JIM McGOWAN

… it was a monthly bright spot surrounded by a lot of automotive darkness!

New Events for a New Year

Wow, what happened to 2022? Actually, I’m glad the last year is now over and done with. In my mind it was not a great time to be a car enthusiast. Way too many downers and not enough positive things happening within the hobby. Thank goodness for this magazine—it was a monthly bright spot surrounded by a lot of automotive darkness! The past year’s news always seemed to me to be about something negative, particularly the monstrously high gas prices and destructive storms across the country, which adversely affected so many people. It also had a negative impact on our hobby and many automotive events. The increased gas prices resulted in many muscle cars being left sitting in the garage, rather than cruising as usual on weekends. I know it certainly negatively affected my driving pleasure. My regular Saturday or Sunday fun cruise pretty much ceased for way too many months!

But now it all seems like a bad dream, and as a positive result I also realize that it provided time for improving several areas of my ’65 GTO. During those bad months I accomplished a bunch of little things that I wanted to do, but never got around to addressing since I was regularly using my muscle car. More than a few of my automotive friends experienced the same situation, so I guess there was a upside to that period of reduced driving.

Now that the worst seems to be winding down, it’s time to get back to regularly using my car. My daughter, who lives and works back east, is visiting for several weeks and enjoys top-down cruising on sunny Sunday afternoons. We can nally get back to enjoying that little pleasure again while she’s at home.

There’s also a brand-new local car show scheduled for next month, and it promises to be a full house. It’s being put on by a church group in their huge parking lot. I know one of the church members and he speci cally called me to let me know of the event as it is a rst ever gathering, so he asked if I would let my other car buddies know about it. I enjoy attending these new events, because, if successful, they will most likely do it again next year. February weather in California can be unpredictable to say the least, so we’ll hope for the best. I like to support rst-time car shows, as good attendance usually contributes to pushing new events to becoming annual happenings. Or, in some cases, the event may happen multiple times a year if it proves really popular. We’ve all lost many enjoyable shows over the past few years due to circumstances beyond our control, so building up new gatherings is a worthy pursuit.

With new events coming back, more of my friends are looking to get out and enjoy their vintage cars. Recently a fellow GTO enthusiast called me about a car he was looking at and would possibly buy. The price was right, so we went to check it out. I was immediately turned off by the seller—he was pushing too hard, and when asked about several different mechanical areas, he danced around the questions, and we really didn’t get any concrete answers. I advised my buddy that it might be better to pass on this one—too many important questions went unanswered.

I am often asked to accompany friends and friends of friends to look at vintage muscle cars being offered for sale, and I try to offer advice to people who are shopping for a classic. One of the things I often tell people is to arm themselves with some good books dedicated to the car or cars they are interested in. Over the years I have acquired quite a few books covering mechanical, cosmetic, and lots of other areas dealing with different makes and models of muscle cars. I usually take along one covering whatever car I’m looking at. This saves a lot of anguish down the road after you make a purchase. You might consider this as well when looking for a particular brand and model muscle machine.

Happy hunting for muscle cars in 2023— here’s to a new year of enjoying our hobby!