Tuesday, March 16, 2010


You know it's happened to you. You'll be driving around one day in whatever area you live in, and all the sudden you notice a car you haven't seen before such as a BMW Isetta or the Lamborghini Gallardo shown above. You regrettably forgot your camera or phone or whatever you'd need to fittingly obsess over the vehicle, so what should you do? Here are a few tips for when you are stalking tracking down a car.
First of all, you need to know where and when you see the car. If you see it only once or at a gas station, chances are it was passing through your area and doesn't necessarily reside there. On the other hand, if it shows up regularly at a local business, such as a coffee shop, chances are you can easily catch them there and start a conversation with camera in hand to take photos. If you think that the business you see the car at is the workplace of its owner, you don't want to approach them about it at that time to avoid looking like a stalker. If you see the car often at the person's home, just go biking a couple days a week and wait until one day when the person is out polishing their car or doing lawn work or something. Using all of these methods, you can probably successfully approach the owner of a car you love and start a conversation about the car. You can also get all those obsessed photos!
If the first step doesn't work (such as with a situation where the car is driven to work at an office), take note of the business. If it is an automotive business, you may be in luck. Often these types of businesses have sections on their websites dedicated to customer and employee cars. From this you can find out more about the car and get photos. If the business isn't automotive or doesn't have such a feature on their website, you can sometimes still get contact information for the business and ask about the car in an e-mail. It may set off a few stalker alarms for the owner, but it also means you can get a private peek at the car if the owner doesn't put a restraining order on you.
Another situation, which I've run into often, is when the car is a project sitting in somebody's yard. The most direct route is to go up to the door and ask about the old car in the backyard, but some people may be a bit less than inviting to you. On one occasion I was checking out a car at an abandoned home when the property owner, who I'd never seen at the house before, rolled up. He was pretty nice and didn't have a gun, but it could've been a lot worse. A way around this is to look up the address online and get a name. From there you can look up an e-mail address and, if not, a phone number to contact the person. I discovered a '39 Ford pickup, a 1950 Chevy Panel truck, a '48 Oldsmobile coupe, and many others in my time using this method.
So what are you doing staring at this web page? Get out there and obsessively follow cars! Using these methods, you're guaranteed to get that photo of the car you see in the parking lot. Or, of course, you could bring your camera along with you when you go driving...

 

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