CarPort

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 CarPort’s first half-decade.

We launched with a piece on French flatheads, something I had intended to use in print journalism before my principal outlet canceled my column. Who knew that the Ford flathead was being produced for Gallic armies right into the 1970s…

We’ve highlighted many discoveries of Wayne Graefen, our Texas Ranger, as well as those of St. Louis Bureau Chief Fred Summers. Dennis David has been a ready source of sad Saabs and ostracized Opels, and we shared several readers’ cars, like Frank McMullen’s DeSoto and Michael Della Gala’s Barnette Chevy ambulance. I was sad to learn of the sudden passing, this last July, of faithful follower Randy Poole, before he was able to complete much work on his DeSoto Suburban.

We’ve covered auto events from Greenwich to Hershey to Amelia to Beaulieu, even Paris and Nairobi. Notable scoops have included the Ghia Centurion and Alain Cerf’s Cugnot replica, and along the way I’ve introduced you to several members of my family and some of the cars in their lives.

We can take satisfaction, too, in the destiny of some of our featured vehicles. The Wayward Bus, for example, is now being restored and I’m hoping to show it again when it’s finished. Others have been rescued, whether for restoration or parts.

Steady CarPorters will have noticed that I take the term “automotive” pretty broadly, including such peripheral vehicles as snowmobiles and agricultural machinery. In fact, the single most popular item, judging from reader comments, was the posting on Gravely tractors.

So, with thanks to all who have had a part in making the CarPort what it is, we look forward to another five years and more.

I don’t expect Father Christmas or anyone else to bring me a new car this season, much as I would welcome it. But sixty years ago today something like that happened to my family, although it was the local dealer, not Santa, who delivered a new Mercury.

The 1949 Mercury was “All New” – though ours was one of the later models: the ’49s had been introduced in March 1948. Originally intended to be the 1949 Ford, it was the last design from the studio of E.T. Gregorie before he left Ford Motor Company., When the smaller Ford from the consultancy of George Walker was chosen, the “old Ford” was bumped upstairs to be a Mercury, and the putative Mercury became the entry-level Lincoln.

Just four body styles were offered, a two door Coupe that was more of a sedan and a handsome station wagon of half-timbered construction with a lovely woodgrain dashboard – friends of ours had one. At the top of the line was a convertible, but the most popular was our model, the four-door Sport Sedan. The 110 bhp engine was a larger, 255 cid version of Ford’s venerable flathead V8. Priced from $1,979 to $2,716, they were competing with Oldsmobile, DeSoto, Chrysler and even the Packard Eight.

For 1950, Mercury got a cosmetic facelift and a new dashboard. The 1951 cars were more heavily facelifted, and lengthened with longer rear fenders. A prestige model for 1950 and ’51 was the fabric-roofed Monterey, a stopgap measure to counter GM’s hardtops.

Our Sport Sedan was black, like this one, but lacking whitewalls and fender skirts. The interior and dashboard were almost opulent for the day – our car had green where this one is blue, but otherwise was the same.

It was logical for us to buy a car that winter – more than a year earlier we had replaced Mommycar, the 1935 Ford, with a Willys Jeep. Intended to be truck, tractor and passenger car, it proved more of the former than the latter. I had never understood, however, just how the transaction came about.

My mother kept a daily journal for nearly 50 years. I was recently reading the 1949 volume, and therein lay the answer. My uncle was being married on the 23rd of December that year. On the 22nd she wrote: “Frank Howe brought the Mercury over for us to borrow for the afternoon and took the Jeep back to work on.” Frank was the sales manager at the local garage; “the afternoon” presumably referred to the following day’s wedding. On Saturday the 24th, we learn “When Phil called Frank Howe to ask if we might keep the car over the weekend, he said ‘Well, you better keep it at least a year’.”

We kept it for nine years, until it was traded on the Peugeot 403. Oddly, we took few pictures of it, and most of those were during our “Polaroid period,” the products of which faded badly. Here it is outside our house, and here at my cousin’s in New Jersey.

Part of my puzzle was how we paid for two new vehicles in little more than a year. We were of modest means, but my father had an aversion to debt. The entry for Thursday, December 29, 1949, tells all: “We took out a note with the garage to pay for the car. It was so nice to be able to handle it all through Mr. Tracy [the bank manager] and Frank Howe. I still can’t believe that we can own such a beautiful bit of luxury. But we have waited a long time for such an indulgence. We are like snails, putting our house money on wheels and riding around in it.”

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). He managed to get it running, but rather quickly became bored, so he took the body off. For a while he drove the naked chassis around in the fields and woods near his home.Then things got adventurous, as Tom learned to weld.

The two-seat body-less Crosley became a monoposto machine, with the engine and rear axle mounted on a sprung subframe. Then he happened upon the rear axle from a 1950 Dodge, so he designed a tubular frame that would accept the Dodge rear and the much narrower Crosley front axle. It was made up out of threaded steel pipe, screwed together and welded at the joints.

Then he purchased a worn-out 1935 Ford, like our old Mommycar. The Ford’s V8 was transplanted into this new car, overwhelming the Crosley front suspension, so the Ford front axle and wishbone were adapted. About the only Crosley parts that remained were the steering wheel and the seats; its engine was relegated to running the arc welder.

He called it the Jackrabbit, not to pay homage to the Apperson car by that name but to describe its demeanor. With virtually no weight, the engine was basically pulling itself, and the car fair bounded over hill and dale. The brakes were two-wheel hydraulics, operated with a hand lever, and the shift lever was relocated to the rearward cockpit with a parallelogram linkage.

I helped him with some of the welding, here in October 1956. After a time, Tom tired of the Jackrabbit and sold it to his younger brother Dennis. Tom’s later projects included a Benson gyrocopter and a Bradley GT, both from kits. He went on to found his own computer company.

There were many such home-built cars created in the 1950s. Some of the more sophisticated ones were given fiberglass bodies, a good medium for one-offs and small lot production. Geoff Hacker, a guru of fiberglass cars has an awesome website devoted to them.

The Jackrabbit was eventually scrapped, never having had a body. One wonders what it might have looked like clothed in fiberglass. One impediment to making it street legal would have been the position of seating relative to the engine, making forward vision difficult. At the very least, a lower radiator would have been required.

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 and we were not a Microbus family. We looked at the Triumph Ten, but found it almost as cramped as the VW. Peugeot, however, had just hit the American market with their 403 model, still drawing raves in France three years after its introduction. After a few test drives and appropriate deliberations, we bought a Peugeot 403 Grand Luxe Berline (sedan) from Hamzy’s Garage, the local dealer. Hamzy’s also dealt in two other imports that were becoming popular, Renault and Borgward.

The 403 was mechanically a refinement of the 203 model introduced in 1948, and which continued in production. The engine, a hemi-head inline four, was enlarged from the 203’s 1,290 cc to 1,468, but the car retained a four-speed column-shift overdrive gearbox and worm gear rear axle. Suspension was a somewhat unconventional setup, independent in front with a transverse leaf spring and rack-and-pinion steering, and a coil-sprung live axle in the rear with “wishbone” radius arms. Whatever, it handled superbly, in part due to the standard Michelin X radial tires. The body was an entirely new design by Pininfarina. US models could have whitewalls as a no-cost option, but the handling suffered since they were not radials.

There were five different models of 403s, at least in the home market. In addition to the Berline there was a natty little Cabriolet, beloved of Peter Falk in the Columbo series, and an eight-seat Familiale station wagon. The Limousine Commerciale was a utility version of the wagon, and there was also a Camionette Bachée (covered van). Only the Berline, Familiale and a few Cabriolets came to the United States.

Our car, in the soft green shown in the brochures, had the standard features of manual sunroof, reclining seats (which made a lumpy bed) and large trunk with readily accessible spare tire. It took us everywhere, to church (Easter Sunday 1960), on vacation, around town, for more than ten years. By that time it was still running well despite having covered 100,000 miles, but the salt of northeastern winters had taken its toll on the unibody. Eventually they gave it away. You don’t often see them restored (think salt on unibody), but every time I do I get nostalgic.

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 “Backward Look” for which the trucks had been known, although a dressed-up Town Panel was available for upmarket businesses.

For 1957, the updated cab was mated to a Forward Look nose, but Dodge was still upstaged, for pickups lagged the competition in style. In 1955 Chevrolet had introduced the snazzy Cameo Carrier to complement its standard pickups. The Cameo covered the pickup’s bulbous haunches with gently-sculpted fiberglass panels. Dodge product planners responded with their own commercial version of the Exner look, the 1957 Sweptside pickup.

Implementation was deceptively simple. Steel side panels, complete with Swept Wing fins and taillights, were adapted from the station wagon line. The standard bed and tailgate were used.

Ford bypassed the prestige pickup phase entirely, bringing out its Styleside bed, with full-width cargo area, for 1957. International did likewise with the mid-1957 A (for “Anniversary”) Series.

Sweptside pickups were built in 1957, ’58 and ’59. By that time all makers were following Ford, Chevy having introduced the Fleetside pickup in 1958 and phased out Cameo production. Dodge followed suit in 1959 with the Sweptline pickup, and the last Sweptside was built that January.

Total Sweptside production is believed to be about 1,250, compared to more than 10,000 Cameos. It was a noble experiment, and can probably be considered a success, because, even though sales were few, engineering and tooling costs were minuscule.

This 1959 Dodge Sweptside was offered for sale in the 2009 Hershey Car Corral. A V8-engined, four speed truck, it had been driven but 31,000 miles. For less than $42,000, you could have driven it home.

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 car (well, that could happen, if, for example, the speedometer and odometer had been replaced). It’s common to advertise a car’s “original miles,” however, particularly if the mileage is low, like this 1976 Cadillac seen in the 2009 Hershey Car Corral, or this ’73 Pontiac Grand Prix.

Then there are “actual miles,” which amount to the same thing, although the context suggests that they are neither figurative or fake. Actual miles were also rampant at this year’s Hershey meet, blatant in some cases. And there was even one car that had both original and actual miles.

As the miles, whether original or actual, get higher and the car less pristine, they become less important, often an afterthought on the For Sale sign, although a car with high miles can still be very desirable. Sometimes, with a very distinctive car like a De Tomaso Pantera, it’s sufficient to say simply “miles.”

There comes a time and place, however, when even “miles” is superfluous, when the number alone speaks for itself.

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 the same as 1936, but with a blunted grille shell and a split windshield. The major changes were under the skin, where the new chassis frame for passenger cars was adopted by the light trucks, along with cable-operated brakes and an updated 85 hp V8 engine. Also new was an optional 60 hp V8, a 136 cubic inch unit available in Standard passenger cars and nearly all trucks.

I’ve always liked 1937 Ford trucks, mainly because of the grille that’s “softer” than the 1936 item. For 1938-39, Ford trucks got a new cab as well as a new “barrel front” grille. I don’t care for those as much, finding the new grille too bold. Sales in 1938 dropped to a post-1934 low, as a new recession took hold.

I stumbled across this ’37 Ford pickup at Hershey last month. Basically complete, it looked like it had been slumbering in a swamp. The engine looked inert, and the body was rotten. I couldn’t tell whether the sagging was due to cab rot or a broken frame. There was no price evident, but it was clearly a project only for the stout-hearted, even with a spare cab included.

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 and safety regs) they’d probably sell a few dozen, given the speed with which technology advances. But one manufacturer did revive a dead model and make a success of it: American Motors with the Rambler American.

To be sure, the old car had been out of production less than two years, so the model was not old and stale. And as timing is everything, they were reviving an economy car in a recession, when small imports were gaining market share and the Big Three had nothing to offer in that segment. The new Rambler American was a small-change investment, since it was essentially the old Rambler that was discontinued after 1955, with a new grille and taillights turned upside down. The engine, too, was old hat, a near dupe of the 1955 flathead six with merely a new water pump location. When the powerplant was updated for the “big Rambler” in 1956 and given overhead valves, the water pump was moved from behind the generator (and driven by it) to the “conventional” spot at the front.

The Rambler, you will remember, was introduced in 1950 as a small car in the Nash line. Initially sold only as a well-optioned convertible, it was much more successful than Hudson’s Jet and Kaiser’s Henry J. A station wagon joined the ragtop that year, and later a hardtop coupe. For 1953, it was restyled with cues from the ‘52 Nash, and longer-wheelbase four-door sedans and Cross Country station wagons were brought out for 1954 (the illustrations are 1955 cars).

The revived Rambler, dubbed “American” to distinguish it from the larger models, joined the 1958 line, as a two-door sedan or station wagon, both on the short 100-inch wheelbase. Priced from $1,775, it undercut Ford by $200 and Chevy by nearly twice that much. Production for the year was modest, slightly more than 30,000, about equal to 1953. For 1959, though, sales soared to 91,491 the best year yet. In 1960, a four-door sedan was added, also on the short wheelbase, and production hit a new high of 120,603, though no match for the new compacts from Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth. They didn’t sell a million, but 242,674 cars in three years nearly equaled the six-year total of the first Rambler.

For 1961, the American got new sheet metal, but underneath was the same Airflyte unitary understructure. A new offering was the convertible, which differed from its 1950-53 antecedent in having a fully-retractable top. With minor trim changes, the freshened American soldiered on until 1964, when a wholly-new Richard Teague design was introduced.

The car that heads this feature belongs to David Dykes of Waterford, Connecticut. I saw it, complete with authentic aftermarket swamp cooler, at the auto show put on by the Greater Norwich Area Chamber of Commerce back in September.

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 met before, we can take a tour and decide for ourselves.

This year’s Africa Concours took place on September 27th, and Harriet and her husband Don Howard, who live in Nairobi, went to take a look. The rules are interesting. “Any normal roadworthy car,utility vehicle or motorcycle made in 2007 or earlier is eligible to compete.” There are 20 classes, of which eight are for motorcycles, and cars are grouped mostly by engine size. Also interesting is that cars are judged on “cleanliness and condition without regard to originality.”

Contestants were as diverse as Rolls-Royce and Volkswagen, Alvis and Plymouth. Of particular interest were the last Peugeot 404 ever assembled (they didn’t say where), a diamond-plated Mini Moke and a Metropolitan. A Ford Fairlane was seeking a new home, and a British Ford E83 truck displayed an original emblem from the Kenyan dealer. Cleanliness was a transitory commodity, as dust settled as soon as the polishing cloth was put away. And where else but Africa would you see a Peugeot 505 4×4?

Around the periphery were displays from manufacturers, including Daihatsu, Kia, Mahindra (India) and Subaru. The Chinese automaker Chery showed a hint of America’s upcoming imports, and even General Motors made a good showing, with the familiar Chevrolet Aveo and upmarket Optra, both Daewoo products. You could buy bull bars for your SUV, a Howling Moon roof tent for camping, or take driving lessons for Kenya’s dangerous roads. You could also get your suspension, the Achilles’ heel of many a Kenyan car, tested for free. Also on hand were the Kenya Automobile Association and the Vintage and Classic Car Club of Kenya.

Once the judging was complete, the Starehe Boys’ School marching band played, and the Ugandan Motorcyclists’ Club led the parade as cars passed in review. Overall winner was this 1928 Model A Ford, whose restoration had been finished shortly before the event. The costume prize was taken by this Hillman Minx convertible. The surprise of the afternoon? See if you can spot the Railton.

From time to time, the guys over at the Hemmings Blog, one of the more inspired forms of journalism to emanate from the Green Mountain State, look at cars available for under $5,000. That seems to be about the minimum for a car that runs in which you’d dare to be seen. For people of my generation, though, that seems like a lot of money, for we can remember when $500 would buy a pretty decent car.

While at Hershey the week before last, I decided to keep my eyes open to see what sort of car I could buy for $3,000, a sum of money I could easily lay my hands upon and, not coincidentally, the price I paid for Angus the Hudson in December 1976. I was surprised at the results.

We all know about stratospheric “Hershey prices,” so I did not take the $3,000 limit too seriously – there’s always room for negotitation, particularly on Saturday afternoon – but some of the asking figures were, frankly, insane. Granted, barn-fresh prewar cars can be expensive, like the Lincoln service car at $21,500 and the ’39 Ford convertible sedan for $14,999, but why pay tens of kilobucks for a restoration project when you could probably drive home in a nice Model T roadster for $6,500. A little less money would buy a 1940 Bantam coupe, that might also run. The 1941 Ford one-taillight-one-wiper Special coupe was certainly rare, but does that make it more valuable than a Super Deluxe model in comparable condition? Grandpa’s 1937 DeSoto at $27,000, though, makes it look like good value indeed. Neither the 1930 Whippet nor the brokeback ’37 Ford had a price listed, nor did the 1927 Buick, but at least the latter left room for haggling. The $600 Model A Ford and Overland we’ll dismiss, as they’re not whole cars.

Postwar cars were similarly diverse. Thirteen-five for a ‘57 Olds with broken windows seems high, but the value guides do show a premium for the hardtop wagon. Seven grand for a sun-dried Cali-Camino is indeed rich, but perhaps they’ll get it. Ten-and-a-half big ones is too much for any standard VW, in my opinion, but the value guides disagree. Unfortunately, the Beetle that fit my budget was a bit tatty. I wouldn’t pay $4,500 for a Mercury that you couldn’t leave out in the rain, though $4,300 for a ‘62 Ford Galaxie might be palatable, if I actually thought the car was attractive. A ‘48 Dodge seemed a relative bargain at $1,500, but it was not a running car. The only hope for an impecunious drive-away seemed to be a $2,500 ‘64 Ford F100, though it showed that “rust free” is a relative term. Then I saw the ‘61 Studebaker Lark being offered in the car corral. “I think it’s worth $3,800” said the seller, and it came with the original owner’s manual. If I were serious about buying a car, I’d have seen how close to my $3,000 limit he would come.