CarPort

As April turns to May, apple blossoms follow forsythia and it’s time to mow the lawn. When I was growing up, lawn mowers were made of cast iron and had to be pushed. When I was seven, my parents bought an old house whose lawn had grown to hay. Instead of a real lawn mower….
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Sometimes the most enjoyable museums are where you least expect them. Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum, for example, hides in a former bakery in the Music City. Another of my favorites is Musée National de la Voiture et du Tourisme at Château de Compiègne, about 45 minutes north of Paris by train. The Musée is not….
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I got involved with Hudsons by accident. In the spring of 1974, a friend of a friend showed me a 1939 Hudson that needed rescuing from the woods. It was straight, but the rear window had fallen in, ruining the interior, and the engine had been sitting without spark plugs. However, the crankshaft turned and….
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Many moons ago we told you about the Vauxhall imported by GM to sell through Pontiac dealers in the recession-wracked late ’50s. As we hinted, there was a similar program at Buick, where the Olympia Rekord, from GM’s German subsidiary Adam Open AG, was sold as a captive import. If the Vauxhall was important for….
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If Detroit, the Motor City, can boast the Motown Sound, why can’t Nashville, Music City USA, have a car museum? Happily it does, and has since 2002 when Susan and Jeff Lane opened the Lane Motor Museum. Touting “Unique Cars from A to Z,” it has marques from the British ABC to German Zundapp and….
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Until 1959, Chrysler Corporation had its own version of Sloanism, a car for every purse and purpose. Plymouth, at the bottom, sold for $2,143 to $3,131, Dodge a notch higher at $2,516 to $3,439. DeSoto weighed in above Dodge and finally Chrysler, with its premium Imperial series, above that. In an unusual marketing strategy, all….
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The blogs have been agog since Edsel Ford‘s Special Speedster made $1.76 million at RM‘s recent Amelia Island auction. The notoriety is well deserved, since the car lay unnoticed in a Florida lockup until re-discovered and restored by Amelia Island Concours founder Bill Warner. Perhaps more to the point, it aroused interest in Edsel’s other….
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New York’s International Auto Show is, like Easter, a movable feast. Following the first full moon in Spring, in western cultures it can fall as early as March 22nd or as late as April 25th. The New York show, which opens on Easter weekend, is the last of the North American auto expos, but last….
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As the earth’s first motor city, with five companies manufacturing cars by 1897, Paris is the logical place not only for Rétromobile but for an exhibition of concept cars by automakers on two continents. Just such a show was presented last month by Le Festival Automobile International at Les Invalides, the military museum and monument….
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Ford was America’s acknowledged wagonmaster, from the introduction of a woodie to the Model A catalog in 1929 (this is a ’30) right through the thirties and forties. In 1946, nearly 17,000 were built, more than all other manufacturers combined – including sibling Mercury. These were all upright four-door 8-passenger woodies; with all seats in….
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