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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Resurrecting ‘dinosaurs’

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Nostalgia dominated the 27th TransSport Show held at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.  The show, arranged by Tradeshow International, Inc., a leader since its inception in 1992 in providing institutional events such as TransSport Show, Custom Car Show, Sport Truck Show, Manila Auto Salon, Defense and Sporting Arms Show, and the Philippine Vintage and Sports Car Festival, gave vintage car aficionados something to carry on  the tradition of auto restoration skills and an enduring cross-generational alliance among owners who share a common fascination for rebirthed cars.

It’s a complex task to recapture things past—to attempt body modifications from dreadful scars and serious rusts into an eloquent objet d’art, an indelible image audience can’t refuse to look at.  In many ways, we are what we own.  People with vintage cars which could be older than their first born are a sentimental lot.  Through the years they have formed a remarkable friendship—warts and all—with their cars. The mutual attachment has created an umbilical cord that refuses to disband owners and these dinosaurs in their garage.

Automotive craftsmen dusted off some of the dinosaurs and transformed them into shiny and spiffy objet d’art like the Corolla. 

You know it when you see it.  The beauty of a 1995 Toyota Corolla, last show’s cup winner, by Vonetrix Radical Creations, made memories remembered from the “old days” come alive to make its own defining piece of car restoration history.  

A 1937 Chevrolet Coupe, owned by Bryan Dee, done magic to by Alfred Perez Motor Works, Body Repair and Painting has remarkably maintained great resilience in the face of decades of grime, nature’s punishment, and war.  Seventy years old but still as up to date as a news bulletin.  The fusion between an old car and the new technology lavished into it had raised its re-creation to a true art form.  Who would have ever thought that old cars, coughing and huffing like old men, could be over beautiful, almost unimaginably so?

The eyes have it as exemplified by a restored Volkswagen. 

A pair of cutie pies—a 1953 Singer 4AD 2-door convertible and a 1953 Ford Hotrod—must have been encased in a garage where magic rules. Red hot and with gleaming chromes begging to be touched, these cars were glory days incarnate.

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The 1960s were free-wheeling times, peace, and search for easy life when travelling by groups was the pervading norm.  A Volkswagen Bus made such culture possible and a 1962 VW Bus, owned by Bugeye Customs and Restoration, looking like it has neared the stub end of its life has been, from pieces of scraps, paint coats, and plenty of plodding attention was given a new, vibrant life.

Who would think that this Mitsubishi is a vintage car?

There were plenty of sleek cars to ogle at:  a 1964 ½  Ford Mustang, Porches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis.   Some were not necessarily lots of years old but they have brought glitter to the show.  The 27th TransSport Show was an entirely characteristic display of a subculture of entwining men and their machines, and the cycle of aesthetic ignoring, obliviousness, and resurrection.  It was a positive affirmation that what was past still breathes life and that people like to remember memories of the more Arcadian times.   The 28th TransSport Show next year is expected to be another festival of dinosaurs extricated out of extinction through meticulous craftsmanship to become, from a beloved star in somebody’s garage to really, really big superstars.

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