[Tigers] Conservative PDX

[rande]

Steve,

Forgetting, temporarily, that we all are enjoying? the highly politically-charged
season right now, I meant 'conservative' as a characteristic of the automotive
tastes I remember while living there 25 years ago. I wasn't thinking 'red,blue,
purple' state. It's very possible that car tastes, as well as politics, have
broadened there since then.

I should have known better, but for some reason I didn't expect the chrome wagon
wheel flu to have reached there, call me naive.

I thought, then, that the local car-buying public tastes seemed conservative,
and that they tended to hang onto cars longer. Maybe, that's changed.

I do remember a small contingent of boutique automotive businesses that were
a surprise: John's Used Auto Parts, a foreign auto wrecking concern housed in
a four-story downtown building, a NW Portland dismantling yard specializing
in Ford Falcon parts, Burwells Ford Specialty - a classic Mustang parts and
Shelby Cobra restoration shop in NE, Oregon Classic Cars - a certified traffic
distraction in nearby Beaverton, the huge blue neon 'Volvo' sign that you can't
miss as part of the SW downtown skyline(it tops the 4-5 story Jim Fisher Volvo
building), and Monte Shelton's Alfa-Romeo, Avanti, Jaguar dealership where I
saw the first of two Tigers, only five blocks apart, in a two hour period -
the second was Richard Codanti's Med Blue car parked at the curb near the Galleria
downtown.