Imagine you find yourself in a conversation with a stranger over a 1965 Mustang Fastback. You may not be a car aficionado, but this person is. You’re both talking about how the vehicle is a beauty. You say something like “what a gorgeous classic car.” Then you get a sinking feeling as the person looks at you before saying “Um… actually…” You may have just committed a faux pas, at least in that person’s eyes. So how can we accurately describe and classify cars? Well, it depends on who you ask.
Many look at convertibles as the ultimate in luxury driving. Having that top down as you cruise the city streets has been an appealing piece of car culture for as long as anybody can remember. However, despite its innovativeness, convertibles aren’t as lavish as people may think. In fact, there was a time when ALL automobiles on the road were open-topped, and we imagine it wasn’t all that great. Before the turn of the nineteenth century, if you were out driving in your fancy motor-powered vehicle and encountered some inclement weather, well, you either had to be pretty innovative yourself, or you needed to find a tree to park under! Read on for an interesting look at the history of the convertible.
Enjoy Cheap Travel by Building Your Own Travel Van
Spending a month or two driving across the country - exploring national parks, adventuring in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, relaxing on pristine coastal beaches - sounds like a fantastic dream. The reality however, generally has something to do with the expense of a trip like that. We simply can’t afford that kind of travel. Or can we? What if we could cut out all of the lodging costs? What if we didn’t have to eat out at restaurants? What if we could simply travel city to city, or park to park, and pull into a campground each night? Those are some things we could get on board with!
That’s where the travel van comes in. For the sake of this article, and our wallets, we’re going to keep this idea pretty basic. There won’t be a bunch of talk about stand up showers or indoor plumbing. You won’t see any sophisticated entertainment options, or feng shui inspired interiors. We’re keeping it bare bones. That’s how we’ll be able to afford this epic adventure.
We think we have this idea pretty well thought out after doing some research, and that this dream can be put into real life by following these fairly simple steps:
Warning: If you have yet to watch Ford V Ferrari and don’t know the true story behind the movie, you may want to tread lightly. Spoilers ahead!
On the heels of the massive success of the new film Ford V. Ferrari, we thought it would be interesting to learn a bit more about the hall of fame driver responsible for the Ford Shelby winning (sort of) the 24 hour Le Mans endurance race in 1966, after five consecutive years of Ferrari dominance. We knew the name Ken Miles, and we knew about his genius ability to race high powered, high performance vehicles around any race track that was put under his foot pedals.
What we didn’t know, however, was that there were many people that didn’t believe he died in a fiery crash on August 17, 1966 while test driving the new Ford J-car prototype, just two months after racing in the biggest race of his career. The Le Mans race itself is for another blog at another time; today we want to share with you the story of Ken Miles surviving the crash that claimed his life, or…didn’t?
