Hemmings Classic Car April 2023

Write to our Editor at mlitwin@hemmings.com and follow him on Instagram @matt.litwin.hemmings. “As with most car owners who invest in an expensive paint job—the new finish should be mesmerizing” VETERAN READERS will recall that we’ve often discussed the overwhelming enjoyment of driving a vintage car daily, an old reliable ride that still presents well at the local cruise-in, or outside the pastry shop while we commiserate over morning coffee with like-minded enthusiasts. The automotive equivalent of your favorite pair of loafers that shine, despite the accumulation of miles on the heels. Therein lies the flip side of daily driving Old Reliable: miles. Tires, brakes, and plug wires notwithstanding, the slow and steady accumulation of nicks and scrapes on the body eventually defy attempts to hide the age of the finish. Brightwork…

PRIOR TO THE COVID-19 pandemic, regular visitors to our Bennington, Vermont, headquarters became familiar with Hemmings’ antique vehicle collection held within “the Sibley Shop,” casually known as the Hemmings Museum. Each vehicle holds some level of significance, whether due to rarity, rally service, or—in the case of our 1940 Buick Century four-door convertible phaeton, one of just 194 built—a combination thereof. According to the Fisher Body tag on our example, it left the assembly line painted black and trimmed in a red leather interior, the same combination present when the Buick was purchased in 1987. Further confirmation comes from period color photos found within a history file created upon the Buick’s Vermont arrival. The same meticulous file offered that although it was a running, driving car, mechanical refurbishment was performed,…

Oakville, Ontario, Canada, 1988 – ’89 “Getting fired was not easy but getting laid off was a risk in a trucking job that was largely dependent on the auto industry; then as now, it was feast or famine.” I RETIRED during 2021 after working 33 years in the trucking industry. My first trucking job was driving car carriers for Maris Transport, a long-defunct company that was based in Oakville, Ontario. It was only a stone’s throw from Ford of Canada’s Oakville Assembly Plant and Ontario Truck Plant. It began when I earned my Class-A license at the age of 25 on April 20, 1988, after which I started working for Maris on June 20. At the time, there were 177 drivers working for the company, and even though two others…

EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS TO: mlitwin@hemmings.com AS THE OWNER OF A 1958 Edsel Citation convertible, I always enjoy seeing these orphans in your magazine. The 1960 Edsel that graced the cover of the November 2022 issue, and was commented on in the January issue, shows that this Edsel was based on the ’60 Ford body. The placing of the ’59 Pontiac grille in the ’60 Edsel was not just a result of designers being influenced by other manufacturers’ designs, but a direct order by the CEO of Ford, Ernest Breech. The Edsel was on the way out and Ford needed to make the ’60 Edsel as cheaply as possible. Robin Jones was the designer just under Roy Brown, the stylist in charge of the Edsel. In the June 1999 issue…

Zach Suhr is a humble guy with a passion for the artifacts of an earlier era. “You probably know more about this car than I do,” he tells me. Not true. Or, if it is, it’s only because of him and a handful of other guys that I learned what I know about hot rodding’s protoplasmic era between the World Wars (see “Gow Jobs Revealed” in this issue). Among that group of teachers is the late Bruce Lancaster, a New Jersey-based librarian and hot-rod historian of the first rank who became a mentor to Zach, a resident of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and owner of both the gorgeous barn and the 1925 Ford Model T Runabout in these photos. Zach is among the next generation of enthusiasts who are keeping alive the…

“Even though labor was a significant part of a car’s cost, the Kaiser engineers had to resort to de-contenting the car to reduce costs.” I THINK WE sometimes forget that Henry J. Kaiser’s original intention when entering the automobile business after World War II was to build a small family car of high quality at a price nearly anyone could afford. Kaiser talked about building a modern Model A, a great car at a low price. Before he teamed up with Joseph Frazer to form Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, Mr. Kaiser had his West Coast-based engineers working on several small-car design projects. They weren’t automotive engineers, so some of the prototypes were strange little two-passenger jobs that looked like something you’d see at a circus or a bumper-car ring. Others were more conventional,…