Hello, One year in 1961, we were in Huntington Beach at a 4th of July party. Two houses together that had a couple of surfers renting them, had their friends over for the celebrations, the parade, and the fireworks show. Yes, there was surf right out in front and a few steps down the beach at the pier. But the party was away from the center of the pier area, away from the maddening crowds. The young folks were all having a great time with music playing and a gathering of friends. Our vans were parked down the street and could be used as a respite from the parties or a place to crash late into the night. Which we did to have a place to stay. The party house had bedrooms, but they were taken up fast and there was nowhere to actually sleep in the small house. So, luckily our vans were just down the street and closed doors and curtained windows gave us the look of a van just parked on the street for a local surfer in front of his house. No one bothered us, which was good and a drop off deep sleep was guaranteed. The next morning, I woke up early and walked down the street to the PCH highway on the beach. As I approached the last block, I heard a crash. No other cars were on the road and a VW van was stuck in a light pole. The look was similar to the photo above, but without the snow. It was dark and awful to see the accident results. There was another lady who came out of her house and saw what happened through her window. The van just careened across two PCH lanes and ended up on a light pole. It hit the VW van in the front VW emblem and divided the window in half. One half was still glass and the other was broken with the young surfer sticking out of the window. I told the lady to go call the police or ambulance services asap. She ran off and within a few minutes, the local ambulance came to help. The police came a few minutes later and blocked off the first lane of traffic and started their investigation. The ambulance took the young driver away and it did not look good. Jnaki Needless to say, it was a harrowing experience to see and the results were not the most fun thing to experience. The bad thing was, VW vans were very popular and I had just left one a block away to walk to the shoreline. The vans were made for delivery services and the thin front metal sheeting was very thin with out any crash protection. But, they were popular due to low cost and easy repairs. So, from that point on, we were always cautious in driving around in one VW van. I felt relatively safe in the 1940 Ford Flathead Sedan Delivery instead of a thin walled VW van. YRMV
Scace had a long history of attending the Bonneville Speed Trials, the earliest photo I found was this Porsche- He drove a number of different exotics on the salt like this 300 SL Roadster and also his SL Gullwing seen here after it had been restored. I couldn’t find a photo of his ‘68 Corvette, the last car he entered at Bonneville and there may have been other, earlier cars too.
The Jalopy Journal
