A chilly start developed into a perfect fall day by the time I emerged from a mid morning meeting in Lancaster today. Feeling myself ahead of immediately pressing work, I impulsively decided to take the rest of the day off. I drove back to the studio, grabbed my sketchbook, pencils, and folding stool, and with windows rolled down in the Saab 99, headed for Hershey and the world's largest annual antique car flea market. When I've attended in the past, it's always been on Saturday morning, and I always have arrived in the dark and the cold, to get a decent parking spot and to be on hand when the show cars are driven onto the field for judging. But today's weather was irresistable, and the idea of going twice appealed to me more than wearing myself out with a long visit on just one day.
Today, all I really did was stroll the car corral, looping around the perimeter of the endless aisles of old car parts and memorabilia. There were plenty of nice cars, from brass age buggies with wooden spoked wheels, to depression era Hupmobiles and Packards, to chrome laden behemoths from the 50s, muscle cars, British sports classics, and pickup trucks from every decade. All the shiny restored vehicles left me less than enthralled, though, and I began to wonder if the wide eyed delight I'd always found in wandering among old cars had abandoned me. I didn't see anything I liked until I was almost ready to leave without even taking my sketchbook out of my bag.
1939 Lincoln Continental prototype
The car that got my attention was an unrestored Lincoln Continental, one of two prototypes built in 1939. I'd ridden in a 1940, the production model that came from this prototype, years ago one wild night in Tokyo's Ginza with a rich and car crazy friend of my brother in law's, and remembered not being all that impressed. I also read somewhere that many authorities on classic cars considered the Lincoln Continental to be the most beautiful car of the era, and I never could see why. Until today, when I saw it with the ungainly looking soft top down and buttoned under its canvas cover.
I think it was necessary for me to draw it in order for me to truly appreciate the graceful lines and elegant simplicity of this car. The curves of the fenders are voluptuous and understated at the same time. The chrome trim is extremely minimal. Restraint is evident everywhere in the near absence of superfluous detail. The spare tire shroud, copied so often on later cars that it is known as a "Continental kit", was never so perfectly integrated as on this, the famous archetype. The proportions of this large automobile are immaculate, saving it from chunkiness. I'm a believer now. I could have sat there in the grass all day, getting up from time to time just to walk around it and let my eyes flow over its curves. The real bonus for me is that it has the dents, scrapes, faded paint, and cracked leather that I vastly prefer over 100 point show winning restorations.
second, quicker sketch, sitting on the grass instead of my folding stool
Cars, and I've probably said this before, are difficult to draw convincingly, and I often dislike the results of my own efforts, but this one was such a pleasure that I had to do it twice. I feel tempted to go back again tomorrow as well as Saturday to draw it again from different angles. I can only hope that someone will not have come up with the $87,500 asking price and taken it away by then. If I had the spare change, that someone would be me.