@Su8overdrive

To my friends in places with horrendous traffic,

Mar 29, 2025953 views

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· Mar 30, 2025

Driving in Los Angeles with my Model A Ford at 18yo was no trouble. I used any road or freeway I chose. Now when my wife complains about my driving I remind her I learned to drive in LA traffic. Didn't wreck my car either! I have driven it all my life.

· Nov 25, 2025

Su8overdriveMar 29, 2025
when, where do you take your rigorously rejuvenated ancient dragons out for an occasional fettling romp? Are we vampires now, consigned to the night, or if still mortal, venturing out only before 8am weekends?
Not talking about driving around your neighborhood, but at least 18-20 miles, long enough to get the oil so hot that using the old mechanic's test of touching the bottom of the oil pan, if too hot to keep your hand there, you haven't merely invited moisture-formed, bearing eating carbonic acid, sludge, varnish. Because you never start your engine, run it awhile, without driving at least 18-20 miles open road to get the oil hot. Cardinal rule.
Thinking Stupor Bowl Sunday the quietest roads annually, as it was suddenly 1978 again three years ago when i took my girl out for a ride in my wheeled alter ego. But this year, 'twas little less trafficked than any other Sunday afternoon. Such ain't fun anymore. Hell's bells, downright unnerving. Breeders in their badge-engineered transport pods, cross overs which my girl says look like wheeled hamsters in heat, piloted by texting, tweeting, junk food scarfing clones.
Because I never....see other old, as in o l d, at least pre-1950 authentically drive-trained barouches, out and about anymore. Never. Not even old sport cars, nada.
Until a decade ago, there was an enormous cars and coffee at the Blackhawk Museum, 15 miles east. 300, even 350 cars. In the sprawl of old metal as well as plastic/fiberglass rods, customs, retro rods, nifty fifties chrome baroque two- and three-toned juke cars, '60s this and that, was a former Pebble '30 or '31 Cadillac V-16 phaeton someone had driven not trailered. There were other well tended survivors from the '30s and '40s. But the best, for me, was a '34 Pierce-Arrow 8 club sedan, a "close coupled" luxe road car, made in the day for effortless relaxed travel anywhere. Not a snooty machine, but quietly regal. Parked casually by the curb, the man and wife bringing it wandering the multitude as I, wondering what else worthwhile for our sort.
What a car. I'd like it better than the V-12 version. A straight eight's all you need. That long, gracefully crook "cane shift" lever, as Packard called it, four individual seats in a day long before buckets. Once, flying with an old supercharged Cord Phaeton friend in his Cessna tail dragger bush plane, saw a steel gray barely luminescent '36 Willoughby Pierce V-12 sport sedan outside one of the hangars, birds eye maple, gray inside like a quiet day at an empty beach. Some cars grab you, a visceral thing, like some women; you see them and think, now we're talking. But this '34 Pierce was smaller than most such big "Classics." Admire some heavy iron of the '30s, but too large for me, prefer the later "pocket luxury cars" that replaced them. Yet this '34 Pierce 8 club sedan was just compact enough to work, to fit the bill.
Going to that huge cars and coffee was worth it that early that Sunday morning for the sake of seeing that bronze Pierce, with the scent of warmed engine, those evocative car smells that mean something to us just as our girls will try a dozen perfumes at Macy's.
A couple years later, that event gone, thanks to a few midlife crisis CPAs and successful drywall contractors doing "burnouts" and street racing in the usual look-at-me resale red and yahoo yellow Lamborghinis and "muscle cars."
There are other cars and coffees near me, but nothing old and authentic from the '30s or '40s shows up.
Been a long time since i saw someone else on the road or parked at a cars and coffee who gets it. Few of us on this forum are remotely "car snobs." We can appreciate anything.
But we're discerning, an alien word to most of the above. We like what we like. It's a visceral pull. Some powerful old "road cars," luxe or sub-luxe, in the right colors, designed before the war that took the world's remaining innocence; some cars, some women, some music, a well-written article in the New Yorker or National Geographic. This forum is populated largely by those owning or appreciating what were once known as "fine cars," and advertised in those magazines.
Today, gone. Disappeared from the roads. I'm an ex-NYer, long in the east Bay Area, half a century playing with prewar wheels. We've all memories. But i'm talking about now, today,
2 0 2 5. Those here gathered not all geriatric despite many of us born when Truman in office or well before. Others having "old souls" own such "full Classics" and their kin despite being lads of 40- or 50-something. But their charges are locked away in garages. Others have fled to the slightly  calmer North Bay for second acts, taking their fine cars with them.
But they're gone here. Maybe it's different where you are. To my fellows who must remain mired in urban suburban sprawl, how do you manage? Judging by the activity on these genteel, knowing forums, many of you are also under house arrest.
Even the most pampered, venerated, awarded garage queen must be driven else she age.

I think the best solution is to move out into a rural area where there isn't much traffic.

· Nov 25, 2025

Su8overdriveMar 29, 2025
But the best, for me, was a '34 Pierce-Arrow 8 club sedan, a "close coupled" luxe road car, made in the day for effortless relaxed travel anywhere. Not a snooty machine, but quietly regal. Parked casually by the curb, the man and wife bringing it wandering the multitude as I, wondering what else worthwhile for our sort.

We were regulars at Blackhawk and mourn the loss of that venue for the reasons you articulate. Perhaps you saw this one of mine--a 1934 Pierce 8 but a Silver Arrow "coupe" although it's more a 2-door sedan, pictured here on the Blackhawk entry road--certainly not a club sedan, though. At 144" wb, it's no shrinking violet.

Perhaps more to your greater point, over the past year on three occasions I've had to drive my 1930 Pierce roadster northbound on I-880 from San Jose to just before Oakland on Sunday afternoons, and the experience has been almost terrifying each time. In our local Nickel Age Touring Club, the main problem getting turnout for back road tours is the very unpleasant process of getting out of--and back into--the metropolitan Bay Area, whether driving the car itself or trailering. Today's drivers do not appreciate that we have neither 4-wheel power disc anti-lock brakes with sensors nor extremely responsive power steering with automatic lane control.

@Hemi Joel I'm too old and have 'way too much stuff to move to a rural area, and love where I am, other than as described.

· Nov 25, 2025

Oops, here's the photo I forgot to post...

· Nov 25, 2025

Zounds, Grimy, mayhaps your lovely '34 Pierce 8's the one, but woulda sworn there was at the late, great Blackhawk cavalcade a bronze close-coupled four-door club sedan of the same year or so? Anything/anybody come to mind?

That's a g o r g e o u s number, yours above. Note you also have a '36 Pierce 1601 five passenger sedan. Would that be my late friends Neil and Katherine Calderwood's well-tended factory hued Viceroy maroon five-passenger town sedan?

"There is nothing like a Pierce-Arrow," proclaimed their slogan. Truer ad copy never penned. Or typed.

And man o Manischewitz are you right about the whacked traffic here in the East Bay, the entire Bay Area having the worst traffic in the nation after only LA, according to Newsweek, TIME, US News & World Report. Returning from San Jose to Wastrel Creek late Sunday afternoon couple months ago in my gal's immaculate 104,000-mile '01 Miata we had to maintain a steady 80, not 75, but 8 0 lest bump drafted by impatient active lifestyle sorts in their Escalade or hard-charging Bozo in his F-150. Bless the wee blighter which Lauren christened Belle (silver, tan top), she returned 30 mpg. But whether driving such a genuine modern sport car or an 80-, 85-, 90-year-old dragon, the nicer any car apart from the indistinguishable transport pods, the more enjoyable to murmur along winding back road at a sedate 40-45, if you can find one, smelling the lilacs and remaining greenery. This being much of what prompted this post back in March, which i'm glad to see you rejuvenate.

Exactamente, as Pookie the Lion said to Soupy Sales. You've gotta get home from such roads less traveled via caffeinated corridors like I-680. Some of us have longer-legged auld barouches, and drum brakes can stop you fast as discs--if not repeatedly, which is why Jag beat hidebound Ferrari at Le Mans five times in the '50s. But who wants to rebuild such survivors only to grind the life out of them on the halting lock-step of concrete conveyor belt surrounded by impatient pilots of interchangeable badge engineering?

Jeepers, Hemi Joel, believe Grimy, I, and others just might possibly have thought of escaping to the country, but being enamored of the cultural offerings of metropolitan realms, were pondering salvation in place, foolish us.

· Nov 25, 2025

I drive the back roads to the rural areas. Best time is Saturday morning. Everyone is still in bed slipping off Friday nights shenanigans. If I do have to hit the highway, I do the speed limit in the slow lane. Go the heck around me if you need to get to the fire down the road. Leave me alone. :)

· Nov 25, 2025

@Su8overdrive in all my Sunday mornings spent in the Blackhawk shopping center parking lot, I don't recall any bronze 1934 Pierces (sounds like you're referring to the aberration 836A), and know all of them in the Bay Area. Of course, I could have missed a one-time participant.

Even a better Pierce slogan is/was "The man who owns a Pierce-Arrow envies no one." I have a 2x4 ft professionally enamel-on-steel sign to that effect and am currently engaged in discussions with my loved one as to whether that sign or a large opened Japanese fan belongs on an available wall in the TV room. All the wall space in my shop, aka Dogpatch Motors, is occupied from a lifetime of collecting SWS (Strange Weird Shxt).

My 1936 Pierce sedan is green and was restored by the late Doug Warren of Coarsegold in the mid-1970s, 100,000 miles ago, then went through a couple of owners before landing with the late Phelps Chamberlain, from whom I acquired it in 1995.

We trailered the 1918 Pierce to Park City UT last June for a 5-day tour, the worst part of which was the 20-mile run each day between the hotel at an I-80 intersection and the two-lane roads. And I found the drivers there to be even less tolerant of antique cars than those in the Bay Area

@avgwarhawk a delightful thing about the Blackhawk event is that we always avoided highways on the 25 miles each way and drove at 7:00 AM Sunday mornings through Crow Canyon which is replete with equestrian centers but is now being encroached upon by townhouse developments and the resultant traffic light intersections. The alternative to I-880 between San Jose and Oakland is Mission Blvd with no less than, possibly more, 57 traffic lights, too few of which are synchronized.

· Nov 25, 2025

AWWHH!! I sure feel for you guys! Choices we make/ made.

I MUST be missing something, though. Folks talk about grid lock and SLOW traffic. You talk about 70-80 mph traffic. Two different Bay Areas? LOL.

I lived in San Jose in 1956-1957. I drove trucks from 1972 to 2008. Bay area was a regular destination

· Nov 25, 2025

Ben Bruce aka First BornNov 25, 2025
AWWHH!! I sure feel for you guys! Choices we make/ made.
I MUST be missing something, though. Folks talk about grid lock and SLOW traffic. You talk about 70-80 mph traffic. Two different Bay Areas? LOL.
I lived in San Jose in 1956-1957. I drove trucks from 1972 to 2008. Bay area was a regular destination

It has changed a lot since 1956-57, Ben. In 1960 census, the CA population was 9M, in 1980 about 22M, now about 39.4M. Traffic runs at 70-80 mph on the fast roads until you reach a congestion point, then bumper-to-bumper.

· Nov 25, 2025

Su8overdriveNov 25, 2025
Jeepers, Hemi Joel, believe Grimy, I, and others just might possibly have thought of escaping to the country, but being enamored of the cultural offerings of metropolitan realms, were pondering salvation in place, foolish us.

@Su8overdrive and @Grimy and others: I enjoy your fine creative writing. Here is a potpourri of thoughts. First, I prefer to live in SF 15 minutes from the UCSF medical facility to cover old age emergencies. Second, regarding high speed roads, my 1941 Buick Estate Wagon, aka a truck, has no turn signals in the right and left taillights-only in a center BUICK EIGHT fixture. Modern drivers have no thought to look for turn signaling in the center. Someone on the forum said there is no problem as all modern drivers would be very aware of my presence. Maybe not. Finally, for my own cars and coffee aspirations Grimy, what is the venue shown as the backdrop of your wonderful Silver Arrow?

· Nov 25, 2025

@Grimy If I catch the Chesapeake Bay Bridge before 10 am, getting to the eastern shore of MD is a snap. Once on the shore it is nothing but country roads, farms and small towns. It is also very flat. Makes for nice driving experience.

· Nov 25, 2025

ShooteyNov 25, 2025
Finally, for my own cars and coffee aspirations Grimy, what is the venue shown as the backdrop of your wonderful Silver Arrow?

That is the entrance road from Camino Tassajara to the Blackhawk Shopping Center in Danville, CA where the Blackhawk Museum is located. For a number of years the Museum hosted a 1st-Sunday cars-n-coffee year-round. "Bring what you got." At the end of that entrance road to the right was a perhaps 100-space shaded lot that I called the "high rent area" and to the left a perhaps 1500-space no-shade lot. A docent would direct the more interesting cars to the shaded, close-in area until that area filled up, so it was good to arrive well before 8:00 AM! Toward the end of that wonderful experience about four or five years ago, the burnout contingent attracted the ire of other businesses in the center and of the local police at the exit. Several cars, both muscle and expensive sports cars, were wrecked against light poles during their dramatic exits. The event was at its best when Tim McGrane was the Executive Director of the Museum and he kept the event under gracious but firm control.

On a few occasions we arrived late and wound up in the South 40 with a Pierce, and got along fine meeting with street rodders, sports car folks, ratrodders, and everyone else. It was that kind of vibe. That 1st-Sunday event was free to all, and coffee and donuts available with donations requested. These days, the Museum hosts a Fathers' Day show with a registration fee of $50 but no free coffee. But once in awhile, we get lucky meeting interesting people, such as the lady with her grandfather's 1954 Buick Special stick-shift. Her grandfather had been a professional chauffeur for a lady in SF's Pacific Heights and drove her 1913 Pierce 48 touring, and later her 1922 Pierce EDL, all over the West Coast from Vancouver to San Diego. Some photos of these adventures were shared.

· Nov 26, 2025

Right, a handful of mid-life crisis muscle car, "hyper car" mortgage brokers, arbitragers trying to make up for their shortcomings ruined the huge Blackhawk event for us all. In which unrequited testosterone and ignorance supplant charm.

Do you have any pull, influence with any of the directors at Blackhawk, Grimy? I emailed them weeks ago asking if they'd like to have a special gathering of genuine cars from the first half of the 20th century, no retro rod crate-engined Frankencars, but never heard from them. As you know, the enormous San Francisco Academy of Art collection filling a pair of former showrooms on the city's Van Ness Avenue auto row has been largely liquidated, the kids running it harking to muscle cars, just as Fred and the recently departed Dan Kanter--R.I.P., Dan, you were part of this hobby for so many of us since at least the '70s-- turned operations over to their kids, who sold most of the pre-'60s inventory to Merritt and others.

It's normal for people to be drawn to what enticed them as teens. However, the most enthused and stringent members of the HCCA (Horseless Carriage Club of America, for 1916 and earlier cars) are 20- and 30-somethings.

Ken Burns was not around in the late 1700s, but gave us the terrific, most thorough, accurate look at the Revolutionary War the other week.

Cars and coffees and related are swell. There are otherwise too many "hot summer" this and that, suburban "concours" banking on car owner vanity, charging entry fees instead of setting up boy/girl scout booths asking the crowd for donations, which would make more sense given such events are a l w a y s to raise money "for the children." Hilarious.

If we're serious about traffic, those child-free or adopting should be getting tax breaks, given "smart growth" without curbing population growth just means turning the entire nation into Queens. Every poll of scientists shows them agreeing overpopulation remains our biggest by far problem, their words, "bigger than climate," but thanks to those whose business model so weak it demands evermore customers and cheap labor, the consumer-driven media blackout on the subject remains, despite other ways to fund Social Security and Medicare, every nation with declining birthrate enjoying higher per capita GDP.

Ted Turner, who coolly gave the UN a billion dollars, thinks that figure right for global population, what it reached in 1804, when Beethoven debuted the Eroica, his favorite of his nine symphonies. Bill Gates, whose Foundation now overseen by Melinda, provides education and contraception to women and girls around the world, thinks two billion, what it reached the year Lindbergh flew a crude single-engined tail dragger to Paris.

The disconnect is darkly comical. You bring up the big picture, some whine "politics." But in the next breath, they complain about traffic.

Like you, Grimy, i'm an ex NYer. In the late '60s, you could still drive anything on public roads just outside the city, including to Ed Jurist's wonderful Vintage Car Store in Nyack, when Chadwick, Lozier, Simplex, Locomobile "speed cars" were the holy grail, Duesenbergs, Packard, Pierce, Lincoln KB V-12s still slightly second tier. US population then 200 million. Today, nearly 350.

Perhaps further afield, but always preferred inline eights over V-12s, the latter "too much of a good thing," as a friend and owner of 70+ Packards since high school, pre- and postwar, junior and senior, inc. a '33 Twelve conv. coupe and several Darrins, puts it. Your Pierce 8, Grimy, was used unchanged other than twin ignition mandatory in emergency vehicles, by Seagraves through 1958. Something poetic about straight sixes and eights, the only i.c. engines with inherent natural balance, V-12s and V-16s just more of the same with firing impulses halved for less crankpin loading, more complexity, more to go wrong. Duesenberg, Chrysler Imperial, Stutz SV16/DV32 did just fine with "only" eight. Having ridden or driven well fettled examples of both, think much of the additional cylinder smoothness psychological.

Inline six for large sport or GT, eight in a row for vintage road car, luxe or not. That's the ticket for some of us.

Pardon verbiage. A Happy Thanksgiving to all.

· Nov 27, 2025

Su8overdriveNov 26, 2025
Like you, Grimy, i'm an ex NYer.

Gasp! Not I, sir, I'm a native Californio, although I have set foot in all 50 states and almost all US territories.

As to cylinder count, the only V-12 I've ever owned was a H series Lincoln (1948 Continental), not that that actually counts as a peer among those you mention. ? My three Pierce 8s have plenty of smooth power, and the 1918 Pierce dual valve 48 has enough displacement (525 cid) out of six cylinders to make it a torque monster that flattens any hill. (A retired police officer friend saw me accelerate the 1918 on a freeway onramp, and asked what I had been able to stuff into that ancient chassis.) I salvaged a 1941 Seagrave 8 for parts, and it yielded TWO Delco 662-J dual-point distributors for my 1934 and 1936--AND a brass water jacket, but what a heavy bugger to remove from my pickup bed with all that additional hardware attached.

Sadly, I have no contact with the Powers That Be at Blackhawk since Tim left, and their car collection now occupies less than half the real estate it once did. You might try the new leadership of NorCal CCCA who may have some influence.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

· Nov 27, 2025

My longtime friend and neighbor has an immaculate '38 Zephyr "town sedan," and if you look at the one-off '39 Bentley Corniche "speed saloon," it's obvious Derby/Crewe's heavy-handed aping of the "Ford and a half," as wags termed the junior Lincoln in the day.

How we wish Pierce had had the funds to launch their planned 25,000 1938 Hayes-bodied juniors at their far more affordable $1,200 base. You've got some splendid cars, and love the coincentric circles on the 1936-38 Pierce 8 & 12 speedometer which came with Warner R-1 overdrive standard equipment, showing rpm at speed in both under- and overdrive.

Woulda sworn you or someone above mentioned being an ex-NYer. Perhaps another here gathered or perusing this thread has sway with the Blackhawkers.

· Nov 27, 2025

Su8overdriveNov 26, 2025
poll of scientists shows them agreeing overpopulation remains our biggest by far problem, their words, "bigger than climate,"............yeah....i agreewith him so far....!
It always preferred inline eights over V-12s, the latter "too much of a good thing," as a lifelong owner of 70+ Packards since high school, pre- and postwar, junior and senior, inc. a '33 Twelve conv. coupe

isn't human nature fascinating....! The four cyl. guys assure us that four is enough.....the six cyl. guys make the same argument.....and this eight cyl. guy who tells us how many Packards he owns....says that's enough. I disagree. On the open road.... on old car events.....when I am "pulling a grade" I know exactly what this guy is thinking when he can't keep up with me...hmmm...human nature........probably the same thing I think about when I get passed by a Dusie SJ or Hisso ..........here's a suggestion for a happy life. Figure out what works for your own needs and limitations....get it and accept ITS limitations.......be happy.....just accept the fact there is always someone who has something bigger and better than you. Sure...o.k. to envy them....but to expres your resentment and jealously........well....dosn't say all that much about YOU...! (photo below is my wife and I enjoying our Twelve during a recent CCCA "CarAvan"...a high mountain pass in the Colorado Rockies...)

PACKARD COLORADO 2 - Copy.JPG

· Dec 2, 2025

GrimyNov 25, 2025
Toward the end of that wonderful experience about four or five years ago, the burnout contingent attracted the ire of other businesses in the center and of the local police at the exit. Several cars, both muscle and expensive sports cars, were wrecked against light poles during their dramatic exits.

All it takes is one idiot to wreck it for everyone else: Calgary car show comes to screeching halt after destructive stunt | Watch News Videos Online

The only hilarious part is he crashed into the pole with the maximum speed limit sign on it!!

Craig

· Dec 2, 2025

I live in suburbia. Definitely not in the hinterlands. Driving any day of the week between 9-3 is fine as long as you know which roads to get to and which roads to avoid. I can do 30 mile loops going either north or south on 2 lane 40/50mph roads. But we are getting snow today so the driving season is finished unless we get some rain.

· Dec 3, 2025

Our East Bay is suburbia on steroids. I get the impression many here gathered live, if not in the country, then in the exoburbs, or gated communities. The sun out today, low 60s, wanted to get the oil hot, since last trip all of a mile-plus to nearby 75-year muffler shop to have the exhaust centered where it twice passes through the X member, causing thumping otherwise. Figured midday, how bad could it be? Hell on earth. One moment, all the breeder clone lemmings scurrying along at 70, then a sea of brake lights down to 45 for a moment or two, then back to 70. This between 12:45 and 1:15. It's always rush hour out here, but first gear not required 'til after 3pm.

Haven't been a morning person since schooldays, so that leaves cars 'n' coffees out, weekend morns before 9 am the only daylight hours you can drive hereabouts in relative tranquility, other than Stupor Bowl Sunday, when seemingly the entire nation before their TVs, insanely rooting for one city's collection of free agents over another's. A bigtime collector of cars you might've seen in the original pre-1954 Mille Miglia years ago started the California Mille and the Anti-Football Drive. But their launch site a bistro in Marin, a freeway and bridge too far.

Back to house arrest for me and my spoiled rotten gothic grilled b___ch. But long a case-hardened autoholic, i seek succor on these swell forums, where i spend too much time. Ah, life.

The muffler shop now owned by a mere lad of 68, who's worked there the past 40 years, learning from its late founder the "old ways," including on auld departed friends' Cords, Delahayes, a Maybach Zeppelin, among other more prosaic fare. Like gearheads Paul Newman, Dave Garroway, James Garner, Andy Griffith, Doc Severinsen ('30 or '31 Lincoln), and the late Hemmings publisher Terry Ehrich, I'm a Democrat, so like them all, high born or not.