Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Brentwood High School Car Show was fancy schmancy

Nashville is the center of country music, and home to many big-name country stars.  Now, these people do not live in the same neighborhood as I do.  Once you sell a few gold records, you can distance yourself from the middle class a bit.  I was breathing some rarified air on Saturday when I found myself in the parking lot of Brentwood High School for their annual car show.  This pristine school is surrounded by some of the most beautiful Southern homes I’ve ever seen.  And the cars that showed up to this event were, well, not your normal Friday night cruise-in standards.

A good example of that is this 1993 Jaguar XJ220.  Now, I knew what it was because I remember seeing them in magazines.  But this is the first one I can recall ever seeing in person.  And if the car itself wasn’t special enough, they only made 278 of these cars, and this was the very last one ever built.   Oh, and there are only 12 in the United States right now.  On the used market, these babies trade hands for more than $450,000 a pop, and since this is the last one, who knows what it’s worth?  I know one thing; no one ever parked one of these in front of my high school.

Here’s a Lister Dragon II.  The windshield tag says it’s a 1965 model, but I think these are fairly recent kit cars.  They have their own birdcage-style space frame, and use a lot of components from 1990s Corvettes. It is really low and small, so I’m sure it’s a hoot to drive.  This will give you sort of the two-seat, open-air feel of a Cobra, but with modern handling and power.  Other than that, I guess I don’t really know much about it.  It had a really nice blue paintjob, and whoever stitched up that leather interior really knew what they were doing.

There were a few cars that I recognized, though.  This was a ’56 Ford Victoria two-door hardtop.  It looked very 1950s with a paint color that looked pretty close to Ford’s Meadowmist Green.  The wheel covers were your basic aftermarket wires, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to detail them out with matching green paint.  There was a copy of the Fomoco Times in the trunk with this car on the cover.  It was just a stand-up old car that I’m sure the old guy that was watching over was proud of.

Here’s a Mustang that I’m not really sure of the year on.  1980?  ’81?  ’79?  Beats me.  But I can tell you that it was a nice little car, and the modifications looked like they were straight out of 1985.  I mean, people get pretty obsessed with building “period correct” ‘50s customs or ‘40s hot rods or whatever.  But the ‘80s were part of my childhood, and this is the way people did up their cars.  The wheels might be a little bigger then what they would have used, but the style is definitely spot-on.  I don’t think I want to see a whole lot full of ‘80s customs, but it’s kind of fun to see them once in a while.

I’m still more of a Chevy guy that a Ford man, though, so I probably should feature a Corvette here too.  This is a nice red ’60.  In all honesty, there are a lot of nice red Corvettes out there with white coves and these wheels, but the interior really set this one apart.  They had the basic original pattern covered there, but you could tell that they added some subtle lumbar shaping to the seats to make them more comfortable.  Plus, they were covered in soft red leather.  In 1960, the only covering available was vinyl.  You could tell that someone put some thought and money into this car.

I took 108 pictures of all the cars at the Brentwood High School Car Show, both ordinary and extraordinary.  Check them out in the slideshow below, or click this link for a nicer version.

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