Agree that it looks better than the Cybertruck, but I don’t know if that’s saying a whole lot.
A nice silver Ferrari 458. Its license plate: FOUR58
A Polestar at REI with a bike rack on the roof. And the bicycle too.
What was the bike?
A nice looking Chrysler Crossfire. It was smaller than I remembered.
I didn’t notice.
Lincoln makes an SUV named the… Nautilus? Yes, Nautilus. It used to be called the MKX but Lincoln is phasing out that name. Since 2019 it has been known as the Nautilus.
Today, riding home in Hampton Roads, Virginia, I saw a black car with a license plate that’s apparently from Korea, China, or Japan (it had Asian characters on it, in any event-- I don’t know how to tell the difference between those three languages), and the driver was seated on the right side of the vehicle.
A Pontiac Grand Prix, 1968, I think. What a weird looking front end. And it’s a big as a house plus fender skirts.
In the last week, I’ve seen 3 unusual license plates. Two were standard Illinois passenger plates, one simply TT and the other a three digit number. But this morning, I noticed an Illinois issued US Congressman plate, number 1, presumably the First Congressional District. The State Legislature ones are easy to find but I don’t recall seeing another for US Congress. Here’s a 15 year old guide to Illinois license plates, there are some oddly specific ones I wasn’t aware of like fertilizer spreader, not to be mistaken for farm fertilizer:
I saw a green Gran Torino on my walk this afternoon.
It’s a '65.
When I went out to lunch today I saw what I’m pretty sure was a Ferrari Portofino on the way to the restaurant, although I was looking at it through the trees and bushes planted on the median, so it was hard to make a good id.
At the restaurant there was a BMW i8 in the parking lot. Those things look pretty exotic too, especially in profile.
ANGINA. Really?
And the ironic thing I’d that this was spotted in the parking garage at a hospital.
Walking up the beach today, I saw a Ford Model T convertible driving down the beach.
Ages since I posted, but the car that eventually reminded me to do so earlier this week fits nicely with the Lotus Elise conversation further up. Lotuses used to be pretty common round here but these days I hardly see them at all, and the newer models are very uncommon - I don’t think I’ve even seen anything later than an Exige.
Anyway, the other day I saw a very nice, and quite new-looking Lotus that was slightly more exotic than an ordinary Elise so I didn’t immediately recognise it. It was in racing green with yellow go-faster stripes, and had Type 25 in a racing-number circle decal on the side and on the back. I didn’t know the Type 25 so thought it was a new model. Looking it up, I was a bit disappointed to discover that it was a special edition Elise from 2008, named after the old Type 25 racer. But then looked further and found that they’d only made about 25 of them - so it was actually really quite rare! It definitely looked better than an ordinary Elise, and didn’t look 14 years old so somebody has been taking good care of it.
It also had a confusing licence plate with “25” as the number, also making me assume it was new, which if it were in the current format would put it in the future - but it must have been an older format with changed spacing (one digit of the number moved forward), I think.
A friend of mine used to have a Mk 2 Elise (I think he had a Mk 1 before that) and I’ve been in it a couple of times, one of the few of that type of car that I have actually been in. As a fat six-foot-tall bloke it was really hard to get in and out of, with door sills up to your armpits. Apparently the Mk 1 was even worse. Although I’m sure it was great to drive and definitely looked the part, it made me realise that I could never look good in an exotic car myself because the moment anybody saw me getting in or out it would completely ruin my image!
Anyway, apart from that, there was a seasonal lull in London supercars, but picked up a bit in the last couple of months (I think it must now be proper “supercar season” when the rich Arabs come over with theirs, but they’re all in Kensington and Mayfair). For a while it seemed McLarens were appearing proportionately more than usual but maybe not.
I think I’m still seeing fewer exotics than were around last year but some of the newer models are starting to appear. In the last month or two I saw my first McLaren GT, and my first Ferrari Roma - which looks better in real life than in photos, and is quite unusually styled for a Ferrari even though that doesn’t come across in pictures. It looks almost like a Porsche 928 from the back. I liked it.
Earlier this week I saw a Ford Mustang Mach-E, which bears no obvious relationship to the muscle-car Mustang at all - looks nothing like one and presumably, since it’s electric, has little in common mechanically - so I’m not sure why it’s called that. There was no external Ford branding on it at all, only the Mustang branding, so I almost wondered if they’d spun off Mustang as a separate brand rather than just a model name. Maybe they are planning to.
Interesting morning for cars today.
On my drive to Physical Therapy I spotted two cars in front of the drug store that caught my eye. The first and more interesting was a black 3rd gen (1965-68) Ford Galaxie 500. It wasn’t pristine, but it looked like it had been raced. Directly in front of it was a 2nd gen (1968-72) Chevelle/Malibu. It was in significantly poorer shape than the Galaxie, with obvious rust showing.
On the way home I saw a late 40s or early 50s sedan with a very high, square hood, boxy shape, and tail mounted spare tire, but it went by too quickly for me to get any identifying marks. It was in great shape.
For what it’s worth, I have a 2012 Mustang (the actual pony car kind), and there isn’t a single Ford logo or brand name on its exterior, other than on a small sticker on one of the side windows, touting that it was built at Ford’s Flat Rock plant.
As a former Mustang owner, I don’t get Ford’s thinking on that. Better to name this car after a sturdy workhorse than a Mustang. But FoMoCo’s marketing group talked themselves into keeping it for I don’t know what reasons, perhaps name recognition. They should have called it the Percheron.
The Ford Clydesdale?
If they had named it something like e-Escape, do you think we would be discussing its name in this forum right now? No! But because they gave it the name “Mustang”, everyone’s debating whether they should have named it that, and giving them free publicity. It was a brilliant marketing move!