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.