Not only are there two festival car shows planned in Muskegon next weekend, but pulling up alongside will be the sixth annual Cars for Cancer Car & Bike Show. And this is no small affair.
Two cars exploded early Friday in a northern state where officials are investigating the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants, and a prosecutor investigating the massacre has disappeared.
Every year, cars get better. Every year, cars get more expensive. It's been the rule since Henry Ford put doors on the Model T in 1911. But it doesn't always apply in a recession. The cost of the average car will almost certainly continue to climb for the foreseeable future, as the cost of everything from the metal and plastic and rubber that...
An art car is a vehicle that has its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art car owners often dress in a matching motif (much like their previous generation hippie counterparts) when displaying their cars.
Art cars are public and mobile expressions of the artistic need to create. In creating an art car, the
“exteriors and interiors of factory-made automobiles are transformed into expressions of individual ideas, values, beliefs and dreams. The cars range from imaginatively painted vehicles to extravagant fantasies whose original bodies are concealed beneath newly sculptured shells”
(from Petersen Automotive Museum’s Spring 2003 Los Angeles, California exhibit Wild Wheels: Art for the Road Gallery Guide)
The origins of the art car have been debated. Some would consider the lowriders as the first art cars since airbrushed graphics are commonly painted on the trunk lid and hood panels. During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelic-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon, a paisley Rolls Royce. [1] [2] Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured many Day-Glo painted VW Buses and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood seen in the film Escape From New York). But cartistry truly attained unstoppable momentum as a social and artistic movement in the 1990s, on the spur of movies and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative art display venues such as Burning Man.
At this writing, Art Cars are a nationwide (and Canada-wide) phenomenon. In the U.S. Art Cars are strongest throughout Texas and the Southeast, in the Minnesota/Wisconsin area, and on the west coast. They are least evident in the Northeast, although there is a large Baltimore show. In Canada, Art Cars are very big in British Columbia and also in the western Canadian plains (see Artcar Society of Canada) with shows in Nanaimo, B.C. and Regina, SK.
An art car is a vehicle that has its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art car owners often dress in a matching motif (much like their previous generation hippie counterparts) when displaying their cars.
