Summertime is here, summertime is great, summertime is fun. And since it's summertime, that means there are plenty of neighborhood classic car shows going on. But if you had to bring one new car to a classic car show, which would you bring?
The idea of bringing a new car to a classic car show came to me as a bit of practicality, really. I was up in the somewhat-tony riverside town of Nyack, New York, last week, and there were posters up everywhere advertising the upcoming classic car show.
It's not a particularly historic or venerated classic car show, as many are, since it's only in its third year. While in the town on a regular Tuesday evening, however, I saw an Alfa Romeo GTV, a BMW M635CSi, and a smattering of every variety of old Beetle you could imagine.
It's also the town where I saw that gorgeous Jaguar Mk. II last year.
So while the pedigree might not be there, all the right ingredients for a wonderful little community automotive gathering were planted already, even if it was just a random Tuesday night.
So when I saw those posters, I figured the only solution to my dilemma of not planning on going to the classic car show was to start planning on going to the classic car show.
There was only one problem. I do not actually own a vehicle befitting a classic car show. Which means I had to get one.
"Easy peasy," you say. "You work for Los Jalops! Surely it's easy for you to just order up any old Duesenberg SJ and have one delivered right into your face."
And sure, a Duesenberg SJ would be a splendid old car to bring to a classic car show. But if only it were so simple.
I'm about to get a little inside baseball here, however, for all those that love the automotive journalism industry. Contrary to popular belief, we can't actually get any car delivered to us, on a whim, just for our sole driving pleasure.
First, the car usually needs to come from a manufacturer's already-established press fleet. Then we usually need to establish some sort of purpose for borrowing it. Then we need to make sure the guys over at Motor Balls haven't reserved every single car in the fleet already for that entire decade.
And then we need to make sure our timing matches up with the manufacturer's timing. If I need to depart from wherever by 5 AM, and the car can't be picked until 10 AM, then no dice.
And there's a bunch of smaller little steps in between, which I won't bore everyone with.
So like I said, it's not a simple proposition. Getting a truly classic car is generally a no-go, since it's not like Chevy is keeping a whole bunch of '57 Bel Airs around just in case any aspiring auto journalist feels like having a nice sunday drive. Or that we would want one, because, let's be honest, everyone and their mom is going to have a '57 Bel Air at this thing.
So it's got to be a current car, and it's got to be plausibly in a press fleet, and it's got to be plausibly available. So that means no '57 Bel Airs, but also no BMW i3s (too new to have made their way into the press fleet), no Morgan Three-Wheelers (Morgan doesn't exactly actually have a press fleet), no Singer Porsches (unless someone wants to give us around $300 grand), and nothing boring.
Because you don't want to bring anything that won't get some sort of response out of a bunch of old, grizzled classic-car people. Sure, the Mazda3 is a great little car, but to a bunch of people to whom the '57 Bel Air is the holy grail, I'm just gonna be another punk with some other hatch made by some other company that nobody cares about.
I already posed this question on Twitter the other day, but I figured this would actually be a question better posed to our audience here and the Kinja Blog System (™), since you lot always seem to have some good ideas.
So which car would you bring to a classic car show? Show us in the comments below!