We live a few blocks from one of those auto rows — a string of car dealerships including Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer. My husband goes by them on his daily walk, and he came home the other day and told me one of the dealers had moved, leaving an empty storefront with 2 interesting-looking cars inside. They sort of looked like Corvettes but weren’t. Yesterday I walked over with him to check them out…
The back said “SV” and “9 Campetizione,” so we took a picture and headed home to look it up in Google. This blog says it’s a “a re-skinned C6 Corvette with a touch of Italian flair” and it’s set to debut here in San Francisco this weekend, then have an unveiling at the Concorso Italiano in Monterey in mid-August.
It’s not often you get to see a car before it’s been debuted — even if it is behind a dirty store front window! More pictures and info here. And click on our “spy photo” above to see a bigger version.

Toyota has a new micro-car for Japan and Europe called the iQ. As part of their ad campaign, they hired an agency based in Belgium to design a new font that “demonstrates the small car’s agility.” The agency decided to let the car design the font itself. Using two typographers, a motion capture programmer, and a racing driver, they filmed the car driving around in a warehouse and the movements were translated digitally into each corresponding letter…

(From here)

At my house, our cars include both Porsches and Volkswagens. So it was amusing to find this hybrid on Ebay. According to the listing, it’s a “1966 porsche body kit vw bug….it runs and drives nice, feels like a go cart! this car draws mega attention going down the road or at shows, people love it….ive driven it several 50 mile trips with no issues. its getting around 27 mpg too! the car may look like it will hit the ground,it has a 3 inch rubber guard so you have good clearance anywhere with it. looking at it coming down the road it looks like its about a inch off the ground. ”

I have a few mini wind-up car toys, but nothing like the tin toys being shown at the Japan Society in NYC this summer. Coupling traditional metalworking skills with imported machinery, Japanese tin toys established a worldwide reputation after World War II for their quality and detailed workmanship. The exhibit showcases 70 examples of faithful mini models of Cadillacs, Buicks, Chryslers, Pontiacs, Chevrolets, Studebakers, and Fords. You can see pictures of some of the cars here and read some trivia about the heyday of Japanese tin toys here.

General Motors Cadillac 62 Four-Door Sedan, 1950; with friction motor. 9 1/2 x 3 7/8 x 3 1/8 in. (24 x 10 x 8 cm). Suzuki Gangu, about 1953–54. Yoku Tanaka Collection. Photo: Tadaaki Nakagawa.

Instead of a yearly vacation to the beach, my husband & I spread ours out over 5 or 6 track weekends a year, some with our local Porsche club and some with the Northern California NASA. In May, we were at Buttonwillow Raceway in the hot center of California. Several friends were commisserating about their bad backs, and John, in particular had some unorthadox advice — he tapes medicinal magnets to his back to reduce his pain. He also was emphatic that his back didn’t hurt when strapped into his GT-3 raceseat. Well, I didn’t think of it again until I found this office furntiure made from car seats (fancy ones, too — not just Porsche but Ferrarri and Maserati).

This past March Bertoia Auctions sold part of a collection of antique toy cars — 1,400 pieces from a collection of over 7,000! I’m a collector too, but nothing on that scale! The video below shows off the collection, and some of the prices they fetched are listed on the auction houses’ website. There’s also a nice story about how the Kaufmanns collected their stash at the NY Times here.

Porsche and Mustang where the featured marques at this past weekend’s Palo Alto, California Concours d’Elegance. You can see Rich Tsai’s photos here.

I wouldn’t say we have too many cars. It’s the extra stuff that turns out to be a problem…. where to put those priceless wheels, the tires in 5 different sizes, and of course the spare part that we probably don’t need but would be too hard to replace? In most houses, open a closet door and you’ll find coats or suit cases or shoes and boots. But at my house, you’re as likely to find wheels. To the left you’ll see our downstairs hall closet (and our cat, Elwood). It’s always a balancing act when we acquire something new — what to move, where to put it. It was all easier when we didn’t live together, there were more closets and two garages. But since consolidating, I have fewer clothes and shoes and extra sheets for the bed.

More stuff to decorate your car: these tire valve stem caps made from legos and come in orange, black, red, blue and neon green.