Classic Cars, Tech Center News, January 01, 2001

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TOP HAT JOHN-CLASSIC CARS COLUMN - Tech Center News, January 01, 2001

Definition:

NOSTALGIES n. 1. Having an incurable/very bad case of living in the past or to relive the past on a constant basis.

Thats it! That is absolutely and most definitely what we all got … at least I know I do. And I feel quite comfortable with the fact that it is akin to and just like exceptional vintage wine.

These "nostalgies" bouts creep up every time I hear the beach Boys "409-Shes so fine", or Duane Eddy’s "40 Miles of Bad Road". No known antidote is available. Please don’t attempt to find, suggest or promote a cure. I really don’t want one.

Heck, I start to shake and make rumbling noises like a top fuel dragster when I pass the hallowed grounds of where Ted’s Drive-In once stood at the corners of Woodward and Square Lake roads. Once every year I walk the broken grounds and stroll the dragstrip where I used to work the staging lanes of the long closed, vegetation overgrown and mostly forgotten Motor City Dragway. Raced their a whole lot too. They claimed the coffee was actually brewed from burnout rubber scraped from the starting lanes … and it made you faster if you drank it.

Yeah, Steve McQueen made a movie a group of years ago called the ‘Bounty Hunter’ and in it he drove a ‘51 cream colored Chevy convertible. He commented to his girlfriend in the movie why he drove that car instead of something newer … "I like the old better than the new simply because its tried and true". That works.

I live in nostalgia land where almost everything is past. Over the last year I’ve bought a few hundred thousand dollars worth of old cars for clients that wanted ‘em and wanted ‘em to be right. So I just pull up that old memory bank of automobile history stored in my cranial library and along with a real library … and we find those old cars and bring ‘em to someone who loves ‘em.

In the last month it was a triple red ’62 bubbletop ’09 with 4-speed and 2x4’s, a ‘67 Camaro IPC 4-speed convertible and a ’65 Oldsmobile 442 convertible with a 4-speed. With whats not going to go on with Lansing in the future … Oldsmobile, but thats another story for another time. These are all museum pieces that will be preserved and seen just that way.

I have always wanted that boat that just sits in my garage and I do use it occasionally. First time it was out-since I got it back it made the television news by accident. Thats cool and real nostalgies every time I walk into the garage.

Some fifty years ago dad built that 14-foot Chris-Craft kit boat, all mahogany and custom fitted with a dual cowl and a vintage ten horse Johnson for motivation. In 1950 I was but four years old and well I remember turning those brass screws and the varnish smell-I loved it. She was sold in 1974 to make room for … what else but a bigger boat. A few years ago I got it back.

So now some 50-plus years later she’s back home where she belongs and will stay forever, never to leave again.

Sometimes when I look at that old boat, I think I can hear my dad, Johnny DeGeorge, Mr Fabrykowski ‘jawing’ on how to do this or that, just like when they were building her 50 years ago.

That my friends is true nostalgies. Now, all I needs is that green and white 1956 Buick Century pic-a-door like dad had and …..

COMING up is the North American International Auto Show, NAIAS, to be held at the

Cobo Convention Center in downtown Detroit. This is the place that I typically and annually

‘make a choose’ as to what vehicles I want to check out in a physical road test format. They are usually-and almost always-high performance or luxury high performance and this year I will add to that format in some way-but I haven’t decided in quite what way. We’ll see at and after the NAIAS.

The auto show brings back a whole transport load of nostalgies for me too as dad always took me to the new car showings at Cobo when they first came their. My fondest memories are of the show cars from the 1963 show with GM having sport models dolled up with custom paint and interior trims-gee similar to the ones we see today. Sure am glad that somethings stay the same.

Also coming up in January is the first Motor City Motorsports Expo to be held at the Macomb Sports and Expo Center, Macomb County Community College south campus on the weekend of January 20-21. McME 2001 as its labeled, is the Detroit areas SEMA show.

For info call 810-296-2488 or 248-788-0135.