SHAVE ICE

It happened on the strip

where the road is wide,

Two cool sharks

standing side-by-side;

there was my fuel-injected

Stingray and a 413,

we're revin' up our engines

and it sounds real mean;

tach it up, tach it up,

buddy gonna shut you down!

- The Beach Boys

"Shut Down"

Recent news that America's Big Three automakers are flirting with bankruptcy sent my Ford and me on a drive down Nostalgia Avenue, where we hoped to see the Big Three's finest.

On this island, Nostalgia Avenue is anywhere the Maui Classic Cruisers happen to be parked. Founded in 1977, the club is an informal group of vintage auto fanciers who meet a couple of times each month to show their vehicles and swap car talk.

Central and South Maui motorists might have seen club members parked at Maui Mall, at the old Kahului Shopping Center, or near Round Table Pizza or Peggy Sue's restaurant in Kihei. Even in crowded commercial parking lots, the Cruisers' wheels tend to stand out.

Almost exclusively American-made, the vintage cars and trucks boast powerful engines, magnificent paint jobs and meticulous detailing. Parked side-by-side, they look as bright and varicolored as M&Ms.

When I visit a club rally, I always park my mud-spattered blue Ford a respectful distance from the cordoned-off Cruiser cars. This is not simply from automotive deference. These restored autos carry the collective gravitas of antiquity. Like Stonehenge, the Acropolis or Machu Pichu, they are best approached solemnly and on foot.

I've dropped by three club events since hearing that Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are lobbying U.S. taxpayers for a $25 billion bailout. After viewing several dozen costly Maui vintage restorations, I believe club members have contributed more than their share in parts expenditures alone.

For instance, the owner of an immaculate 1949 Chevy Fleetline told me that he paid $500 for the car, but the custom-order dashboard gadgetry cost twice that. Another club member needed an original top for a 1957 Corvette. The cost? $5,000. Want wire headlight cages for the same model? Forget it. Custom painting can get even crazier. One enthusiast told me a top-of-the-line paint job can run $15,000 or more.

While the hobby may carry a heavy price tag, Maui vintage car ownership also has its light side. Strolling past a '39 Chevy at the Maui Mall one afternoon, I heard Elvis Presley songs issuing from the dash-mounted sound system. At a night rally, the owner of a red 1969 Nova had mounted a fluorescent bulb on the underside of his open hood so passersby could admire the engine. The back shelf of a 1960 El Camino displayed a row of 1960 year plastic model cars.

Vanity license plates add their own cachet to club events. "Sexty" announces one. "Bad 57" warns another. "51 Rat" celebrates the rodentlike profile of a 1951 Henry J Kaiser. "Puffer" is a black Ford Ranchero, while "Dads 31" is hot orange 1931 Ford with a flying goose hood ornament. My favorite: the 1968 Chevy Camarro plated "3 qt low."

The occasional visiting Jaguar, Ferrari or Lamborghini aside, most cars on display at any given Classic Cruiser rally are strictly U.S. products. They run from late '20s models like Clifford Figueroa's 1929 Ford five-window coupe to early '70s muscle cars like Kimo Galbraith's 1971 Ford Mustang or Mark and Sheryl Dunlap's '72 Corvette Stingray ("the last year of chrome bumpers").

In between are fantastic coupes from the 1930s with running boards for bank robbery getaways. Sleekly "aerodynamic" 1940s and 1950s models with spaceship hood ornaments bespeak America's postwar fascination with rocketry. And Detroit's powerful 1960s muscle cars seem as cut and ripped as lifters at Gold's Gym.

The Classic Cruiser stable seems to die out in the early 1970s, not long after lead was outlawed as a gasoline additive and Ralph Nader started crusading for auto safety. As engines shrank and car designs grew increasingly generic, restorers seemed to lose interest. Gone were such arcane flourishes as "sun visors" and "continental kits;" "fender skirts," "column shifts" and "tuck and roll" upholstery.

Admiring the dazzling rows of Fords, Chevys, Studebakers, Pontiacs, Chryslers, and the odd Willys or Cadillac, I couldn't help wondering why other brands were not represented. Where were the bulked-up, chrome-heavy Mercurys, Hudsons, Buicks, DeSotos and Lincolns of my day? Why hadn't they been "pro-streeted" like these others?

"They're gone," laughed Gerald Perreira. "Those were demolition derby cars. The derby drivers used to like 'em because they could take a lot of beating. They all got busted up and thrown away. They're buried in the gulches now."

It seems an apt metaphor for the current state of America's auto industry. Sic transit gloria mundi.

* Tom Stevens is a freelance columnist whose "Shave Ice" column appears every Wednesday. He can be reached at shaveice@maui.net.