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

imidazol97

I see lots of Mitsubishi Eclipses at certain types of area car shows and cruise-ins. Usually tended by younger (okay, much younger) guys. There are some others with certain other Toyota and Suburu models that I consider too new to be classics.

Is that the future of restorations with the new generation?

stickguy

Issue might be the electronics and computers. Complicated parts that are either too expensive, or unobtainable, to restore.

fintail

DSM cars (Eclipses) along with some higher spec Toyotas and Subarus will definitely be special interest cars in the not too distant future - some are already hitting that status.

I suspect restorations will focus on what is under the hood rather than having better-than-new paint and having every interior nut and grommet to exact OEM specs. Younger enthusiasts are much more tolerant of cosmetic patina.

ab348

ab348 said:

Now here's something you don't see every day:

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1965-austin-850-mini-beach-car/

Hold on to your hats - it sold for $230,000!! Holy cow!

stickguy

Was John Lennon in the boot or something?

xwesx

Well, considering the history of it and lack of miles, doesn't surprise me. People eat that stuff up:

This 1962 Austin Mini is one of approximately 15 “Beach Cars,” 13 of which were left-hand-drive examples exported to the US to promote the Mini’s arrival to the North American market. Manufactured on March 19, 1962 and finished in Smoke Grey with a Snowberry White top, this car came from the factory without doors and is powered by a numbers-matching 850cc inline-four mated to a four-speed manual transaxle. It was originally delivered in Michigan to Falvey Motor Sales Company, which was a British car distributor in the Midwest. The dealership’s principal, the seller’s late father, acquired the car for himself on August 24, 1965. The seller took ownership of the Mini after her father’s passing in 1986, and the car was put into storage 10 years later. It was removed from storage in 2004, and subsequent recommissioning included a carburetor service, fluid changes, a replacement fuel pump, and tires. This single-family-owned Beach Car is now offered with a British Motor Industry Heritage Trust certificate, a copy of the Manufacturer’s Statement of Origin, recent records, and a clean California title in the seller’s name.

stickguy

That car in Michigan must have been truly bizarre. Almost makes sense in SoCal.

fintail

BaT tax strikes again. I wonder how much of a similar experience a Mini Moke could deliver for what fraction of the price:

ab348

Hey, let's go check out the used car lot down at Crown Pontiac, I hear they have some interesting trades on offer!

stickguy

wonder where this is? Some tasty items in there.

I like the Porsche 914. and see a Pontaic Ventura (green with dog dish hubcaps) up on the ramp. why they picked that one to highlight, is beyond me.

and the tail of a 71ish Firebird that is probably sweet.

looks like a Ranchero GT (with hood scoop) partial obscured by the post, behind the Jag XKE hatch. what an awkward design I always thought.

fintail

I wonder if the Ventura has something special under the hood, remember "The Seven Ups"?

Series II E-Type 2+2, not a beloved model.

stickguy

speaking of the 70's, out driving around today was about a 77 or so Camaro. Black, not a fancy model that I could tell. A couple hipster types driving it. looked clean enough but not a fully restored trailer queen.

tjc78

Could have been my neighbor across the street...they have one

ab348

They seem to have a number of Ford products on the lawn, not just the Torino GT convertible but another Torino behind the Jag, and behind that, what looks like the rear end of a Mustang Mach 1 fastback.

Judging from the number of '70 Pontiac full-sizers lined up in front of the showroom building, this must be from the 1970 model year. The palm trees proclaim it is in a warm climate.

fintail

The 914 would have been a pretty fresh release then, too.

ab348

Looking again at that picture, I wonder if those aren't all new cars. Everything appears to be from the 1970 model year. Maybe that is just a slice of a larger early automall sort of multi-dealer location?

ab348

Yesterday, in response to a Hemmings Blog post on the HC-series early '70s Vauxhall Viva ( the link pulldown here is not working again so here it is: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/viva-las-vauxhall-1974-vauxhall-viva/ ) I remembered an excellent article I had read last year about the woeful experience of customers who bought it when it was rolled out into Canada by GM as the Firenza. But I could not find the article anywhere.

After some online sleuthing I turned up what was now a dead link because the website had shut down, but thanks to the Internet Archive the article has been preserved. It is nicely researched and is well worth a read (I suspect @magnette might particularly enjoy it). It is a lesson on how a manufacturer should not deal with a troublesome car:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180630080921/http://www.autofocus.ca/news-events/features/the-firenza-fiasco-is-the-canadian-nader-corvair-affair-you-never-heard-about

tjc78

There is a huge dealer group in St Petersburg called Crown. Been in business 50 years. I’d wager this is them.

fintail

There's a "Dennis the Menace" marathon on one of the unusual cable channels, and it can be like a car show for period cars that are now hens' teeth. I've watched several episodes, and there are always obscure spottings to be found without effort. Here are some I recall seeing:

As the show was sponsored by Ford, plenty of those, including this beauty:



Probably just as rare as the wagon these days:



Mr. Wilson's car was probably what we'd call "fleet spec" today (but wide whites because 1959):



The Mitchell family had a fancier model (but blackwalls):



One of these could probably be called "incredibly rare" today:



3 uncommon models:



The new Falcon had to play a role:



And the car Dennis receives for selling a winning raffle ticket (to an older lady who won a new Comet), one of my favorite episodes:

andre1969

In that picture with the '59 Pontiac, and the Ford wagon, off in the distance you can see the "Bewitched" garage, even though the house hadn't been built yet! IIRC, originally the garage was free-standing, and was the garage to the house that eventually got used for "Hazel", "Gidget", the preppy neighbors in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", etc. At some point, the Hazel house had an attached garage built, and the Bewitched house was built to the right of the garage.

One thing that I think is cool about "Dennis the Menace", is that even though Ford sponsored it, you'd often see other cars. I caught part of that marathon yesterday, and there's a '57 Cadillac that shows up in a few early episodes. In one shot, I think there was the Caddy, a Packard Carribean, and a '57 Chevy!

fintail

Funny you mention "Christmas Vacation" - in a brief street scene, I thought it looked like a scene from that movie. I guess there is a link, same backlot. The preppy neighbors were "Todd and Margo", who had a Saab 9000, a stereotypical yuppie car of 1989 no doubt.

I have seen the same white 57 Coupe deVille in a couple episodes - you can see its fin through the windows of the 61 Squire in the pic above. These cars must have belonged to people who worked on the show. Here's an imcdb shot showing the Caribbean - something probably even more rare than a 60 Mercury wagon:



Here's the Caddy again in an episode I saw today, along with a Stude seen in at least two episodes, and I think the Buick convertible is seen at least a couple times too:

imidazol97

andre1969 said:

One thing that I think is cool about "Dennis the Menace", is that even though Ford sponsored it, you'd often see other cars. I caught part of that marathon yesterday, and there's a '57 Cadillac that shows up in a few early episodes. In one shot, I think there was the Caddy, a Packard Carribean, and a '57 Chevy!

Today in history: on this date in 1960 the last Desoto rolled off the assembly line. I heard this on a radio talk show early this morning...

andre1969

imidazol97 said:

Today in history: on this date in 1960 the last Desoto rolled off the assembly line. I heard this on a radio talk show early this morning...

For some reason, the date November 18, 1960 always sticks in my mind, so I googled it. Looks like the decision to end DeSoto was announced on November 18, and the last one was built on November 30.

It just hit me...November 18 is another dark anniversary in Mopar history. It was the date my 2000 Intrepid got totaled, back in 2009!

One other Mopar parallel...my birthday is the same as Walter P. Chrysler's. April 2. Maybe that's why I've tended to have good luck with them!

fintail

Apparently Edsel production also ended at the end of November, in 1959. I can't find a firm date for the end of production, I find a date of the announcement of November 19, 1959, but apparently production continued through the end of the month.

omarman

andre1969

It's amazing how quickly they could eliminate a brand in those days. For instance, didn't they announce Oldsmobile would be discontinued, just before the 2001 Aurora came out? Yet I think they built some of them, like the Alero maybe, through 2004?

In contrast, Mopar makes the decision to get rid of DeSoto in 1959...pares back the lineup considerably for '60, and then just does a hardtop coupe and hardtop sedan with no series names for a couple months of the '61 model year, and poof, it's gone.

And, it's interesting how quickly the Edsel came and went. With as much money as they sunk into it, it's interesting that they decided to dump it all so quickly. Seems to me it would be kind of expensive to launch the abbreviated '60 models as well. Whereas the '61 DeSoto wasn't that diffferent from a Chrysler, just a modified front-end, the Edsel looks like it might have had more sheetmetal mods. Plus, the Edsel still offered a full range of body styles...2/4 door sedan, 2/4 door hardtop, convertible, and wagon. DeSoto just pared back to a 2/4 door hardtop its last year.

I guess they got rid of Pontiac, Mercury, Saturn, and Hummer pretty quickly in the wake of the Great Recession, though. And, going with the November theming, Mopar announced they were phasing out Plymouth on November 3, 1999. According to Wikipedia, the last Plymouth Neon rolled out on June 28, 2001.

fintail

Wow, from announcement to shuttered in one day. I suppose a wagon would be one of the cars to have, along with the deluxe trim 4 door HT, which had production of 31 units.

A model that comes to mind for unusual mods is the 60 Edsel 4 door HT. This had the wraparound/bubble style rear window of a Fairlane, but the HT style of a Galaxie - IIRC there was no 4 door HT Fairlane, so this had to be made by itself.

thebean

I’ve read somewhere that McNamara and the rest of the “Whiz Kids” had decided to discontinue Edsel shortly after its formal introduction. It would have taken a big sales number for them to reconsider, and with all the shade thrown at it for its styling and the initial quality problems, that was never going to happen. Dead brand rolling.

fintail

MB passenger car lineup ca. 1969, those were the days, no cloned CUVs:

stickguy

Surprised they had no factory wagons back then.

fintail

Oddly enough, no factory wagons until 1978, but a number of aftermarket wagons to fill demand until then.

ab348

I had never heard of this classic-car mecca in Germany before now. Sounds like a fun place to visit if you're nearby:

https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2019/11/28/automotive-paradise-is-germanys-klassikstadt-museum-dealership-garage

fintail

Reminds me of the V8 Hotel in Stuttgart, with car-themed rooms.

I haven't spent much time in Frankfurt, maybe I'll stop by there next time.

uplanderguy

Not spotted by me, except on a FB page about instrument panels....still to my eyes, probably the most-expensive-looking panel put in a mass-produced car...1965 Pontiac Grand Prix (same in Bonneville with bucket seats and console options). More-expensive-looking than Buick and Olds even IMHO.

uplanderguy

RE.: Edsel--Studebaker-Packard's president from 1954-56, James Nance, jumped ship to run the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division at Ford. Supposedly he and McNamara weren't fond of each other. The last Detroit Packards were junior and senior series, like Edsels were, but the timing was wrong, of course. Edsel failed while Studebaker scored the highest profit in its 107-year history in 1959. Of course, it was short-lived.

In 1960, Nance went on to run a bank in Cleveland and lived in tony Chagrin Falls, which is maybe twenty miles north of me. I've always wanted to try and find his old home, but haven't been successful (although haven't tried real hard).

I was looking through '56 Golden Hawk production orders in South Bend once and came across one with the notation "Mrs. Nance" at the bottom.

uplanderguy

That Caribbean in the "Dennis The Menace" shot looks like a '56 to me, only from the more pointed-area of the front fenders above the headlights. I could be wrong. But if it's a '56, only 276 convertibles built and if it's a '55, 500 built.

Amazing to me that some Caribbeans were built for inventory. The one my hometown dealer sold (and was proud to do so), was actually sitting in Packard's inventory at the time. It was put on a boat from Detroit to Cleveland and my dealer friend and his head mechanic went to pick it up. The mechanic, at 88, is still very sharp and remembers that day as the first time he ever ate frog legs at a restaurant in Cleveland.

uplanderguy

RE.: Crown Pontiac photo--the Nova-based Ventura II was new for the '71 model year, so maybe it was the 'new thing'. I think it's funny there seem to be a number of full-size 1970 Pontiacs leftover, on that lot. At the time I didn't like those cars at all, but I've grown to like them just because I NEVER see them now. I'd take a Ventura two-door hardtop, maybe an Executive or Bonneville Brougham two-door hardtop!

I love the '69 and '70 Grand Prixs, when they still had four headlights and before the decklid was chiseled for '71. I like the interiors of the '73 better, but exterior of the '69 and '70 best of that era.

Still a fair amount of those for sale online at any given time, which represents the high sales volume when new of course.

uplanderguy

RE.: Edsel four-door hardtop for '60--I never noticed a different rear window style than the Galaxie four-door hardtop had. That seems hard-to-believe for the low volume. I need to check that out; interesting.

fintail

Yep, as far as I know, they (and all 60 Edsel sedans) all had the bubble type window as on a 60 Fairlane, not the flat window as a 60 Galaxie.

Looking at that Pontiac dash reminds me of something - numerous GM cars at the time used at least sections of real wood for such trim, right?

uplanderguy said:

RE.: Edsel four-door hardtop for '60--I never noticed a different rear window style than the Galaxie four-door hardtop had. That seems hard-to-believe for the low volume. I need to check that out; interesting.

uplanderguy

I think it was 'veneer', which I don't really know what that means! I think it's sorta-real, LOL!

Boy, you know, on a different subject--I'm on an "Original Cars" forum on Facebook. I love original cars no matter the make. But the "malarkey" (to quote Joe B.!) I see people post as fact. I guess 'cause I've been an auditor my whole adult life, if it's my opinion, I label it as such and if I don't know, I either don't comment, or I say I'm not sure. People always want to find the auditor wrong, LOL! A guy posted a pic of a very nice, 30K mile '74 Vega Estate wagon with the gold Cosworth Vega wheels. Looks really nice...but not original. I politely mentioned that those wheels were Cosworth-specific in '75 and '76, and offered as an option on 'regular' Vegas in '77. This I do know. Owner replies, "They're on the window sticker", I replied "the window sticker will not say 'aluminum wheels'. Check the brochures online, and there are many photos online to verify".

His response? "I don't care what the brochure says...my original paperwork says it came with them". BTW, he is not the original owner.

I'm only half-kidding when I say, "I hate people", LOL.

texases

Pretty much any car you see with 'real' wood interior trim uses veneer over some cheaper support.

I was wondering if that one was wood, it looks so much better than the fake wood that curves in impossible ways.

fintail

If it isn't plastic, it counts!

I'd ask for a pic of the window sticker specifying those exact wheels. I bet you wouldn't be granted that request. To use an old line, "put up or shut up". He should be able to produce some kind of build sheet on a car like that, right?

The old MB world doesn't seem so bad, mostly questions about whether a finish or type of accessory is correct, which can vary as changes happened at random times rather than model years, and could even vary based on where the car was built. I too work in the audit field (compliance rather than financial, although the compliance is related to financial laws), although that could change next year. Like you, I have an eye for minutiae, and enjoy the details.

uplanderguy said:

I think it was 'veneer', which I don't really know what that means! I think it's sorta-real, LOL!

Boy, you know, on a different subject--I'm on an "Original Cars" forum on Facebook. I love original cars no matter the make. But the "malarkey" (to quote Joe B.!) I see people post as fact. I guess 'cause I've been an auditor my whole adult life, if it's my opinion, I label it as such and if I don't know, I either don't comment, or I say I'm not sure. People always want to find the auditor wrong, LOL! A guy posted a pic of a very nice, 30K mile '74 Vega Estate wagon with the gold Cosworth Vega wheels. Looks really nice...but not original. I politely mentioned that those wheels were Cosworth-specific in '75 and '76, and offered as an option on 'regular' Vegas in '77. This I do know. Owner replies, "They're on the window sticker", I replied "the window sticker will not say 'aluminum wheels'. Check the brochures online, and there are many photos online to verify".

His response? "I don't care what the brochure says...my original paperwork says it came with them". BTW, he is not the original owner.

I'm only half-kidding when I say, "I hate people", LOL.

imidazol97

uplanderguy said:

Are the knobs under the lower left dash and the far right dash pull knobs for opening vents on the respective sides for fresh air blowing on knees?

I recall our 1950 Studebaker had those vents. In fact then the vent scoops opened out from the front fenders and caught air as the car moved. IIRC my 1967 Mustang had vents that opened.

sda

imidazol97 said:

uplanderguy said:

Are the knobs under the lower left dash and the far right dash pull knobs for opening vents on the respective sides for fresh air blowing on knees?

I recall our 1950 Studebaker had those vents. In fact then the vent scoops opened out from the front fenders and caught air as the car moved. IIRC my 1967 Mustang had vents that opened.

The wood was a thin veneer that often peeled or bubbled as it aged. Looked great new. I do like the Pontiac dash in this year better than most of GMs full size cars.

Hard to believe Buick will no longer have cars/sedans, only CUVs and SUVs. Recent commercials had a Buick sedan and several SUVs. Pointing to the sedan, oh that’s not my Buick, that one is, pointing to a CUV. The writing was on the wall. Sad.

ab348

imidazol97 said:

Are the knobs under the lower left dash and the far right dash pull knobs for opening vents on the respective sides for fresh air blowing on knees?

Yes, cowl vents. My Cutlass has those as well. Cars with A/C did not get them IIRC. They are surprisingly pleasant on a summer day.

uplanderguy

Since my parents never owned a car with A/C while I lived with them, I remember the cowl vents too. You did get a lot of air moving through them.

kyfdx

uplanderguy said:

Since my parents never owned a car with A/C while I lived with them, I remember the cowl vents too. You did get a lot of air moving through them.

All of my parents cars had A/C.

But, I didn't have A/C in my own car until I was 32....

xwesx

I love the cowl vents on my '69 C20. They are a great alternative to the little triangle window vents in older pickups and vans, which were also a wonderful feature, but tended to cause a ton of air leaks/whistling if you actually use them much. On the C20, I can only recall one time when I opened them, which was on a 95-degree day in Pennsylvania in 1999. Because of the heat, and the fact that we had my (now) wife's dog in the truck, I had to open them to give the pup enough air flow so she would remain calm on the floor of the truck.

However, 50 years old now (and counting!), and no air leaks from those windows.

imidazol97

Studebaker air vents. The air conditioning from these was adjustable: one could open the vent more or less to catch more air from the side of the car--not from the hot air the came over the hood OR one could speed up or slow down to vary the air volume.

This '51 was almost identical to our '50 when I was kid. I'll even guess that this one is the popular pea soup green colour based on how it rendered in black and white film.

texases

One of my first car memories was playing with the rusted paint around our '53 Studebaker's side air vents.