Car Stalker - Minneapolis-St. Paul

It's true, when I see a cool car on the road and either I'm driving and the wife has the camera or vice-versa, I'll go miles out of my way to stalk my victims until I get a few choice shots.

This vintage Mini drove by us and since we were in our (new) Mini it just felt right to tag along for a few miles. It still amazes me how small the original Mini is compared to the modern version.

First they go by in the outside lane, should we follow? Of Course we should.

We almost lost them at this junction...

...but thankfully traffic slowed the nimble Mini down.

Then we got the money shot...it seriously felt like we were in a SUV compared to the older Mini, staring down at them from the towering heights of a Mini Cooper!

Then we let our prey go on its merry way, they went left, we went right.

So, if you were driving your beautiful vintage Mini back in June in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and a blue and white Mini Cooper followed you for a few miles with a giant camera lens poking out the window, I apologize, but your car was just too awesome not to stalk.

Ode to the Truck - or America F#*K Yeah!

Trucks are to young Americans what hot-hatches and GTIs are to young Europeans and that is why I've grown to love and respect THE TRUCK.

You can pick up an old beater truck for under two grand and with a few hundred bucks here and there on maintenance you can have yourself a world of motorized independence. Which is after all, what America is all about.

These colors don't run...even in the rain

I love the arrogance of this truck...compacts only F NO!

Life gives you a hatch back...your American ingenuity and a welder gives you a TRUCK

Try doing this with a Gti

Truck, beer, sleeveless shirt with strip club logo...check, check and double check

And where else are you going to put all your stickers?

Rainy Day in Portland - what a surprise!

We got dropped off somewhere on Hawthorne and walked down to Burnside. Lovely walk in the soft rain, reminded me of being at home in Ireland. But the surprise of the day was all the older classic European and Japanese cars sitting in drive ways and parked on side streets.

Here's a small sampling: Ford Fiesta MK 1, Peugeot 505 S, EVO IX (VIII?), VW Bus, Datsun (1500)Sports, Volvo 144, VW Karmann Ghia (two examples) and an Audi Quattro (love the plate).

Two American Classics

I was walking around the Crossroads District in KC back in June for FIRST FRIDAY enjoying the art and live music when I came across these two within a block of each other.

The Chevy El Camino is one of those cars that some people absolutely love, yet others wouldn't touch it with a big stick. A car held in high esteem by NASCAR fans and ridiculed by snotty European sports sedan drivers. Vorsprung durch Technik it ain't.

Whatever side of the fence you happen to be find yourself on you have to appreciate the genius (madness) of putting a flatbed in a sedan and then stuffing it with a big thirsty engine. The stuff of live-rear-axle wet dreams.

And just in case The El Camino didn't live up to it Southern Boy Supercar image check out this sticker

And now for something completely different...

Follow this link to see what another GT40 owner in the KC area did to his car.

Crazy Irish Kids - How they sort out a car clamp

My wee brother back in Ireland is a total car nut-junkie. Here's how he got himself out of some car clamp bother recently. Mad bollox!

Click Here If the video below does not play...youtube has been fecked this week!

New Car Porn

Haven't had a chance to post in ages...but I came across this tasty wee bit of car porn. Follow the link and be prepared to waste 15 minutes of your fine day.

Pike's Peak

I am 100% for sure, without a doubt, going to Pike's Peak in 2011.

Austin Healey Sprite

When I was a kid in Ireland in the 1980s Austin did not  translate to sexy. An Austin on the road meant a crappy little granny-Metro, a rusted out Allegro or a boring as feck Montego. So when I see a car like an Austin-Healey Sprite, I can't help but think "where they hell did BMC go wrong?"

This Mark I Sprite, the bugeye, was parked right across the road from the Lotus 7 look-a-like. I'd bet the two owners were out together enjoying the open top driving and the weather in KC is perfect for it this week. And in the same area were two showroom perfect examples of a Miata and a convertible Corvette.

Power-wise the Sprite would be left behind by all these cars, including the Miata, but sitting still on a beautiful sunny day, the Sprite wins all the prizes.

Lotus 7 lives on

There were no badges on this little yellow beauty, so I couldn't tell if it was a Caterham, Westfield or other "kit car" as they are classified over here. But no matter what it was, it's Colin Chapman's Lotus 7: the ultimate expression of performance through light-weight

I saw this one in Brookside, Kansas City, with a touch of Americana on this English go-kart by the addition of a hood scoop. The scoop takes away from the pure lines of the 7, but no matter what it looks like, it's keeping the tradition alive.

The scoop leads me to believe it might be a SUPERSTALKER, which I'd never heard of until I did a minute of research. According to their website you can build one for about $18,000. The cheapest Caterham is about $28,00 sans engine and gearbox and go all the way up to over $60,000 for the R500. So if this is a SuperStalker it's a relative bargain compared to the English versions.

Looks like a toy car sitting between these two modern cars

Mercury is Dead: What's for dinner Honey?

Mercury, the subsidery of Ford, not the planet, has effectively been silently killed off this week. No one is talking about it, 'cause nobody cares. Crap, even Saturn had a bigger going away party.

For too long Mercury(s) were just re-badged Fords, which were not such great cars in the first place. And where did it fit in the family line between Ford-Lincoln-Mercury; was it a step up or a step down? Often they were a few hundred bucks less than the blue oval versions, other models were more costly.

The last decent looking Mercury was the 8th edition of the Cougar, but favored by cougars, not drivers, and that will always kill a sports car/coupe (are you listening Mistubishi Eclipse?).

The only Mercury I ever had a crush on was the Mercur badged XR4ti. It wasn't a huge sales hit, unlike the European Sierra counterpart, but when you are lucky enough to see one on the road today it still looks amazing. Sure, loads of gear heads had a boner when the 2003 Marauder came out, but it looked like a 1987 cop car. So that makes it lame, especially when you could have gone to the auctions and picked up an actual Crown Vic Interceptor for about two grand at the time.

Well, only the only person to blame is parent company Ford who decided the Mercury brand was only good enough for retirees who didn't give a damn how a car looked or drove. The kind of customer, who due to Alzheimer's is not even going to remember that they used to drive a Mercury Sable, or where they parked it.

R.I.P. Mercury, say hello to Pontiac and Saab in car heaven for us.

Even this commercial looks like it was made by a Youtube Fanboy.

BMW Art Car on 39th Street

This car started out life as an E36 318is and Artist Ryan has turned it into what he calls "Half-Art Car, Half-Rat." He uses it as his daily driver and puts different pieces on the roof rack to keep the art alive.

BMW art cars have a long history and the current marketing campaign for the new Z4 is tapping into it, so it's good to see such a young BMW enthusiast pumping out his own work. Some of his smaller pieces were amazing too, especially the re-imagined 3.0 CSL etched on the rusty slab of metal. Might have to save up a few bucks and get one of these.

The artist had a whole wall of ideas, inspirations, rough sketches, media-collages and random thoughts on the world of art and the automobile. They also had another 3 series BMW in the show room being worked on connecting everyday mechanics to the aesthetic in life.

To contact the artist about his work, email Ryan Lawrence at nosamind@gmail.com