Not a Cloud in the Sky: Caffeine and Octane at the Beach

This weekend was supposed to be about cars. It certainly wasn't my first pilgrimage to see some steel. Last year I trekked to Hilton Head for the third time and watched a Packard get fished out of a water hazard at the Port Royal Golf Club. The summer before that, I drove all the way from Detroit for the Concours d'Elegance of Michigan. It was 700 miles up, with a cracked windshield and no rear view mirror.

My windshield was clear this time, but that stupid mirror fell off again. I've since decided it's too heavy for its own good. It happened a couple weeks ago, actually, when I lazily romped over what was probably the two-millionth manhole cover I'd pounded in the IS.

But this weekend I was headed to Jekyll Island, one of Georgia's barrier islands that sits about 20 feet above sea level, protecting the port of Brunswick. It's also provided a winter getaway for New England corporate magnates since the late 19th century. Here, the chamber of commerce decided to approve an event I've been looking forward to for months.

Caffeine and Octane, now managed by Cox Communication's automotive arm, has plugged Caffeine and Octane at the Beach since last fall. It's the marketing department's first stab at expanding the Atlanta-based show to more markets. They picked the three-day span of this St Patrick's Day weekend to attack; nearby Savannah's population is known to swell by half a million as the River Street Ankle-Breaking Convention stumbles down every year.

I arrived around noon on Saturday, the spotless cerulean sky left no shelter for a merciless sun, which wasn't helping my sunburn. But it was perfect for a day outside looking at cars. The temperature barely broke 70.

What this weekend meant for local government was a big pay day, with the booth at the entrance to the island ringing its proverbial cash register constantly. Normally quaint, the beach village adjacent to the Jekyll Island Convention Center (where the show was being held) was scattered with cars and wanderers. Jekyll is actually owned by the state government, so new developments are severely restricted in order to preserve the island's natural beauty. There's only one gas station on the island and lodging here is limited to just a handful of hotels and vacation rentals.

My first move after parking near the Beach Village was to find some shelter from the sun. Inside the main hall of the convention center was an odd array of cars ranging from a Ferrari F430 Scuderia to a BMW 550i GT--I like to think the latter was subject of intense event planning contention. God I hope it was. But it soon became clear that if the increased organization of C&O has been apparent in the past couple years, then this weekend on Jekyll Island was the marketing team's magnum opus. Booths inside sold vintage airbrushed motorcycle helmets, line drawings of BMWs drifting, racing accessories, and crocodile driving loafers. Throughout the weekend, seminars were held in various rooms of the convention center (for a fee), with names like Chip Foose headlining the festivities.

Show literature promised 300 cars and a rough head count verified this. It was a much more restrained showing compared to the Atlanta show, but also a chance for neat-car owners in the Georgia and South Carolina low country (and bits of north Florida if we're keeping tabs) to show off their rides. This produced a few notables I hadn't seen before, like a 1958 Bentley that was ordered by a Venezuelan dignitary. The twist in the story is, he never took delivery, so the car eventually found another home in the oil-rich South American country, remaining in that family's ownership until the late 90s.

While we're discussing deviations from the Atlanta show, I'll also note that Jekyll's buzz was largely centered around bespoke hot rods. Those cars earned prime beachfront real estate on the front lawn of the convention center.

One of them, dubbed "La Cucaracha," was a Buick rat rod with a straight-eight set in front like an industrial auger. I can only imagine it made a sound to match. There were two electric vehicles, but no Tesla badges here. One was a banana yellow Volkswagen van; the other, a Honda motorcycle with a data bank sized slab of batteries between rider and handlebars.

Overall, the show's pace and restraint fit the mood of the weekend, and definitely the picturesque setting. Gone was the free-revving and stereo-cranking one might associate with the big city meet, but gone also was a bit of the diversity you'd find in Atlanta. To be fair, there was a Brazilian market Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, which featured unique bodywork more in tune with its amphibious cousin. And the Bentley was special as well, along with the hot rods. But certain cars were missing from the young show, ones which should have been there.

British sports cars were in short supply, save for a Triumph, a Morgan and an Allard; a very special car indeed, but this hardly runs the gamut of a full showing. Gone also were the Italian sports cars of years past--think Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Fiat. Only your standard, contemporary Lamborghinis and Ferraris were on hand, with a Testarossa and DeTomaso mixed in for good measure.

All of this is not to say it wasn't a good show, because the most important thing about Caffeine and Octane was still present on Jekyll: the enthusiasm. People talked to each other, swapped stories and passed along knowledge. There were fans young and old, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends and everything in between. Because, at the end of the day, it all goes back to that same love of cars.

Several months later, I took another trip to Jekyll for Points North Atlanta Magazine, which you can read about here.

The 80's in Car Advertisements

It was a zany time, a decade before I was born, but I read the stories afterwards. I saw the flourescent workout clothes and heard the synthesizers that backed up a moody Phil Collins. The 1980s were a time of discovery, and the decade sticks out in history as a time of life in color.

Car advertisements, of course, reflected that time. New, exciting, red, fiery, a blast to drive--these words could've been used to describe a Pontiac GTO or Pontiac Fiero.

One of the first things I noticed about these ads, which are lifted from 1985 and 1986 issues of Road & Track magazine was the sheer amount of information still present in ads at that time. Often, several paragraphs touted things like the oddball Peugeot 505's lackluster 0 to 50 time (it was still measured in that before the national speed limit was upped). Instead of slow, they said their customers cared more about just the power anyways.

Sadly, though, the 505, like a lot of strange cars for sale in the United States at the time, didn't sell very well at all. But those bad sales numbers weren't just limited to imports. This was a time when the auto industry in our country was having a bit of a struggle.

Japan had swept over the United States like a Kevin Bacon Footloose number. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and even Subaru had started to make a name for themselves here and in Europe, because buyers realized they could have a car that sipped fuel, was inexpensive to maintain, iron-clad reliable, and inexpensive to buy in the first place.

Echoes of the fuel crisis were still being felt in the late 80s, and American carmakers simply couldn't adapt as well to the small car market. Think cars like the Ford Grenada, the AMC Pacer, and the abysmal Cadillac Cimarron. Advertisers touted these cars' abilities like you wouldn't believe, even going so far as to suggest buyers were somehow "un-American" for choosing a car from an overseas maker.

Muscle cars were where the US held strong, though. The ad agencies knew this of course, and plastered the magazine with scenes of bikini-clad women surrounding a guy in a Camaro, edgy, almost Tron-inspired ads for cars like the Dodge Daytona, and slick spots for the fox-body Mustang that touted its handling prowess.

Indeed, this time in history marked a bit of a shift back to the gas-guzzlers that were alienated in the late 1970s. No longer was it as unwise to own a Corvette or a big Cadillac or full-sized pickup, but the market had certainly expanded further. Cars like the Plymouth Conquest, a six-cylinder turbocharged hatchback coupe, represented a new age of affordable sports cars that could hold their own on a road course.

Of course, the Conquest jumped into the ring with Japanese sports cars like the Toyota Supra, the MR2, and even the Isuzu Impulse, which all offered affordable, forced-induction performance.The high-pitched whines of those engines combined with the constant squealing tires must've meshed pretty well with the Miami Vice soundtracks of the era, I imagine.

And the Vice was certainly an inspiration for many an ad agency as well. BMW mixed that with James Bond to appeal directly to the types of folks they figured bought BMWs--slick, business types who liked to party. And of course, they were right.

Truthfully, though, most of the ads were pretty straight-laced. One or two pages, they usually featured a visual that took up 50-75% of the page, accompanied by quite a lot of text, as mentioned before, and usually a catchy slogan that went with the campaign. During this time, Dodge used "An American Revolution," which would interestingly enough be used by Chevrolet in the mid-2000s. Toyota liked the question: "Who could ask for anything more?" And  my favorite, from Hyundai: "Cars that make sense." Although, at the time, Hyundai's cars weren't doing very much more than that.

You can catch more of my vintage automotive advertising finds on my newly-minted Tumblr blog, Car Advertisements in Print.

Cruisin' with Creepers at The Strand, 7-18-2015

Today the historic Earl Smith Strand theater in Marietta, Ga hosted a classic car show. Two main arteries through the square --North Park Square and East Park Square-- were blocked off to other traffic, but open to pedestrians so that they could see some great examples of classic Detroit steel. Creepers Car Club, founded just down the road in Smyrna back in 1960, was well-represented on this hot Saturday afternoon.

What caught my eye, then? Well, the atmosphere was the first thing. These streets, normally bustling with afternoon traffic, instead funneled a diverse crowd through the small show area. I ran across two older gentlemen with sons in-tow, explaining the straight-8 Buick we were standing in front of. Then it was on to a beautifully-redone Chevelle, 1966, with the appropriate year-of-manufacture license plate. The silver Chevelle had a corner spot, and rightfully so. Red pinstripes on the tires accented the Torq Thrust style wheels beautifully, and further proved that you don't always need a lot of flash to be noticed.

But there certainly was a fair display of flash elsewhere. A custom, chopped top Mercury convertible turned the heads of everyone passing by. Further down the lane, however, I found something even more interesting.

Rat rods are almost always head-turners, because they go against every single rule we know about classic cars. Classic cars should be clean, well-preserved examples of what used to be. But rat rods, on the other hand, are the exact opposite.

Examples like this sedan and pickup are often made to look even more ravaged by the elements and years than they already have been. Intentional surface rust, broken glass, stickers, and ripped up upholstery are all staples of the rat rod.

Shows like this one are the hotbeds of Americana. Located in a historic town square --one spared by Sherman in his march to the sea-- these events are the epitome of small town America. They're the picture you see on the postcard. The cars are simply display pieces, testaments to what used to be. I overheard a guy my age drop the token phrase: "They don't make them like they used to." While on the whole I like to disagree with that statement ("Look at our technology nowadays!" I say. "Don't live in the past!" I say), we do benefit a lot from looking at the past.

You see, even the rat rods are being preserved. Underneath all of that surface patina (to put it nicely), there's often a modern, sophisticated chassis and drivetrain. But history repeats itself. Undesirable cars are filtered out; they die off one by one, then hundreds by hundreds until only several are left. These several remaining Ford Tempos are kept running by their faithful owners (for some reason), but then expire to the pages of history. Only the staple cars--the Pontiac GTOs and the Camaros and even the Falcons-- are kept going because they light that spark. It's a spark that's ignited from a combination of factors.

The way these cars look, or the way they drive, or even television shows and movies they appeared in. They inspire a collective group of people who can afford to fix them back up to their former glory. And then they're passed back down to us, the masses, in hopes that we'll catch a glimpse and become compelled to stay a little longer and truly examine these pieces of history.