Hoonivercinema: The Beverly Hills Cop II Intro Sequence

The second installment to the Beverly Hills Cop movie series has one of my favorite title sequences. As Axel Foley, Eddie Murphy takes his Ferrari 328 GTS to work through Detroit morning traffic, accompanied by a Bob Seger soundtrack. There are Ferrari engine noises, there’s some inspiring driving and there’s also a number of continuity issues (count the times the 328 is replaced by a 308).

When I was a kid, I almost wore out my VHS copy of the film just rewinding the sequence back and watching it again, then repeating. Got to love YouTube.

Make the jump to see the clip again. It has been a while, hasn’t it?

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Time Sink Of The Century: Dave Friedman’s Archives

After serving in the Navy, Dave Friedman attended and photographed many amateur sports car races around the Los Angeles area. In 1962,Friedman was hired as staff photographer for Shelby-American Inc. It was in this capacity that Friedman earned the opportunity to photograph the development of the Shelby Cobra. In 1966 and 1967, Friedman was hired by Ford Motor Company to document the company’s racing program. Friedman again bore witness to the unique experience of capturing the first American-designed and built racecars to conquer the grueling 24-Hours of Le Mans, the GT40. Friedman had a lengthy jaunt in the film industry, but continued to photograph his passion of motor racing through into the nineties.  

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Hooniverse Wagon Wednesday: The Addy Edition

So last evening this olelongrooffan was hanging out at the Taj Mahal enjoying the consumption of some hurricane supplies and looking through my image library to try and scrounge something up for Hooniverse Wagon Wednesday. It’s been since my trip to the Corvette Museum that I had seen any cool longroofs.

Before I could find any cool longroofs to honor this day, I did find some cool old longroof ads and thought my fellow Hoons would enjoy them.

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EV Midget Build – Part 8: Finishing Touches and Adventures

35 days had gone by since I decided to do this build.  With a lot of help from my friend Sam and my dad, this thing was up and running in time to take it to the Wells Fun Run in Wells, Nevada.  But, it still needed a few things.  It needed a proper seat, a charging port, and my wagon needed a hitch to tow it with.

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Modern Art Monday – 1993 Moskvitch/AZLK Pedal Car

Today, I’ll be introducing a car from my old personal fleet. This cornflakes-powered Moskvitch/AZLK pedal car was brought over from a trip to Russia back in 1993, and it’s one of the first cars I’ve gotten my hands on. Granted, at nine years old I didn’t really fit in there, but my younger brother hooned it around the backyard with such vigour we had to swap the steering wheel for an aftermarket part later on – the original wheel was a thinner, white plastic item.

As we cleared some stuff from our old storage room and I picked up some tires, it was time to get the old Moskvitch back from the shelf and see how it runs.

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EV Midget Build – Part 7: Wiring, Body, and Test Drive

Four cables looping back and forth from the throttle assembly to the resistor pack.

This crazy idea of mine was about to come to life.  The midget only needed wiring to be fully functional car. (Car? Toy? I don’t know, or care.)  So, off we set, plying our electrical skills.

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Personal Favorit – 1986 Skoda Favorit

Today, I’m wheeling out more European quirkiness, this time in the shape of a groundbreaking Bertone design. Yes, this dirty white box of a car was a dawn of a new age for the Czech car manufacturer Skoda; it’s an Italian-designed front-engined front wheel drive hatchback.

For decades, Skoda built what the Soviet brothers told them to, and that meant chucking all front-engined designs in the bin and using the same-old same-old pushrod engine in the rear of the car instead. But by 1987, the Soviet ice had thawed so much, that Skoda could introduce a competitor for the Samara and an actual contender in the booming European hatchback market.

Sure, the Favorit was far from perfect, but it was the car that stuck the foot in Volkswagen’s door in the early ’90s and got the company under VAG’s wings. Czech check out the pics.

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True Blue – 1973 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

When I was a kid, there was a maroon ’80ish C3 Corvette just around the block from our house. At the time, it was the definition of an American sports car for me: incredibly low and swoopy, straight from the pages of a Chevrolet book I used to leaf through. While those years of the Corvette weren’t the best of the C3 bodystyle, it was still the same iconic shape and undeniably the coolest car in town.

Now that I’m living on the other side of the country, it’s nice to see I can still walk around the block and spot another C3: I saw this deep, deep blue 1973 Corvette just 300 metres from my apartment. It’s a better car and a better design, as it still has chrome even if the front section now has an urethane nose. Like yesterday’s Spitfire, it’s a classic piece of ’70s nostalgia that never really goes out of vogue.

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EV Midget Build – Part 6: Odds and Ends

The next item on the to-do list for the midget was brakes.  We could roll and steer, now we needed to stop.  ’40s midgets did not use a brake pedal.  Instead, they had a lever on the outside of the vehicle which was actuated by hand.  The lever actuated the rear-only brakes.  Midgets were drift cars long before drift cars were a trend.

An example of a period midget brake lever can be seen in the above photo with a white knob. That is my grandfather, Dale Ith in the 108 car.  This photo was taken at a now defunct racetrack in Salt Lake City called the Hippodrome circa 1948. 

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Finnish Line – Selected Snapshots from an American Car Show

On Tuesday, I posted some select motorcycle shots from last Saturday’s American Car Show held in my town, the Finnish coastal town of Kokkola. Today, you get to see the actual cars that were displayed at the venue. There’s a good helping of American metal on display here, and it shows here in the variety of cars that the region is full of petrolheads that get their kicks on the Route 66 in their collective minds.

Outside it was rainy, sleety and slushy, as you would expect; inside there were trailer queens, racing cars, rarities and beaters. Click and scroll for the complete content.

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