"Automotive taxidermy"...

...was the term I dropped into the conversation, and it brought on a stare, followed by a knowing grin and a nod of agreement.

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine, and the usual bench racing turned to the topic of restored cars... namely muscle cars and classics, and soon to one-off's like customs and hot rods. Initially, conversation revolved around escalating costs involved with merely buying a muscle car in today's market. It's a large amount of money to even touch anything worthwhile, and it prices the average Joe out of the game from square one. Add to this the recent trendiness that revolves around said collecting, and the people outside of the hobby begin to think that any car manufactured pre-1980 is a collector car, and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of this notwithstanding, we soon hit on the real meat of the situation:

Cars locked in museums.

Granted, I can appreciate a one-off ride being preserved for future generations to enjoy and study... and who wouldn't want a work of art like Cadzilla to be around for a hundred or so years? Yet, to keep the cars locked in a climate-controlled room, pampered (sometimes quite literally) by teams of "preservation technicians", to me, anyway, deprives us of the best aspect of building a car. Actually driving it, and witnessing it in action!

Granted, you're not going to pull a world championship-winning Ferrari F-1 car out for a jaunt to the Circle K (that'd be like asking to fly the Spirit of St. Louis over a stadium, dragging a banner advertising a tanning salon, or a space shuttle around for kicks), and I can't imagine risking the original Hirohata Merc in LA traffic. What I'm getting at is that taking a Camaro or a Mustang, whatever, and storing it inside forever is a waste of the car. Why not just commission a great scale model, or a nice painting, or even a Poloroid?

Cars today are fast becoming trophies. Watch a certain auction, where it's no longer about bringing enthusiasts together to trade vintage rides and share some time... It's about "dig how much money I have!", and then living in fear of enjoying the purchase. I cannot fathom anyone getting so behind this attitude, and helping to hype it. It's a hobby meant to enjoy. The moment anything becomes centered on simply getting rich from it, well... at that point, I've lost any respect for the person(s) involved.

Take the car, and drive it. Not onto a trailer, and then off of it, 30 feet to a spot at a show.... Take it to the drags. Go for ice cream. Hit the park, whatever. If you don't, it's the equivalent of stuffing the deer you bagged, and throwing away the meat. Why not just mount the front clip over your fireplace, and tell stories of the "big block that got away"? In my opinion, there's really no place in the hobby for automotive taxidermy...

And with that, I'll hop off my soap box here...

Excessive...

...to excessively clean...

As I mentioned in the last entry, I was digging through some photos, looking for some shots to help illustrate a point in a future blog entry, and, well, the future is now, I guess..."Where are we going today?" you ask... Back to the 1980's! Woo-hoo!

I got to thinking about some cars that made a serious impression on me in my youth, more specifically, cars built in the '80's. Even MORE specifically, cars that defined opposite ends of the spectrum, be they in style, outlandishness, subtlety, whatever. Narrowing it further, the two cars needed to have something in common, beyond their build decade. Bear in mind, the '80's were a decade of HUGE influence on modern hot rodding. The garish show queens that pro-street became ushered in the rebellion we now call pro-touring. Clean street rods led to billet-encrusted trailer rods, and the to the rebellion that spawned a renewed interest in traditional hot rods (which, sadly, bred the "rat rod" whatever-the-hell-it-is hellspawn in the '90's... Ask me sometime how I feel about THAT.). A re-birth of customs, kustoms, and kustom culture. Aside from that whole Huey Lewis deal, not a bad decade.

I narrowed it to the undisputed king of pro-street excess, that yellow and candy-color graphics doused, hyperbole on wheels, Rick Dobbertin's J-2000, and Billy Gibbons' oh-so-sweet, I-could-just-eat-this-thing-up Cadzzilla. As a certain yellow-hued guy might say, "Mmmmmm..... purple."
To say that each car impacted the future of our hobby/industry would be an understatement. And that little Pontiac was anything BUT understated. It was designed to BE excess. One blower is good? Two is better. And make 'em siamesed. Add a pair of turbos, too, why not? The whole car, from the incredible, fully-polished chasssis, to the plated or polished damn-near-everything was detail to the extreme... 

A flip front was trick, and, well, a flip-up body just had to be better, right? And how about that rear suspension, huh? Right on.... THERE WAS NONE! No room for pedestrian items like suspension out back... this thing needeed HUGE meats to complete the look.

It's everything that was "right" with the show car scene at the time, and a glaring example of what was seen as "wrong" with the pro-street movement. You have to admit, though, the car had amazing fabrication work, and a fit and finish that was unheard of before, and in some cases, since.

On the custom side of things, in my opinion, anyway, there is nothing sweeter than Larry Erickson's design opus, Cadzzilla... Take a moment, and drift back to that Hot Rod Magazine fold-out poster you no-doubt hung from your wall... Man, that car turned my world upside-down. It was so radical, yet easily identified as a Cadillac... it was classic, but, well, somehow... futuristic! It was a sled, but it hinted as a dry lakes or salt flats screamer... It was part luxo-barge, part touring car, part kustom... it was an automotive tour de force! Check. All it needed was a cool owner...oh, wait, Billy Gibbons. Checkmate.

In the later part of the 1990's, I snapped a quick shot of this gorgeous ride at the Oakland Museum of California:

...resting beside the Hirohata Merc, which had the windows soaped, as the interior was unfinished... A historic gathering! (and just around the corner? The Beatnik Bandit.) 

So what's all this boil down to? Consider how these two cars influenced the hobby... Sure, they may have ushered in an era of mega-buck show cars, but at the same time, they brought with them a new age of cars-as-personalities. Two very distinct, well-known cars, built with astronomical budgets, and quality that raised the bar sky high. Do I agree with what these cars stood for? Perhaps not entirely... As entertainment, yeah... As practical examples of how to build a car? Probably not. Taken, though, as symbols of the age of excess, well, hell yeah...