Arts and Entertainment

By Paul Williams

A friend of mine recently returned from Europe gushing about all the great vehicles he saw and marveling that "Wow, the place is full of foreign cars!" He’s a good friend so I forgive him these lapses. One car he was really taken with was the Renault Twingo. Obviously with a name like Twingo it’s not a fire-breathing hot rod. However, it is a car whose design and functionality captures the imagination like the Mini and the Volkswagen Beetle, both automotive legends. Take a look at this car at the recently updated Twingo Net.

Yugos were not at the forefront of automotive technology but who would have thought they’d become vehicles, so to speak, of artistic expression? Check out the Yugo Next Gallery and Yugo Art to see what I mean. You won’t believe what they’ve done with these cars. The Yugo Next exhibit gave new purpose to this failed economy car of the 80s. It’s a product of Manhattan’s School of Visual Art.

Not particularly artistic, I think you’ll agree, are car license plates. Except that I recently saw a car from Canada’s North West Territories and was surprised to see that it’s in the form of a polar bear! Bet those are collectible, I thought. Wonder if there are any car license plate sites on the web? Silly question. Not only are there license plate collector sites, but there’s also Michael Kusterman’s License Plates of the World.

What a site! Mr. Kusterman must be a License Plate god, I think, or at least a minor deity. He provides pictures and descriptions of plates from just about every state, province, territory and country in the world, from Abu Dhabi to Zimbabwe. There’s even a license plate magazine called PL8S.

On a more esoteric note, I found a page devoted to cars on postage stamps. You can check to see if your favorite car was memorialized with a stamp. Many have been. The philatelic (stamp) pages are part of the larger Autorama site which also has an interesting section on automobile advertising, both print and TV. The commercials are fun. Check out the 1958 Chevrolet, for instance. Its safety and durability is demonstrated by having a stunt driver put it through its paces. "What a car!" the commentator enthuses as it flies through the air with all the grace of a London Bus. The 1956 Chrysler ad’ is a good one, too: "Hey lady, those rear lights look like a rocket!" Well so they do; I think I'll buy one.

Cheers for now!