Mystery car pix

fintail

A lowline dog dish Fairlane sedan, maybe an I6/3 on the tree/manual steering and brake car.

To the left of the Impala, a basic looking 61 Chevy 2 door post.

ab348 said:

Obligated to post this pic:

tmart

57 Thunderbird. Wish I still had mine, but realistically probably couldn’t get in or out of it! Who am I kidding, no probably involved.

tmart

ab348 said:

Obligated to post this pic:

Two 58 Fords.

andys120

Lostwrench3

1960 El Dorado Brougham.

fintail

Humber Super Snipe ~1963.

Seattle, 1978 (right click and enlarge etc):

stickguy

bottom left, a Porsche 914 next to a mid-70s Celica. I had a white one just like that.

and between the white mustang and the white Fairlane, I think it is a dark colored SAAB but won't swear to it.

andys120

Yeah, I think it's a Saab.

That first gen Mustang reminds me that although the current Retro-stang cars are all either fastbacks or converts, the notchback was by far the most popular style in the 60s.

tmart

Dodge Aspen at far left.

stickguy

2 aspens. the nose of the white one, and a darker wagon at the bottom of the hill. Or a Volare.

stickguy

next to the white mustang, I think the black wagon is a Datsun.

andys120

stickguy

z8. I love these. Will of course never own one (heck, ever even sit in one)

kyfdx

Trying to pick future classics is impossible. Local dealer couldn't give these away, when new. Now, they bring over original MSRP.

ab348

Interesting that in most mid-1960s pics of Montreal I've found at the archive, the place seemed a haven for Detroit iron, with far fewer imports to be found than I would expect. Yet in these two sequential 1961 pics of a part of Decarie Blvd, imports abound on this block. Maybe it had to do with the population of this neighborhood, who knows.

stickguy

A Renault Dauphine and a mini in the one pic.

fintail

Top pic, 2nd from left - Hillman Minx. Lower pic, between the Dauphine and a Mini, a Vauxhall Victor/Envoy wagon.

magnette

The parked Victor estate car would be a real rarity now. Hardly any estates survive although the saloons are more often seen at car shows here

You don't think the photographer was driving round in a Minx do you? They seem to get everywhere.

ab348

There appears to be a Fiat 500 (?) behind the Minx.

fintail

Close, due to it being obscured I've give it to you, but I think that's a Fiat 600 - like a 500 but about 20% bigger

Another Victor/Envoy is in the second pic, in motion in front of the Daphine.

Minx must have sold very well in NA for at least a few months, I have seen them in local period pics too. I posted this some time ago, it showed up at a local small town car show a few years ago. I talked to the owner, who gave it a nut and bolt restoration. He apparently had one in high school, loved it, and when he found this one, made it a labor of love. It was fairly perfect:

magnette

Yes - that Minx is a credit to its owner and must have involved a good deal of effort. It's almost certainly in better condition than when it left the assembly line...

andys120

Minx sales peaked IIRC around the turn of the decade as the 50s gave way to the 60s. It was during the same period that Dauphine passed those of the Beetle. There was a crush of European makers trying to angle there way into the lucrative NA market but it wasn't long before VW was back on top and stayed there until the 70s when Datsun and Toyota crashed their party.

ab348

Here's a shot from 1966 Montreal near the port.

Lostwrench3

On the left, a '60 or '61 Chevy truck.

stickguy

BMC 1100 behind the Arret sign? And a 65 Chevelle on the left by the kid.


57 Buick backed in bottomed right?

magnette

ab348 said:

Here's a shot from 1966 Montreal near the port.




I like the bilingual Arret / Stop sign - are many of the signs in Quebec bilingual like this?

Reminds me of driving back home in Wales where the road signs are - as in the rest of the UK and indeed most of Europe - based on symbols in most cases (roundabout symbol, picture of a hump backed bridge etc, but the symbol is often accompanied by a word or two in English and Welsh.

I'd show an example but no pictures from me presently.

Typical examples are the picture sign for children on the road - ie school - with the words YSGOL and underneath SCHOOL on the panel below.

Thats fine and people get used to those, but the visitor from England - maybe only a few miles down the road - gets a bit more confused by temporary signs like at road works etc

DIM MARCIAU FFORDD
NO ROAD MARKINGS

Blaenorlaeth dros gerbydau
yn dod atoch
Priority over
Oncoming vehicles

(Welsh uses about three times as many letters as English sometimes).

ab348

magnette said:

I like the bilingual Arret / Stop sign - are many of the signs in Quebec bilingual like this?

No. They used to be like this in the '60s and '70s, but French nationalists took power in the late '70s and soon we had French-only signs, not just for roads but also for businesses. Quebec’s Charter of the French Language prevents the province from putting English on signage, unless there is “no symbol or pictograph exists that satisfies the requirements of health or public safety.” To deal with business signs they created a very activist "sign police" agency that had powers to force businesses to replace English or bilingual signs with French-only versions. Quite ridiculous. That's why these old pics of 1960s Montreal look so odd to me now.

A couple of years ago the gov there announced the French-only road signs would be replaced with pictogram versions, but I don't know if that has proceeded.

The pictogram versions bring their own set of problems, as this story indicates:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/american-tries-to-figure-out-what-canadian-road-signs-mean-and-fails-1.3137763

magnette

That is an interesting article - I got some of the signs and a couple were similar to the sort of thing you would get in Europe (including UK). For example the one for bed and breakfast we have a sign with a bed and a knife & fork so it would link I suppose. (although the sign also means hotel here too)

I had no chance with the beaver or the hand and pot, but guessed the road surface changing - what got me with that though was the description as "Pavement ending ahead." We drive on the road, and are not allowed to drive nor park on the pavement - which is your sidewalk

I think the majority of roadsigns in most places are pretty universal - especially where there are language variations - and for Europe the signs on all main roads and most others are based on a standard set of symbols although there are national ones where a particular symbol means more to them I think. It isn't easy to get a wide enough range of symbols to suit everyone but given the EU and surrounding bits (like the UK shortly) are all on the same page with all this.

If they use too many words then it gets confusing - the EU alone has people from Greece with its own alphabet, ex Russian places like Latvia etc, as well as Bulgaria which has a form of cyrillic lettering and some languages like Finnish don't cross boundaries as well as others.

Fortunately apart from symbols the usual practice is to use English as the default lingua franca (though not in France) so when we are eventually allowed to travel again we can get there somehow.

The more esoteric languages around the edges are where there are minorities - Welsh is spoken and supported in Wales but isn't encountered once you are in England, and in Ireland the Republic has bilingual signs with Gaelic as well as English, but in Northern Ireland as part of the UK this is not always the case and the history there tends to mean such things are sensitive.

Basque areas of Spain, Catalonia in Spain also, and numerous other local dialects get onto road signs.


Most people in Wales learn some Welsh at school but it isn't spoken by everyone (my parents and grandparents weren't taught it) and tends to get swamped by the pervasive neighbour over the border!

Quite rightly the Welsh language is shown on road signs - Welsh spellings for place names where possible and for such things as libraries markets etc, but it gets controversial with some areas - there is a town called Port Talbot and there isn't a Welsh translation - Port is the same in both and Talbot is the name of the family who developed the place in about1850....

I remember seeing a chap in welsh local news once complaining that the local council where he lived were slow to repaint a section of road where the road markings were painted on the road surface. It was on a dangerous bend on a hill, so it said SLOW on the road, and should also have it in Welsh above it, so it should've said ARAF and then SLOW below that.

He said it meant no one would slow down but the interviewer said, its a blind corner and a hill, with the word SLOW on it anyway, do you just go straight on?
Sometimes a bit of common sense is needed...

Its with place names we get the tourists confused though....

My old home town is Bridgend. In Welsh it is Penybont ar Ogwr, Swansea is Abertawe and there are many others.

And of course the welsh names are unpronounceable too. There is a village near where I grew up called Shwt. Another called Llangesty Talyllyn.

And a town called Ynysybwl........

fintail

Latest Montreal pic, lower left - Vauxhall PA Cresta, incredibly rare in NA now, amazed to see them in these old pics. At right, nearest the Arret sign beside a Beetle is a Peugeot 404.

ab348

I'll give you one most would not get - at the end of the row on the left by the little fellow is a '65 Pontiac Parisienne Custom Sport, which used the Grand Prix grille but not its roofline or rear panel, and had black grained vinyl on the dash where the GP got wood veneer. And of course it was built on a Canadian Chevy chassis with a Chevy engine, with a 230-inch Chevy 6 as standard, though you could order 283, 327, or 409 V-8s optionally.

Lostwrench3

stickguy said:

57 Buick backed in bottomed right?

1966 Plymouth Satellite.

fintail

1967, final summer season of the legendary Seattle-area ferry Kalakala :

stickguy

your Fintail, behind a Corvair.

Lostwrench3

Right front - 1959 Pontiac.
Catalina, Starchief, or Bonneville. Would need to see more.

ab348

Some major body lean on display in this rare action shot from 1963 Montreal:

stickguy

I like the Chevy II nova taking the off ramp.

magnette

Is that a Ford Consul Mk I in the middle?

ab348

magnette said:

Is that a Ford Consul Mk I in the middle?

Possibly so. It doesn't seem to be anything domestic.

fintail

Yep, looks like a Consul to me. Surprised there's no Vauxhall PA or a Minx in the pic.

Fintail on the ferry is a W110 (4 cylinder car) 1961-65. The little bump by the radio antenna is the giveway, an unusually-placed turn signal. Car beside the Corvair maybe a big 67 Mercury.

andys120

Fiats! and more

kyfdx

Is the red one on top a 124 Coupe?

andys120

kyfdx said:

Is the red one on top a 124 Coupe?

Nope, it is what was sold here as a Lancia Beta Coupe intended to replace the 124 Sport Coupe in most markets after 1972.

stickguy

Couple 124 spiders and an X1/9 on the bottom.

stickguy

And the cabs a GMC.

ab348

The two in the middle on the top row appear to be examples of the rare Fiat Brava, an uncommon wagon and a 2-door.

stickguy

I remember in HS (late 70s) one of my teachers sold his early 70s camaro and replaced it with a Brava. Poor guy.

fintail

Couple of Fiat 128 there too - wagon at the end, 2 door at the front. Last car on the bottom appears to be a Lancia Beta HPE, fairly rare hatchback.

I recall when I was a kid, someone in town had a yellow Brava/131 wagon - even then I knew it was a unicorn.

The Brava/131 also comes to mind as the car the Donger parks grandpa's automobeeeeel on top of in Sixteen Candles:

ab348

Montreal is famous for many things, not the least of which is its BBQ chicken. St. Hubert, Chalet, Côte St Luc BBQ and many, many more. Unfortunately, Lajeunesse seemed to not quite get the formula right.

The cars aren't very challenging but this 1962 picture was worth it.

imidazol97

The car behind the group of boys is GM, but what GM?

tmart

58 Ford, 59 Ford Sunliner, 60 Ford Falcon