The Cars of Arizona

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I just wanted to add a short post here about how much I have enjoyed "car watching" here in Arizona. As any of you who know me would understand, I have been a "car guy" all my life, and as such, the southwest is a treat. Someone should tell Neal Young that even if "Rust Never Sleeps" -- here it must take some serious naps. Sure, in the wealthy areas you see expensive new cars, but I don't give a rat's ass about those. And I'm not surprised to see the older "hobby cars" either, we see those in the warm months at home. What winds my watch are the plain "old cars" you see driving around, still doing just what they were designed and built to do, so many years ago.

One day in a Walmart parking lot I saw a Chevette -- a Chevette!! Those were intended (I'm sure) to have the life expectancy of a fruit fly, but here was one of those ultimate disposable 70's Detroit junkmoblies still cruising, going on 50 years -- wow! And of course the old pickups -- so many old pickups! We saw a beautiful Splitty Bus too, just exactly like my old one, except red & white, not orange & white like mine. Oh, and mine was beat to crap too, that's another important difference ;

Best of all though, as we cruised along on a lonely two lane a few days ago -- I saw an odd shape grill on a blue sedan coming towards us. "That looks like? Could it be? It is -- that's a goddam Studebaker Commander! Maybe a '64?" I was jumping up and down with excitement, and Cathy was looking at me like I might be showing early symptoms of rabies. The thing is, this was no restored Avanti, or Supercharged Golden Hawk, kept in a heated garage and driven only on sunny Sundays. This was an old guy just heading out to the store or something in his transportation, which just happened to be a 60+ year old product of a now defunct manufacturer. Studebaker was America's oldest car company, if you take into account that began by building wagons in the 1850's, and hung on with cars and trucks until 1967. I still can't get over it -- A STUDEBAKER!! Just sorry I didn't get a picture.

Oh, and we did see some newer cars of note. Driving around the outskirts of Phoenix, I saw an odd looking sports car coming up from behind, when it passed, I recognized it, a McClaren. He pulled into a bagel shop, say what you will about the McClaren, it is an ideal bagel-fetcher. Pretty exciting I guess, I'd never even seen one before, but lets face it, "Sorry buddy, it's no Studebaker."

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