The Abarth was a tiny two-seat sports/race car powered by an 1100 cc Fiat engine. That may not seem like much of a power plant, but considering the car wasn’t much bigger than a go-cart, it did just fine. Probably the most interesting thing about this car is that is was an asymmetric body design which did give it a distinctive and somewhat odd look.

The Siata looked a little like an early AC Cobra, but predated that car by almost a decade. It was very Italian and very beautiful. This baby was powered by a very unique 2-liter, 70 degree Fiat V8. This is a very rare engine and you don’t want to have to find parts for it!

Fred was a great guy, his cars were beautiful, and he let me drive the heck out of both of them. What more could you ask for?

We were only back from Calgary for a couple days before we were off to the Big Island of Hawaii for Cruisin’ Paradise. Bob McClurg, my good friend, automotive journalist, and now resident of Hilo, Hawaii turned me onto this event, and I’m really glad he did! It only takes place every three years, and this was the third one. (You do the math.) It’s a 10-day happening with runs and activities all over the island, culminating in a big car show in Hilo on the 4th of July.

It was unbelievable, and I clearly made a big mistake by not going over for the whole thing. I did my typical swoop-in/swoop-out thing and only came in for the last three days, with one of those largely being a jet lag recovery day. What was I thinking?!?

At any rate, I did manage to spend one day cruisin’ with Herb Leite, the host club prez, in his ’30 Ford coupe as we led a group to the stunning Waipio Valley and the memorial park at Laupahoehoe which was the site of the devastating 1946 tsunami. We also stopped by a really cool 50’s themed café in the middle of nowhere for lunch. Believe me, I didn’t see that one comin’. Bottom line tho, there are few places on earth more beautiful than Hawaii and what a way to see it!

Hilo is on the wet side of the island and it had rained almost every day that week, but the weather for the car show on the 4th was absolutely perfect. There were in the neighborhood of 350 cars at the show with 24 of them having been shipped over from the mainland and about that many more having come over from the other islands. Now that’s a commitment!

Honestly, I was expecting a lot of run-of-the-mill cars, but was really surprised at the uniqueness, diversity, and quality of the cars in attendance. One of my personal favs was Norm Gonzales’ ’54 Chevy custom. This baby was built from a brand new car back in ’54 and has been in numerous hot rod mags over the years dating back to ’58. Norm’s owned the car for 50 years and this was the second time he had shipped it over from SoCal for Cruisin’ Paradise. I think he likes the event.

The whole experience was topped off by a killer 4th of July fireworks show over Hilo bay which I was able to watch from the balcony of my hotel room. Life is good!

This is going to make a fantastic episode, and I’m already making plans to go back in 2012. And next time, I’m going for the whole thing!

We were only back in E’ville long enough to repack our suitcases before we headed back north of the border, this time to British Columbia, eh? We went up to check out a couple of Chip Foose designed hot rod pickups owned by Don Voth; a ’37 Husdon Terraplane and a ’49 GMC.

We lucked out on the weather again and had a beautiful day for shooting. Chip’s work always just blows me away, and this time was no exception. He’s a “less is more” guy when it comes to design and his creations are nothing short of art. His stuff always runs too, and Don was gracious enough to let me behind the wheel of both of them. A good time was had by all and it’ll make another great episode for 2010.

Most recently, we were up in Hickory Corners, MI for Mopar’s at the Red Barns. This show is in its 21st year, and it’s a bit a Mopar Mecca for the upper Midwest. It’s held on the beautiful and rambling grounds of the Gilmore Car Museum which, as the show’s name might indicate, has a lot of red barns around. (all packed full of amazing cars themselves BTW). But filling up the spaces between those barns on that mixed-weather Saturday were about 350 wild and wooly Mopars of all description.

Probably the wildest thing I saw that day was a ’69 “MopTop” notch-back Barracuda; F3 Green with yellow floral vinyl top and interior. Completely bizarre! The owner brought it specifically because he thought it might catch my eye. He called that one right.

We didn’t shoot this past week because I had a SEMA Board of Directors meeting in Pasadena, and I wrote this on the flight out. I head to Kansas City this weekend and then will be shooting a couple one-off Oldsmobiles in Galena, IL the following week.

Uh, I think that’s it.

Happy Motoring,

This was the 21st year for this show, and while it’s not all that big (about 250 cars) it really brings in some fantastic vehicles. I think my favorite was a ’53 Studebaker Commander coupe that had been made into a convertible.

Now, it’s no secret that I’m a Stude guy, but I don’t think there’s anybody that wouldn’t consider this car drop dead gorgeous.

The day started out bright and sunny, but as clouds started to roll in over the mountains, it was clear that we were going to be playing beat-the-clock to get this show shot before the weather changed. The rain held off till about two o’clock, but then it really came down for about a half hour.

At a lot of shows, this is when everyone scrambles for their cars and heads for home, but to my surprise, I don’t think a single car left Main Street. Most folks had to come a long way to get to this show, and they weren’t about to let a little rain dampen their spirits. After a while the rain let up, the sun came back out, and the festivities went on. This really was a great show, and it’s going to make a killer episode.

As long as I had come all that way tho, I figured I may as well hang around for a few more days so after we wrapped, the producer and I embarked on a three-day backpack trip up into the Wallows. This is a range I spent a lot of time in when I lived out in that area in the late 70’s, and I’m pretty familiar with it. Ben, on the other hand, had never done anything like this, and I may have forgotten to mention that our packs would weigh about 45 pounds apiece.

The weather was a mix of sun and downpours all three days, but it all worked out. The view from the tent was pretty spectacular although we encountered a fair amount of snow at the higher elevations.

The whole trip was about 20 miles round, and we were both feeling fairly beat up when we got back down.

We flew back to E’ville and were only there one day before we headed up to Indy to shoot the Road Rocket Rumble. This is a great traditional hot rod show that was celebrating its 10th year. It draws several hundred cars and really crams a lot into four days. There were no fewer than 10 rock-a-billy bands performing through the weekend along with seminars, a Burlesque show, pin-up contest, flame throwing, and burnouts. It’s incredibly cool and all the more amazing when you realize that the club that puts it on, the Indy Road Rockets, has all of nine members.

There was everything there from rat rods to a car that was reminiscent of Big Daddy Ed Roth’s space age Beatnik Bandit; not to mention an extremely “colorful” crowd. We had an absolute blast!

Another couple days at home, and I’m now on my way to Calgary, Alberta to do a feature on a very large and diverse collection there. The owner has a little bit of everything, but I’m thinking we’re going to focus on a couple of his unique sports/race cars from the 50’s. After that we’ll be home for two days before heading off for Hilo, Hawaii to shoot Cruisin’ Paradise. Hey, somebody’s got to do it!

It’s actually pretty hard for me to keep track of all the dates and places this time of year. All I know right now is; if it’s Tuesday, it must be Calgary.

Happy Motoring,

Neale, Sam, and I rode from Evansville, IN to St. Augustine, FL last week and shot the sixth episode of our motorcycle touring series, Trippin’ on Two Wheels. Here’s a shot of the bikes we rode taken at an overlook somewhere in NC. As you can see, they look considerably better than we do.

We were headed to St. A for Riding Into History which is motorcycle Concours d”Elegance that is held at the World Golf Village. I was also the Grand Marshal this year, so we kinda needed to get there.

It was an amazing trip, and it will make a killer episode of Trippin’. The bikes ran flawlessly, the concours was incredible, and a good time was had by all! You can see pictures and read Neale’s four-part travel blog about our adventure at the following links to Motorcycle Classics website. They’re pretty entertaining.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

We left the bikes in Jacksonville, FL and had them shipped back to E’ville by my good friends at Exotic Car Transport. (Hey, 1,000 miles in those saddles was enough!)

We all piled into the production van and headed for home via Charlotte, NC. That’s where Neale lives, and I also took the opportunity to stop by SPEED’s offices while I was in town. It was a happy meeting since MCC is pulling some of the strongest Nielsen’s at the network these days. (Yea!).

The next six months will pretty much be a travel blur as we get serious about production for the next season of MCC. It’s startin’ out good tho! I leave next week to shoot the Oregon Mountain Cruise in Joseph, Oregon. This isn’t a big show, but it’s held in one of my favorite places on earth.

I used to live out in that neck of the woods, and I spent a lot of time in the Wallowa Mountains which serve as a backdrop for Joseph. I’m really looking forward to the show, but the coolest thing is that after we wrap, we’re slapping on some backpacks and I’m going to drag the producer’s ass 10 miles up to spend a couple days at a place called Ice Lake at about 9,000 feet. I keep telling him it’s one of those life experiences everyone needs to have. Trust me.

I’ll let you know how all that went when we get back, blisters and all.

Happy Motoring,

We spent the first night in Smithville, TN and made it to Westminster, SC last night. We’re leaving for Savannah Georgia shortly. You can read a short update of the trip thus far that Neale wrote and see a few pics on Motorcycle Classics site.

Wish us luck on the second half of this epic. Whose idea was this anyway?!?

The good news tho is that I have it all nailed down and will now spend the better part of the next six months on the road. You can see the dates and locations of the events we’ll be shooting here. There’s still one unscheduled wild card slot because I’m trying to figure out how to get down to Canberra, Australia in January for the Street Machine Summer Nationals. How cool would that be?!? Wish me luck on that one.

I’ve got an equal number of killer feature shoots lined up that will take us to California, South Dakota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Alabama in the US, and Alberta and BC up in Canada just to name a few. Needless to say, I will be racking up the frequent flier miles.

But the thing that has really been domination my attention for the past few weeks doesn’t involve four wheels. It’s the upcoming shoot of the sixth episode of my motorcycle touring series, Trippin’ on Two Wheels.

Those of you who are familiar with the show know that it involves me, my teenage (actually, now 20) son Sam, and my good friend and motorcycle photojournalist, Neale Bayly, on multi-day rides in some pretty awesome parts of the world. To date we’ve shot in Scotland, Sicily, Spain, Quebec, Italy, and Switzerland. However on Tuesday, May 16, we’ll ride out on first one of these to be shot in the US.

We’ll be riding from the Gage Ranch in Evansville, IN to St. Augustine, FL where I will be Grand Marshal of Riding Into History, a motorcycle Concours d’Elegance held at the World Golf village. We’re taking a 1,000 mile back roads route and just to make it interesting, we’re riding three of my 40 year old bikes. I’ll be on a ’69 BMW R60/2, Sam’s riding a ’72 BMW R75/5 toaster tank, and Neale’s on my ’67 Moto Guzzi V7.

Just getting these bikes prepped for this epic has been an experience. The R60 hadn’t even been started in the last five years so I pretty much had to start from scratch with that one. I’m happy to report tho that after six weeks of extensive tweaking and tuning, all three of them appear to be ready to go. I’ve actually run out of things to do to them. At this point, they’re either going to make it or not.

The plan is to cover the 1,000 miles in four days with evening stays at the Inn at Evins Mill in Smithville, TN, the Fieldstone Farm Inn in Westminster, SC and The President’s Quarters in Savannah, GA.

We’ll be shooting all of this for an episode of Trippin’ on Two Wheels to air on SPEED late this year and Neale will be covering it for Motorcycle Classics magazine. If fact if you’d like to learn more about this and see pics of the bikes we’ll be riding, you can check out the story on Motorcycle Classics website.

Hopefully the weather gods will be with us, the bikes will perform flawlessly, we’ll have a great time, and we’ll shoot a killer episode. Regardless tho, come May 18 I’ll be back home in E’ville and probably eager to plant my butt in a vehicle of the four wheel variety. Wish us luck!

Ride on,

We flew out of Evansville, IN on Friday morning at 6:00 am (CST) for Atlanta, which is in the Eastern Time zone where we languished for a couple hours before boarding a plane to San Diego, CA. Four and a half short hours later, we touched down in the Pacific Time zone in sunny California.

After gathering our gear, we made our way over to the rental car facility, located my name on the board, and went to the appointed parking space to see what they had assigned me this time. It was a brand new Nissan Altima; not exactly a ’56 Lincoln, but I figured it would get the job done.

Ben (the show’s producer) and I threw our stuff in the trunk, jumped in, and attempted to fire it up. This is where things got a little confusing. Nissan’s latest “innovation” is that they don’t use a key. They just have a fob and you sort of wave that in the general direction of the dash to let it know you’re there and then step on the brake pedal, hit a start button and theoretically, Vroom!

However when I hit the start button, the dash lights came on but nothing else happened. I hit the start button again and the dash lights went off. I repeated this sequence five more times, each time with the same result. Ben suggested that maybe it was running and it was just really quite. I dismissed that as patently absurd, but after I hit the start button the next time, I put the car in drive and to my amazement, it moved forward. It was at this point that it hit both of us that this Nissan was a hybrid. Duh. We sheepishly and stealthfully made our way to the exit of the rental car facility, hopped on I-8, and embarked on our three-hour drive over to Yuma.

I had never been in this neck of the woods before, and it really has some strange and diverse geology. Not far out of San Diego, you climb up over a range of mountains that appear to be comprised of huge piles of boulders unlike anything I’ve seen. The pass is at about 4,200 feet and then you drop back down to sea level on the other side. Farther along, you come into an area that looks like the Sahara Desert. Apparently this is where Patton trained his tank commanders for warfare in North Africa. Now days tho the tanks are replaced by battalions of ATV’s and Sandrails bombing around on these seemingly endless dunes. The dunes eventually give way to more typical sage brush and sand, and then things finally turn agricultural as you start to near Yuma. All the while, you catch periodic glimpses of the fence on the Mexican border which is no more than several hundred yards away.

Well, that was sort of the travelogue part of the trip, and we were feeling pretty good as we rolled in to our hotel in Yuma about 3:00 pm; or at least that’s what we thought.

Midnight at the Oasis kicks off with a parade on Friday, and they had asked me to be the Grand Marshall. I thought that the parade started at 5:30 pm, but I didn’t have any of the details about it nor was there any info awaiting us at the hotel. No prob, we still had plenty of time.

When I got to my room tho, I noticed that the clock read 4:00 pm. I checked my cell phone and lo and behold, it corroborated that time. Yuma was apparently in Mountain Time zone. Imagine that. I had just lost an hour, but I should still be OK for the parade if I hustle a bit (and figure out were it is).

It was just about at that moment tho when my hotel room phone rang and on the other end was a semi-panicked event organizer wondering where I was since the parade was going to start in less than a half hour, there were 500 cars waiting, and the natives were getting restless.

Less than a half hour?!? I thought it wasn’t supposed to start at 5:30! Apparently not. Holy crap!!!

I called Ben and apprised him of our latest crisis and sprung into action, throwing on an MCC shirt and cranking up my mustache in record time. We bolted from the hotel, dove into our trusty Nissan hybrid, floored it and silently glided off. Something about that last part just seemed sort of anticlimactic.

We immediately hit rush hour traffic and as the minutes ticked by, we inched ever closer to the parade staging area. After what seemed like hours but in fact was only about 10 minutes, we arrived at our destination, There were several police cars and motorcycles waiting for us with lights flashing and they parted the crowd and escorted our mute Nissan toward the head of the parade to cheers (and occasional jeers) of the crowd. When we got there, I hopped out of the Nissan and into the driver’s seat of an awaiting ’66 327/350HP Corvette roadster and the parade was underway, a mere 15 minutes late!

From that point on, everything went pretty smoothly. The parade followed a five mile route and there were thousands of spectators lining the streets along the way. The shoot the following day went off without a hitch, and we really saw some fantastic cars and met some great people. But the whole time warp thing wasn’t over yet.

That night, most of the nation switched to daylight savings time. A notable exception to that rule tho is Arizona. We were still facing a three hour drive back to San Diego Sunday morning to catch an 11:40 am flight back home. Considerable discussion ensued between Ben & me as to when 11:40 am Pacific Daylight time really was relative to where we were and therefore when we actually needed to leave Yuma so as not to miss our flight. I was told there would not be math in this job! At any rate, we ultimately sorted it out, and I am on the plane headed home. Yowza!

BTW, does anyone have the correct time?

Happy Motoring,