Gone Hollywood

Glamour girl at the local park with a dream car realized - '56 Lincoln Premiere in Starmist White over Amethyst. When the photo was taken, it was an icon of an already superseded future and just the sort of extravagant foolishness the old timers in the sturdy Rambler next door had learned to live without. Kodachrome 35mm slide.

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Root Beer Injun Head

Part of a roadside 'Indian Village' complex that included a 50 foot tall teepee gas station and motor court of smaller teepee cabins on US 40 in Lawrence, Kansas.

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Camarito

People personalize their cars in very personal ways, but this particular impulse is new to me. Seems that Hebron, Ohio's Manny Powell had a tricked out 454 big block that he wanted on permanent display, so he sawed a '69 Z28 shell into 29 pieces and went from there. Honey, I shrunk the Camaro. As for interior accommodations, try to imagine any of the guys on either side, inside. Read all about it.

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Thunderbowl Comet

Dan Strohl of Hemmings Blog kindly indentified this formidable machine as the Golden Eagle aka Thunderbowl Comet. Although the car's story varies from one teller to the next, it did at least portray a Muroc Dry Lake LSR contender in a Jimmy Stewart B-movie called Speed in 1936, turning up years later as opening act at the Carpenteria Thunderbowl, a quarter-mile dirt track near Santa Barbara, California. As Auto Puzzler editor Ray B. posted, "The Carpinteria Thunderbowl was operational between 1947 and 1956. Anton Krivanek reminisced about the circuit: "I used to go there when I was about 14. The guy who owned it had a great big streamliner called the "Thunderbowl Comet". It had the name painted on the side and it had a big fin on the back end with a stylized comet with a tail of sparks and stars painted on it. He'd trundle it around the track before the races to impress the rubes (me). In my memory it was so long it could hardly make it around the corners... Years later I saw it parked alongside Highway 14 out near Acton as a draw for a sad little western roadside attraction. I told Strother MacMinn about it and he drove out there and checked it out. Turned out it was a pseudo land speed car built for a movie in the '30s and he had seen it parked on the street in Hollyweird in the late '30s or '40s. It was on a stretched L29 Cord chassis and eventually was bought and dismantled for its Cord parts." According to Strohl, the beast is still out there.

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