Billy Kingsley

Cruise in season starts May 1st here in the Hudson Valley. I can't make the first one since it conflicts with my scale model club meeting but I will be at as many as my health allows me to make. Last year I only got to three all year due to my health and other factors and I will be increasing that number this year for sure, even if my health doesn't play along so well, I'm going to force it. I miss it too much not to.

Thinking way outside the box here, but Tamiya gray primer is the right color and will bond with rubber/synthetic rubber without getting sticky. It also has the mostly flat with just a touch of glossiness mentioned above. I use it in my model building all the time...pretty much every single model I build. I have not tried driving on it, however, and I don't know how it would hold up to that usage.

Seeing the back makes me think this was "new old stock" and never actually used for what it was created for.

Looking again at the damage under the KL in Brooklyn, I wonder if there was a pin or attachment soldered on there that has since been removed. I've seen similar damage on coins that had once been turned into jewelry.

That style of enameling dates back to ancient times, and is still made today. The Chevrolet logo looks older...what time periods had the bars above and below the name? Is it possible the badge was adhesive and the adhesive backing has been removed so it doesn't stick to everything? I know current cars nameplates are just held on with adhesive, but I don't know when that started. Is it possible it was never attached to a car and instead used as, say, a paperweight on the salesman's desk? There are many variables that I simply don't have the knowledge to piece together or rule out.

It's a 1965 Pontiac Bonneville, not a GTO. Not Hot Wheels, it's the no name store brand and it's the only way to get the Bonneville in close to 1/64...although like most of the generic cars in the sets, it's undersized.

I like it! Wonder if it exists in model kit form?

Rob Ida is still in business as far as I know. He had both the green and black custom and the blue one at Rhinebeck at various years when the Goodguys East Coast Nationals was held there. The blue one is the first Tucker I ever saw in person, original or recreation. I've seen 5 originals now.

Thank you for the further info. That grill really threw me off.

I photographed this today, but I'm not entirely sure what it is. It looks like a Jeep, but not like a Jeep at the same time. Sorry for the filthy window, roads were wet today. It was actually snowing when I took this.

Although it rarely has uses in automotive, I absolutely hated the table saw. I know how to use it, I know the proper safety procedures, and I did use it successfully...I just hated it.

Will do, it has not appeared since. I'm sure it's this phone I'm using, it seems to have a mind of it's own sometimes.

I have visited 35 states since the start of 2022. Only place I saw 25 year old vehicles as more than a rarity was in Roswell NM where I was for one day, but saw a handful of 70s trucks, all Chevrolet, and most modified. It was enough that I wondered if there was a show and I just didn't know about it, since I was only there for a day and a half.

We just sold our 1994 Grand Cherokee last week. Last ran in 2015. I'm impressed you've been able to keep a 90s Jeep running.

Celebrity ownership generally doesn't do much for me...except race cars. Then it makes a lot of difference because you can pinpoint actual historical racing events it participated in. Certain celebrity ownership would actually be a detriment in my mind, but since I don't want Peter chasing me with a broom Tom & Jerry style I'll stop there 😂

If you think 25 year old cars are daily drivers, you really have no idea how to date a car outside of your area of interest. Anything from before 2010 is a rare sight. I saw a PT cruiser on Tuesday and realized I hadn't seen one in over a year. And it's not like I've been hiding in a small portion of the country...that time period covers a drive from NY to Utah and back and another from NY to Charlotte NC and back. Just admit you are a date snob and be done with it. It's fine to only like a certain period of cars but don't crap on those of us who care about the history of the automobile post World War 2. History doesn't stop just because you don't care.

I leave a window open on my phone all the time with the forum pulled up. Today when I went to go on the forum I had to perform a captcha test. First two were "place a dot at the end of the car's path" which I apparently didn't understand and failed, third was click all images showing a bucket. That one it took. I've never seen that happen before on this website. Is it a new thing that's going to be a problem every day, a temporary thing to stop a spam attack or something else entirely? It has not happened again in this session. I didn't think to screencap it.

I should add where the story of my nickname El Camino Billy came from. I have been fascinated with them since sometime in the 1990s when I became aware of them. I had surely seen them before but for some reason something just "clicked" and they became my favorite vehicles in 1998. Fast forward to the year 2000 or early 2001. I had joined a model car forum that still exists but I can't get to work on my phone so I no longer am a regular member. A topic came up about El Caminos and they were repeatedly referred to as an abbreviation that drove me up a wall. I will not say it because I have vowed to never type that word. (yes, I am obsessive and a little bit strange). Anyway, I got into a bit of an argument imploring people to use the proper name. One of the forum regulars began calling me El Camino Billy and it stuck. More people at the model shows refer to me by that than my full name. I was a lot more argumentative back then. Comes with being a teenager I guess...I was 15 or 16 years old when I got the nickname. I don't know when it happened exactly. It's the name of my website, my email, pretty much everything where I don't use my full name...except eBay where somebody else took it. There I am "therealelcaminobilly". I didn't actually get a chance to sit in an El Camino until 2019, go figure.

My parents picked it out and I'm not likely to forget it. Remembering passwords is hard enough...

Found on Twitter today. I have no knowledge of when/where, it was posted without caption.

It works for the beasts of burden that cars replaced, maybe it will work for them as well?

This generation Monte Carlo played a pretty big role in auto racing too. Chevrolet had been out of the sport for a decade, with all factory support ending in 1963. Realizing that Chevrolet was losing out to Ford and Dodge, they came back in a big way with Junior Johnson and Charlie Glotzbach. Today the Monte Carlo nameplate is the most successful in NASCAR history, despite not appearing on a race track since 2007. The record still stands.

My list is a lot more... pedestrian I guess you could say. The first word I thought of was humble but that doesn't feel right, since I'm not trying to slight the amazing cars listed previously. I am just not on those levels. Any El Camino. Any 58 or 59 Edsel. These will always be tied at #1. (Note that I am known as El Camino Billy and my profile picture here is me with the first Edsel I ever saw, which I saw again at Rhinebeck years later) 1950 Pontiac 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air 4-door only. Bullet nose Studebaker. There are lots of other cars and trucks I love and would be very happy to own...I could list cars all night long and not run out of cars. My phone battery would give up long before I ran out of cars. But those are the ones I have had literal dreams about. Alas, I am on the poorer side and not physically capable of working on cars...so they will surely all stay dreams. At least I can build scale models of some of them.

No disappointments except who you're talking to.