Bike Ride 20

David: Another Bike Ride for this winter, but less exciting than the other. This is another "revisiting" bike ride, where I went back to check on some local classics in my neighborhood. There are some new finds in this collection though. I was looking a few old Volvos that I had seen driving around the main streets of Cranston, but, spoiler alert, I had no luck. Perhaps a bit tragic, but we'll see what the future brings. This ride harkens back to the early era of the blog, where I didn't go to far on my bike rides, staying more close to home and traveling the side streets. This ride doesn't have an amazing amount of cars found on it, but neither did the early bike rides. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but it did feel refreshing to see these old local classics that were the inspiration of what became this blog. 

Above: 1968 Pontiac Firebird Project

We begin this bike ride at an old truck depot near my house. I had seen this car from the road multiple times, but only saw it from the back end, so I had no idea of the front end condition of this car. I thought at first this was a Camaro, but as you can clearly see by the "Pontiac" on the trunk lid, I was clearly wrong. I also thought this car was complete, but you can clearly see I was also wrong about that! The parts were shoved inside through the front windshield, so I can only assume that its owner is planning on restoring it at some point. 

Above: 1980 Chevy Camaro Drag Car

At this point, I was starting to think I stumbled upon someone's personal collection, because this is the third F-Body car in a row, all found in that old truck depot. This car doesn't look any better than the other two condition wise, but unlike the other two, this one seems to be complete. Now I'll be honest, I never liked the second gen Camaros from 1978 to about 1981. They just give me a bad vibe, and I'm not sure why that is. Ever since I was a kid, these cars always carried around a bad auroa to me. I've never been able to pin point exactly why I feel this way about these cars, but seeing this one definitely re-emphasized that feeling. Maybe it's the stereotype of who these cars are driven by, maybe its the late '70s Malaise, or maybe its the ugly styling these cars got. Even the fancier personal luxury Berlinetta models of the Camaro were ugly. This car is a low point of GM. I'm sorry to any Camaro fans out there reading this, but I really don't like this car. 

Above: The Shabby Caddy Returns!

Now we're back in some familiar territory. This "Shabby Caddy" is a very early car featured on the blog. Almost three years later, and this car is still in the same spot it was last time, and is in the same condition as last time. Still though, I wanted to grab some better pictures of the car and give you an update on how some of these early era cars are doing. As we'll come to see, a lot haven't changed.

Above: LeBaron Front and Rear

Lastly, here some shots of the front and rear ends of the car. You can see that this LeBaron is a GTC car, which was an upscaled trim level of the LeBaron.

Above: VW T2 Kombi Bus 

Now this is quite the VW Bus! As I was heading back towards my house, I just happened to look down into a parking lot, where I saw this unmissable VW Bus. Obviously, I had to investigate. It appears to be long to Good Dogg Hard Seltzer, which I guess is a hard seltzer brewery based in RI. However, I found this in the parking lot of an insurance company, so I'm not too sure what's going on here.