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We had awesome weather for the sow yesterday; registration started at 7AM. amd of course I was running late. Friday I spent most of the day going over the car, detailing it out, covering up the nicks and chips whte a Turtle Wax ChipStik. The car looked fantastic by the time I was done.
Saturday mornign, very early (for me!) I got around went out and uncovered the car, took my shower, found some decent clothes, and went to get into the car to go to the ATM to get the entry fee and lunch money.
During the hour or so the car was sitting uncovered in the driveway, the elm tree in the front yard dripped a ton of sap onto it. *sigh*
I cleaned off the windshield so I wouldn't be looking thourgh a few hundred thousand tiny sparkly diamonds while I drove, and loaded up and took off. The drive to the bank is about 8 blocks, and the show was a block from there.
I did the registration thing and went to park the car. The parking marshal tried to put my little Volvo and another car into a norrow space between a '32 Ford Victoria and a '57 Nomad, so I feigned bad driving skills and managed to take both spaces, so there was plenty of room around all our cars.
The last thing I wanted to do was scrape my wheelchair up against a $100,000 show car that was owned by the guy who designed the Chevy 350 engine and worked along side Arkus Duntov!
I brought my car-cleaning stuff with me, including a couple of new products I hadn't tried yet. I used Meguiar's Show Detailer to get the sap off, but I ended up with a crappy-looking haze where the cleaner mixed with the sap. I tried Rain-X Super Wax and found that it gave me a great shine, as well as not having the drying-in-the-sun problems you get with most waxes. I was extremely please with the product, the the guy with the '57 Nomad tried a little of it and liked it too.
Most of the morning was taken up with re-detailing the car, but nearly everyone was doing the same thing, so I wasn't out of place with my bottles and polishing cloths.
The response to showing my car was totally unexpected. All day long I was surrounded by anywhere from 6 to 12 people looking, crawling underneath, asking questions, asking if it was OK to sit in the car (of course!), etc.
I passed out polishing cloths and got a lot of help cleaning up the places I can't reach without using my crutches - and who can wax using only one hand?
About 95% of the people had never seen a PV before, and a few had owned one 'back in the day' or knew someon who had owned one. I discovered that there are at least three other PV's in our little town of about 10,000. One belongs to a guy's neighbor, one is an 'occasional driver' that apparently rarley leaves the garage - and isn't in very good cosmetic condition - and one is a '59 PV-544 owned by the original purchaser. He said it had been a great car, but in the 1970's it wasn't running very smoothly and he couldn't find a mechanic who knew how to tune it up. He said he starts it every couple of weeks, and drives it three or four times a year. It has about 60,000 miles on it!
I'll be taking my tools over to his house sometime in the next few weeks and giving it a proper tuneup and checking all the carburator wear points, etc.
I met all the local car club folks, and several from clubs in LA and Arizona.
The only thing I won on this outing was a 'gift basket' in the raffle. Pretty cool if you like bank advertising crap!
All the attendees received a really nice car club mug and ceramic dash plaque.
Most of the owners went to Sizzler for a dinner afterwards, and I sat with a guy named Jerry (can't recall the last name, but I'll look it up later.) Jerry is severly handicapped, and built a gorgeous 1946 Desoto Limousine with full handicapped setup; swivel front bucket seats, power wheelchair ramp out the rear door, hydraulic suspension so the car snuggles right down to the pavement when he parks, etc. A gorgeous car! Jerry has been inducted into the Hot Rod Hall of Fame. We talked about future projects and I mentioned that I own eight
Cushman trucks/vans. He got all excited, so I offered to sell him five of my eight for $100 each - about 10% of their market value. I'd love to work with him and build a totally unique show car from a Cushman!
My personal van is this body style, but I have nice paint, chromed baby moon hubcaps, etc. Funny I don't have any pictures of it!
During the dinner after the show, awards were given out. They used a system I wasn't familiar with, but I really liked how it worked out. Instead of having a bunch of separate classes and giving 1st-2nd-3rd, etc, trophies, they had the participants list their top 15 favorite cars. If your car was in the Top 15, you got a cool plaque. No one who won had any bragging rights that their car was any better than any other winner. The plaques were really unique, too. Shomehow they managed to get a lot of old 45 rpm DJ records, with the small spindle holes. Not the standared 45's with the big holes in the middle. They added a removeable sticker to cover the original lable, and also put in an engraved brass plate. It looked a lot like those 'million-seller' gold or platinum records. Really unique!
I found out the local car show schedule. I can go to a show every weekend, sometimes two in a weekend, all summer long. Being close to LA and Las Vegas and the Reno/Lake Tahoe area makes for a LOT of car shows!
All-in-all, everyone had a great time. I got a sunburn and made a lot of new friends.
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