I'VE GOT THE OLD CAR DISEASE BAD

Yesterday I realized that I've got the old car disease bad. Why else would I spend my Saturday morning driving 160 miles round trip to visit a shop called Zero to 60 Gargage (www.Zeroto60garage.com) in Sherwood, Wisconsin? My excuse for going was to get some brake work done on my 1936 Pontiac, but the real reason was that Zero to 60 Garage has turned into a Saturday morning gathering place for all types of car buffs. Yesterday's visitors included two men from the Collier Auto Museum in Naples, Florida, a couple of guys who race sports cars at Road America and me and my friend Colin Bruce III, a rare coin expert who (for some inexplicable reason) collects '73 Corvettes. The coffee was hot, the pizza was lukewarm and the BS was particularly good. Our conversations ranged from 1933 Alfa 8C Grand Prix cars to Cunnigham C5s. We talked about Briggs Cunnigham, Carroll Shelby and Colin Comer (a high-performance car expert from Milwaukee who just wrote a book called Million Dollar Muscle Cars). We left the old Pontiac at the shop and headed home for Iola in Colin Bruce's Ford minivan. That's when I realized that I felt totally out of place in a modern, air-conditioned vehicle. Like I said, I've got the old-car disease really bad.