Historic Cars of Historic Savannah

Surprising how many interesting little cars cropped up this weekend while in Savannah, Georgia. We cruised up I-95 for a quick weekend getaway and stayed in downtown historic Savannah right off of the waterfront. Most of the trip seemed to revolve around eating at the local places like Uncle Bubba's Oyster House and the Lady and Sons restaurant (if you know who Paula Deen is then you know these places). I'm definitely not complaining though - best Southern food I've had in a long time!

On the second day of the trip, I had to get up early and walk from the hotel up River Street (great spot on the waterfront - pinnacle of the Historic area) and over the Congress Street to get in line for a reservation at Lady & Sons restaurant. After about an hour of waiting, I made the reservation and began to head back to the hotel at which point I unsurprisingly got lost. The silver lining was that I stumbled across this original, off-white Toyota Land Cruiser in daily driver shape. I love original SUVs because they were actually built for utility - not hauling kids to school. This particular model is an FJ40 and had a few signs of rust but was in otherwise great shape. I'm unsure of the year but my guess is its one of the earlier model years.

I shot these on my Nikon D90 with a NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8 so I couldn't frame these as well as I'd liked but it worked(I also had to get back for breakfast!) After lunch, we stopped by the Murphy House in Chipewa Square and I found this Mercedes-Benz 220 Diesel parked right out front. I wandered around and snapped a few photos of it. This W115 had a great little "200,000KM" badge on the front (almost 125,000 miles) and was accompanied by the earlier "100,000KM" badge. Given the wear and tear of the Benz I'd say it's done far more miles than that. The lamp and bumper over the tail pipe looks like it too quite a bit of soot from heavy diesel exhaust. The paint looked gone and the wheels were showing rust but the car seemed to fit in perfectly amongst the old world buildings in Savannah.

After that, I spotted a standard looking but fit E28 5 Series hiding out in the parking deck of the hotel. The 5er came with period square driving lamps under the front bumper. I happened to see a few other E28's scattered around some of the small squares and diving across back alleys. Old German iron seems to be the perfect car of choice for Historic Savannah!