Cars are the best medicine at the Lee's Summit Medical Center Car Show

BHo and I were on a car show mission Saturday, and one of the events that we hit was at the Lee’s Summit Medical Center. But we had to take pictures quick, because they were just finishing up the awards when we rolled in.  Luckily, we were early enough to take in the wide-variety of vintage iron that this show had to offer.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day.  It’s a ’65 Volvo PV 544, and it is a nice one.  The styling of one of these reminds me of a '47 Ford. Think about that for a second--a car built and sold in 1965 that looked like it was made in the '40s. They actually started making the Sweedish compact in 1943, and '65 was at about the end of the run. But when you look back on it now, it really is a neat little car.  Phil Turner was the lucky owner of this one.

And while we’re going with unusual, how about this Cosworth Vega?  They made these for two years, 1975 and 1976.  They’re fairly rare, as only 3,508 of them were actually produced, and they were really expensive for a compact car.  The magic was in the British-designed, all-aluminum, 122-c.i., fuel-injected, twin-cam four, which was rated at 110-hp.  That might not seem like a lot now, but for a four-cylinder car in 1975, that was pretty impressive.  They were quite sophisticated in their day, and have become quite the collectors’ items today.  This one was as nice as if it were brand new. 

This was one of the prettiest first-generation Thunderbirds you’d ever want to see.  It’s a ’56, the second year of production, and the only year that the spare tire was mounted on the bumper from the factory.  My wife thinks that tire is the best looking thing she’s ever encountered on a car.  This one is Peacock Blue, which is a very agreeable color on one of these.  If you’re going to have a ‘50s icon, it might as well be a color that encompasses the decade.  If you like old Thunderbirds, there wasn’t much wrong with this one.

Now here’s the part of the story that most people look forward to the most.  That’s where I stop writing stuff and you can look at the pictures.  See them all in the slideshow below, or click on this link for a nicer version.