Rotting Corvette headlines this week's Thursday Drive-By

We’re looking at old cars and new cars, new cars built to look like old cars, restored show cars, and old cars that need to be restored in this week’s Thursday Drive-By.

Confused yet? That’s OK; I’m not doing much better. But we have links from sources like Autoweek, Hemmings, Automotive Traveler, and the Autoextremist.

So get on out there and explore the World Wide Web. Just try not to get so excited that you forget to come back here sometimes. Check out the links below.

You often see these stories about people parking interesting cars in a field and leaving them to rot for decades. In this one, Autoweek found a ’65 Corvette convertible that has been sitting in someone’s yard for 40-years. I don’t know if these stories really make me all that sad. They’re more curious, or interesting. I know if it was my car, I’da gotten the good out of it, but unfortunately, it isn’t. I mean, the car pretty much jacked up, but at least it’s restorable. It’s lucky that vandals haven’t destroyed it or stole all the parts off. I like it better than some of them that people have cut up and messed up while they were “using” them, so that’s sort of another way to look at it. At any rate, the pictures are pretty fascinating. You can see them at this link.

Promoting and supporting car shows is obviously one of the goals here, but I’m just one guy, so most of those efforts are limited to the Kansas City area. Of course, there are great events happening all over the U.S., and some of the biggest are summarized in this post by the Hemmings Blog. From Bloomington Gold to Carlisle, and from GM to Ford to MOPAR, these guys cover the biggest events in the nation. I’ll tell you what, if I had unlimited time and a generous travel budget, I’d hit a few of these myself, but I don’t, so you’re going to have to look outside of this blog for some of these. This link is a great place to start.

When it comes to cool events, anything associated with Steve McQueen is right at the top of the list. So the Friends of Steve McQueen Car Show in Chino Hills, Calif., is perhaps the coolest event in town. Automotive Traveler is a great online car magazine that always takes beautiful pictures and takes you on exciting adventures, so I figured you might want to check out their coverage of this car show. A lot of what they do there is document road trips to various places, which can also be pretty interesting. Spend a little time browsing through the Automotive Traveler archives after you’ve read the article at this link.

A couple of years ago, I had the absolute pleasure of seeing a perfect, half-scale 1949 Mercury cruising the streets at the Ol’ Marais River Run in Ottawa. Well, here’s the rest of the story. The Phoenix News Times documents the exploits of Ernie Adams of Maricopa, Arizona, and his amazing scale vehicles. The guy really is incredible, and the craftsmanship of his “Dwarf” cars will blow your mind. Plus, my father-in-law tells me that Adams used to live in his hometown of Harvard, Nebr., so he has some personal experience with some of his earlier work. I’m not doing a great job of selling it here, but you’ll get a better idea what I’m talking about by clicking this link.

If you’re interested in the state of the new car business, you should keep the Autoextremist blog in your favorites. Sometimes you’ll wholeheartedly agree with Peter DeLorenzo's well thought out rants, and sometimes you’ll just leave ticked off, but they’re always interesting and thought-provoking. In this story, he lists all of the major car brands and gives a little synopsis of what he currently things of them. But don’t stop there. Check out some of his previous commentaries if you have a little time. I’m including this as a public service announcement as much as anything. It’s just one of those places that people in the know take a look at from time-to-time to get a feel for the current State of the industry. The link is here.