Platte City Cruise wraps it up for the season

If you were looking for old cars in the Kansas City area last weekend, you were going to find most of them in Ottawa.  But it also happened to be the final Outta’ Control Hot Rods Pizza Shoppe Cruise of the year in Platte City, and I really wanted to check that out too.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t a complete bust, as the owners of several nice cars and trucks decided to stay closer to home and have some pizza instead of braving the sea of chrome and billet down south. 

If someone forced me to choose one car as my favorite, I suppose I would have to go with this Sebring Silver 1963 Corvette coupe.  You notice I didn’t call it a “split-window,” because all ’63 Corvette coupes have that two-piece rear window.  Why does every article you read about these seem to think that needs to be included?  Anyway, we’ve seen this car around before, and it is a nice one.  I don’t remember it much from last year, but it is making up for it this year.  The only thing I’d change if it were mine would be to put the original steering wheel back in, but sometimes guys put these smaller tillers in to open up a little more room.

My nine-year-old son’s pick-'o-the-night was the Volkswagen off-roader.  I honestly can’t tell you anything about this other than what’s obvious in the picture.  I don’t know the year, what it’s used for, or how far it’ll jump.  BHo liked it because it was loud, cute, and had googly eyeballs on the headlights.  Truth be told, I like it because it had googly eyeballs on the headlights.  Plus, if you were stranded in the middle of the desert, I’ll bet you’d rather have this than that ’63 Vette up there.  Everything has a purpose.

You see this ’54 Ford around pretty often, and it’s a nice sort of resto-mod type thing.  1954 was a year of first and lasts for Ford.  It was the last for this body style, which debuted in 1952.  But it was the first year for Ford’s overhead valve Y-Block V8.  Gone was the legendary flathead, as this was the year the Blue Oval entered the modern era.  The mill under this hood looks way more potent than anything they had in 1954, and the interior gives you the impression that this is a modern car in a vintage wrapper.  Whoever built it did some nice work.

I also kind of liked this ’64 El Camino.  You probably know that the El Camino started out as a pickupized full-sized Chevy from ’59 to ’60, but then it was dropped from the lineup.  It returned in 1964 as a pickupized Chevelle, which is what you’re looking at here.  These were available with sixes, 283 V8s, and 327 V8s.  Judging by the fender emblems, this one probably started out as a 283.  It looks like there is maybe an updated Chevy V8 in there now (it could just be how it’s dressed), but it does have what appears to be factory air and a four-speed stick.  This is a nice, clean car that would be pretty fun to own.

And so ends another car cruise season for the Platte City-based Outta’ Control Hot Rods and Cruisers Car Club.  This picture might be the last time we see them all together this year.  They had some great turnouts over the summer, and hopefully they’ll be back again next year, bigger and better than ever.  In the meantime, check out the slideshow below, or click this link for a nicer version.