Wheel spins: Fast forward 35 years and guess what? Reborn pony cars are taking off again like race horses. The Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro saddled up in 2005 with new ponies and galloped with concept cars at the 2006 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Now, the Dodge Challenger is ready to trot from the show stand to the show room. While the curvaceous Challenger looks like a reissue, it is modern size because of its Chrysler LX underpinnings.
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I ran across an old artist friend, Bob McCoy, who is as busy as ever turning out paintings and sculptures of auto racing’s distant past. To see some of his work, worth thousands of dollars, is hard to imagine because of his tumultuous but adventuresome career. The Lakeside resident was an animal trainer, sprint car driver and rodeo cowboy. After a lengthy hospital stay with injuries from a bucking bronco tumble, he decided then to take pen and paint brush in hand. Pretty good, too, for a high school dropout.
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Another fellow comes to mind, but this one’s in the major leagues of business. He’s the incomparable Roger Penske. We can honestly say we knew him well, talking to him at Riverside International Raceway in 1962 after he scored a controversial victory in a Canadian-American Challenge race. The rules called for a two-seat body and his was more like a single-seat formula machine. He won that argument and has been winning somewhere ever since.
Most will identify him with his race cars, winners of 14 Indianapolis 500s. Away from the track, he is in partnership with General Electric, a 12,000-vehicle Penske Truck Lease company, and serves as chairman of United Auto Group Inc., a consortium of 173 U.S. car dealerships and 123 non-U.S. stores. He tops all that off with a new venture, as an importer and U.S. sales chief for Daimler Chrysler’s new two-seat Smart Car ” a far cry from his position along the Indy pit wall wearing headsets.
Porsche and Lexus are currently running 1-2 in the influential J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, which potentially boosts sales as consumers continue to focus on quality as a leading factor in buying decisions.
What a jump. Porsche ranked 32nd last year. I guess they got their act together.
The survey included 63,000 new car owners. Each was asked 237 questions. Hyundai, Toyota, Jaguar and Honda were third through sixth, respectively.
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In its biggest ever tie-in with a major motion picture, Volvo Car Corp. supported its official promotion of Disney’s release, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with a global, multimedia treasure hunt for a VolvoXC90 V8 that has been buried somewhere in the world. Volvo retailers had the free treasure maps. Then, prospective hunters registered for the search. What will they think of next?
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Through Oct. 23, the San Diego Automotive Museum will display historic Chevrolets. The next show, Oct. 27-Jan. 29, 2007, will feature the 1935 California Pacific Expo when the Aerospace Museum was then known as the Ford building.
Qualcomm Stadium’s parking lot will feature the San Diego Auto-Cycle Show and Swap Meet on Labor Day, Sept. 4, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Watch for Johnny McDonald’s “Auto Biography” car column each month in the Village News.