I got a lot done this last week. All the Royce McClintick shots are now scanned and the last of the Gear Grinders massive photo collection only needs some of the shots Identified. Bill LaPolla's drag race shots have been converted to tiffs and no need captions to go with them and I got a new Herman Miller chair to replace my recently broken 30 year old Cyborg. With that lets get to some pix to see what has been unearthed.

Last week we showed you a shot of Royce's featuring his radically slammed Willys coupe. To add a little back story to it check out our first pix (RCE_027). It's a shot of a wrecking yard out Fontana, CA way where Royce got his ride. If you look at the roof of the building you'll see the '33 five window coupe before he got his hands on it. A crane was needed to get it off the roof. Note the used auto parts painted on it that was left on during slamming.

Next up is a shot from Bill LaPolla's collection. All we know at this time is the slick little '29 was named "Tinker Toy". A shot after it in the collection keyed as SLOTA show some guys setting up timing lights. A little detective work reveals this means San Louis Obispo Timing Association so now we know the possible track location. The CAL plate on the front is from '55 to '62. Another shot shows a '59 Chevy push car so lets date it '59 or '60. After we print out the 200 or so shots, some of our friends up Santa Barbara way that ran during this period might be able to help us figure out who's who. Stay tuned.

Our next shot from the Gear Grinders (GGC_544A) started out as a little 3" x 4 1/2" print. The pix was taken at Bing Crosby's old Del Mar Race Track on November 6, 1949 and shows cars waiting to go out and qualify. You really don't see a lot of detail except for car numbers, so on shots like these we scan them really big. The final width on this one after scanning is 26" so we can really zoom in to see some stuff. GGC_544B shows a section blown up of the same pix that reveals a bunch. Sitting in 99 we can see Tony Bettenhausen and you can almost read Belanger written on the side of the car. The short guy with his hands on the hood is ace mechanic "Chickie" Hiroshima. Hideing the front wheel in his Stetson hat is hog farmer J.C. Agajanian. On the far right is one of the AAA race officials wearing the infamous arm bands. Zooming in closer reveals even more detail so with a lot of research we can probably be able to ID a lot more of the players in this pix. 

This Saturday I went up to Oxnard to visit some friends and take in the new Mullin Automotive Museum. If you love cars this is a must visit place. It's filled with the most outlandish Deco cars from the thirties bristleing with details that beg to be transfered to our hot rods. Most of them are French which means Avant Guard to the hilt. The first shot is of a car that you probably never heard of called a Voison (JMC_1306). It fits in with our current rat rod/ unfinished look that's all the fad these days. Note the unfinished hood in aluminum. Now check out the copper rivets that hold the support brackets to it. These are really cheap and really pop. The long louvers also add a real since of coolness over the standard short ones that everyone uses. The thing that sent this car over the edge in my book is how the painted copper lines run outside the body to add to the mechanical look of the ride. Think the production designers that did the DeLorian in Back to the Future might of been inspired by this? By the way this car won the first race it ever ran, the Grand Prix du Tourisme at Strausbourg way back in 1922.

To me the coolest thing I spied at the museum was captured in this next shot JMC_1305. If you climb under a '37 and earlier Ford you will note they had mechanical brakes with a bunch of levers under the drive shaft to work them. This is an artist's take on the same setup only it was mounted on top of the tranny. If you look closely you'll note an adjustment lever on the far left arm. This my friends is to balance adjustment between the front and rear brakes. Pretty cool. This ride is also way out there in the chassis concept area too. Note to the left of the tranny the wood on the floor, well this is the frame. I counted four of them. The all aluminum body was a riveted affair and was attached to them making it probably the first Monocoque chassied ride around. Also note the steering wheel wasn't round, the overflow tank for the trans and the demasking on it to also add some pizaz. This was another Voisin design for Grand Prix Racing from 1923. Voison started out playing with aircraft at the turn of the last century then switched to cars. This one was only the second one he had designed.

To cap off the weekend on Sunday there was the Scociety of Automotive Historians annual literature fair held down in El Segundo at the Automobile Driving Museum. This is another one of those car museums that nobody has ever heard of but is filled with interesting rides. Shot JMC_1307 shows just a portion of their fleet of toys. These happen to be all Packards. The one on the left is a one-off fastback job by Pinin Farina. Growing up these big clunkers never were of interest but today that's not the case as the design details are fantastic. You gotta visit the place if your ever fly out of LAX as it's only five minutes away.

As this was a literature fair they were about 25 venders selling cool car stuff. Naturally I had to come home with stuff hideing out as research material for the Foundation. And as usual I forgot to take along my list of wants so this time we only got one dupe. The last shot today shows what came home with me (JMC_1304). In the center was a Honk Vol. 1, No. 1 that cost $5. The Car Craft's were $2 each and are in great shape. The others were $5 and under. These are good prices but still seem high to this old codger as back in the day I use to pick them up for .15 to .25 cents each, but then again that was a long time ago. 

The fun part is going through the stuff and rediscovering all the things you forgot. Boy, this is a hard job.