2019 Club Meet By the Numbers

This year is the 21st time I've been to the West Coast Crosley Club's annual fall meet, and after all the years I've learned a few things.

Raffi's Happy Cars

Raffi Minasian is a car guy of the first order - an automotive designer who got his first car when he was just 11 years old. And WHAT a car: a 1953 Giaur sports car powered by a Crosley 4 cylinder. With a car like that in the stable, the fact that he still speaks fondly of the stock Crosley Super Sports he picked up a few years later tells you a lot about him.

Raffi has had a fascinating career in the auto industry and currently writes for several car magazines... he just published an article in Vintage Road and Racecar about what makes a car fun to drive, starting with his Crosley.  A good read and some nice pics too!

Duh.

I Hate Trailers

I hate trailers.

Yet, here I am again, carting a Crosley behind my Toyota, on my way to the annual West Coast Crosley Club meet. This time, at least I have a good excuse...

Goodbye, Lil Garage

A strange day: the funky little shed that has been my workshop/garage/practice space for 12 and a half years, is gone. 

Special Collection

I was happy to learn that the California Auto Museum will be hosting a microcar show next year, from March 15 to August 5, 2019 - especially great news for me, given that CAM is about a mile and a half from my house. A friend of mine is on the Board of the museum was talking about the show and knew I had a microcar (or, uh, four). I told him about the Crosleys and one of the things I mentioned was that my 1950 wagon had been featured in Road and Track Magazine back in 1975.  He couldn't even picture what a Crosley looked like, so I told him I'd send him a few photos.

Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries

As I got the pictures together I looked to see if the R&T article had ever been posted online. I did some googling and found what seemed like it might be an online version of the article. I clicked through to the site and could not believe what I was seeing...

The 1st Annual Jenkem Spank'em 69 Road Rally

When my buddy Marcos was in town for the Snowball Rally in April, he invited me to drive the Crosley up to the Bay Area for the first annual "Jenkem Spenkem," what he described as a half-assed, ill-planned "shitty car ride" he was organizing for his birthday, 6/9. The idea was to get a bunch of his pals with old cars to meet up in the parking lot of a nearby Grocery Outlet, drive 69 miles on back roads around the bay, and end up at his house in Oakland for an afternoon BBQ. No entry fees, no cut-off dates, no fancy cars... just a goofy fun trip on some less-traveled roads.