Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Hemmings Classic Car

I GREW UP IN A working-class town near New Orleans, Louisiana. As an adolescent, I could count on one hand how many families I knew who could afford to buy their children a car. Mine wasn’t one of them; however, it didn’t quell my teenage fantasy of buying my own. A few months after I turned 16, I got a job at a fast-food restaurant earning minimum wage ($3.35 per hour). Eight months later, a high-school classmate said his parents were allowing him to sell the car that he drove to school: A two-tone 1973 Chevrolet Nova with faded gold paint and even more faded white paint on the roof. It had some minor rust issues, but it was all original, mechanically sound, and had 44,000 miles on the odometer.…

“American Motors’ designers were real car enthusiasts, and they wanted the company to offer a special Gremlin model for enthusiasts circa 1970, something they dubbed the Gremlin GT.” WHEN DICK TEAGUE sketched out–on the back of an air-sickness bag, no less–his idea for an American subcompact car, he was making both history and legend. The small car that grew from that sketch became the American Motors Gremlin. Launched on April Fool’s Day in 1970, the Gremlin surprised the automotive press. How was tiny AMC, which in 1967 was close to going out of business, able to rebound and beat the Big Three to market with the first American subcompact car designed to compete with a new wave of imports? Chevy and Ford wouldn’t field their entries for another six months,…

The recent craze for restoring trucks and SUV’s is cool, but in some ways kind of sad. After all, once returned to perfection, can they accomplish the tasks for which they were originally built? Who will pick up a load of gravel with a perfectly restored ’49 GMC dump truck? Who will go explore two-track offroad trails at the wheel of that glisteningly immaculate ’69 Bronco with the knobby, but shined-for-show, tires? Thank goodness, then, that there are still oldies doing their original job. Take Richard Douglass’s 1959 Rambler Super Cross Country station wagon, shown on these pages. It’s a survivor, sure, but one heavily enough scarred from the journey it won’t be entering any of the Antique Automobile Club of America’s Historic Preservation of Original Features (HPOF) classes. No,…

1. IMPALA REFLECTION HUBBARD’S IMPALA PARTS 800-846-7252 Interior mirror supports are rarely thought of unless they go bad. They’re particularly prone to damage on convertibles, where they’re often exposed to the elements. Should you need to replace one in your 1959-’60 Chevrolet Impala convertible, these parts will prop up day/night or plain rearview mirrors just like new. The reproduction parts are finished in chrome and are manufactured like the originals for easy fit and function. Look up p/n 5960IMSC for more details. $126.49 impalaparts.com 2. THE WELDER’S WELDER HTP AMERICA 847-357-0700 The dual-voltage 110/220-volt Revolution 2500 is a multi-process welder that can handle MIG and TIG applications while maximizing efficiency and precision. Three packages are available: steel, aluminum, and an “all-in” package that accommodates both. Each features a MIG gun…

“Known surviving Voyagers – as you’ll read – can be counted on a single hand as of this writing.” BACK IN THE summer of 2018, I purchased a station wagon and proudly posted it on my social media page. It was a roller in desperate need of a new home, devoid of an engine, transmission, and interior. Heck, it didn’t even come with windows or floorpans. That was hardly a concern to me, since it was a 1954 Buick Century Estate Wagon that wore the remains of factory green paint–even on the trim and bumpers. In the post, I joked that it “ran when parked.” In truth, the price was right (only $5), and the Tootsie Toy was small enough to carry around in my hand. Today, the shelf-worn Century…

I TRULY ENJOYED THE ARTICLE “Behind the Barn Finds” by Scotty Lachenauer in the October issue. The photo on page 39 showing the Ford F-600 stock car hauler is my old truck that I drove on Long Island, and in Stephentown, New York, where Tim ultimately purchased it. He did not use the Ford in the late ’90s, as I still owned it then; Tim purchased it in 2007. Let me describe the Ford. The front bumper was from a Mack truck, the front axle came from a Ford F-800, and the engine was a 361-cu.in. Ford that was bored .030 over and had a 20/20 crankshaft. Behind the engine was a Clark five-speed transmission, and a two-speed rear axle. The clutch actuator rod was brazed together by me and…

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“Most of the Classics I’ve seen offered for sale are running, driving cars.” REFERRING TO a vintage car as a “classic” is rather commonplace today, a title usually cast upon anything older than 25 years. More succinct, it has become a generic term, like Kleenex to any-or no-name facial tissue. However, many years ago one car club used the word “classic” when identifying the automobiles in its organization: the Classic Car Club of America. The CCCA, founded in the early 1950s, is a multi-marque club that recognizes specific marques, or models within a marque, as having “Classic status.” (The club had hoped to copyright the term “classic” as applied to cars, but when it couldn’t, the founders settled for the term Full Classic. This magazine differentiates CCCA recognized cars from…

YOU WOULDN’T THINK screwing together a primitive Model T gow job (“hot rod” from before the term was coined—let alone considered non-pejorative, see HCC #223, April 2023, for details [https://www.hemmings.com/stories/gow-jobs-revealed/]) like David Mazza’s wouldn’t be such an unusual thing. Yet he recently took an informal inventory of cars that exist at least on the internet and even encompassing ones that have been in a perpetual state of construction for a decade, unrestored survivors not yet revived from barn-find status, and those that only exist very quietly in quasi-private collections, there just aren’t many black-radiator Ford Model T’s that exist in a period-modified form. There are, however, a lot of 1920s and early ‘30s Ford castoffs that can be assembled into one. David’s project, slowly but determinedly coming together in a…

The Antique Automobile Club of America has begun releasing its calendar for the 2024 show season, which will include events in most major regions of the country, as well as a return of the Special Winter National in Puerto Rico. As always, the club will kick things off with its annual convention, which will take place in Chantilly, Virginia. The convention features a trade show, seminars, and judging school. After the convention, there will be many touring events and shows running into the fall—most including car corrals and swap meet fields—with the vaunted Hershey Meet among the highlights. It’s a great opportunity to rub elbows with tens of thousands of collector car enthusiasts. Although other local and regional AACA events have yet to be announced, here is what is on…

“The repair was something I should have done a long time ago, considering I was driving the La Salle on hot days.” VAPOR LOCK WAS not an uncommon curse for those with carbureted classics on hot days. That is until electronic fuel injection eventually became popular, helping reduce the problem. In fact, as a youth I remember seeing cars stranded beside the road with their hoods open, while sweaty, frustrated drivers put wet rags on the fuel pump, fuel line, and carburetor to cool those components, all to try and get going again. My father used to attach wooden clothespins along the fuel line of his old Pontiac to mitigate the heat. It must have worked because we didn’t have to begin life anew in some place like Gila Bend,…