I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)

magnette

Haven't been online much lately, but did get a chance to go across to Essen two weeks ago for the Classic Car show. I went two years ago so I thought I would give it another go as Dusseldorf (the nearest proper airport) is only an hour's flight from London.
Great show, loads of unusual cars - everything from veterans to Veyrons, and from Isettas to a Duesenburg.
Some of the rarities were incredible - whenI get the chance I'll post a couple of the pictures in the mystery car forum...

fintail

How I wish I was closer to such events. I read MB had a good display, focusing on the S-class.

fintail

Nothing so bad here - makes me thankful I live where I live. Things rot here too, but slowly. Most cars from the early 90s onward are rust free, 80s cars too.

lemko

Those fintails were susceptible to rust around the headlamp bezels like 1950s American cars were on the headlamp visors. One of the most common improvised repairs Ive seen on both is the use of duct tape over the rust holes and then painted over to match the car's finish.

lemko

...don't rust with nearly the ferocity they did back in the 1970s. Only a badly neglected car built from the 1990s on to the present rusts here. Heck most 1980s domestic cars are still holding up well per rust.

fintail

Yes, the headlights and front fenders in general are sensitive. Old MBs weren't rustproofed very well until maybe the mid-late 70s. That car I looked at the other day had some pretty bad bubbling on the passenger side headlight area.

magnette

M Benz had a whole hall and lots of decent stuff although having only visited Stuttgart last September a lot of the factory stuff was familiar - great to see it again though.
There are a lot of Benzes, but even more Porsches and Jaguars / Aston Martins etc - as well as Mustangs and other pony cars - very popular in Germany.
What I like the best is the rare and unheard of makes - weird Fiat specials, Talbot Lagos, Adlers, Tatras - there were several of the latter from the period before they discovered streamlining....
A great show - although Essen itself isn't really a holiday destination and a but soulless.

fintail

Yeah, German tourists go nuts when they come to the US and get to rent a Mustang or Camaro. Big deal to them, kind of like me renting something odd there that I can't get at home.

Early Tatras were pretty boring IIRC...Tatra 77 with a rear fin is the one I'd want. That part of Germany isn't scenic, the great NRW industrial zone, factory after factory, and traffic.

uplanderguy

Around here, rustouts I see repeatedly that surprise me a bit, are full-size Dodge trucks one generation back before the current iteration. Holes right above the rear wheel openings.

magnette

I went to the show using the metro system as it was free (you get a pass with the hotel booking) but the car park was always worth a look on the way out of the show - on both days that I went there, a number of different cars had turned up - a highlight was a very modern one as someone had turned up in a McLaren MP4-12C - I've only seen one other on the road - in London - and that was at some photo shoot.

lemko

...cream and red 1957 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan at Robbins and Huntingdon Pike in Rockledge, PA. Primered light green 1968 Pontiac LeMans two-door hardtop nearby.

uplanderguy

The '57 Chevy One-Fifty may well be my favorite (or close) '57 Chevy. It doesn't have that 'fanned out' trim on the rear quarter...has side trim similar to a '55 Chevy Two-Ten. But you knew that!

berri

"cream and red 1957 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan"

So did the driver have a pack of cigarettes rolled into his t-shirt sleeve!

bhill2

"The '57 Chevy One-Fifty may well be my favorite (or close) '57 Chevy"

I think I was ruined by being around in the day. I just can't appreciate the low trim line of these cars. They scream 'poverty' to me (except when that trim was chosen for lightness). Anyway, I like the Two-Ten just fine.

berri

I think for it's time the 57 Chevy was a decently made, clean looking car; but it's problem was it looked a bit outdated. My real issue with the vehicle though is that "chintzy" looking dashboard.

fintail

The parking area at the local concours is interesting too. Good bet for finding oddities is the parking garage of an old car show, must be a cultural universal.

On the obscure car topic, saw a nice looking 450 SEL today in the typical boring creamy beige, a ~65 Mustang convertible that looked like a 6, 190E 2.3-16, Volvo Amazon/122 4 door.

omarman

Did MB use cosmoline for rust prevention? I think VW still uses that or some variation like tectyl. Some Porsche owners remove all that spray on goo and post before and after pics. I suppose if they are fastidious about car care and storage then there's no harm in that.

explorerx4

Trying to remember all the cars i saw.
65 Fury on a car carrier. 58 Fairlane Corral/Cream. 71 or so butter colored Galaxie. Late 60's Mercedes sedan on a car carrier. 60's gray Mercedes coupe as I drove over an underpass.
It was about 70 and people are getting their specialty cars back on the road in the Northeast.

fintail

That's the waxy stuff right? I am not sure. My old car has a fair amount of undercoating - which I presume is original, but I am not 100% certain. The floors on the car are spotless though, so whatever it is, it worked. Wish they would have coated the inner fenders with some kind of rust inhibitor though - that and rockers are weak spots on fintails.

lemko

It's a shame those old cars which are rolling works of art are susceptible to rust while today's bland appliances are much better protected against corrosion.

lemko

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/02/junkyard-find-1976-pontiac-grand-lemans- /

andre1969

In some ways, I actually prefer the 4-door to the coupe on the '73-77 A-body. The coupe, while still attractive IMO, still fell victim to the cliches of the era such as landau roofs, opera windows, etc. In contrast, I thought the sedan had a very futuristic, airy passenger cabin. Heck, it translated pretty well into a 6000SUX!

Hate the fender skirts though...IMO, they just make these cars look fat! Oh, and I think that color is "Firethorne", which is the color that mine would be, had it been properly repainted. I'm impressed at how little rust is on that junkyard car. I wonder what it was that ultimately sent it to its grave? The Pontiac 350 was pretty reliable, and THM350 transmissions were pretty durable. Of course, that car is now 37 years old, and nothing lasts forever.

fintail

This morning saw the same Volvo Amazon from the other day, and the same red Volvo 544 I see now and then.

Speaking of junkyards, "Cereal Marshmallows" has started getting into junkyard videos, and at 1:30 happens upon a rare very early fintail - hopefully to be parted rather than scrapped.

stickguy

I liked the Supra right at the beginning. That body looked really good. Would be better than you can find in the NE rust area!

fintail

I noticed that too - even here, the bottom of the rear hatches started rusting by the 90s, and they are very rare on the road anymore.

magnette

Since coming back from Essen - which was two weekends ago - I have noticed a few old cars about - mainly at weekends when driving my Magnette. Saw a Ford Escort MkII - possibly an RS one but it was going the other way - certainly sporty. Also a Prewar Ford - looked like a big one - probably an American V8 - it was a "Tudor" as they called them...
Also a fities preserved London Bus - a single decker we knew as an RF - there were hundreds of them once and quite a few are preserved - theres a big old bus scene in Britain.

andre1969

but my roommate is watching some tv show (not network tv, judging from the F-bombs they've been dropping), and at one point I heard him say "There's an old car. REAL old!" He paused the tv, and I came in, out of curiosity, expecting to see something from the 30's or 40's that I'd need a book to identify.

Of all things. It was a 1980 Citation. I tell ya...kids these days!

lemko

Think about it. Today, a 50 year-old car is a 1963 model. When I was a kid, a 50 year-old car was something from the 1920s and a 1963 car was just a older car somebody down the block had as a daily driver. A 33 year-old car like that Citation would've been a prewar Chevrolet Special Deluxe to me as a kid.

andre1969

Yeah, but my roommate has been around me long enough to know the difference between "old" and "really old"!

But, time marches on. My '57 DeSoto was 34 model years when I bought it (September 1990), and it seemed like an old car, even back then. I guess to me, something from 1957 has ALWAYS seemed old, because it was before my time.

but it's weird to think that my two 1979 New Yorkers are now 34 model years old (soon to be 35!). Somehow, they just don't seem all that "old" to me. Not like that DeSoto did when I bought it.

I think part of it though, might be simply that I can remember a 1979 New Yorker when it was new And, in that timeframe, whenever a new car came out, it had a habit of making the preceding model seem ancient. Now that everything's aerodynamic, and the retro trend has been bouncing around here and there honestly, since the 1994 Ram was introduced, new cars just don't have the ability to make the preceding model seem "old" anymore.

But, I guess to younger kids (my roommate isn't *that* much younger than me...born in '75, while I was born in '70), something that pre-dates their birth, or was new when they were just a little kid, might seem every bit as ancient to them, as my DeSoto or an older car would seem to me.

Mr_Shiftright

50s cars look ancient to me now.

fintail

Being able to remember a car being new definitely is the key. Kids today think an 80s car is a relic and 90s cars are old. The age of cars in junkyards helps too - lots of Y2K era stuff being scrapped now, so it becomes "old". Lack of design changes helps it the other way too - many 90s cars don't "look" too old today, where 20 years ago, 70s cars looked ancient already.

My dad had several 60s Fords back in the 90s - cars that were usually 30-35 years old. To my teenaged eyes, they were real vintage cars. I bought my fintail around the same time - it was an ancient car then. But a 30 year old car now? Not extremely impressive. I'm older.

ateixeira

I think by the 90s the wind tunnel era had started, but we're still in the wind tunnel era. Now it's just more universal.

There's less differentiation because there's much less design freedom nowadays.

fintail

There will certainly never again be as much of a change as we saw in 1955, or 1965, or at the end of the 70s, or around 1985-90. There's just nowhere to go, so we just repeat trends now and then - and designers are in large part sycophants, so as one does, so do the others.

Also, I think cars age better cosmetically than they did. Other than a few late 80s-90s paint issues, paint holds up better today, interiors age better, cars rust less, etc, so they don't look as "old".

ateixeira

I think we see a round-square-round-square cycle. They just spin it as something new.

80s cars were square, then came the Audi 5000/Tempo/Taurus and everything became jelly bean round. That got old so we got New Edge and Art & Science creases everywhere, so back to square. Then came fluidic sculpture and peeled back headlights and we seem to be moving to rounded again.

I guess once those headlights hit the A-pillar it'll change back to square again.

Nice to have the emotorcons back! :surprise:

fintail

That cycle is exactly what MB has been doing. From the mid 80s the mid 90s - fairly chiseled. Then things got a little round, then the arc came around, then some angles popped up, now they are aiming for curves again. Gotta change it up to make it look new, even if it isn't real evolution.

I really cringe at marketing speak like "art & science" or "fluidic sculpture"...sorry suits, it's not art nor science nor sculpture :shades:

ateixeira

Here's the new Genesis:





URL is the embedded image doesn't show:

http://www.turquoisebranding.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/water-sculptures.jpg-

fintail

Sad thing is, many of the drivers and execs probably believe the hype.

Speaking of odd cars, a white Reatta convertible just drove by.

andre1969

I think that, for the longest time, the old mantra of "Longer, Lower, Wider" was so drilled into our psyche And, that's pretty much what cars did, essentially from the moment someone thought to put a gasoline engine in a carriage, until the mid 1970's. Another trend was lower beltlines, larger windows, more glass area, although in some cases, thick C-pillars and opera windows negated some of that.

But that trend couldn't go on forever, as the cars could only get so long, low, or wide. And windows can only get so huge. The first domestic cars to really buck that trend in a major way were GM's downsized 1977 B/C full-sized cars. The 1976 Aspen/Volare did it to a small degree, in being taller than a Dart/Valiant, slightly shorter (but a longer wheelbase), and more glass area. However, they were also a bit heavier than a Dart/Valiant. So while they might have stalled the longer/lower/wider and heavier trend, it was GM that truly reversed it.

But then, you can only make cars so short, narrow, and tall. You can only round them off so much. So, it was probably around 1985-90 that the downsizing trend began to stall, and then reverse. One one hand, you had GM shrinking a bunch of cars in 1985-86, and a few more in 1988. But then you had Honda coming out with a larger Accord and Civic every time they redesigned them. And GM started lengthening some of its cars for 1989.

So, what goes around, comes around I guess. To me though, some features will always be considered "Modern". Such as low belt lines, large glass area, thin pillars, etc.

berri

I think cars born before you always seem old. But another phenomena seems to arise as you get older. Things seem closer together than they used to. In the 80's, my 76 Cutlass already seemed old, but these days it doesn't seem as old to me as back then. Maybe it has something to do with that old proverb that time flies...

berri

There will certainly never again be as much of a change as we saw in 1955, or 1965, or at the end of the 70s

Today I think it is more the technology that changes, and sometimes quickly... but I still want my CD's in WAV format rather than degraded mp3. :shades:

berri

To me though, some features will always be considered "Modern". Such as low belt lines, large glass area, thin pillars, etc.

I think sometimes features are classic rather than just modern. Some examples; an XKE, 66 Toronado, 57 Chrysler 300, or a 65 or 69 Mustang will always look good no matter what is around it . The again, a 58 Edsel or 59 Chevy will always draw attention because it's a freak show (but I still like 'em)!

fintail

What goes around comes around - that might be the best summation of the future of styling. I am not anticipating anything really new - maybe some odd trends, but overall shapes and sizes all seem to be established. We'll just get varying amounts of dolloped-on styling and maybe dumb faces now and then.

With intense safety standards, lots of glass and low beltlines are probably something that won't come back.

Just saw an International Scout drive by.

fintail

What's a CD? :shades:

berri

You youngin's have been deprived. Mp3 players with plastic buds jammed into your ears instead of stereo's with large quality speakers, no rich sounds of vinyl records (well, until they're scratched anyway), beer and wine instead of a good cocktail, media always bashing a good steak, airplanes are now cattle cars with the passengers transported like swine on the way to the slaughterhouse, bucket seats instead of a big bench seat and necker knob on the steering wheel to facilitate "making the move" and the list goes on and on... OK, I'll move on and reminisce with a Beach Boys album now.

tjc78

I have pretty good ears and a few pretty nice audio systems and I have a tough time telling a well encoded MP3 from the original source. To me well encoded is either 256 or 320kps and done with LAME or other good ripper.

I do have a soft spot for vinyl, however!

Mr_Shiftright

80s music sucks. Can't we just say it? :P

I do believe that the terms "classic" and "timeless" are intertwined.

A car's status as a classic will be tested by time passing, just like Presidents and baseball players. The hype is not carved in stone by any means.

ab348

So not only do you have bad taste in automobiles, but music too? Now things really start to make sense. You really are hosting the wrong forum.

ateixeira

80s music sucks. Can't we just say it?

My kids played Bon Jovi in my car, and the sound was awful. Massive distortion, my ears almost bled.

Then I upgraded to premium sound. We played it again.

The sound was awful. Massive distortion, my ears almost bled.

Just a little less static.

Mr_Shiftright

Which car did I pick to violate standards of good taste? I don't remember.

andre1969

Which car did I pick to violate standards of good taste? I don't remember.

Well, you're probably not a fan of the majority of my fleet either, so I'll second ab348! :P