This observation may seem off-topic to some of you but many people following this thread will recognize the significance of the subject. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, the modest cluster of buildings that housed "Russ Davis Ford," the famed sponsoring dealership of Gas Ronda's racing team and spawned Les Ritchey's "Performance Associates" racing enterprises during the mid-1960s, has been leveled to make way for several acres of tenement-style housing on the edge of downtown Covina, California. The facility had stood vacant for several years and was, I think, the property of the now-defunct Covina Redevelopment Agency. The actual dealership had been renamed a couple of times and moved from the corner of San Bernardino Road and Citrus Avenue in Covina to freeway frontage in West Covina nearly twenty years ago before it collapsed under the weight of the financial collapse of ten years ago. Meanwhile, directly across San Bernardino Road, and facing the Russ Davis site, the similarly empty buildings of Clippinger Chevrolet await a similarly dismal future. Current land-use trends suggest that the design of the development will be three-to-four stories of tightly packed housing units, built from side-walk to sidewalk with few redeeming esthetic qualities. Such developments have become commonplace across wide swaths of the San Gabriel Valley in recent years. Progress? I think not.
LB I don't think I ever saw that "Andy Panda" 55 sedan delivery. It must have been before the 2dr. sed. Did that come out of a magazine? Pat
Yep it was from a mag but I don't know which one. The site that it was on has a lot of Div 1 Chevies that we featured in mags. There is another photo of it back a ways can't remember this thread or the Sedan Delivery thread. Search andy panda and click the search this thread only.
I really hate it when people do this. Like I or someone else is going to steal this less-than-high-resolution photo, put it on a CD along with a bunch of other car pix and sell it on eBay or at a swap meet. Yeah, right. You'd have to be a pretty low creature to do that as well as very desperate for money. All I want to do is add this photo to my collection and share it on a forum with like-minded people. Nothing more. Oh well, I may as well customize the 'stripe' before I post this photo.
I remember that car but don't remember the drivers name. That was my home track before it closed for good. I started going to Aquasco in 1962.
Johnny people do it all the time (sell photos not there's) I've seen it happen and I don't like it. Pat
^^^That green 55 is a Canadian Model 150; their 150's were "fancier' than ours^^^.The side trim is like a 210 wagon trim. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
It would be easy to adopt a currently popular socio-political analysis and attribute the proliferation of condensed mass housing around the Los Angeles Basin to a spike in the number of undocumented residents but I recently drove past the site of one of the condo developments that is currently under construction. The starting price for units in that development is $500K. I spent forty years educating children of newly arrived immigrants and few, if any, of them could have presented a down payment on a half-million dollar condo. I suspect that a more logical explanation might be found in the deregulation of the lending industry. Predatory lending practices contributed to our difficulties ten years ago and the cycle seems to be repeating in the current economy.
Chuck Norton: I agree with everything you said and you are right about predatory lending practices! I lived through the S&L lending problems and remember the banking lenders using a practice called "I will swap you my dead cows for your dead horses" Jimbo
The S&L's are government regulated, aren't they? Gov.= politicians. Of course, certain ones wanted folks who normally couldn't qualify, to be able to buy houses, which then went into default. Meanwhile , they were buying, you guessed it , votes and power. As with most things, there are politics involved..which is a no-no here, so we better move on. Just sayin'.
No political agenda here. The facility that housed Russ Davis Ford has been demolished. Street gossip suggests that Clippinger Chevrolet buildings will be similarly erased. The land-use is destined for high-density residential construction.
Good friend, Barry Raichlin, whom I first met in the "barn" at Pomona during the 1971 Winternationals! While we were waiting for tech to roll our camshafts he told me that he was counting on the class win money to buy gasoline for the trip home.
Well took the 55 Q/SA to the Indy National open over the weekend.Had a good time, and won the first round of Stock with a 13.750 on a 13.75 dial.Even got a little air(very little) under the left front tire as you can see in my new avitar pic.Was fighting some carb woes all weekend,but hope to get that figured out before the snow flies.Had a lot of lookers, and compliments.Im thinking it has to have been a long time since a legal 1955 265 Stocker has gone down the track at Indy.The older cars got outlawed in 1971,and reinstated in 2008.Might have been 47 plus years.My goal(or dream)next year is to set some kind of NHRA record, 1/8 or 1/4 mile, so I can get "NHRA Record Holder" on the roof.
The Jalopy Journal
