The Kargoyle, a chop-topped 1967 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Funeral Coach of dubious practicality and somewhat mysterious origin, slunk and slithered its way into the Adams Avenue Vons lot in Normal Heights and parked next to me. …
December 13, 2017
Driven
Kargoyle haunts Normal Heights
San Diegans on wheels
Did Somebody Call a Cab? There was a strike. Yellow Cab drivers walked out in August, 1976, and by October they were crossing their own picket line. The strikers burned some Yellow Cabs, assaulted some …
May 27, 2017
Famous cars of San Diego and their owners
Pop the Hood and Open Your Wallet Drive in at midday. See the gas attendants, red rags dangling limply from their grease-stained back pockets, leaning against pumps, waiting. But after a Padres or Chargers game …
May 1, 2017
Mary Jackson's Faith
Mary Jackson founded a ministry in Barrio Logan. She helps women learn job skills. Mary drives a new Honda Element. “Do you want to hear how I got such a nice car?” she asks. I …
September 8, 2005
Minimalist on a Motorcycle
Michael Emerson, the optician at Hart Optical, rides a big Suzuki. He tells me, “It’s a Cavalcade 1400 cc. Suzuki gave up on them in ’88 and built the last generation in ’89 from parts …
July 14, 2005
Paul and His Dueling Mufflers
Paul Koch spent six years as road manager for the San Diego Chicken. Now that he’s in real estate, you might see his Cadillac around town. “I drive a big car with a big name,” …
May 12, 2005
San Diego's Mexicans who dragged at Paradise Valley Road and went on to Bonneville
Along the south side of Paradise Valley Road, from the mesatop by Bell Junior High School, waves of rooftops undulate down to the shore of the hazy blue bay. The area is graded, developed, and …
January 14, 1999
The Santee and the Dolphin — cars engineered in San Diego
You can take the boy out of the car, but sometimes you just can’t get the car out of the boy. Especially if he grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, the hot rod and …
November 25, 1998
Corvette owners are into them for show, so are Ferrari owners. But Porsche owners are purposeful people.
You have seen them, these Porsches — on highways, on city streets, in parking lots — and you have coveted. You have gazed at them as they passed you, stopped and walked around them when …
February 12, 1998
San Diego proud VW bus owners — and the story of the Nazi mechanic
The year is 1949, Volkswagen is up and running, building Beetles for the amusement of the four people in America who know about them. Nineteen forty-nine was also the year Volkswagen began commercial production of …
September 7, 1995
San Diego was a smaller town then, and the Road Ramblers used it as a racecourse
"A lot of us guys had an interest in hopping up cars, and I finally said, 'Let’s get a little organization together.’ So we met in one of the guys’ garage. Armistice Day, the 11th …
September 29, 1994
San Diegans' first cars: Susan Golding, Nick Reynolds, Sandy Dijkstra, Bob Dale
For me, first car was my parents’ car, a 1958 Hilman Lynx. This thing was a squat, 35-horsepower English import the size of a VW bug, except square. It had the aerodynamics of a grocery …
September 8, 1994
Drag-racing from Vons at Balboa and Genesee
From the freeway a half-mile across on the other side of Rose Canyon, it must look like a muscle car convention in the glare of the floodlit parking lot. Someone says that the security cops have blinders on.
Gouging gas customers on North County I-5
Smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, auto mechanic Alec Smith sits at a booth inside a surfers' dive on First Street, Encinitas. Five months earlier, he had quit a North County service station, where he’d worked …
April 11, 1985
Morris the Car
I didn’t buy the car just because it was cute. These are the best cars the English ever made, no matter what anyone may say about how much that is saying. (Some would have you …
May 13, 1976