Cruise-A-Palooza Rolls On

          While Labor Day generally marks the end of summer, it doesn't really mark the end of all things related to it. Yes, around here, this is one of the biggest and most anticipated car shows of the year. Not the only one, mind you, but one of the bigger draws, for both owners and those just wanting to enjoy the cars on display. While there are a number of other great shows after this one, including one that surely ranks in the top five, Cruise-A-Palooza is always one of the most fun. The weather always seems to co-operate (though sometimes it's just too damn hot and sticky, especially right by the river), it seems as though the sun keeps shining. And that was the case this year for sure. So for someone like me, it was very enjoyable to wander among the hundreds of cars and talk to all the people and snap picture after picture. I hope you are enjoying these shots as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Another Group of Pictures from Cruise-A-Palooza

          Coney Island is something of an amusement park located along the Ohio River, just east of downtown Cincinnati. In the old days people use to hop on a boat and head east to enjoy a day there. Today it has a few rides, some arcade games, a couple of live shows and, I believe, the largest recirculating swimming pool in the country.

          Back in the day it had a bunch of amusement park type rides, including a couple of roller coasters that, by the time I first was old enough to go there, seemed huge and very intimidating to me. Looking back on them they weren't nearly as fast and furious as anything out there today. And over the years I've ridden my share of really good coasters, including several that were the fastest, tallest, longest and coolest at the time. The old Shooting Star was a pretty cool coaster back at old Coney but it is nothing like The Beast.

          The ride that scared the crap out of me, though, was called the Wild Mouse. It wasn't all that tall, nor was it all that long or fast. But it was rickety. It was a metal semi-coaster that took you up the hill and then, before dropping you, let you slowly glide through a series of 180 degree turns. When the car took those turns, and remember, it wasn't going fast, it tilted out a bit until the underpinning rollers caught the bottom of the track. Every time I thought the car was going to keep tipping and fall off.

          In a way a roller coaster can be like a great car. It can be a bit intimidating, it can be fast and sometimes dangerous (at least in your mind) and quite often the old ones hold the fondest memories. Still, even after you've "conquered" a coaster you often want to go back again and again and ride it. There are cars in all of our lives that give us that same visceral thrill. Maybe one of those is in this group from this past Labor Day's Cruise-A-Palooza. Let me know.

Unpublished Cars at Cruise-A-Palooza, Until Now

          All the way back on Labor Day there was the annual mega car show at Coney Island called Cruise-A-Palooza. It is always a very big event with hundreds of great cars from all over the region. Earlier I posted some pictures from that event. You can see those posts at these links: http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/cruise-palooza.html, http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-from-cruise-palooza.html, and http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/still-more-cruise-palooza.html.

          In addition, I picked out some of the cars that I found most interesting and wrote up some featured blogs. For example, the very first car I saw when I walked into the show was Carl Allen's great hot rod. (http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-saw-it-i-wanted-it-and-i-bought-it.html) That kind of set the tone for the entire show. I also featured Dale Schultz and his beautiful Packard (http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-is-way-to-do-it.html). One of my favorite blog titles this year was for Dave Krieger's homemade woodie that I first saw at this show. You can check out that story here: http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dave-kriegers-got-wood.html. Another great car and owner I wrote about was Jamie Schworer and the "movie star" car that has been in her family for years (http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/star-of-car.html).
          Over the next several days I'm going to try to catch you up with a lot of the cars that I didn't publish in these other blogs but that were just as amazing as any of them. Hope you all enjoy.

          As always, feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email at either turnerbudds@gmail.com or turnerbudds@yahoo.com.

The Crosley

            It was small, lightweight and inexpensive. Some even called it “cute.” But the Crosley was, if nothing else, somewhat ahead of its time.

            The brainchild of industrialist Powell Crosley, Jr., who, along with his engineer brother Lewis, created a subcompact car which was designed to be affordable for the masses, the first Crosley automobile was shown in May 1939 at the Indianapolis Speedway. It weighed in at less than 1000 pounds and had a retail price of $250.

            To drive this small, lightweight vehicle, Crosley used an air cooled, 44 cubic inch two cylinder engine. A three speed transmission was originally connected directly to the rear axle by using a torque tube but this design was quickly dropped in favor of more traditional universal joints.

            Powell Crosley, Jr. was use to success and innovation. His first successful venture was in developing and selling automobile accessories. From there he branched into various other consumer products including the fledgling field of radio. By 1924 Crosley Radio Corporation was the largest radio manufacturer in the world. It got there by building a reliable product at an affordable price. This became a kind of trademark for Crosley.

            Always thinking ahead, Crosley decided that the best way to sell more radios was to offer more programming for people to enjoy. With that he created a broadcast company and bought and expanded radio station WLW in Cincinnati. Within a few years it was the most powerful radio station in the country and played host to many of the top stars of the day, including Doris Day, Fats Waller, Red Skelton, the Mills Brothers and a young woman who was born not far away, Rosemary Clooney (yeah, that’s George’s aunt).

            Eventually he moved into other major appliances and even owned the Cincinnati Reds baseball team for a while. But it was always cars that kept his attention.

            By 1941 numerous body styles were available including a sedan, convertible, station wagon, a panel truck and a pick-up truck. In fact, among his many firsts was the fact that he was the first to use the term “sport utility vehicle.” Crosleys were the first to market a single overhead cam engine and sold the first car with four wheel disc brakes. In 1949 the Crosley Hotshot became America’s first sports car.

            Still, all the innovations and firsts didn’t bring in droves of buyers. By early July in 1952, with Detroit making larger, faster and sportier cars at all price points, Crosley closed its automobile plant leaving behind the kind of small affordable car that wouldn’t be seen in this country until the Germans made their inroads with the VW Beetle.

The Sales Journey Begins

Bill Jennings’ “Sales Journal,” which he began with an email to me in early December started out as his backstory, his way of telling how he became a self-proclaimed car guy. He wondered in his email whether or not I wanted to do anything with it. “Just tell me if it's not really a good idea. And even if it was OK, maybe you'd not want to
do anything with it until we see something that follows,” he wrote.

For me, though, his thinking is perfect. If nothing else, I feel, it will remind every car person why they are the way they are. Here’s Bill’s account of how he got to this point in his life.

“It seems that selling a hobby car does not come easily to me. Perhaps that's the
nature of the beast;, that these cars can mean so much more to us than what we use
for normal transportation. We can find ourselves determined to 'make money' on the
transaction, doubt the ability to find another, find ourselves wondering just why we
sold the car months/years later. And it's because of these thoughts that I let creep into
this sales effort that, for me, just make it more difficult.

“I was born when my teen years found me seeing the '60's cars in full throttle. It was a great time to see long option lists and just about every imaginable engine available. And I somehow got 'hooked' on Fords (Sorry, what can I say?). More specifically, my interest became 'Mustangs', especially the 1969 model year. Over the years (since 1969), I have only owned 4 1969 Mustangs, all of them 'Sportsroof' or fastback models. But, except for 1, they have all been long-termers.

“My 1st 1969 Mustang was a 'meadowlark yellow' model that ended up to be my daily transportation for 25 years. Another was a blue 1969 GT350 I had for 18 years which was our introduction into a local Mustang and Shelby club.  There was also a red Q code model that stayed for 10 days, made the Mustang car count at three and sort of forced me to choose between the three cars or staying married.

“The current Mustang, the one I am beginning sales efforts with, is a blue Cobra Jet Mach 1 model. Basically, the color and option combination that I thought I always wanted. So since 1969, except for a 3 year period of sanity, there has always been a 1969 Mustang in the garage. And now I believe that I am at a point where I can sell this car and not find myself in a search for a replacement; a time to move on with the 'appreciation of such cars' still there, just not the necessity to have to actually own one.

“And now I find myself at the point of selling this car........................”

Making the Tough Decisions

            Back in early summer, Bill Jenkins contacted me through the blog and told me about his classic and how his interests in cars stemmed from a 1966 trip to see some recently taken out of service Hertz “rent-a-racers.” In 1969, with the help of his parents, Bill got the car he so desired, a Mustang.

            Since that first one in 1969, Bill has constantly owned a Mustang. The one he contacted me about was literally the car of his dreams. “I always wanted my 1969 Mustang to be in Acapulco blue with black interior and the Ram Air 428 Cobra Jet,” he said. In 2006 he made that dream come true.

            A few weeks later I wrote up his story and posted a number of pictures he’d sent me.  The blog piece goes on to tell the great bit of history that Bill had found with this Mustang. You can check it out to refresh your memory here: http://turnerbudds-carblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/cover-model-comes-home.html.

            Since then Bill and I have swapped a few emails and kept in touch. For me one of the main reasons I started writing this blog was to talk to other car people and hear their stories. Meeting someone like Bill who has had a lifelong passion with cars and has managed to fulfill his dream has been one of the joys of doing this little piece of internet composition.

            In early October Bill dropped me an email and in it he dropped a bomb. The car he so enjoyed, his cover model of a 1969 Mustang 428, was going to be sold. “I have had to face my own question of sorts, hobby car wise, and that is ‘Do car folks always stay that way?’ Maybe there has to be a different phases, especially as we age.” he wrote.

“I write this as I'm very close to doing my own exit from ‘needing to have a hobby car’,” he continued.

After a little more back and forth, Bill agreed to let me follow the process of his selling his classic Mustang. “I'll certainly share how the sales efforts go,” he added in a later email.

Today as I was sitting down to write this initial entry about his sales efforts Bill sent me another email entitled “Sales Journal.” In it he wrote the following which I’ve simply copied here to help you all feel the

“I wrote the following in a moment of thought that perhaps my sales efforts should be preceded with a narrative of how I got here.  I was trying to get across how this is
actually difficult for me and a real turning point in what I have to do and yet still maintain
an interest in such cars,” Bill wrote.

For those of you who have stumbled across my blog you know that I tend to write mostly about car shows and the people who willingly display their classic automobiles for a voyeuristic group of hobbyists.  But I’ve also followed the efforts of a single collector in their efforts to restore their car.

Starting with the next blog entry and periodically continuing until Bill either sells his car or decides to keep it, I’ll be updating you, mostly in Bill’s words, on his efforts to part company with his lifelong dream.