Being on the road is great until you return and find your desk buried and everything needing to be done yesterday. My recent travels to North Carolina and Pennsylvania to cover both the Charlotte Spring AutoFair and Spring Carlisle, respectively, really recharged my battery. After a long winter, there's nothing like going to shows and reconnecting with the old car hobby in-person.

    One of the many benefits of attending shows is meeting and talking with hobbyists. Everyone has opinions, but better, everyone has stories. I hear a lot of stories about hobbyists' collector cars, and I enjoy those immensely. Hearing how others have found cars in barns or salvage yards and returned them to the road are my favorite. I hope to be that lucky someday, after I hang up my camera and reporter notebook and take up restoration full-time.

    Every once in a while, I meet a hobbyist who has a story with a unique slant. Such was the case this trip, and I feel compelled to share it. This gentleman, whom I'll refer to as Joe for reasons of anonymity that will become obvious, falls into the category of rogue adventurer. While most retirees winter in Arizona or Florida, he choses to winter in eastern Mexico. He claims the cost of living "down there" is vastly cheaper than setting up a winter residence in the United States. Aside from the usual precautions of not drinking Mexican tap water (bottled water is prevalent and cheap, according to Joe), he spends his days golfing, fishing, hiking in 80-degree weather, much as he would if he were in either Arizona or Florida. He also says the automotive landscape is quite interesting in Mexico, as he sees old cars being used as daily drivers.

    Being a lifelong old car enthusiast, Joe has heard all the stories about the prevalence of interesting vintage cars in Cuba. He says he regularly makes the $99 round trip flight from Mexico to Cuba to see first-hand what the automotive culture is like, and sample Cuban hospitality. Joe claims that staying in the hotels and dining in restaurants near the major cities is no different than any other country, and American currency is most welcome both in Mexico and Cuba.

    It appears that Joe has found a gray area in the rules to overcome travel restrictions to Cuba, and is able to sate his curiousity about car cultures in foreign countries that most of us may never experience, due to politics or fear of the unknown. He's also smoking the finest Cuban cigars on a regular basis, and to that I tip my hat to him.

    I've always been obsessed with going fast. From my first pedal car to home-made go-karts and mini-bikes to almost 20 years of driving hobby-level stock cars, it's always been about the thrill of mashing the throttle.
    A natural extension of that attitude is that I had heroes early on who, in my eyes, were the guys that epitomized and legitimized the search for speed. I'm talking about World Land Speed Record legends such as Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons, Gary Gabelich, and a long list of others before and after who strapped into land rockets and casting aside the high risks of speed record attempts, lit the fuse and went for it.
    So it was with great interest that I read recently that an American supercar manufacturer by the name of SSC is attempting to capture the production car maximum speed record with its Ultimate Aero supercar. This sleek gull-winged two-seater is powered by a twin-turbocharged 6.3-liter V-8 that is rated at 1,183 horsepower.
    The current production car maximum speed record is 253 mph and is held by a Bugatti EB16.4 Veyron. The Ultimate Aero, in late March testing, was achieving 230 mph at just 56 percent throttle, so things are shaping up nicely for an American car to reclaim the record. Unfortunately, the attempt to go for the record on a 12-mile stretch of Nevada highway recently was cancelled due to a snowstorm. Plans are underway to reschedule the record run attempt.
    With the non-production vehicle World Land Speed Record now owned by Great Britain's duo of Sir Richard Noble and his driver Andy Green who piloted the "Thrust" car faster than the sound barrier several years ago on top of Bugatti holding the production car record, it's high-time for America to get back these records.
    Good luck to SSC and the Ultimate Aero whenever the next speed record attempt is made. And, by the way, if anyone is thinking of building a WLSR vehicle to unseat the Brits and "Thrust" and needs a driver, don't call me. I love going fast, but anything over 700 mph and I get car sick!

Don't look now, but that restorable 1957 Pontiac Bonneville hardtop you've been wanting to buy as a project car from your local salvage yard may become an I-beam for a skyscraper being built in China as you read this. The demand for scrap metal from overseas countries such and China and India, which are currently experiencing explosive internal growth, has been and will likely continue to be high.

One of the prime targets for the scrap metal industry are salvage yards filled with older vehicles. These vintage cars and trucks have a high metal content, versus the modern cars that have large amounts of plastic in their makeup, and regularly weigh in at a ton-and-a-half or more per vehicle. According to Yvette VanDerBrink, head of VanDerBrink Auctions (www.vanderbrinkauctions.com), who leads the industry in salvage yard auctions and grew up in the salvage industry working at her father's yard, Nordstrom's Automotive (www.nordstromsauto.com) in Garretson, S.D., current scrap metal value is at $165 per ton. What fuels the problem during the winter months, is much of the scrap metal, whether vehicles or other, is buried under snow and not accessible. As supply lessens, the price paid per ton increases. VanDerBrink believes the price will reach $225 per ton before it levels off. Once the snow melts, and more scrap metal becomes available, the price paid per ton should come down. But if demand from overseas buyers continues strong, the value of scrap metal will remain high.

Over the past several years, salvage yards that have catered to the old car enthusiasts have been closing at an alarming rate. The crush value of these yards' contents have allowed the owners of these yards to reap an immediate cash windfall, and no one can blame these owners for making a sound business decision, even if crushing old cars is counter to the mindset of hobbyists who want to preserve vintage iron. This advanced rate of yard closures will continue as long as there is high demand for scrap metal. Among the many threats to the future growth of the old car hobby, this should rank as the most insidious. Without the parts donor cars that salvage yards provide, the only cars and trucks that will be able to be restored in the future are those that have aftermarket parts support, which is a minority when compared to all vehicles produced since the dawn of the motoring age.

The other frustration factor in this plight is there's not much the average old car hobbyist can do to "fight back" against this near invisible threat. The threat stems from the simple supply and demand logic that drives every society steeped in capitalism. Aside from purchasing donor parts vehicles and "squirreling" them away before the crusher arrives at a yard, if scrap metal values remain high many more old car hobby-friendly salvage yards will close. Quoting a famous line from a popular horror movie: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."