Back in October Chris was out taking photos of cars at dealerships when he came across a new car at the Hyundai garage. It was called a Veloster and was a brand new model. He told me about the car and had taken a couple of photos of it. It looked nice, it was in a dark grey colour and was a small coupe. We did not think too much more about it until we looked it up on the web and found that it was full of gadgets and reasonably priced.
We were looking at the possibility of getting a second car as I was now travelling to Kingston every day and so we put this one on the list. I had already narrowed the search down to a Ford Fiesta, Mazda 2, Toyota Yaris or Honda Fit. Chris did not like the Toyota or Honda, so we ruled them out. The Mazda did not appear as nice as the Ford, so we had really come to the conclusion that the Fiesta was the best, but now we added the Veloster.
We went to the local dealership and they had one which we took for a test drive. It was really nice and it made up our decision to buy this car. They told us they were expecting an orange one in soon, so we got them to call us when it arrived so that we could see this colour in person. They did so and I really liked the colour, but Chris wasn’t so sure, so e decided to go with the Triathlon Grey which we both liked. Unfortunately the model they had was not the spec we wanted so we would have to order one.
The saga of this process is too long and boring for you readers so I won’t go into detail, but it was not a happy period. However, eventually after much stress our Veloster, in grey finally arrived mid December.
So far we love it. It is full of gadgets and you can activate pretty much everything through voice commands. It has a keyless entry and a push button start which is really cool. Here are some pics Chris took.
We decided to travel down to Syracuse from Ontario to see what was being promoted as the largest car show on the east USA. We had no idea what to expect, but decided to spend two days there and stay overnight in a hotel.
We arrived mid day on Friday 15th July 2011 and parked pretty close to the fairground – parking was free. We had to walk over a walkway which crossed over the main road to get the the fairground area where the event was taking place.
The entrance fee was $17 and I was a little frustrated that they did not offer multi-day tickets. We had to purchase tickets for this day then come back the next and buy them again. We purchased a program too which was $5 but every hour a number was drawn to win $100. Our program number was 10041 and 10033 got drawn – so close yet so far!
We decided to use this afternoon to wander round and get to know where everything was and the come back the next day to take photos etc. The heat was almost unbearable – well into the 90′s, so we drank plenty of water and had several ice creams. The prices for food, beverages etc was very good and did not seem to be inflated for the show.
Anyway, this is a car show and boy did they have cars. Apparently there were over 6,000 there and I can well believe it. I have never seen so many custom cars, hot rods, classics etc. They came in every style and every colour.
I was hoping we would win the lottery whilst we were there so we could buy a few, but it was not to be. A good proportion of the cars on show were for sale, so if you are in this market it was definitely the place to be.
In addition to the cars were hundreds of vendors selling everything a car enthusiast could want from engine parts, to t-shirts. There were some odd vendors there too selling baths and windows – but they didn’t look busy!
We did not get around the whole site during the first afternoon as it got too hot and we decided to go to our hotel and come back the following morning.
The Saturday was busier as we had expected as more people were off work, but because we got there early the heat was almost bearable. We went row by row through the cars and I think we saw pretty much all of them. It was an amazing couple of days and we cannot wait to go back again next year.
There was a also some special guests from Happy Days, signing autographs etc. Joanie was there as was Henry Winkler aka Fonz. He was definitely the most popular and people were lining up for ages to see him. I didn’t other but managed to get a very good photo of him anyway.
Henry Winkler - Fonz at Syracuse Nationals
A brilliant show for car fans, even if like us you know nothing about the actual vehicles, you just admire their beauty.
More photos can be seen in my photo gallery:
