MENDENHALL: CARS, GAS PUMPS & PETROLIANA MUSEUM

Posted on June 18, 2021June 18, 2021 by MartynL

CarGuyChronicles’ Jim Palam pulls in to the MENDENHALL: CARS, GAS PUMPS & PETROLIANA MUSEUM to fill-up with American petroleum industry history and an eyeful of colorful signage and cars from a bygone era. Sitting at a window table at Ellen's Pancake House I could see the large neon and red Pegasus rising up above the tall wooden perimeter fence surrounding the Mendenhall Museum – located just across Avenue of the Flags from the eatery in Buellton, CA. Over the years I had picked up a ...

STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT’S A GAS-GAS-GAS!

Posted on May 11, 2021May 12, 2021 by MartynL

Tony LaPolla channeled his 1960s Gasser heroes – Stone, Woods & Cook – when he built the STUDE-A-SHAKER: IT'S A GAS-GAS-GAS! Koufax, Clemente & Mays: Baseball legends who were heroes to legions of young guys in the 1960s – but not Tony LaPolla. It wasn't the crack of the bat that made his heart race, but rather the crackle of the supercharged 448-inch Oldsmobile motor powering a wicked '41 Willys Gasser – owned and campaigned by barnstorming drag racers Stone, Woods & Cook. The lege...

ORCUTT DERELICTS: DONUT RUN CAR MEET

Posted on April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 by MartynL

‘If Muscle Cars Could Walk’, blogs our intrepid, photo-journalist, Jim Palam! ‘I was expecting a four-wheeled GTO Goat from Pontiac, not a four-legged Bovidae family member at the ORCUTT DERELICTS: DONUT RUN CAR MEET.’ When a carguy buddy of mine from the Central Coast told me, they were expecting some cool musclecars and other surprises at the Orcutt Derelict’s Donut Run car meet in Orcutt, he peppered that prompt to attend by also telling me there's going to be a beautiful GOAT there ...

MONTECITO: CARS, COFFEE & CAMARADERIE!

Posted on March 12, 2021 by MartynL

Jim Palam masks-up, packs his photographic gear in his Porsche, and restarts his relationship with live car events. The results: MONTECITO: CARS, COFFEE & CAMARADERIE! It didn't take too much of an arm-twist from my carguy friend Phil to motivate me to get up with the birds and drive down to tony Montecito to check out the reawakening of the Cars & Coffee gathering in the Upper Village. It had been a year since I covered any live car event for CarGuyChronicles and I had a strong...

HOT ROD HEAVEN: DEUCES ON 101!

Posted on October 25, 2019October 29, 2019 by MartynL

’32 Fords flock the Zaca Creek Golf Course fairway for the Deuces On 101 Inaugural Car Show. CGC’s Jim Palam runs the numbers: 3+2 = ‘10-out-of-10.’ Let’s check his math. Henry Ford didn’t like the numbers. The Great Depression and higher horsepower competitors like Chevrolet had broken his monopoly of the American automotive industry. So he decided to double-down: 1932 would be the year to introduce the Model B and Model 18 – and Ford’s new V8 motor – to lead the cylinders war and fire-up sales...

8TH ANNUAL: MONTECITO MOTOR CLASSIC!

Posted on October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 by MartynL

CGC’s Jim Palam goes coastal to rein-in a Moto-Match report from the Santa Barbara Polo Fields. Here are highlights. It dawned on me as I hit Field 1 at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club early Sunday morning, that moving the 8TH ANNUAL: MONTECITO MOTOR CLASSIC! off the asphalt in Montecito and onto the turf in Carpinteria was just a clever way to stomp the divots! No need to ask polo fans to come on the field and soil their Jimmy Choos – we’ll just roll about 300 tons of expensive Ameri...

10TH ANNUAL: VINTAGE TRAILER BASH!

Posted on September 30, 2019September 30, 2019 by MartynL

CGC’s Jim Palam gets his gypsy on to join the Caravanners in Buellton, California. You don’t need to be a nomadic gypsy or itinerant preacher to find yourself footloose on the backroads of America – hitched to a vagabond dream and a vintage travel trailer. No, you just need to put the mail on hold, hook-up your caravan, fill your gas and propane tanks and kiss your 9-to-5 goodbye. 10TH ANNUAL: VINTAGE TRAILER BASH! Caravanning for leisure finds its roots in Europe and South Asia in the 1800s. I...

MONTEREY MADNESS: IT’S A WRAP!

Posted on September 11, 2019September 13, 2019 by MartynL

CGC’s Jim Palam wraps up Monterey Car Week 2019 with a bevy of weird & wonderful deserts, perfect for savoring the hobby’s preeminent seven-day smorgasbord.

CGC’s Jim Palam wraps up Monterey Car Week 2019 with a bevy of weird & wonderful desserts, perfect for savoring the hobby’s preeminent seven-day smorgasbord. If you’re on a diet, you may want to skip this story. By now, car guys around the globe have consumed a veritable smorgasbord of news stories, video posts and water cooler tales about Monterey Car Week 2019. It’s appropriate that this ballyhooed extravaganza is at its purest construction a seven-day experience; this aligns nicely with a...

MONTEREY MADNESS: AUCTION ACTION!

Posted on September 2, 2019September 2, 2019 by MartynL

CGC's Jim Palam raises his camera – not paddle - at RM Sothebys, Gooding & Company & Mecum and grabs twenty standouts. By now you’ve heard the reports: 2019 Monterey Car Week auction results were soft. Not Charmin soft or Pillsbury Doughboy soft, but financially soft – like my timeworn leather wallet. Other analysts described the results as depressed. Not a depression like Shelly’s Frankenstein monster struggled with, or depressed like the seat of a plastic-webbed lawn chair. No, depress...

MONTEREY MADNESS: PEBBLE & THE QUAIL!

Posted on August 25, 2019August 25, 2019 by MartynL

CGC’s Jim Palam ‘captures’ 20 gems from Monterey Car Week’s lauded treasure troves. How do you do it? How do you pick just twenty cars from two of the highest-profile Monterey Car Week events – the 69th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering – now in its 17th year? It’s a daunting task, much worse than selecting your favorite faux meat snack or all-time best action hero. But car guys do what they gotta do: MONTEREY MADNESS: PEBBLE & THE QUAIL! So I started b...