Dreams…

Dr. Zal, my best friend, and his family (Dr. Zal and the Zalettes?) are about to move to a new city. It is just an hour from where they currently live, but it is a move all the same.

Whether it is because of the impending move or some other reason I had a dream last night/this morning that Dr. Zal visited me and that I was extraordinarily happy to see him. I am always happy to see him, of course, but in this dream that feeling was unusual, almost as if something very good or very bad had just happened.

How many of you remember your dreams? I don’t know if it is a blessing or a curse, probably a bit of both, but as regular readers know I seem to be able to recall many dreams, at least long enough to be able to write about them here the next day.

When I was in college I had a recurring dream, probably shared by more than a few college students, that I was late for class, but that the faster I tried to get there, the slower I moved. I would always wind up on all fours trying to crawl to class. The tone of that dream, one of desperation and panic, is common in my dreams.

I am sure that is one reason why I enjoy immersing myself in automobiles because that immersion is an escape. My obsessive hunt for a Corvette companion and my obsessive writing about that hunt are just a manifestation of same. I suspect for some people their dreams are an escape from their real lives, but in some ways choices I make in real life are an attempt to escape from my dreams. Hey, I’ve always known I’m an oddball.

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Speaking of dreams…it’s been almost a year since I showed my Ultimate Garage 2.0. I do not plan to show Version 3.0 anytime soon, if at all, but in (what’s left of) my brain I am reviewing possible changes to the garage. Why? Hello! Have we met?! Obsessing about cars is what I do.

Although I have not decided on anything I have toyed with the idea of removing the unofficial minimums on horsepower and torque. Now I can reveal that if a car did not have at least 200 HP/225 LB-FT of torque available from the factory, then I excluded the car from consideration. Of course, that would exclude all of the amazing pre-war cars except for the Duesenberg Model J. I’m not saying I would necessarily include any cars from this era, but in any future Ultimate Garage they would at least be eligible.

To me, the first thing I notice about a car is its styling. I suspect that is true of many, if not most, car fanatics. Survey after survey reveal that exterior styling is the most frequently cited reason why a new car was purchased. Therefore, while I obviously have a strong preference for performance cars, I should bow to the reality of the primacy of styling and consider it above all else.

Full circle, this brings me back to the car I wanted to buy when I moved to California in the mid-1990s, but which was no longer in production:

See the source image

From this Wired gallery of Buicks a picture of a Buick Reatta. OK, the standard wheels aren’t great, but that’s an easy fix. It’s like house hunting and finding a house slathered in poor paint choices, but with great bones. You can always re-paint the walls.

I just love the way this car looks. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The Reatta never had more than 170 HP/220 LB-FT of torque, but not every car has to be a performance monster, at least not for me, I guess. Oh, I much prefer the coupe to the convertible. The angle of the rear pillar just adds a great touch to the car, in my opinion.

The Reatta is, however, not in contention to be the Corvette companion because it is a fail as a grocery car. With just two seats and trunk of only ten cubic feet in volume, it’s not even as useful in grocery shopping as my Z06.

I wonder how many times I have shown and written about the Reatta? Does it matter?

Please feel free to offer the cars that tug at your heart without necessarily appealing to your brain.

#Dreams

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#BuickReatta

#somanycarsjustonelife

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Miscellany

Johan de Nysschen is out as Cadillac’s president. I hope this event does not mean the end of the Escala as a production car.

See the source image

From gmauthority.com a picture of the Cadillac Escala.

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What do dreams mean? What do you think of these?

First, I had a dream that my wonderful wife and I were at a party and when she went to the bathroom all of the other men in the room seemed to disappear and that the women were convinced that cats had magical powers. They argued that cats could walk through walls, make themselves disappear, levitate, etc. At first, I thought the women were kidding, but they were not kidding. I told them they were crazy and I wanted to see evidence of their claims.

Second, I had a dream that I was at some sort of car gathering and saw two 1967 GTOs parked back-to-back. I then realized that one of them was my first car and to prove it I lifted the engine out of the car, with no machine, to show people the exhaust headers. In the dream, the headers were much nicer than the ones that were actually on my car and, I know people say men don’t dream in color, the headers were a stunning copper color with light metal flake.

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Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the end of the Waco standoff with the “Branch Davidians.” I read articles where psychologists claim that it’s quite easy for people to succumb to a cult. I still don’t understand…

Daydreaming…

This is an ad for the Panther sports car that I wanted to use yesterday as the What Car Is This? car for the week. Of course, I couldn’t have actually used this image as the name of the car is quite obvious.

When my OCD-addled and ADD-addled brain wanders off into daydreams, one recurrent theme is that I start and run a company that builds a limited production, high performance car. My wonderful wife and I live near a former GM plant and every time we drive past I lament the fate of the complex. Of course, I have nowhere near the resources or connections to live out the dream, but as Boog said in Diner, “If you don’t have dreams you have nightmares.”