Jarren was at a Lake Washington Cars and Coffee event this weekend when he saw this note. If you don’t want to squint it says: If you look at the Lake Washington Cars and Coffee Instagram you’ll see a collection of beautiful Alfas, Lotuses, 911s, and event a Morgan Three-Wheeler. There were a lot of choices.

“I thought it was pretty cool because that event is packed full of more traditional “enthusiast” cars and so I appreciated that out of everything there someone liked my ratty old Benz the most,” Jarren told me in a DM.

This is awesome. This is what car culture should be all about. It’s easy to find faults with what other people’s cars, to rag on their choices. You know what’s even easier, though? Finding something you love about their car. Speaking of, one of Jarren’s other cars is a Peugeot 505, an absolute favorite of mine, even if it isn’t in perfect shape.

“Unfortunately the 505 needs a transmission at the moment (my penance for thinking a cross country drive in a $1000 French car was a good idea) but I’ve still got it and I’ll hopefully get it back on the road eventually,” said Jarren. Excellent choices all around, Jerren, never change. All images courtesy of Jerren via his Twitter account and used with permission. Autopian should be selling lots of stuff. I jest, but honestly I live for the recognition, I love nothing more than finding out someone stopped in their tracks to snap a pic of my car, whether for love or hate and always try to engage with people about it. I’m also the kind of guy who just throws his keys at people for a hot lap, so far no one’s stolen it, so that’s nice. Over the last 25+yrs, Ive taken some 100,000 car pics, Ive catagorized them by: Make Model Yr Trip / Occasion Also.. what is creepy about a dude taking pics of another dudes car? Apologies to those regular/semi-regular contributors who I have forgotten/ignored. MaximillianMeen has some good additions to the concept.
Also, stickers… One day he found a note on his windshield with a $10 gas card wrapped in it. The note said something to the tune of “keep it running or I’ll come and siphon the gas back”. He ended up selling it to someone who apparently did a nice restoration, but I’ve never seen it. I think it might be around in the Ottawa or Kingston Ontario area, so keep an eye out. It was a very cool cobalt blue colour. Might have been resprayed by now. When I was a teen in the 80s, my older sister worked in the home office of one of those companies that etched serial numbers into car window glass to “deter theft”. It might have been the first such company (at least in the USA). The owner was a 40-something British guy, and he drove an Interceptor. I didn’t even know Jensen was still a thing…the last time I’d heard the name was my dad’s famous story of how in the early 60s he’d loaned his precious Healy to a friend, who promptly slammed it into a telephone pole. Anyway, I wanted to know what the car was like, so I asked my sister. And she said something akin to, “It’s like a middle-age British guy who conned his way into something that looks more impressive than it actually is.” Then I crashed. Then I crashed. My wife said nevermore. I sold it at a huge loss. A couple of years ago, the wife mentioned she wished we hadn’t sold the rig. Thank god we have been married over 55 years. Are those cards plastic? That’s impressive if so! I wonder how much it cost to print all those… It’s actually worth noting this car has been driven all over the United States, and was owned by a few friends prior to landing in my hands at the moment (some of you may have noticed the Texas plates). I actually just drove it from Minneapolis to Seattle a few weeks ago. It’s a great road trip machine as long as you’re ok driving something that makes 59hp on a good day. Awesome daily though, I drive it to work almost every day! These were small items, but I found them very encouraging. An outdated T-shirt and a ribbon that was meaningless to anyone meant a lot to me. I have a history of owning unusual vehicles, but this is the only time that anyone let me know that they really appreciated them.

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