Here's another entry for the Been There Done That folder.

Last Thursday, I spent the day at Cobo Hall in Detroit for the 2008 North American International Auto Show.

I've been going every year since 2000, and I'm always interested in two things: concept cars and recycled design trends. (Bonus points if the concept cars use recycled design trends.)

Apparently, the AFT Trinity Power Corporation was mesmerized by the rear end of the 1949-50 Nash Airflytes.



Am I wrong here?



According to AFT Trinity, their XH-250 Plug-In Hybrid Sedan "could potentially achieve 250mpg". Instead of increasing gas mileage to several thousand miles per gallon, maybe they should get some fins on the drawing board. Back in the day, even Nash wasn't too thrilled with the dung beetle look. They added some fins to the geometric shape I can only describe as rumpazoidal. I always thought that the '51s were the nicest looking of the first generation of Airflytes.

Stay tuned. More sights from the 2008 Detroit Auto Show are coming soon.

We finally found some time to add some pictures to our interview with Tom Dulaney, the new owner of the long-lost AMX/3 push car that was first displayed at the 1970 Chicago Auto Show.

Check it out on our Podcasts page.

Remember the old guy in the neighborhood who would sit on the porch and shake his bony fist at you while shouting, "You punks get off of my lawn!"? Jim Donnelly is starting to sound an awful lot like that toothless geezer.

Please ignore his babbling, incoherent rant against the changing world in the February 2008 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

For all of its high-quality columnists like Jim Richardson who warmly reflect on the past, HCC also employs writers who can find nothing good to say about the present. It gets especially tedious when writers like Donnelly rage against trivial things like internet abbreviations in general and the changing world in particular. He's like the loud grandpa who yells at the TV when guests are visiting.

Then again, maybe he was tight against a deadline and HCC had little choice but to print his first draft. I just wish he didn't come off as such a Cranky Old Fart.

Dan Strohl's story on the Ghia Centurion with a Checker chassis had me wondering if maybe James Frey had ghostwritten this piece instead.

The Hemmings Classic Car (February 2008) story reads like fiction. Ghia builds a special one-off limo based on Checker's 129-inch chassis with a 327 V-8. Unlike virtually every product that Checker built, there's nothing utilitarian about the Ghia Centurion. The chauffeur rides on leather bucket seats. There's a liquor cabinet, a telephone, and a 12-inch black-and-white television for passengers in the back. (It they could've stuffed a widescreen TV into the back of this car, they would've had the air wrench in their hands.

It's nice to know that collectors have saved it from the Great Outdoors.

I like Jim Richardson's Drive Report in the February 2008 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

He could make a stripped-down, smoke-belching Gremlin with a choppy transmission sound like the most amazing, feather-soft set of wheels you've ever floated on the road with.

Check out his Drive Report on Ed Stifel's 1940 Packard 120 equipped with the one of the first factory-installed air conditioners.

While you're at it, turn the page, and enjoy the stories of Packard owners whose stories add so much value to their collections of rubber, steel and glass. It's another reminder of why this hobby persists and thrives.

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