MARCH 23, 2012: THE CARS THAT DEFINED MY GRADE SCHOOL DAYDREAMS AND ARTWORK

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Elementary school was a pretty uncomplicated time for me.

 

It was after the disorganized chaos of pre-school thought processes rendered me a clueless danger to myself and before the hormonal imbalances of adolescence put a death grip on my common sense.

 

I could concentrate on sports, comics and cars with little distraction from these activities.

 

My daily daydreams while I was held prisoner against my will in an elementary school classroom involved sketches of the things that interested me.

 

None of the sketches involved the subject or lesson presented by my teachers because I had little interest in their topics.

 

My sketches were either monsters, military equipment used against monsters-or cars. I had no artistic skills but that never slowed me down in the least when it came to the daydream sketches.

 

I simply wanted to remove myself from the classroom long enough to survive until recess, lunch hour or the granddaddy of every school day-the last buzzer.

 

Car sketches helped a great deal because they transported me to a fantasy track or street where my badly sketched street warriors never lost a race.

 

Most of them were representative of the race and street culture of the era. I never kept any examples of my elementary school artwork because they were not exactly masterpieces for the ages, even for me.

 

However I would like to show a few examples of the rides that inspired me all those years ago because most car shows have great examples of them.

 

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I was a huge fan of the 60s fastback look because they were new and fast-looking examples of the Detroit sporty look when I was a kid. These cars were the stuff of dreams for me until I discovered my older brother’s Playboy stash a few years later in my young life.

 

I also loved the hot rod look of the 50s and 60s and felt that a front hood was totally unnecessary because it covered a beefed-up motor that deserved to be shown to the world.

 

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Without a doubt I liked the gasser look of the time because they looked so cool, fast and tough to my impressionable young car guy eyes.

 

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Anything with a supercharger was an instant hit in my sketches, as was anything with mag wheels.

 

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Simpler times…I was easy to please then and I am easy to please in 2012 when it comes to cars. The difference these days is that I let my camera handle the images.

 

The final visual results are much better.

 

Jim Sutherland

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