Hall of Very Good Cars: Also Kicked Out Of An Ultimate Garage

First, I thank everyone who has been reading the blog lately. Both the last four days (Thursday-Sunday) and the last WordPress week (Monday-Sunday) had more views and visitors for any such time frames since February.

I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but I am hard pressed to ascertain the reason(s) for the dramatic increase. (For example, views for the last week were 34% higher than the average of the previous four.) I suppose I should just be grateful, but that’s not in my nature.

Having a failure of our second floor HVAC system in the middle of an Arizona summer doesn’t help my mood, I guess. We had the entire system–AC unit, furnace, blower motor, coil–replaced last year. If it hadn’t been for the third strong thunderstorm in four days, I might not have been able to get any sleep at all, as opposed to the four hours of poor quality sleep I did manage. A relevant photo:

Not too long after I took this picture, the mountain disappeared in the rain. I wish I had a rain gauge because micro-climatic variations in this area are such that rainfall amounts for surrounding locations are not much of a guide as to how much rain we received at our house.

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In light of the strong number of views and visitors for days in which the posts had little, if any, automotive content I am reluctant to write about cars today. Here goes…

This picture from this post reminded me of another car that once occupied a spot in one of my Ultimate Garages, but was not included in Ultimate Garage 3.0 last July.

The Facel Vega was a hybrid in the original meaning of the word in an automotive context. The chassis was designed by British race driver Lance Macklin, Facel owner and founder Jean Daninos (Facel was a French company) designed the body and the car had an American drivetrain: a Chrysler V-8 engine (a hemi from 1954 to 1958) and, usually, a Torqueflite automatic transmission. The car had three iterations: the Vega, the HK 500 and the Facel II.

Despite famous people like Tony Curtis and Ringo Starr owning a Facel Vega, the cars didn’t sell well enough to keep Facel afloat. The last Facel Vega was manufactured in September, 1964 and the company was liquidated in 1965.

I grant that the exterior design is, perhaps, a bit dated. However, I am still very much a fan of the Facel Vega. Just one is shown with a listed price (as opposed to “Inquire”) in Hemmings ads this morning; the asking price is $197,500.

On a more general topic, I remain curious about what content readers want to see. As long as the comments are civil, please feel free to express yourself truthfully. Thanks.

#HallofVeryGoodCars

#BoomInBlogViews

#FacelVega

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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