Name Your Car Day

We all remember Kit from Knight Rider, Herbie the Love Bug, Lightning McQueen from Cars not to mention, Shaguar from Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.

October 2 is Name Your Car Day, a perfect opportunity to personalize your car or truck!

Al Moore not only named his ’73 Datsun 240Z, he also wanted to dedicate his car to the four people who built it during its 41-year life with a plaque.

“My best friend for 27 years, ‘Turbo Tom’ Wyatt, and I worked together for decades, bringing the Datsun from essentially stock condition to serious street machine,” Al tells us. “When Tom and his girlfriend, Barbara Creamer, were killed in a tragic traffic pile-up on I-285 in Atlanta, Georgia in January of ’05, I stopped working on the car. It went up on jack stands in my garages in Hendersonville, North Carolina and later in Spartanburg, South Carolina. No more work was done until 2008, when I enlisted Stuart Anderson to ‘race-prep’ the head and create a special ‘Ferrari-Red’ cam cover. I installed the head after it was done, did a bit more reassembly of manifolds -and stopped work again. Then, recent circumstances in the past year caused me to ‘come awake’ and enlist Bryan Feldman to pick up the baton and help me finish my car.”

“I designed the plaque online, picking a font I liked and using a layout for our names that appealed to me. I asked (PlaqueMaker designer) Christina if she could place a side view of an F8E Crusader jet fighter under the car’s name, ‘Afterburner.’ She said it would be no problem, which surprised and delighted me. When the proof came, I was amazed! That rocket ship was my personal ride for three years in the US Navy, onboard several aircraft carriers, and the tail-pipe device that made it supersonic is the perfect name for my car.”

When the plaque arrived, Al mailed it to his friend Bryan, who mounted it on the cermachromed top plate of the radiator inside the engine box.

“Now, everyone is pleased and impressed by “The Plaque,” Al says. “It’s an unusual item to see on a custom car, but was the touch I wanted for mine. This plaque is my idea of honoring those who stood by me with their efforts and expertise to create this awesome machine.”