CarPort

The Greenwich Concours d’Elegance is all about circles. Cars are arranged in circles of their peers on the picturesque waterfront of Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in Greenwich, Connecticut. This past Saturday opened the twelfth edition of the Nutmeg State’s premier car event, the brainchild of Bruce and Genia Wennerstrom. With six duPont cars on the….
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It’s probably a combination of heredity and environment. On May 9, 1930, my father Philip Foster, whose 96th birthday would be today, bought a new Model A Ford Standard Roadster from William T. Swackamer, of Long Valley, New Jersey. He explained to me once that he went out of town, rather than buying from the….
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DaimlerChrysler is teasing us with a new Imperial. I wonder whether it’s intended to be a Chrysler Imperial, or an Imperial Imperial. Poor Imperial has had an identity crisis for much of its intermittent life. For its first 26 seasons, Imperial was the mightiest Chrysler. Introduced in 1926 as the Imperial 80, it bore hallmarks….
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International’s building pickups again. Perhaps we should say PICKUPs, as the smallest one comes in at 14,000 lbs. GVW. They’re a far cry from the K-1 “Cornbinders” my generation saw on the road when we were growing up. Actually, it’s not out of character. Although the first International trucks were light duty high wheelers, from….
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Richard Guerrera, Sr., loved trucks. As he built his hauling business from one truck to a fleet, he began collecting them, particularly trucks of the 1950s. “The trucks of the 50s had souls; they were alive,” he said. “They had a different look to them and a different sound.” In 1998 he formed the Golden….
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Lee Iacocca denies fathering Ford’s Mustang, and, referring to the numerous other men who have claimed paternity, implies that Mustang’s mother was a tart. While the the matchmaker responsible for Mustang’s conception remains elusive, the car’s DNA leaves no doubt about its parents: in horsebreeding terms, it’s out of Falcon by Fairlane. The original Mustang….
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I thought about it, though. I used to pass a Fiat dealer on my way to work, during the period when the 131 Mirafiori had come on the market. My Rover 2000 was a few years old, and I noted that the 131, later called “Brava,” had twin overhead cams, to my Rover’s single, and….
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On Independence Day 1894, Elwood Haynes took his new car for a ride. Haynes, of Kokomo, Indiana, had the car, which he designed and had built over the previous winter, towed out to the country behind a team of horses, so as not to cause a commotion in town. It started easily, and took the….
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Easter weekend brings the International Auto Show to New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. This year, skies are blue regardless of the weather, as Saturn livens its image with a “Red Line” intercooled turbo version of the Sky roadster introduced at Detroit in January. Joining it are the new Aura mid-size sedan and Outlook….
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You’re the top; you’re a Brewster body,” wrote Cole Porter in 1934, to rhyme with “You’re the top; you’re a Ritz hot toddy.” The custom coachwork business at Brewster & Co. was waning, but the American public knew that a Brewster body was indeed “the top.” The Brewsters began building carriages early in the nineteenth….
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