Fountain Hills, Arizona.

I learned about the Sunday car show in Fountain Hills while talking with another Arizona snowbird on the phone. Phil’s Filling Station is a restaurant we discovered during our most recent winter respite in Scottsdale in February, but when we had lunch there, we didn’t learn about their weekly car show. On one of our last Sundays, we went to Fountain Hills to check it out before heading back to Fargo.

The Sunday car show at Phil’s Filling Station in Fountain Hills, AZ, is called Cruisin’ at Phil’s. It runs seasonally, from the second Sunday in October through the third Sunday in May. There are two exceptions: The car show does not occur on the second Sunday of November and the fourth Sunday of February due to the Town’s Great Fair.

The show was busy with many classic cars on display. The beautiful April day drew a good-sized crowd of spectators and a collection of vehicles that exceeded my expectations. Like many activities in Arizona, the show shuts down for the hot summer.

I could have featured many different vehicles, as there were plenty to choose from, but one small SUV attracted my attention because it was the most unique vehicle there on the Sunday of our visit. The opening photo features the Toppo, a small SUV that was very popular in Japan but never sold in the United States.

The Toppo was known for being a small, fuel-efficient, and versatile vehicle. It was eventually replaced by the Mitsubishi eK but enjoyed a successful run, particularly in Japan. I had a chance to visit with the owner, Gino, who declined the opportunity to be photographed with his mini-recreational vehicle. He bought the car while on a trip to Japan and had it shipped to the United States.

According to Wikipedia, the Mitsubishi Toppo was a light recreational vehicle (RV) produced by Mitsubishi Motors. It was available in two production runs: the first from 1990 to 2004 and the second, which was reintroduced in 2008 and discontinued in 2013. You can find more information on Wikipedia here.

Since Japanese highway laws require vehicles to be driven on the left side of the road, vehicles sold for the Japanese market have the driver seated on the right. This configuration gives drivers a better view of oncoming traffic when positioned closer to the center of the road.

About the photos: I brought along my Sony RX100-V but decided not to use it; instead, I opted to take several photos of the Toppo with my Samsung S23U. I picked three to share here. I imported them into Lightroom Classic, adjusted the cropping, tweaked the geometry with the Auto button in the Transform tool, and then sent each image to Luminar Neo. As it turned out, the only tweak needed in Luminar Neo was a slight adjustment using Enhance AI.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner