CarPort

Three years ago I devoted a post to buying a car at Hershey for less than $3,000. I found the pickings were pretty slim, and that the only one I’d have been able to drive home was a Studebaker Lark for which the owner was asking $3,800. Yesterday in 2012’s Car Corral, however, I was….
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Yes, the CarPort has re-awakened, after a ten-month, Google-induced coma. The owner of Blogger.com, Google ceased supporting FTP publishing back in the spring, making it impossible for me to post any features to my server since February. My son Nick, neuroscientist by day and impresario of WeFunk Radio by night, has rebuilt and relaunched the….
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The CarPort went live just five years ago this week. This post makes 255 features in that time, just shy of one per week for the entire period. I’m not a great fan of “best of” lists, but I do wallow in nostalgia now and then, so please indulge me while I reflect on the….
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Who among us hasn’t wanted to build his own car at one time or another. Most of us have only thought about it. My cousin Tom is one of the few who actually did it, at least part way. When Tom was in his early teens he bought a Crosley two-door sedan (like this one).….
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The summer I turned 14, my parents bought a new car. It was 1958, and we were in the second Eisenhower Recession; economy cars were hot. It seemed an opportune time to trade in our 1949 Mercury, which, though it had fewer than 60,000 miles, was anything but economical. The popular Volkswagen was too small….
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Undoubtedly the most flamboyant of 1950s pickups, Dodge’s Sweptside was a clever innovation by one of America’s more conservative truck manufacturers. In the early years of the decade, Dodge pickups were upright and utilitarian, much more staid than the Advance Design Chevys and F-series Fords. Even a new greenhouse for 1955 didn’t shake off the….
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I think we all understand the concept of original miles. They represent the distance a given car has been driven since its birth. The choice of the word “original” is a bit peculiar, as it implies that the car does not have replacement or replica miles, that the miles have not been transferred from another….
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Nineteen thirty-seven was a very good year. Production of US cars, at 3.93 million, was the best since the peak year of 1929, and trucks, at 891,016 even surpassed the earlier year’s record. Particularly significant was Ford’s tally, first place among truck manufacturers. The 1937 Ford trucks were not revolutionary. The sheet metal was basically….
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How many times have we heard the familiar lament: “If only they brought back the _____, they’d sell a million of ’em.” Fill in the blank with the name of your favorite car: Model T, Model A, VW’s old Beetle and the list goes on. In reality, if they did (and could comply with environmental….
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We think of the concours d’elegance as an American institution, despite its French origins. These days, nearly every car show adopts the lofty title, despite the fact that only the most prestigious really qualify. What are we to make, then, of the Africa Concours d’Elegance, held in Kenya? Courtesy of my daughter Harriet, whom you’ve….
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