New Decade

Just a few days left and we will finish this decade, and the first 20 years of this century.  It doesn't seem that long ago we were finishing up 1999, and ready to enter the 21st. century.
I was thinking about that this morning, and looking at some old photos, and realized that was the last time I owned a yellow Mustang. Our 1999 Mustang GT was a lot of fun for us, and very popular at car shows. People would walk past a line of Mustangs, and stop to walk around ours, and talk to us about it. That's when we first noticed how much attention the bright yellow color attracts.
After a few years, the yellow 99 was followed by a number of red Mustangs, with some pretty awesome cars among them. The 2003 "Terminator" Cobra, and 2007 Shelby GT 500, were a couple of the most rare and powerful cars I have ever owned.
I have enjoyed all of my cars, no matter what color they were, but for years we kept thinking how much we enjoyed having a bright yellow Mustang. When we saw that they would have a sharp yellow option available for the 2015 models, we knew we wanted one. We special ordered a 2015 premium GT in the bright "triple coat" yellow. It has been a joy to own and drive, and the color still attracts a lot of attention at car shows, and supermarket parking lots. I get comments almost every time I drive it. Even people who generally don't like yellow, comment on how much they like it on that Mustang.
Anyone interested can check out more in my book, just follow this link: Grab Some Gears

Our 1999 Mustang GT , back in the day.

Car Movies

I've been thinking about this subject quite a lot in the past few weeks, as the "FORD v FERRARI" movie was being advertised. I'm planning on seeing it myself in a couple days, and I'm looking forward to it. That got me thinking of the other car movies that have been special to most car enthusiasts over the years. There have been many.
The first one I want to mention is "Bullitt", and its now famous chase scene between the Mustang and Charger. That car chase was the best part of the movie.  Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset  did a great job in that, other wise, slow moving movie.
Another classic that meant a lot to me, as a long-time "street racer", is "American Graffiti". I identified with a lot of what was going on in that movie, and I loved it, . . . even though the final street race ended badly for Harrison Ford in the Chevy.
Many of the car movies have had a lasting effect on our "car culture" over the years, but none more to the Mustang crowd than "Gone in 60 Seconds". As a Mustang fan from its introduction, I loved that movie. But, the use of a modified Mustang "movie prop" car as "Eleanor" has had a lasting effect on the classic Mustang culture. Now a whole generation of enthusiasts think that "Eleanor" is what a real 1967 Shelby GT500 looks like. Now, after 20 years, "Eleanor" clones are everywhere. That was my only disappointment with the movie, because they changed many of the most beautiful styling details of the actual 67 Shelby.
Another car movie that had a special meaning for me was "I Am Legend" in 2007.  The new Shelby GT500 that Will Smith drove in the first few scenes was identical to the 07 Shelby that I owned at the time (red with white stripes).
Anyway, I do enjoy car movies, and I'm looking forward to seeing "FORD v FERRARI".
Car enthusiasts can follow this link to check out my book; Grab Some Gears

The  "American Graffiti" movie car race    (Google image)

Wildest Dreams

This is a subject I’ve covered in my blog several times before, but I find it necessary to address this issue again. The subject is those new cars that capture our attention, and we start wondering if we could actually own one.
The one that keeps catching my attention lately, is the new 2020 Shelby GT 500. The sites that I follow on Twitter have been full of pictures and amazing performance specifications, and it has me drooling and dreaming of what it would be like to actually own one.
The thought of 760 supercharged horsepower and 7-speed automatic transmission, contained in such a beautiful package, is the stuff of dreams.

My wildest dreams. (Twitter photo)

My Book

I’ve been a car guy for more than 50 years, and have been involved in some type of racing for many of those years. About 10 years of that included many runs down the quarter mile drag strip, but most of my experience was late night street racing.
One night, in the late 1990’s, we were out at one of the popular street racing spots, talking with a group of young racing fans, most of whom were much younger than me. After talking for awhile, one of the young guys asked me; “how many years have you been doing this?”  I thought for a few seconds then answered; “ I’ve been doing this for about 40 years.”  He looked at me with amazement and said; “Wow, you should write a book.”
That conversation started me thinking about all that I had experienced in my many years of racing, and all the changes I had seen in all that time.  It took a few years, but the thought kept coming back to me, “maybe I could write a book.”   I started to put some ideas together , and after a little while, I had the start of a book.  It was finished and copyrights filed in 2006.

Follow this link to read sample pages: Grab Some Gears

Dreams

We all have these type of thoughts, no matter who we are, or what our stage of life.  Sometimes it’s about our home, our job, places we wish we could visit, or maybe the type of car we wish we could have. No matter what we’re lucky enough to have, there’s always something nicer out of our reach. Sometimes these things are so far out of our reach, we know for sure that we’re just dreaming.
For me, these “dreams”  often involve a beautiful car I have seen on the automotive posts that I follow on Twitter.  This is an everyday occurrence for me. The most beautiful and amazing cars in the world make an appearance every day.
People who know me, or are familiar with this blog, or my Twitter posts, will know that I have owned some very nice cars over the years. I have to be very satisfied with the great performance cars have been able to experience. But, even after all that, I can still dream.  I can still admire the amazing beauty, and try to imagine what it would be like to get to drive those awesome machines. Let’s never stop dreaming.

Awesome Ferrari as seen on Twitter.

Ten Years Ago

A few days ago, I was doing some car stuff in my garage, and the thought crossed my mind "Why don't I do the maintenance tasks I used to do"? Part of the reason was our move, five years ago, to our Southern Utah home, and a smaller, two car garage. I just didn't have the room.  So, I left some of my tools, and maintenance equipment, at our Northern Utah home that I sold to my son.
For the last five years, I got used to taking my cars to someone else for routine maintenance tasks, that I used to do myself. Eight months ago, we moved into our new home, and I now have a very nice three car garage. It has plenty of room. If I wanted to, I could resume doing the kind of maintenance that I used to do. Ten years ago, I was still doing all my oil changes, tire rotations, and making some occasional performance modifications, to all of our vehicles. That's in addition to the normal detail cleaning that I still do to our cars. Detail cleaning, and tire treatment, is the one thing I never stopped doing, even when I had the smaller garage.
Maybe my age is partly to blame, but I don't want to go back to doing oil changes and tire rotations. I guess ten years ago, I had a little more energy.
For more of my story, check out my book at; Grab Some Gears

My garage ten years ago.  A lot of car maintenance was performed here.

End of Summer

We’ve reached that time of the year, summer is almost over, and fall will be here before we know it. It’s like I wrote about in my last post, time goes by faster all the time.
It seems that that there’s always so many things that I planned to get done, that somehow didn’t get accomplished in the time I had hoped for. I’m thinking that I’m not the only one in this situation, we all seem to have the same problem.
Ok, one season is almost over, and the next one is about to begin, time to put together a plan for what I want to accomplish before winter gets here. Best of luck to all of us.

Summer lasts a long time here in Southern Utah. 

Time Goes So Fast

For as long as we can remember, the older people in our life have been telling us that time goes by faster the older we get. It was just something people would say, until I woke up one day and found that somehow I got old myself.
In recent years, I have noticed that the old saying is true. At least from our perspective, time does seems to go by faster as we get older. We get thinking about something that happened in our past, then we realize it wasn’t just a few years ago, it was 20 or 30 years ago. We shake our head and exclaim, where did all that time go?

It’s hard to believe, I’ve been with this beautiful lady for 50 years.

The Road is Calling

Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time on the road, attending to various matters in our families lives. I was making almost weekly trips between Northern and Southern Utah, from the time we bought our southern house until we moved down here as our primary home. I got to know that portion of I-15 by heart.
 About the the time that happened, family issues had us making the 930 mile road trip to Washington State on a pretty regular basis. Over the next four years, I got to know those roads, through those four states ( Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington ), like the back of my hand. And, I made that trip more times than I can remember, in every kind of weather you can imagine.
All that driving was no problem, I have always loved to drive. It didn't take long before I had a picture in my mind, of every hill and valley, and each country side vista, of the entire trip.  It's always been that way with me, for every road I have traveled more than a couple of times, since I was a teenager.
Now that various situations in our lives have kept us home more over the last couple years, I miss the road. Every once in awhile, something will remind me, and I see those pictures in my mind, of a portion of a road I haven't traveled in awhile. It's like the road is calling me. I'm looking forward to the day that I will get back out there again.

A portion of highway 59,  here in Southern Utah,  that I have traveled many times.

We Would Never Have Believed

If somebody from the future would have visited us 30 or 40 years ago, and tried to explain the technology we use today, we would never have believed it.  We may not even have understood what they were talking about, even when they tried to explain it.
I sometimes wonder, if I could talk to my Dad, or Grandfather, who were car guys to some degree, and have been gone for many years, could I even explain our cars of today. And, the cars are only a small part of it. We live with technology, playing a big part of every aspect of our lives today.
Knowing what we live with today, think of what might be 10 or 20 years into the future. Now I can't even believe myself, the stuff we still have coming will amaze us, no doubt.
Anyone interested can check out my book by following this link; Grab Some Gears

Me at age 16, checking out my Mom's new 66 Mustang.

Followers

Last week I went over 5000 on the number of followers on my Twitter page. That's not a big deal for a lot of people, especially famous people. But, for an average car guy from down the block, it seems like quite a few.
That got me wondering who all these people are, and why are they following me? I guess it's for the same reason I follow the people I do, they must have some of the same interests, and enjoy seeing the photos I post. That's the reason I follow the people I do. I don't really know much about most of these people, but, the few that I am more acquainted with, I feel we could be friends in "real life".
Over the years I have been posting on social media, I have been making an effort to improve the quality of the media I post. That's what I enjoy about the pictures I see that others have put out there, and I try to constantly improve the quality of the photos I post on my page.
Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am a "car guy", so that's mostly what I post. Very seldom you will see other subject matter appearing on my pages, but, I will try to keep any of that high photographic quality as well.

(Random photo from unknown Twitter source).

Time Machine

Does anyone know how many books and movies have been produced that have included the subject of time travel?  There have been many, and the "Back to the Future" stories are some of the most popular in recent years.
The idea of a time machine has been around for hundreds of years, but especially in the 20th. century. We all may wonder what we would go back and change, or travel to the future to see, if we had such a machine. In the books and movies, something usually goes wrong in those adventures, and if we could actually time travel in real life, I'm sure we would mess things up somehow.
The closest thing I have to a time machine is my modern muscle car. In this world of millions of mass produced transportation appliances clogging our streets, my car at least reminds me of times gone by. Driving it makes me remember why I fell in love with muscle cars over 50 years ago. And, if only for a few moments at a time, I'm a teenager again.
Anyone who wants to know where my story began, follow this link and check out my book; Grab Some Gears

My time machine,  just making the leap,  into the future.

Stress Relief

In this modern life, all the day-to-day problems, unexpected changes, and world-wide craziness we see on the news every time we turn it on, is it any surprise that we have a lot of stress in our lives? I'm one of those people that stresses about anything going wrong, so I always have to deal with plenty of stress in my life. And, yes, it sometimes keeps me up at night.
I do a lot of things to try to keep it all under control. I get plenty of exercise, walk a couple of miles almost every day, do indoor exercises almost every day, and try to eat the right stuff, most of the time. Since my heart surgery last summer, I consider staying healthy my number one job. I want to be around for many more years to take care of my wife and family the best I can.
A lot of things go into reducing the stress in our lives. I have wrote in past blog posts that I love spending time doing things with my cars. Keeping them clean and detailed, keeping my garage nice, and as always, going for a cruise in my favorite performance car. All these things help reduce the stress in my life.
Things would run a lot smoother if we remember these stress reducing activities at those times when the stressful situations pop up and take over our lives. I think I'm mostly talking to myself on this point, but I needed to hear it.
Car people new to this blog may want to check out my book. Just follow this link to see it on amazon and read sample pages: Grab Some Gears

My favorite mode of stress release - my 2015 Mustang GT.

Mustang Day

April 17th. is known by enthusiasts around the world as “Mustang Day”. The iconic car we all love was introduced to the public 55 years ago today. They made an everlasting impression on a young South Dakota farm boy, and made me a life-long fan.
At the time, I would never have guessed how that car model would affect my life, or how many Mustangs I would come to own over the years.
My first experience with a Mustang was when a friend was lucky enough to get one for his 16th. birthday. Then, a few months later, my mom got a new 66 Mustang. I was lucky enough to get to drive it, once in awhile. (I have shared a few stories about those times in my book).
It would be a few years later when I would own my first Mustang, a yellow 66 coupe, with 289 V8, and 3-speed on the floor. That was the first of many I have owned in the years since. Everything from pretty basic models, to a couple Cobras, and even a Shelby GT 500. I have loved every one.
For more of this story, check out my book at; Grab Some Gears

Happy Birthday to the Ford Mustang.

Spring Cleaning

Here we are again, it's finally spring, and something we have been waiting for. This time of year usually signals the start of a lot of changes in our daily routines, and some of the things we have been waiting all winter to accomplish. For me, it always means some sort of "spring cleaning".
My cars, garage, and the rest of the house always need their share of cleaning and organizing. This year, we just finished moving into this home a couple of months ago. You wouldn't think there would be much spring cleaning needed, but there still is. Maybe mostly organizing our stuff.
Sometimes I think this job is never done. We all tend to keep stuff that we really just can't decide what to do with. When we move, we get rid of some of it, but there always seems to be more that we just can't make up our mind about. So, this will always be one of those never ending tasks that we have to face over and over again. That's where I am now, maybe I should get started.

Spring should be a great time for some sight-seeing trips, instead of spring cleaning.

Home

What makes a house into a “home”?  We have been in our new house for a little over a month now, and it’s now starting to feel like home.
I think it just takes a little time, and getting into the new routine, and getting used to where everything was put away when we moved in. I’m still finding stuff that I forgot where it ended up after the move. I guess that just takes some time.
It makes it a little easier when you like the neighborhood and all the neighbors we have met.  So far, from everything we have experienced in this first month, I think we are really going to love this new home.

Just a glimpse into our new home.

Next Shelby

The photos and details are all over the social media automotive sources the last few weeks. It’s the 2020 Shelby GT 500, and all us Mustang fans are pretty excited about it. That is especially true for us former Shelby owners. The prospect of over 700 horsepower surely adds to the excitement.
My last GT 500 was a 2007 model, and was tuned to to about 575 horsepower. That was more power than most performance cars on the roads today, but the idea of over 700 is still something most of us would love to experience. Let’s keep looking at all the beautiful photos, and keep on dreaming.

The next Shelby GT 500.

Ready for Spring

It has been a long, cold, winter for many parts of the country. Here in Southern Utah, we usually don't have to worry about snow and ice on the roads, and our weather is usually a lot warmer than our northern neighbors. But even here in the sunny southwest, we have had plenty of cool and wet days in the past couple weeks. I'm ready for spring, even though we have about a month of winter left.
Being a car guy, there is a lot of things I would like to be doing, if it were just a little warmer.  Everyone has their version of "spring cleaning", and that applies to car chores too. After a season of cooler days, and all the craziness of the holidays, our cars tend to be a bit neglected. They need a good vacuuming and a good wash job, and that's just the starting point. They also need a good wax job, and some quality wheel cleaning, and tire shine treatment. That's the kind of stuff I'm anxious to do, especially since I have a nice new garage to do it in.
Car enthusiasts should check out my book, just follow this link: Grab Some Gears

Lets keep that snow on the distant mountains, I'm ready for spring.

The New “Darwin’s Garage”

We have spent the last week moving into our new home. It has been a lot of work, but it’s finally complete. The last task I had to complete was moving everything that was to go in the garage. We had to give the epoxy coating on the floor plenty of time to cure properly.
The most enjoyable part for me was decorating the garage with all the automotive signs and memorabilia I have collected over the years. The organizing and putting everything in it’s proper place is also a very relaxing and enjoyable task for me.

Now maybe I can just relax, slow down, and start really enjoying this new home. On second thought, I now have two cars to get cleaned up after a week of neglect and rainy weather.  A car guy’s work is never done, and now I have a very nice place to do it. 😎

Just a glimpse of the new garage.

Another angle.

Darwin's New Garage

Coming soon, The new version of the actual "Darwin's Garage".  We're in the process of buying a new home, and it has a three car garage. It has a beautiful epoxy coated floor, finished walls , and I'm looking forward to how it will be decorated with all my automotive memorabilia. It's going to be great.  Stay tuned.

This is my current garage.  The new one will be much bigger and nicer.

New Car

A couple weeks ago we bought my wife a new car. We traded our 2014 Dodge Charger for this 2018 Chrysler 300 S. I had stoped by the local Dodge/Chrysler dealership to look at a red Charger I had spotted on their front row. As I parked my Mustang and started walking through the lot, I walked right past this 300, and the wheels caught my eye. They really made an impression, so I stopped for a better look of the whole car. After a call to my wife, and a test drive to show it to her, a couple hours of dealing and paperwork, and we were the owners of this beautiful Chrysler 300 S.