Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Hemmings Classic Car

Cars have a habit of finding us. Call it fate. Or luck. A few devotees might say it’s a curse, often with a good-natured chuckle. No matter which, it all starts innocently with a simple attraction to a brand, model, or era. Next thing you know, you’re halfway across the country, brimming with optimism, trailer in tow, eager to examine another vehicle that piqued your interest. Bill Lillie knows this situation all too well. A resident of Gales Ferry, Connecticut, his interest in pre-1940s cars led him to, among others, a pair of Detroit Electrics. One remains in unrestored condition, while the other — a 1919/1931 Model 98A Brougham —received a comprehensive restoration. We covered that car’s award-winning rebuild in the January and February 2019 issues of Hemmings Classic Car.…

In the glovebox, not only was there the registration from November of 1967, but in the owner’s manual was the original purchaser’s name and address written right there in the manual! I never even knew the owner’s manual was filled out until recently. I just wrote him a letter; if he’s still alive, maybe he can put me in touch with his daughter! It’s like doing ancestry.com on your car. I’d love to know why this car was taken away from her all those years ago, and I’d love to close the loop on my Mustang’s history!…

To those of us (like your author) who grew up with minivans, it’s hard to envision station wagons as uncool. We get, of course, that to earlier generations, the station wagon occupies the same cultural place as the minivan does for the Millennial. Gen Z, yes, we see you there —some of you are actually nostalgic for minivans because you grew up in the back seats of crossovers. Wagons, now, are very cool. They have been for quite a while, actually. A quarter century ago, 1930s and ’40s woodies, with their luxury, surf, and resort connotations, were hot. They’re still beloved, though their market has softened. Wagons of the 1950s, as which our feature car nearly qualifies, came on strong next. They’re arguably in their heyday now — a 1958…

FIFTY YEARS AGO, ONE OF THE most anticipated days of a young person’s life was his or her 16th birthday, as it was the day you got your driver’s license. My birthday was on Easter the year I turned 16, and I was allowed to drive the family to church and then to Sunday brunch. We had a maroon Chrysler Town & Country eight-passenger wagon, with fender skirts and 40/20/40 split front seats with a fixed center arm rest that you could fold up for a third person to sit. We were hot stuff! Our second car was a 1965 Mustang convertible with the two-barrel 289 and a three-speed on the floor. My dad immediately started to teach me how to drive a stick in this car. Meanwhile, our family…

OVER ITS YEAR-PLUS OF OPERATIONS,THE MEAT-AND-POTATOES OF Hemmings Auctions has been vintage and classic American cars, trucks, and muscle cars, but sports cars of all stripes have been gaining ground and popularity with this site’s engaged enthusiast audience. The consistently solid sell-through rate speaks to the quality of vehicles that are being offered, as well as the realistic reserves that Hemmings’ team of trained auction specialists work with sellers to set. A search through recent sales turns up sports cars hailing from each of the past six decades. British classics are perennially in demand, and examples that have crossed the virtual block have included a 1964 Triumph TR4 (said to need a bit of mechanical fettling; $9,800), a 1988 Jaguar XJ-S convertible (Hess & Eisenhardt-converted two-seater; $10,100), and a 1998›Westfield…

AACA Hemi Exhibit THE AACA MUSEUM IN HERSHEY, PENNSYLVANIA, HAS OPENED ITS NEW EXHIBIT, entitled “Yeah, It’s Got a Hemi.” Chrysler’s famous powerplant is no doubt the best known among engines with hemispherical combustion chambers, but the AACA display highlights those you might not suspect used that same design. Executive Director, Jeffrey Bliemeister said, “This exhibition is possibly the first historical overview of this subject ever presented by a major automotive museum. With more than 35 vehicles and nearly 20 engine and cutaway assemblies, it is certainly the most comprehensive.” The collection ranges from a 1914 Stearns-Knight to a current RAM pickup truck, with displayed cars on loan from Maine to Florida and as far west as Nevada. The exhibit will be featured until April, so be sure to stop…

Worldwide Auburn Highlights WORLDWIDE AUCTIONEERS WRAPPED UP ITS 13TH-ANNUAL AUBURN EVENT OVER LABOR Day weekend with nearly $8 million in total sales and a 90-percent sell-through. The top sale of the live and online auction in Auburn, Indiana, was a 1935 Auburn 851 SC Boattail Speedster by Buehrig that changed hands for $1.072 million. Also selling were the Allegheny Ludlum Inc. stainless-steel Fords built to show off the company’s new metal and Ford’s new cars. The threesome was comprised of a 1936 Ford Deluxe Sedan, a 1960 Ford Thunderbird, and 1967 Lincoln Continental, selling for a combined total of $1.045 million. Chryslers had a good showing, with two of them among the top 10: A 1941 Town & Country “Barrelback” wagon sold for $286,000 and a 1934 Airflow coupe found…

Well Polished HARBOR FREIGHT • 800-444-3353 HARBORFREIGHT.COM  • $109.99 This 6-inch, 7.5-amp, dual-action random-orbit polisher from Bauer will help you restore or maintain your car’s shine with minimal effort. The polisher features a six-speed dial with electronic speed control to give you constant power and speed, even under load. The 20-mm orbit diameter gives you a smooth, swirl-free finish, and the ergonomic design was made for operator comfort and easy maneuvering in all positions. Each has a flexible backing pad with hook-and-loop fasteners to hold 6-inch foam pads, which are available in coarse, medium, fine, and ultrafine, for various polishing tasks. Look up p/n 56367 for more information. C-10 Climate Control VINTAGE AIR • 800-862-6658 VINTAGEAIR.COM $249 (CHROME); $259 (BLACK) New bolt-in replacement control panels for 1964-’66 Chevrolet C-10 pickups are now available…

THE COVER PHOTO OF ISSUE #195, December, stirred my soul and brought fond memories of my 1940 La Salle. The year was late 1961. I lived in Tacoma, Washington, and drove a ’47 Plymouth club coupe powered by a Corvette engine. It was the day after I had been caught street racing, in a road block near a school yard. The judge suggested that I sell the Plymouth and stop paying the Tacoma police department’s wages. My buddy owned a used car lot that had just received a beautiful ’40 La Salle sedan from an estate sale. The moment I saw it, I was immediately smitten by the glossy black paint and fabulous grille of this really classy piece of craftmanship. I took the judge’s advice and traded my Plymouth,…

GMC might be the professional-grade division, but its trucks share their powertrains with Chevrolets. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there was a time when GMC designed and built a line of pro-grade engines for commercial duty. Those engines were the new-for-1960 GMC V-6s and a heavy-truck variant, the Twin Six V-12. The 1960 model year was pivotal for General Motors’ light trucks. The market for pickups was booming and the emphasis on styling, comfort, and power was stronger than ever as all major manufacturers vied for a piece of this expanding pie. The evolution of the Chevrolet Task Force and GMC Blue Chip trucks during the 1950s helped popularize many features that are commonplace today: fleetside boxes, V-8 engines, automatic transmissions, and comfortable interiors. But, for 1960, GM…

Since its April 1964 introduction, countless throttle jockeys have lusted after Ford’s Mustang. Its blend of personal coupe proportions, timely styling, sporty image, broad engine availability, and attractive pricing sent sales into orbit. Not surprisingly, many 1960s and early 1970s iterations of this pop-culture icon are highly collectible. Later Mustangs can also instill the thrill of driving and collecting, and they, too, enjoy a wide fanbase. Following the Mustang II era, a new Fox-bodied Mustang arrived in 1979, and its modern appearance and performance charmed the buying public through 1993. The SN-95 Mustang platform debuted for 1994, and the momentum continued to the “New Edge” styling years of 1999 through 2004. Among the high-volume offerings were special editions like the street-trim replicas of the 1979 Mustang that paced the Indianapolis…

CAR 1929 Pierce-Arrow Model 125 Roadster AUCTIONEER RM Sotheby’s LOCATION Online Mitosinka Collection DATE September 16-25, 2020 LOT NUMBER 565 RESERVE None AVERAGE SELLING PRICE N/A SELLING PRICE $67,100 PIERCE-ARROW NEEDED AN INFUSION OF energy in the late 1920s, and the combination of Studebaker coming in with a lot of money and the company’s desire to build a luxury model, helped jumpstart the development of the Model 125. The new inline eight-cylinder engine provided 125 hp from 365.4-cu.in. and was smooth-running with minimal vibration. As a result, the company saw an impressive improvement in sales with nearly 10,000 cars sold during 1929. This roadster featured an older, cosmetic restoration, with some age in the paint and a little wear throughout. The engine compartment was tidy, and the car had a…

AFTER GROWING FROM A LARGE pony to a nearly full-size thoroughbred in the 1970s and enjoying increasing success along the way, the time had come to downsize the cat. Yes, I mixed my metaphors. Already established as a near twin to the Ford Thunderbird since 1977, the direction of the next-generation Cougar was no real surprise, especially since, one year earlier, a Mustang-like Capri debuted in the segment originally occupied by the Cougar. I already featured the Fox-platform Thunderbird, and somehow gave the impression that I wasn’t a fan. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Apparently, my attempt at an honest assessment of the aesthetics of the 1980-’82 Thunderbird struck some nerves, so let me try this again. The “Foxy Cat” was a boxy cat, adopting the overly square…

Some cars are born special. You know the ones: ordered new by owners who fretted over the ticking of every box on the order form, slathered in bright colors, stuffed full of high-performance powertrains. The cars looked it, they sounded like it, they oozed it. And if they were lucky, their owners knew it and treated their machines accordingly. But for every instant street legend in the hometown of your choice, there are dozens, nay hundreds, of cars that people just drove. Nice cars, something a new owner could be proud of, bought off the lot after the dealer ordered a popular array of options, maybe something more attuned to comfort, with a dash of style. They are the ones that, over time, people stopped looking at; they got left…

What does it take to turn a cheap, economical, populist car into something very exclusive and expensive? Lashings of leather, wood, and lambswool carpet can help, as proven in the 1960s by the Mini de Ville, created by British coachbuilder Harold Radford Ltd. Alternately, stripping a car of its roof, doors, and standard upholstery could do, as Carrozzeria Ghia confirmed when this venerable firm turned Fiat’s everyday heroes, the 500 and 600, into Jollys, and attracted the attention (and lire) of the world’s jet-setters. We’ve found a 600 Jolly that has traveled fewer than 2,000 miles from new, and might just be the world’s most original example of this rare breed. That’s right, your eyes do not deceive you. As of this writing, the 1962 Jolly personalized with “Tori Jo”…

Eight times from 1949 to 1961, General Motors staged lavish auto shows in major cities for the purpose of telling the public about its products. These shows included automobiles from GM’s passenger car and truck divisions, as well as its AC auto parts and non-automotive concerns such as Electro-Motive Diesel and Frigidaire. Essentially, GM’s road-going show (under the names Transportation Unlimited in 1949, Mid-Century Motorama in 1950, and The GM Motorama for the remaining years), served as a marketing tool for selling the current crop of new GM automobiles and other products. Furthermore, it informed people of the company’s latest developments in scientific research and engineering. The traveling show was well known for its array of dream cars, or concept cars in today’s vernacular, which tested public reactions to innovative…