That’ll draw ‘em in…

We’ve never run a business, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s probably not a good idea to advertise your tune-up shop by sticking a decrepit, barely identifiable car out front. Only those of us with an eye for decrepit oddball cars will really be the only ones who will pay it any form of positive attention. Reader Jay Benedict of Columbus, Ohio, would thus be one of us, and emailed us recently to ask us if we know what’s up with the funny-looking blue fiberglass car on a stand in Bradenton, Florida. “I’ve been going down to  Bradenton since 1983 and its been there since,” Jay wrote.

He didn’t send any pictures, though, so we turned to Geoff Hacker (another one of us), who had indeed seen the car and stopped to take photos of it on his way down to Amelia Island earlier this year.

So from Geoff’s photos and Jay’s description, we see that it’s at about 3620 14th St. W, and the Google Street View (it’s also visible on Bing Maps) shows a sign painted on the car advertising Transmission Exchange. In all views of the place, though, the business seems long defunct and the area seems long abandoned. A call to the realty company whose signs were up on the property in the Street View yielded nothing, and RoadsideAmerica.com doesn’t have any details on the place either.

As for the car, it’s a tortured Glasspar, and it appears to have once been a streetworthy car. How it got up on that stand, we may never know.