If you hadn’t noticed… I launched a new website a little over a month ago, CoolCaroftheDay.com.
Previously, I had been writing a LOT of car content that was finding its way here. And it was diluting the site… it had become more of a car based website than one about real estate. I needed to change that up a little, so CCotD was born.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to meet some really cool folks and see some really wild cars…
Come on over and check it out.
Turn the beat around… Changes.
No, I’m not stopping this blog, but it will re-gain its real estate and garage focus. For the last 4 years, I have been churning this blog out almost every day. But around a third of my posts have been about cars. (I really like cars…).
But this is supposed to be a real estate blog. I have a lot of ideas to make it a better real estate blog. But the cars I going to get parked in a new garage.
That will be the place where I write about cars. This will be the place where I write about real estate, the real estate market and garages.
I have some great garage posts and posts about things that sellers can do to give their homes better curb appeal. I also will be bringing in occasional guest writers to talk about specific things like mortgages, home inspection or other disciplines related to buying or selling real estate.
At the same time, while I get the new site launched and rolling, this one will drop down to 3-4 updates each week, rather than the 5-6 updates a week of the last few months.
I hope you remain a reader, and I also hope you join me over at Cool Car of the Day.
Image via Wikipedia
One thing to note… most Austin Healey owners and enthusiasts just refer to them as Healeys (likely to differentiate them from Austins, profiled last week…). And they make it even simpler… the 3000 Series cars as Big Healeys and the Sprites are ‘Bug Eyes” or “Frog Eyes”. Americans seem to prefer Bug Eye, while the British lean towards Frog Eye…
Bug Eyes are everywhere, so to be cooler, the 3000 Series cars hold the edge. My favorites are the Mark III cars… the last of the Big Healey Sixes. With their 2912cc engines, they made a respectable 150 hp.
And I love them with the two toned blue over white. Toss in the wood-faced dash and some low-backed bucket seats… skip the top completely in favor of a tonneau cover, and I would be a happy driver.
Not only was the performance respectable, but they were very attractive cars in their day. In fact, in the mid-1980s, they were right behind the Cobra as the most replicated cars (Kit Cars).
Here is a beautiful example on eBay. Driving one of these is sure to set you apart from the crowd… Even when they were new, they were quite uncommon. They were also pretty pricey compared to their contemporaries. Now, not so much.
Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. OK, you can tell if you want.
This is the project I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks. It should be launching next week.
It is called…
I have been writing on this blog for 4 years… and about half of all of the posts I do are car posts. I figured it was time to split that off and have a blog dedicated to just the car talk. In addition, there will be a news feed, Twitter feed, FaceBook page and YouTube channel.
Some of the series that I did here, like 101 Cars and 53 Cool Concepts, will find their way over to the new site. There will also be plenty of new stuff.
I hope you join me there.
Image via Wikipedia
And we aren’t talking about Texas.
Austin was a fairly obscure little car builder in Great Britain, until one very little thing happened… you might even call it a Mini Revolution. It was a revolution, and it was the Mini… you know, the one that was brought back by BMW when they bought the name. The original name was the Austin Mini… then the Austin Mini Cooper.
After Austin, the name was owned by Rover Group.
But, back to our Austin for the week…
It is a classic Austin Mini. It is even Right Hand Drive… and from New Zealand. It has a fuel injected 1.3L engine and a manual gearbox. Minis of this vintage weigh almost nothing, handle like the tires are made from Velcro and stop quickly enough to pop out your eyeballs, especially compared to their contemporaries. They were even able to compete quite successfully with larger and more powerful cars in both road and rally racing.
It would be fun to pick up one like this, build it out as a late 1960s Rally car, and enjoy the exceptional fuel mileage… and performance.
