Bill Cash has a passion. Long known as a car photographer, his lust for all things shiny and metal are not confined to automobiles. We were thrilled when Marcelo Plioplis called with a campaign for Exmark Mowers and we learned that he too shares Bill’s passion:
Graduating high school, I was always somewhat of a motorhead. I had my share of muscle cars, motorcycles and a stack of car magazines.
I knew I wanted a 1963-67 Corvette, and three months prior, my brother had seen a 1967 Corvette parked in front of a store in Mill Valley, CA and he had left a note with a name and phone number saying that I was interested in buying the car. I received a call from the owner, who had decided it was time for him to sell his Corvette. Before I had a chance to open my mouth and negotiate a price, the owner said he would let it go for no less than $2,500, firm!
Of course I could not argue with him, and I agreed on his price. I headed up to Mill Valley with cash in my hand. The only information I had was that the car was blue and my brother said it looked nice.
I met the owner—and the Corvette—and, to my amazement, the car was beautiful. It had 20,000 miles on the odometer, the color was Lyndale Blue with teal interior and 300 horsepower with power brakes, power steering, soft top and a vinyl-covered hard top. The only thing that had ever been replaced on the car was the battery. I bought the car without hesitation, and now I was off to college with my new ride. It had everything I was looking for: personality, style and drivability.
Going to school in Southern California for six years is tough on any car, especially with stop-and-go traffic, congestion, hauling friends around, tying surfboards to the roof and parking in precarious locations. But, no matter where I went, I would always get a thumbs up, and it seems that the Corvette would always break the ice and help me to build friendships around the coolness of the car.
Whatever personality radiated from the ‘67 seemed to pass through to me—from meeting girls to the parking enforcement officer on campus not giving me many deserved tickets. This guy even gave me a special parking spot if I was late because he remembered growing up with a Corvette, and shared many stories about his experiences riding in his dad’s 1963 coupe.
On holidays, I would drive home from Southern California to see my parents in Carmel. I would take Highway 1, which was the longer route and that would add an extra hour to my drive time. But I always convinced myself that taking the coastal route was the most direct route. Maybe it was because the car always seemed to run smoother on Highway 1— or maybe it was the car that made the final decision for me.
A wife, two boys and a few Corvettes later the stories and adventures continued. My passion for automotive design and the engineering of the early 1960s cars—especially Corvettes—amplified. I was officially obsessed.
After college, my 1967 Corvette sat in my parents’ garage for years and years, collecting dust and making a nice home for spiders. Every time we would visit the grandparents, my 3-year-old son Graham would inevitably end up in the garage in the driver’s seat of the 1967 Corvette and pretend like he was driving the Mach 5, just like the cartoon series “Speed Racer.” He always wanted to know how fast the car could drive, if it could drive under water and which button controlled the saw blades that popped out in front of the car. Like a good dad, I told him the car could outrun any bad guy and that the heater control lever controlled the saw blades, but we should only pull it if we ran out of road and had to drive through a forest.
A few years later my son looked me in the eyes and asked why we can’t take the Mach 5 home. At that point, we somehow decided as a family that it was time to bring this old friend home and treat it to a full restoration.
Even with the car parked for over 15 years, it seems the design was a magnet to all ages, especially to our young son. After the restoration was completed in 2005, the whole family planned a summer getaway and trailered the Corvette to the NCRS Nationals in Park City, Utah, where our car received a 97.2 for a Top Flight!
Summer vacation is the fleeting phenomenon of youth – if only you could bottle that super happy, life is good, feeling… …now imagine that its summer vacation and you are Elliot and Graham Cash and your dad is car shooter and hobbyist-gone-professional-Auto-phile, Bill Cash, and you get to ride a custom miniature Bugati onto the field at the Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance’ alongside Jay Leno, get photographed by the press and interviewed for a Korean news show. Life is not just good, it is great.
Car love is a family affair and the summer events that celebrate all things auto are a time for relaxing, bonding and socializing for the Cash’s. Lisa (Mom/Wife/Studio Manager) loves the aesthetics of the classic cars, Bill gets his tech on with the “oohs” and “ahhs” of car engineering and sculpting from years gone by and their present day industry application, Graham has a driving suit with a growing collection of legendary autographs and Elliot is being fully indoctrinated into the scene in that youngest child kind of way. Showing, admiring, collecting, and restoring within the world of cars are Cash family vacation destinations.
Fall is here, back to school time for the kids and Bill’s studio is continuing to build out a collection of new work and a new site set to go live in October—energized and inspired by another summer well spent. Life is only getting better.
Here on the blog, our on-going mission seems pretty clear - a good use of the right words that ultimately will convey to the reader, some sense of insights into personalities and interesting details around the images that we’re posting. Because there is so much complexity that comes with every job and every image, some days easier said than done in editing ourselves. But with Bill Cash, we’ve come to understand why and how he has, and continues to, weave this life-long obsession for the automobile into a career celebrating it through photography. The best of the best really - accolades, repeat clients, awards—you get the picture, yes? And for this production, while it’s no automobile, there are the wheels and the transportation passion combined in true Bill Cash production fashion for these SoCal Cycling Team images.
Fact is that it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to figure out that Bill just isn’t the kind of person to take the easy way out on ANYTHING—case-in-point, 2 of our favs from the latest Team Cash production:
plenty more facts at bill cash photo dot com
Since signing on with Bill, and as in any healthy relationship, we’ve been spending our first few months in the getting to know one another phase. So far that’s meant lunches in Manhattan Beach and many a phone call discussing everything from kids to the weather to estimating; peppered in-between with Bill’s educational stories about the past, present and yes, thoughtful philosophies on the future of the all-things-with-wheels-industry—and we’re not just talking makes, models and advertising of either.
More on the horse later…
For several years now, Bill Cash and crew have been, and not metaphorically either, tearing it up for CP+B/VW on locations around the U.S. And for those of us who found ourselves not embedded and sweating it up on location, sharing here a few of our favorite outtakes from these last rounds of production:
And although you might think he’s all about anything Automobilia—okay, you’d be correct. This a 1960’s Indianapolis Racer, in Bill’s words: “Anything vintage and fast!”
