Auto Show debrief

Yesterday my friend Neil and I had a good time at the Dallas Auto Show.  We rode the light rail to the convention center, avoiding all the traffic and parking hassles....easily worth the few bucks it cost, and we arrived ahead of most of the crowd.  Much to my delight and surprise the show was NOT dominated by Bubba trucks.  I was rather disappointed that there weren't any wild concept cars.  None.

Of course I was immediately drawn to the European exotics:

Like this 2014 Aston Martin Vanquish.

Of course I ordered mine "Well Equipped".

After gawking at this more proletarian Vantage ($150K) for a while I was invited inside the velvet rope and assigned my own personal advisor, Aaron Stephenson IV*. Before long I had one of his high-dollar catalogues and was calling him "Biff" and picking colors and accessories.  He's probably still waiting for me after I excused myself for a rest room visit.

Maserati Gran Cabrio

McLaren MP4-12C

The new, soon-to-be introduced Jaguar F-Type.

I didn't say there weren't ANY Bubba trucks there.  This was some kind of "wrap" treatment you can cover your truck with enabling you to hide from ducks and deer and such.

I'm not a big Range Rover fan, but I must admit the Evoque ($58K) was rather impressive.

There were some vintage oddities stuck over in one corner, like this Datsun 2000.  It was quite a screamer back in its day....

....as was this '71 Datsun 240Z.  As a college student I lusted for one of these.  ('Course, I lusted for all kinds of things back in my college days. ;)  As I didn't have $34 dollars back then, much less $3400, it became another of my lost loves.

Awwww, my little Fiat 500 Abarth.  Innit cute?  One of these days I'm gonna convince K it followed me home.

One thing I took away is that cars are getting ridiculously expensive.  A decent BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, Infinity, etc, is just more than I want to pay for wheels.  They're for those who want a "look at me" experience.  Or Lottery winners.

What I found was that Subaru and Mazda in particular have some quite good cars at very reasonable prices....mid-upper $20's.  Even Volkswagen's are getting pricey, although the new GTI @ $33K still seemed like a good value.  Chrysler products seemed way behind the curve, and poor GM seems to be in a continued slow decline.  Ford, however, had some good small world-class cars worth looking at.

The Geneva or Frankfurt or New York show it wasn't, but all things considered the Dallas show was worth the effort to attend.  Oh...and the "booth babes"?  Not a disappointment, either.  ;)

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On today's "to-do" list?  I asked K if she wanted to go to the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade and Alcohol Soiree, but she said she'd rather take a bullet to the head.  I guess that's a "no".   At this point I'm just hoping for lunch out.

Have a great weekend everyone.

S

*not his real name

Cars are back!

In response to the multitude of requests that I show more car photos....OK, it was only Doug....I present some interesting finds from today's Cars and Coffee event (always the first Saturday of each month):

An especially nice mildly customized Mini Cooper.  The guy who brought it, and fit in quite comfortably, was at least 250 pounds.

The Mini's contemporary, an East German Trabant.  Says volumes about the virtues of communism, doesn't it?  It looks like the English Bulldog is about to give his opinion of it, too.  ;)

And from across the other pond Datsun sent us this 2000.  It was quite a hot car in its day.

Here's something I might actually be able to afford to both buy and maintain....a super-clean Karman Ghia.  It was actually just a slick body on a plain vanilla VW.

Here's a tiny English-built Metropolitan.  My dad bought one of these for my mom thinking it would be the perfect little car for her to buzz around town it.  She wanted none of it, however, so he drove it for a couple of years until he could buy something better.  This is the type car I learned to drive in.

Side note:  A gorgeous 20-something woman was showing this car to her boyfriend who I think was Italian.  She was pointing out the food tray with the fake hamburger/fries/root beer on it, explaining how in the days before drive-thru's a girl known as a "car hop" would bring it out to the car and attach it to the side of the car.  She said she learned about it from listening to her grandmother.  After hearing that I gave up and exhaled.  ;)

A Triumph Stag.  I was surprised to see this as I thought they had all self-destructed 20 years ago.  "Durability" was just another word at British Leyland.

The Stag's little brother, a TR-6.  This one was very nice, although I was never very fond of the Baby Diaper color.  I sure would like to have one in British Racing Green, though.

Of course there was all of the modern hardware there, too, but around here they are almost passe.  (As you can tell I prefer the old, odd relics, probably because I'm an old, odd relic myself.  Well, "odd" anyway.)  The newest star there was this Lamborghini Aventador ^.  ("Nice car.  Sorry about your penis.")

Gotta go run a few errands before more college football this afternoon.  Y'all have a great day.  :)

S