Tor Arne Petzold (tekst og foto)


One of my favourite things to do is taking a road trip. Be it in Norway or in the US. This little story goes just a year back.

Some friends and I were going from Austin, Texas, to Las Vegas, Nevada (headin’ for a great rockabilly weekender there). Didn’t take no kind of shortcut as we even drove through the majestic Big Bend. A great trip all in all and one of the highlights came pretty early on. We’d been driving for hours, along one of those miles and miles long stretches of highway, without much of what one could call a spectacular sight (that is if you don’t count crashing into a swarm of mosquitoes, or whatever it was, and actually loosing all sight). Up ahead we saw this sign for a gasoline station. Good thing indeed, we very running short of gas and drinks (Texas is slightly warmer than Oslo come April).

Great Gosh All Mighty ! Turns out this wasn’t only a gas station, but it also housed an antique store. Sure, it was closed, just our luck, but what the heck – it was the parking lot that made our day. As you can tell from the pictures, a neat bunch of cars, many in real good shape. Having seen my share of “regular” cars I must say though, it’s fun to see something different. And if the object in question isn’t amongst the strangest cars you’ve ever seen, I wonder what is… It reminds me of the old Johnny Cash tune “One Piece At The Time”. The song tells the story of the guy that worked at the Cadillac plant and keep steeling one part each day (in his lunch box…) and ends up with a sort of different looking Caddy. One piece a ’59 tailfin, the other a ’68… You get the idea.

Anyway, I don’t believe the owner of this car, originally a mid 50’s Oldsmobile, has the same story to tell.

It’s hard to guess if it was meant for fishing trips or lynch mobs, but I guess any guess will do… Looks like the front window comes out of a jeep, is that a Nash grille surrounded by chicken wire, are those holes in the front fender meant for torpedoes, and that spare tire, why isn’t it placed in the trunk ??? Well, I guess there is an obvious reason for the latter…

Nothing we saw on the rest of the trip could compare to this “Freakmobile”, but there are still quite a few “vintage wrecks” and daily drivers out there and it’s great to see ‘em in their natural belongings. Finally hitting Las Vegas (after a terrible snow storm) there was plenty more cars to see, mainly great looking 50’s style customs, but that’s another story.