For all of you stuck at home, I made this short video of Muscle Car Day, shot last August at Portland Cars & Coffee. I don’t know about you, but my neighborhood is lacking loud V-8’s rumbling by. Hopefully, this will help.
It’s nice to have to time to play around with stuff like this. It won’t be long before we are back to work and will wish we had a little free time just to goof off. Count your boredom as a blessing.
A very nice tour, thank you!
Random thoughts: Two 70-71 Torinos in any one place is amazing. I love the convertible, but it has two problems – Ford’s red interior of that era did not go well with that paint color, and the interior design of the car could not cash the checks that the outside styling was writing.
I cannot recall the last time I saw a 1957 Buick anywhere. My parents took their honeymoon in one, but it was very quickly replaced – my mother remembered it as a horrible gas hog.
I wonder if there will be a bunch of orange Dodge Chargers that sport new vinyl roofs as the cheapest and easiest way of covering the confederate flags that were so popular a decade or two ago?
J P Cavanaugh, there is an exact replica of the General Lee (including Confederate Flag) that I would occasionally see around Portland, Oregon before Kate Brown ordered us to stay at home. It even has 1968-1970 Oregon license plates since those are still legal to be used so that part is not authentic.
I find the whole General Lee flag thing humorous considering it was a fictional TV show created, written, filmed(for the bulk of the shows run) and had set pieces designed in Hollywood, yet I’d wager that’s the region where the most heat comes from to pull it from cable stations and shame General Lee clone builders from using the flag. I’m a yankee, and I’ve seen my share of General Lees at car shows without protests breaking out.
But I’d much rather see normal 69 Chargers, if I bought a General Lee clone I’d pull all the decals off and/or do just that with the vinyl top. People would think I’m some SJW type doing that but the only justice I seek is to restore the dignity of the best looking American car ever built! I don’t think that’s the case with this Charger at cars and coffee since that’s a much redder orange, but it’s definitely a repaint based on the B5 blue uncarpeted floor. Also has Vector wheels, but to be fair those wheels just look good on Chargers, General Lee or not.
I agree about the Torino interior, what were the designers thinking? The 70-71 exterior is so wild (one of my favorites of the period), but that dash is sterile and conservative. They should have just carried over the 68-69 dash, the bulging round gauge pods would have been perfectly fitting to the design
I wonder if it might be related to safety standards? The 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass got a dash remeniscent of the Torino and got a more conventionnal setup for 1970.
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Oldsmobile/1969%20Oldsmobile/1969-Oldsmobile-Full-Line-Prestige-Brochure/slides/1969_Oldsmobile_Full_Line_Prestige-34.html
http://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Oldsmobile/1970%20Oldsmobile/1970-Oldsmobile-Full-Line-Prestige-Brochure-10-69/slides/1970_Oldsmobile_Full_Line_Prestige_10-69-10-11.html
Is that what people’s faces actually look like?
Nice! This was at the World of Speed museum in Wilsonville OR. I am a volunteer there, and I was there that day helping to direct parking. The white 240Z you see there in the opening pic on the right is powered by a beautifully swapped in 302 Ford and 6 speed manual trans. It gets more attention, when it shows up, than any Ferrari does. Love being involved with the place. So, Tim, are you a member?
It’s kind of sad, but for the many times that I’ve been to C&C, I’ve never been in the museum. When things get back to normal, I will have to make a visit, and I’ll take my camera.
Tim, I can get you a pass, and I would like to meet you. You won’t be dissapointed about whats inside. The place is a class act.
Very nice. I like the low angle shots.
One day, in the future, there is going to be a ton of these cars on the market, or stuffed in garages, when the predominately baby boomer owner dies. Every time I have been at a big show, such as this and see the heavily older crowd, that is the first thing that pops into my mind.
Seems like they already are. They have week long TV auction events for muscle cars between Mecum and barret jackson and save for the occasional weekend gathering like this I haven’t just *seen* most of these cars just randomly on the streets since I was a kid in the 90s. People keep saying boomers are holding onto them as if they all have one like a social security number, but it seems like by and large the bulk of these cars, particularly the really valuable models have ended up in big collections, rather than tucked away individually in suburban garages. Most people are completely priced out of the market, even many boomers.
Personally, I’m half the age of the predominant demographic but still lust for these cars, you’d rarely find me at car shows and cruise nights though, as they just don’t have much variety, it’s the same old guys every week, and once I see every car I’m ready to leave. As good as it is to see these cars in the metal, I frankly enjoy looking at high res pictures more, and online communities tend to be much more knowledgeable to discuss the cars with than your average cruise night attendee, in my experience. I imagine many owners feel that way as well, as not everyone who has a hobby car does the car show thing.
I’m with you Matt. I love going to car shows, but once I’ve made a loop or two around all the cars, I’m ready to go. Sitting around all day isn’t my idea of fun, but I’m glad some people like to do it so I can enjoy their cars.
My son fell in love with my 64-65=66 Imperials, 64-65 Riviera’s, ’57 Belvedere convert and 2dr ht, two 1963 Electra convert’s, and ’56 DeSoto years ago, they’re already in both our names, plus he’s added a ’64 Dart wagon, a ’64 Grand Prix and ’58 Bonneville. All his friends and dad’s plan their cars stay in the family, my son considers our car’s part of the family, he’s grown up with them and driven them thousands of miles, they’re in the family for another generation as long as the planet let’s us stick around to enjoy them
I wonder whether the 50’s-60’s V8-muscle car preservation era is a unique event in automobile history, representing cars of unique function and quality, and to what extent it is a baby boomer phenomenon. There were so many of us growing up at the time these cars were extant, at a time people are living so much longer, I wonder how much the worship of these cars represents our particular nostalgia, and how much represents the actual qualities of the cars. I think of myself in the late 1960’s, and it would have seemed very bizarre to see a public exhibit of lovingly preserved cars of the 19-teens. And the remarkable changes in automotive styling in the 1930’s, represented so well in postings on this site, one wonders sometimes why that hasn’t been better preserved and publicly celebrated. Maybe those cars got all used up during the war? Or were they just not that good, functionally, in relation to newer cars? Or is it just me, paying attention to the 50’s and 60’s because that’s what I remember? In twenty years, will people be waxing nostalgic about “Peak Japanese” cars from the 1990’s? (Not that I would turn down one more ride in a 1990 Maxima, a 1991 Accord, or 1993 Camry). I wonder.
People absolutely were preserving and restoring pre-war cars, the Generation previous to the boomers considered those cars Golden age and treated them with the same or greater reverence as Muscle cars are now. And for a while were fetching crazy prices in the collector market for the more rare ones. This was probably the tail end of their collector peak but when I was a kid the Volo auto museum had a separate building for the pre-war cars(pretty sure they still do come to think of it), and back then the prices were astronomically higher than the Muscle cars in the other buildings, which were all still “used car” affordable.
To some degree I think the rather long reign of muscle car popularity might be bolstered by the fact that the cars were still relevant 20-25 years after they stopped being made. 60s cars may not live up to safety standards and handling/braking leaves something to be desired, but as usable cars in modern traffic they are much more up to the task than pre-war iron, and between the mid 70s and through the 90s they still were faster in a straight line than a lot of brand new performance cars of the time.
Nostalgia plays a major role but I think many mistakenly correlate nostalgia to a narrow period of time when the cars were new, and those that were there. Not factoring in later exposure. There are a lot more Gen Xers and older millennials into those cars than there should be otherwise. And that’s just one form of nastalgia, reverence for an era can be completely devoid of personal memories from it.
I like to arrive early at car shows and hang out at the entrance gate. Hearing those lumpy cams and smelling that high octane fuel is something that you are not going to experience looking at high definition pictures. Seeing the same cars parked all in a row with the engines off is less exciting. The organizers are usually not to thrilled when I leave a 6 hour show after 90 minutes, when they just have all of the cars perfectly lined up.