CarPort

Studebaker’s last new bodies came in 1953. In 1956 sedans were given more massive noses and tails in order to look contemporary, but a different approach was called for on the lithe, low coupe body. Instead, a more modest nose- and tail-job was accomplished with very little sheet metal change, just a new “bustle” trunk lid and a hood with a Mercedes-like grille.

In 1955 there had been nine different variations on the coupe, two levels of trim on the pillared coupe and one hardtop in both six-cylinder Champion and eight-cylinder Commander guise, plus one coupe and two hardtops in the President series. Top of the line, in President only, was the Speedster with special interior and dashboard, the latter with Stewart-Warner instruments on an engine-turned background. Many disliked ’55’s gaudy grille, but Bob Hope seemed very happy with his Speedster.

The Hawk line, as the 1956 coupes were called, comprised four models: Flight Hawk with six-cylinder engine, Power Hawk with Stude’s 259 cid 2-barrel V8, Sky Hawk with Stude 289 cid 4-barrel V8, and Golden Hawk with a 352 cid Packard V8 and Ultramatic transmission. The Power Hawk was pillared, the Sky and Golden Hawks hardtops. The Flight Hawk could be had either way. The Golden Hawk alone had modest fins, which close examination showed to be a quickie appliqué.

By 1957, Packard V8s were no longer manufactured and with fewer than 20,000 Hawks sold in ’56 Studebaker probably figured that four models were too many. So for ’57 there were just two: Silver Hawk and Golden Hawk. The Silver Hawk was a coupe, the Golden Hawk a hardtop, and both had more prominent fins, again an appliqué. The Silver Hawk had a choice of three engines, a six or two sizes of V8s. A Paxton supercharger enabled the 289 cid Golden Hawk to equal the Packard engine’s 275 bhp. Minor trim changes occurred for 1958, ‘59, ‘60 and ’61. The last Golden Hawks were 1958s; ’59s came only in Silver, after which the cars were simply “Hawks.” A Packard Hawk with unattractive fiberglass fishmouth was launched in 1958, but mercifully put down with the other Packard cars at year’s end.

The coupe’s svelte lines, originally penned by Bob Bourke of the Raymond Loewy studios, still looked good in 1962, but Studebaker had Brooks Stevens do an update. Modifications below the belt were modest; the principal change was a new formal roofline for the car introduced as the Gran Turismo Hawk. The dashboard was now faux woodgrain, and in 1963 the supercharged Avanti R2 engine, which made 289 bhp, became an option.

The 1964 GT Hawks exhibited little change, and the closing of Studebaker’s South Bend, Indiana, plants in December 1963 spelled the end of Hawk production. The model was not continued after all car operations were moved to Canada. The remarkable thing is that so little change was needed for the coupes to look contemporary in the mid-1960s. In fact they still look good today. From time to time I wish I still had mine.

No, Studebaker never built a Dove model, and despite the plethora of bird names in the car business I don’t think anyone else did either.

The French have a word for it: Rétromobile. Having coined “automobile” from Greek and Latin roots in the late 19th Century, they’ve given 21st Century flair to what Americans might unimaginatively call an “old car show.”

In its 33rd iteration at the Porte de Versailles in Paris, Rétromobile is an exposition of automakers, clubs and vendors, indoors in the halls of Paris Expo. Once the bastion of France’s “Big Three,” Renault, Peugeot and Citroën, Rétromobile has become a “twofer” as Renault has bowed out. This year Peugeot and Citroën were joined by Germans Mercedes-Benz and BMW, and, for the first time, Honda, celebrating six decades of motor manufacture.

Some manufacturers give harbor to their marque’s clubs, and Citroën has a lot of them, from Traction Avant to SM to Mehari. Independent clubs exhibit, too, as diverse as Club Hotchkiss, Fan Club Panhard, Fiat Club of France, Amicale Deutsch Bonnet, Delahaye, the French Jaguar Drivers Club and the American Car Club de France. This year’s theme was “The Woman and the Automobile;” most exhibitors embraced this with dashingly-dressed mannequins, though some went more for household or vocational attire.

Collector car dealers are prominent, with wares ranging from unrestored to interesting to awesome. Bonhams have taken over the Christie’s auction at Rétromobile, and their Saturday sale took in some 10 million Euros, nearly a quarter of it from this 1928 Saoutchik-bodied S-Type Mercedes. Also present are restorers, carrosseriers who can make your crumpled body whole again.

One can buy brilliant brass, new and repro components and supplies like tires. There’s no rusty metal – the rent is too high. But the automobilia collector can find books and literature, artwork, vintage toys and there’s a whole village of model car vendors. And of course this is France, so one is never far from a source of good wine.

Paul Berliet, nonagenarian impressario of Fondation de l’Automobile Marius Berliet at Lyon, traditionally opens the show with a press briefing. Other luminati spotted included the veteran editors responsible for the long-running and late lamented Special Interest Autos magazine. There were few other events within the halls, but an impromptu concert by a Matra racing car between the buildings offered action relief for the boy racers.

It’s not Hershey, not Beaulieu, and certainly not Atlantic City. If you’ve a yen to see how the French do it, there’s still time to get to Paris. Rétromobile runs through Sunday, February 17th.

Until 1952 it was, after Austin, the second-best selling import in America. We called them “English Fords,” not “British,” and the company did, too. Imports began in 1948, of the Anglia and Prefect models, with slightly more than 3,200 sold. They were cute, funky and many of them ended up as hot rods and dragsters. The distinctive English Ford dated back to 1932, when it was decided that the British market needed its own small Ford. The Model Y, designed by E.T. Gregorie, was an instant success and its design was scaled up for the 1934 American Ford.

The first modern English Fords were the Consul and Zephyr of 1951. Unibody designs, they had over-square ohv engines, Consul a 1508 cc four and Zephyr a 2262 cc six. They had suspended pedals (a year before US Fords) and Earle MacPherson’s revolutionary strut suspension – long before it saw production in the USA. Convertibles were added in 1953. The top, for which power was optional, also had a mid-range “de Ville” position. In cities they were often sold by import dealers, but in mid-America the Ford tractor dealers handled them, with the result that they healthily outsold Austins and Hillmans in the heartland.

A Consul Mk II arrived in 1956, now with 1703 cc. A matching Mk II Zephyr was up to 2553 cc. Sales were now over 17,000, behind only Volkswagen and Renault. A new Anglia, the 100E, had debuted in 1955. As before, there was a Prefect four-door version.

In 1963, the first of the long-running Cortina series debuted. Designed by Roy Brown, who had been exiled to England after his Edsel was laid to rest, it was a great success. Ordinary sedans were offered, as well as a GT model and a station wagon. The Cortina had a modern interior and disk brakes. A new Anglia, the 105E of 1960 was sold alongside it. Now famous as the Harry Potter car, the 105E also had a van version.

A new generation Cortina was introduced in 1967. A few were offered with a twin-cam Lotus engine (which was based on the Cortina block) as the Lotus Cortina. This one, owned by acerbic motoring journalist Jamie Kitman, once belonged to Colin Chapman.

After falling below 5,000 in the early 1960s, annual English Ford sales in the US rallied to the 20,000 level through 1969. During 1970, however, imports were halted, their niche taken up by the new Pinto. Nearly 250,000 English Fords were sold in the 23 years they were imported. When was the last time you saw one?

The words “Nash truck” may conjure up images of the four-wheel drive Quads that fought in World War I. But the Quad wasn’t the only early Nash truck. When Charles Nash took over the Thomas Jeffery Company he inherited a line of Jeffery commercial vehicles that carried the Nash name for a while. Nash trucks continued to be built in very small numbers until 1930.

After World War II, however, Nash Motors re-entered the commercial arena, with a line of “Haul Thrift” trucks, mostly for export. The trucks used front sheet metal modified from the 1947-8 Nash Ambassador, like the one in which Cannonball Baker paced the 1947 Indy 500. A brief run of short-wheelbase chassis was fitted with Ashton wrecker bodies and issued to Nash dealers. A few of them are still around. The export trucks generally had much longer wheelbases.

Aside from this run of trucks, which extended as late as 1954, the only postwar commercial Nash was the 1951-54 Rambler Deliveryman, a station wagon with no back seat. It took the purchase of Kaiser Jeep in 1970 for American Motors, Nash Motors’ successor, to re-enter the truck market with the Jeep Gladiator pickup.

Imagine my surprise, then, when one Sunday-morning-after-Hershey when I spotted this 1948 Nash “Quad” filling up at a Texaco station. It was, the owner told me, dropped on the chassis of a late model Chevy 4×4. The back of the body was cut off to mount a fifth wheel, allowing it to tow a trailer so large that it hauled both living quarters and a dirt track race car.

The 1948 Nash trucks appearing in this feature were photographed some years ago at Ed Moore’s eclectic Bellingham Auto Sales in Massachusetts. They have both been sold, but Ed has plenty more treasures available.

Ford’s blockbuster Mustang, of course, begged for a response, but it was three years before The General could raise it. When he did, it was a two-parter, the so-called F-body twins, Chevy’s Camaro and Pontiac’s Firebird. The Firebird, of course, was a tribute to the far-out Firebird I, a concept car of 1952. F-cars were available in plain vanilla and many exotic flavors, from SS to Z-28, HO to Trans Am. Racing driver John Fitch tried his own tuned version, the Fitch Firebird.

A second generation F-mobile debuted in 1970. An alternative to the Trans Am was Firebird’s Formula 400. More civilized than the Z28 was the Rally Sport Camaro. Available only as a coupe, the Gen 2 soon sported a T-roof option.

A Gen-3 series arrived for 1982. Equipped with a nifty glass hatchback, Gen-3s came in all stages of tune from four-cylinder to big honking V8s. They were succeeded in 1993 by a fourth generation of Camaros and Firebirds, and convertibles returned, but after 2002 it was all over. Rumors of a front-drive F-car proved false, and the genre died out with a whimper.

F-cars have long been popular with restorers and rodders. Some, like this tricked-out ’69 Z-28, go way over the top, with hyperactivity disorder and instrument obsession. But there’s a junker syndrome at work, too. It seems that everywhere I go I see dormant and derelict third-gen F-cars. From my office window I can see an ’82 Camaro T-top (not mine), and within a five mile radius are ’84, ’85 and ’91 Camaros, an ’86 Firebird and an ’88-ish Trans Am. They’re all restorable cars, some for sale at bargain prices, but few show the slightest signs of work in progress.

GM’s been showing a new Camaro Concept lately, which may become a production reality soon. I hope it does, but in the mean time won’t somebody please start restoring all those disabled third-generation veterans?

I’ve long considered the 1941 Dodges attractive. My cousin Woody had a ’41 sedan that was a good-looking, if not exciting car. The 1942s were more striking, in a complex sort of way – almost Cadillac-like in the grille. But all that was lost after the war, with the eggcrate-faced D-24 models built from 1946 into 1949.

Chrysler Corporation’s all-new 1949 cars were late in coming. Not until March did they appear, by which time their advances seemed old hat, not just by comparison to Ford and GM but to the independents as well. They were designed by engineers, not stylists, for maximum interior room. Chrysler Corporation president K.T. Keller felt motorists needed not just headroom but hatroom. Although the bodies were narrower than the fender lines, they offered untold width – all the better for smoking. Brochures showed a fairly dated style of interior and touted ease of entry and exit.

In hindsight, the claim of “flashing pickup” seems ludicrous, and of course we know that Gyro-Matic didn’t shift automatically – your foot was an important part of the mechanism, but at least it did shift, which Dodge’s earlier Fluid Drive didn’t.

But at least Dodge offered some interesting models. The upscale Coronet had a woodie station wagon, convertible coupe and 8-passenger long-wheelbase sedan, in addition to the usual club coupe and four-doors. The entry-level Wayfarer was perhaps most innovative of all, with ChryCorp’s three-passenger business coupe, a bustle-backed two-door, and, most enigmatic of all, a true roadster. The roadster’s removable plastic side windows were unpopular, so later in the year vent windows and roll-up side windows were added.

If I were to covet a ’49 Dodge, I might seek out a Wayfarer roadster, perhaps one with a hemi. Or maybe the business coupe. On the other hand, I think I’d rather have a 1941 3-passenger coupe.

We have a winnah! First to report in with the correct answer to last week’s “list quiz” was Jonathan Baker from Australia, who was also the only one with the correct answer. With no equivocation he said the common denominator in the ten cars was their Continental engines. Actually, it’s more accurate to say “Continental-derived,” because some of the cars didn’t actually have their engines built by the Continental Engine Company.

A blatant hint in the list was the Continental Flyer, a car actually built by the Continental Engine Company. We told you about that back in February 2005. Flint and Jordan are well known users of bought-in engines; the ’27 Jordans used the Continental 8-S, the Flint E-55 a 6-E (there’s no rhyme nor reason to Continental numbering – both the 8-S and 6-E are sixes).

DuPont was a luxury car maker, but did not manufacture engines. The eight-cylinder DuPonts, Model G from 1929 on, used an L-head Continental 12-K, but added their own cylinder head cover that made it look like an overhead valve unit.

Hudson is known for outsourcing very few parts, but Hudson didn’t actually build engines until the Super Six of 1916. Until then, all Hudson engines were bought in from Continental. Hudson historian Don Butler says that Hudson designed the Six-54 engine for Continental to build. Marshall Naul, however, identifies the Six-54’s engine as a Continental 6-C, also used by Colby, Howard and Pathfinder. They could both be right. Automotive history is like that.

When the Graham brothers took over the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company, they inherited the Paige product line, which used a mix of Continental, Lycoming and their own in-house powerplants. The Grahams took over manufacture of the sixes, but used Continental eights for a few years. The economy Crusader model introduced in 1936, however, used a bought-in six-cylinder Continental C-600.

Kaiser, too, manufactured engines, but rather than design their own took a tried-and-true Continental six and made changes to the valves and combustion chambers. They even leased a Continental plant to build it. After purchasing Willys in 1953, Kaiser 226 cid sixes began to appear in Willys trucks and station wagons. Ironically, Willys had supplied fours and smaller sixes to Kaiser since 1951 for the Henry J.

Federal Motor Truck Company also bought engines from outside, Hercules for their lighter trucks, and Continental for the larger ones, from Model 45 up.

So what about the Ferguson tractor? Well, when Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford were still on good terms, their Ford Model 9N (sometimes called “Ford Ferguson,” properly “Ford with Ferguson System” hydraulics) used Ford engines. When the handshake partnership broke up and Ferguson turned to the courts, the new Ferguson tractor was powered by a Continental Z-120 engine, a 120-cubic-inch overhead valve four. These were known as TO20 models (Tractor Overseas), while in England a TE20 (Tractor English) used an engine of the same size from the Standard Vanguard. We got to know this engine in Triumph TR sports cars. British Fergusons were also early users of diesel power.

For further reading about Continental engines, seek out Special Interest Autos #38, the January-February 1977 issue. In it, Marshall Naul gives chapter and verse on Continental’s US-built passenger car engines. Today Teledyne Continental Motors builds piston and turbine engines for light aircraft.

As old year turns to new, journalists, particularly, have an obsession with lists: Ten Best, Ten Worst, Ten Most Significant, Ten Things I Hate, Ten Predictions for the New Year, ad nauseam. Truth to tell, I’m sick of lists, other people’s lists, lists that have no real purpose except to spill their listers’ fatuous opinions.

On the other hand, I’m a compulsive lister. I’m always making lists, usually based on some criteria of facts, not opinion. So to usher in 2008, here’s my own list. What I want you to do, faithful CarPorters, is to figure out what it’s a list of: What do these ten motor vehicles have in common?

1913 Hudson Six-54

1929 DuPont Model G Waterhouse sedan

1927 Jordan Tomboy

1951 Kaiser Model 512

Ferguson TO-20 tractor

1933 Continental Flyer

1957 Willys Jeep station wagon

1925 Flint Model E-55

1936 Graham Crusader

1946 Federal Model 45

You can click on the thumbnails to get a larger picture, but it won’t help you much. When you’ve figured it out, email the CarPort with your answer. All will be revealed on Wednesday, January 9th, and enviable prizes await those who correctly name the list.

As Kit Foster’s CarPort begins a fourth year of weekly publication, we wish you all a happy, prosperous and serendipitous 2008.

Today is Boxing Day in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries. Nothing to do with prize fights, Boxing Day was the time that the gentry gave gifts to their employees and those of the lower classes. Its name derives from the Christmas box (which might or might not have been something in a real box). As an Anglo-American family we observe Boxing Day, although it is not a legal holiday, but our gift-giving begins on Christmas Day itself.

Here you see my sister Rosemary and me proudly showing our favorite gifts at Christmas 1954. She was enamored with horses, while my tastes had long been attuned to automobiles. I don’t recall what happened to the two cars I received that year, but the highlight of that day was the American Automobile Album. More than the title implies, it was a concise history of the automobile in America, from the beginning up to that year. I decided that I had started an automotive library, and read it from cover to cover several times. I still have it.

Each year I asked for, and received, at least one car-related gift. In 1953 it was a set of three model cars, a Studebaker Starliner, Ford Sunliner and Pontiac Catalina. I still have the Pontiac, but the Ford is long gone and I haven’t seen the Studebaker around recently. I have a Wen-Mac race car, powered by a model airplane engine and meant to run on a tether, that I received around that time. It never met expectations because we didn’t have a smooth-surface driveway to run it on. In 1955, Floyd Clymer published a new book about the Model T Ford, and I put it at the top of my wish list. It’s still on my shelf.

One of the most useful books from that time is Motor Service’s Automotive Encyclopedia, my favorite gift of 1958. Its forte, then and now, is a table of specifications back to 1931.

We usually stretch our gift-giving out over several days, as long as Twelfth Night in some years, so I can’t give you a complete rundown of 2007’s treasures. But just in case no one gives me any car books, I’ve ordered one as a present to myself.

You may have been singing those words this week, but this item is not about the most popular movement in the best-known oratorio of Britain’s most famous German composer. It’s about one of the least-well known pioneers in the automobile business.

Charles Brady King was born February 2, 1869 on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. With a fresh engineering degree from Cornell he went to Detroit and took a job with the Russell Car & Foundry Company, a rail car manufacturer. At the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago he became enamored of a self-propelled runabout exhibited by a German named Daimler. Charles B. King decided to build his own car.

In 1895, H.H. Kohlsaat, publisher of the Chicago Times Herald, staged a race for motor cars in his city. King’s car was not ready, but King was there, on the Benz entry. When its driver passed out from extreme cold, King took the controls and drove to the finish, losing out only to Duryea. King’s own car was complete and running in March of 1896, and, with his helper Oliver Barthel aboard, King made his maiden journey through the streets of what would become Motown. Another pioneer, whose car wasn’t running until three months later, followed on a bicycle.

Lacking the resources to make a commercial success of it, King dismantled his car and sold it, and went to sea as a machinist’s mate in the Spanish-American War. In 1902 he became chief engineer with the Northern Manufacturing Company, which made the Northern automobile. He left in 1908 to study art and architecture, but by 1910 he was back in the motor industry, and in February 1911 launched the King Motor Car Company in Detroit. Its first product was the King Silent 36, a four-cylinder 35-hp car selling for $1,565. For 1915, a V8 model joined the four, with a smaller engine than Cadillac’s but selling for about 60 percent of its price.

American cars had global reach even before World War I. Salmons and Sons, the English coachbuilders, had the British franchise for King by 1913, importing chassis for their own bodywork. A Salmons-bodied King landaulet was rescued from a scrapyard and is currently undergoing restoration of body and engine. Down under in Australia, collector John Ryder is seeking parts for the King V8 he found in the outback.

By 1919, King had adopted a radiator design that mimicked the shape of the car’s nameplate. This Model G Foursome belongs to today’s King of Kings, Leonard King of Maryland, who has a regal collection of the marque. In addition to the Foursome his cars include a 1913 Model B Roadster, a 1914 Model C Touring, 1916 Model E Touring, 1918 Model F Touring, 1919 Model G Roadster and Touring, and an unrestored 1923 Model L Touring.

The King automobile was out of production by the end of 1923, but Charles Brady King lived on to 1957. Among his many inventions was the spark intensifier, sold even today at fairs and carnivals.

Thanks to UK historian Michael Ware as well as St. Louis Bureau Chief Fred Summers, John Ryder and Leonard King for the photos that illustrate this CarPort.