"something of an extraordinary nature will turn up..."

Mr. Micawber in Dickens' David Copperfield

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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

May 23rd, 2007

Although purists dismiss the Cayenne sport utility model as an improper Porsche, it seems to be selling well enough. Actually it’s not the first utilitarian Porsche. Porsche experiments with tractors started before World War II. After the war, the so-called System Porsche was taken up by Allgaier Maschinenbau of Uhingen, Germany, with a plant in….
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May 16th, 2007

The General was in a pickle. The Volkswagen Beetle, and increasingly Renault Dauphine, were eating into his USA market share, and his reinforcement, the Chevrolet Corvair, would not be ready until the Fall of 1959. What do do? A well-equipped general reaches out to his legions, and that’s just what General Motors did, bringing British….
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May 9th, 2007

Once Hudson Motor Car Company and Nash Motors went to the altar on May 1, 1954, emerging as Mr. and Mrs. American Motors, they decided to live in Ms. Nash’s Kenosha, Wisconsin, home and raise their children there. Mr. Hudson’s home in Detroit was deemed too costly and inefficient. So was the idea of building….
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May 2nd, 2007

Actually, it’s 88 horses, but that doesn’t have the right ring to it. I came across this automobile while walking down Bloor Street in Toronto a couple of summers ago. At first glance, at least to the uninitiated, it looks like a 1928-29 Model A Ford roadster. Closer examination, however, shows certain differences in detail….
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April 25th, 2007

You’ve seen a car like this before, back in February 2005 when the CarPort told the story of Chrysler’s “little limos.” That was about Dennis David’s low-mileage, mint condition 1985 Executive Limousine, one of 759 built that year. This car, though not as pretty, is far more rare. The first front-wheel drive Chryslers were introduced….
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April 18th, 2007

We lost our HoJo’s about ten days ago. I say “our” HoJo’s as it was the last Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Connecticut, one of four in the world. Open since 1957, the Waterbury eatery was of the classic mid-1950s style designed by Rufus Nims, but with the later stylized cupola atop a signature orange roof,….
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April 12th, 2007

Alain Cerf is a man with a mission. Designer of packaging equipment made by his company Polypack, Inc., in Pinellas Park, Florida, he is understandably interested in innovative machinery. As a collector of automobiles he favors those with distinctive engineering: front-wheel drive, rear engines, unusual engines and suspensions. A native of France, he has a….
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April 5th, 2007

Easter weekend traditionally brings the auto show to New York City. On the days preceding the show, manufacturers reveal their latest models to the press, a few of them concepts but the majority new cars due in showrooms later this year. Twelve manufacturers made debuts today, and another seven are due for revelation tomorrow. Saying….
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March 28th, 2007

We lived in farming country when I was growing up, so getting milk was but a short walk across the lane. My first experience with milk delivery came the summer I turned eight, when we went to Cape Cod. Our cottage colony was served by competing dairies, H.P. Hood & Son and White Brothers. Milk,….
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March 21st, 2007

Emergency vehicles – ambulances, fire trucks, police cars – spend their lives racing to the aid of people. But when emergency vehicles fall ill, who looks after them? Well, people of course, people like Mike Riefer. Mike, of Owensville, Missouri, rescued this 1952 National Pontiac ambulance that had done double duty as his town’s primary….
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Serendipity: n. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
“They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
Horace Walpole, The Three Princes of Serendip
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