| As is (Restomod by me) | ||
| Engine: |
Chassis: |
Interior & other cool
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So on a Saturday of the last weekend in August 2017, we're heading out to meet some friends for dinner in the gray Camaro and get T-boned on Loop 306, which totaled 'Francesca,' the 2015 Ashen Gray Camaro LT1 we'd picked up the past March. That's right, less than 6 months and 650 miles later, it's gone. Oh well, what can be done? Find a new car and move on.
Since the gray one did such a good job of protecting us in the crash, and she loved having a cool Camaro, we decided to get another one to replace the loss. A few days of scouring the 'net (since buying a car in San Angelo rarely goes well for the buyers), we found this awesome 2015 Red Rock Metallic RS in Dallas with the help of her brother-in-law (he'd found it right about the same time we did, but we're crediting him with the assist ;-) )
After coordinating with the credit union and dealership, we took off to DFW in the rental Nissan Sentra econo-box POS the insurance company provided. The trip was fine until we made it to within 2 exits of the dealership and were stuck in traffic behind a major accident for almost an hour. Once we finally arrived, we met with the salesman and took the car out for a quick test-drive. Of course, there's not a thing wrong with the car - it's damn near perfect (except for only having a single key & fob - which we can figure out later). We should've been in-and-out in about an hour, since the dealership and credit union had coordinated everything, but No - we wound up spending almost 3 hours there, which put us leaving DFW smack in the middle of rush-hour on a Friday, of Labor Day weekend no less. Yay.
I think I failed to mention that this was also the same Labor Day weekend that some idiot liberal mainstream media outlets in DFW started spreading the story that there was going to be a major gas crunch following Hurricane Harvey hitting Houston and shutting down a refinery. The refinery was shut down just a few hours for maintenance purposes, but the idiots reported it to be a major outage, which hit social media and went viral, and the next thing you know everybody's freaking out and hoarding gas. There wasn't any gas to be had in DFW anywhere (along the interstates, anyway), and the crappy little rental turd needed fuel to get back (so much for 'economy'). Great. So, we head out of DFW hoping the little Nissan rental turd had enough 'economy' to get us far enough out of DFW to find a tank of gas. We finally stopped in Weatherford, gassed up, and found a Subway for a quick dinner. Got back on the road just as it started getting dark and got lost in Weatherford on the way out - took almost a half hour to find the interstate again. Finally made it home around 0100.
Whatta a long-ass day. But, no mishaps on the trip and we turned in the crappy little Nissan the next day - didn't need it anymore, after all.
After we got home, we transferred the awesome Lloyd's mats and a few other things from Francesca into the new one, and that's where we're at. Haven't decided on stripes or anything else yet - I think she's just happy with the car the way it is for now.
OK, so here we are in late April 2017, and we're going to add a bit of the coolness factor to Carmen. My wife got in touch with the same folks that made the burgundy stripes for Francesca and they made up a set of black carbon fiber stripes for Carmen, along with the hood spears and mirror stripes they already offered. She'd also scored an original set of stainless "Blizzard - World of Warcraft" license plate frames on ebay (they've been out of circulation for years). I'd also grabbed a 'For The Horde' decal along with some Horde emblems, intending to put them on Francesca, but we all know what happened there.
So I took Carmen to Gentle Touch car wash (my favorite place to get the cars washed in San Angelo) and they got Carmen all cleaned up and ready to go. We waited a few hours for it to cool down, but it turned out to be just a little bit too long, since I only got the driver side done. We finished up the next day and grabbed some pics. Now, the car is pretty much a "Horde-mobile" as she envisioned Francesca becoming before things went badly last August. She's loving it - here are some pics:
Saturday, May 19th was the usual monthly gathering of the San Angelo Cars & Coffee crowd. My pal Gonzo and I decided to go, get some breakfast, and chill for bit with all the cool cars. I also decided that since I had to move Carmen to get the Mach 1 out anyway, I'd just take it out for spin to debut the stripes, and be Camaro Buddies with Gonzo and his awesome '67. While we were eating breakfast, someone snuck in and parked their 2017 Camaro next to Carmen. I hate to say it, but I still like the 2015 better, as the new ones are looking more and more like a cross between a Toyota Corolla and a new Mustang, and less like a Camaro - then again, most new car designs are pretty much ripping off cues from other cars, anyway. Still, a cool car - but I'll stick with what she picked out. Here are the pics of that outing (right-click to view full-size):
More to come as it comes. Hopefully, I'll stay caught up with the
things I post on Facebook.