{"id":3809,"date":"2013-10-06T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T10:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dennygibson.com\/blog\/?p=3809"},"modified":"2013-10-06T07:00:43","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T11:00:43","slug":"valiant-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/valiant-still\/","title":{"rendered":"Valiant Still"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PumpkinI made my first attempt to sell the Valiant this weekend. It was feeble and half-hearted and impressively unsuccessful. What I did was put the car on display in southwest Ohio’s largest car show with a “For Sale” sign on it. At the end of two days, I had not a single indication of serious interest in the car but I’m neither disappointed nor particularly surprised. The whole thing was something of an experiment and I think I learned quite a bit which is essentially what experiments are for. I certainly hope I no longer own the car when next year’s show rolls around but I’m pretty sure I could generate a little more interest if that were the case. I’ve got a somewhat better handle on the crowd and I’ve got a much better handle on pricing.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>Danny’s Rod Shop<\/a>\u00a0is a key player and gets a ton of name exposure by supplying the window tags but the Pumpkin Run Nationals<\/a>\u00a0is managed by Fastiques Rod & Custom, Inc., a \u00a0car club based in Owensville, Ohio. The show, which typically has 2600-2800 entries, is held in Owensville at the Clermont County Fairgrounds. This is their 38th year. I’ve attended before as a spectator but this was my first time as a participant. Cars must be running and registered and can be no newer than 1970. That’s it. Gates open at 6:30 Friday morning and cars are waiting. The picture of the Valiant was taken about 9:30. The place seems rather full by Friday afternoon but there is another burst on Saturday morning that makes the fairgrounds seem packed.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>The picture at right hints at the variety of cars on display. That is an original MINI between the MG-TD and the big Packard. It is hard to identify specific cars beyond the three in the foreground but I do see a panel truck, a couple of Chevrolet hardtops from the sixties, a pickup truck, and at least one decades old sedan.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>\"Pumpkin<\/a>\"Pumpkin<\/a>I picked these three as some of the more unusual stock cars I saw. The 1959 El Camino is beautiful as well as unusual. Then there’s a 1960s era Chevrolet 4-cylinder and a 1969 Rolls Royce.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>\"Pumpkin<\/a>\"Pumpkin<\/a>There is no shortage of variety but the Pumpkin Run is the brainchild of a hot rod club so there is a general air of performance. Among the stock entries, Muscle Cars are plentiful, and real drag and even track racers are well represented. The middle picture is of a Corvair window van based dragster with a big V8 where a bench seat once sat and electric fans where the original flat-6 once was. There were several Studebaker Lark based dragsters which I found surprising.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>I happened to look inside that green Lark and noticed a message<\/a>. Dennis Gage of the TV show My Classic Car<\/a>\u00a0was known to be on the grounds doing interviews and such for a show to be broadcast in January. Looks like one of those interviews just might be with the owner of the Lark. I ran across Dennis himself a bit later and got a friendly pose when I raised my camera. He was coming from the general vicinity of my car but I found no note on my front seat.<\/p>\n

\"Pumpkin<\/a>\"Pumpkin<\/a>The weather on Friday was great and, although it rained a little overnight, Saturday started out just about as good. Then, a little before 2:00, some rain fell. It was short lived but so was the sunshine the followed it. Starting about 3:30, the rain became increasingly steady. I was one of the car owners who retreated to their vehicle and quite a few actually headed for the gate. That yellow car seen through my windshield is a Super Bee. There was another on my left side and a Road Runner a couple of cars beyond that. The rain wasn’t too heavy and the temperature remained high so people continued looking at cars but the numbers had definitely decreased. Anyone who had a poncho or umbrella, put it to use.<\/p>\n

Weather reports called for a stop to precipitation around 5:00. I mostly stayed in the car until, at about a quarter until 5:00, I saw clearing skies approaching the fairgrounds. With predictions of storms and heavy rain overnight and a rather wet Sunday, I decided to truncate my first (and probably only) participation in the Pumpkin Run at two days. I headed home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made my first attempt to sell the Valiant this weekend. It was feeble and half-hearted and impressively unsuccessful. What I did was put the car on display in southwest Ohio’s largest car show with a “For Sale” sign on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[52,10],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","tag-cars","tag-festival"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WE0S-Zr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3831,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions\/3831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}