidates to provide financial support that allows an apprentice to develop their skills through on-the-job training in a full-time position at a Piston Academy-approved auto restoration shop. The goal is to help the young apprentices find the job, learn the trade, and continue the industry for another generation of restoring and maintaining the classic cars of museums and collectors