Sunday, August 4, 2013

Biggest Parkville Cruise so far this year

Several years ago, if you wanted to go to the monthly Parkville Cruise, you needed to get there early if you actually wanted to park your car.  But lately, it hasn’t been that tough.  Oh, the turnout is usually pretty good, but you can usually end up with a good spot relatively easily.  But that wasn’t the way things went on the first Saturday in August.  When I got there at about a quarter-to-five, there was virtually no place to park.  We ended up circling the lot several times before settling on a place that we probably shouldn’t have been.  This turnout was huge, even with the threat of rain in the area.

Among the cars fighting for a spot was this ’49 Plymouth Special Deluxe convertible.  I caught this picture when he was driving in, but both my dad and my wife separately mentioned how much they liked it when I caught up with them later.  If you were to mention “1949 Plymouth” to me, I would usually think about a short, frumpy old car.  But with that deep black paint, contrasting white interior, and mild hot rod treatment, this particular example was anything but stodgy.  I had never seen it before, but I hope I get to see it again.

This ’67 Riviera made quite an impact.  I think it was finished off in a color called Green Mist, or something pretty close to that.  It had bigger wheels than I would normally pick, but they sat under the car nice and were extra deep.  It was also a nice car, with factory air conditioning and that novel drum speedometer.  I know there are a lot of people out there who would pick one of these as their dream car.  And who could blame them?  Look at it—it’s a great looking car.

You see a lot of ’32 Ford roadsters, but some are better than others.  This is one of the best.  We’ve seen it around before, but it’s hard to stay away from.  I love the colors.  I love the interior.  I love the wheels.  I love that hopped-up flathead.  Those wide whites are radials, so you know they built this car to drive. It reminds me of the high boy some kid in the ‘50s might have built out of the AMT 3-in-I kit.  Well, it’s like that except this one doesn’t have stick-on louvers or flame decals.
 
I’ve taken photos of this particular ’70 Ford Torino GT convertible so many times at car shows over the years that the owner offered to close the hood so we had something different.  But don’t let the frequent sightings of this car fool you into thinking this is a common car.  They made less than 4,000 of these GT convertibles in 1970, making it quite rare.  And for as often as this car gets out of the garage, it always looks great.

Here’s another one you see at car cruises quite often.  This is a real, honest-to-gosh ’65 Cobra 289.  It’s easy to take this car for granted because we see it all the time, but it’s an extraordinarily valuable car and in a different league than most of the cars at most any monthly car cruise.  It gets driven often enough that it’s had a Cookie Monster Band-Aid over a dent on the right front fender for quite a while now.  Naturally, the vinyl-covered glove box door was signed by Carroll Shelby.

This is probably more pictures than I’ve ever taken at this cruise—346, to be exact.  My mom and dad even showed up in their old Corvette, and my mom declared that coverage of this cruise from this blog is the reason the crowd was so big.  That’s not really true, but that’s exactly what a mom is supposed to say.  Anyway, check out the slideshow below, or click this link for a nicer version.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks John.
    I really do think when Craig tells folks about all of the car shows people just want to have the experience. I thought it was great to see such a big turnout.
    Keep up the good work.
    Love, Mom

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