Mystery car pix

fintail

46-48 Chevy...I don't know the trim level or year. I will pick the middle and say 47.

lemko

It's a 1948 Chevrolet. The 1947 version doesn't have the prominent vertical grille member.

andys120

That's it, Lemko, it's a '48 Chevy Fleetmaster.

andys120

magnette

Bentley S2 Continental Flying Spur - coachwork by HJ Mulliner circa 1960

andys120

Correct, right down to the coachbuilder. Remind me to post these when you're asleep. :P

andys120

Street scene>

andre1969

I'll take a stab at it...

Brown car to the left: 1980 or so Honda Civic
Black hatchback to the left: 1980-ish Chevy Citation
Sedan with the blacked-out window trim to the left...can't tell, but looks GM-ish to me.
White sedan: 1981-82 Ford Granada
Creme car behind it: late 70's Ford Granada
Black car with the white graffiti on it: late 70's Dodge Aspen
Black-ish car to the right in the back: looks like it could be a late 70's Plymouth Volare
Car next to the white Granada: 1978-81 Honda Accord. Could be earlier I guess...I can't remember when the sedan model was added.
All the way in the back: Another 1980-ish Civic?

boomchek

The closest one in the pic is a 80-83 Honda Civic hatchback.

The grey car behind the Civic, to the left looks like a GM J body, most likely a Cavalier or a Sunbird 4 door.

Further up to th eleft looks like a GM X platform car, a Pontiac Phoenix I'd guess.

The white car behind the X car is a Lincoln or Mercury of some sorts..sorry :confuse:

The cream colored sedan behind the white Lincoln Mercury is a Granada/Monarch, late 70s.

The brown 4 door car facing us in the background looks like first gen Honda Accord.

The brown sedan in front of which the lady is walking, and the black graffiti car is a Chrysler/ Dodge Aspen/Diplomat/Volare series.

boomchek

I think collectively, if most of us posters on this thread got together we could write an auto encyclopedia about every car made :surprise:

berri

I think the white one may be a Lincoln Versailles (based on Granada) aka - Ford's Cadillac Cimmaron.

stephen987

Not the white one--it's definitely a Granada (or Granddad). Maybe the cream one behind it.

kyfdx

The white one looks Lincoln/Mercuryish to me, also..

The Civic is '81 or later.. first year of that body style.. (at least in the US).

magnette

That would best be during my working day then.... the trouble with the time difference is that I tend to look at the site during the day here, and then about three evenings a week I log on, like now, but I'm not online for more than one hour - or at least I go away and come back to it, I'm not really a computer addict. It's 10:16 pm GMT here, while it's presumably late afternoon with you...
2:17 pm ? Is this site on Pacific time ?

boomchek

It's 2:17pm in now sunny Vancouver BC. I think many posters here from US central and east coast are a couple hours ahead.

magnette

(posted at 22:33 GMT in cold wet dark London)
EDIT - In fairness it isn't actually wet at the moment

andre1969

Yeah, the white one's definitely a Granada. Back in 1981-82, when you bought a Cougar, you knew you were getting a much more prestigious car, what with the vertical grille and all.

My grandparents had a '77 Granada coupe that was a creme color, and then an '81 Granada coupe that was sort of a 2-tone champagne/brown. We thought that '81 was actually a sharp looking car, at the time!

fintail

I see the prancing horse, but it must be some kind of replicar. Wheels look funny too, and the J reg doesn't give an air of being vintage.

andys120

It doesn't look right to me either, I'll go w replicar too.

berri

What threw me was that it had than little Grand Marquis type look and appeared to have a vertical hood ornament which usually meant L/M, rather than the more horizontal one on most Fords. Roger Smith and GM certainly weren't the only proponents of look alike back then!

karsick

I'm going with Triumph Spitfire with a Ferrari kit body. :P

That front suspension looks just like the one on the Mk2 '66 Spitfire I owned 25yrs ago.

Am I close? :confuse:

magnette

That's exactly right - it is a Fiorano Type 48 Corsa Spyder - based on a Triumph Spitfire (or a GT6). They were initially sold as just 'Type 48 Corsa Spyder' but the firm got taken over by Fiorano a few years ago. They must have made a few hundred by now - I've seen quite a few and they are not uncommon at shows - but they do suffer from having no weather protection, as British summers and good weather don't always coincide.

andys120

Some of these are very prewar but there are at least 3-4 postwar cars you can identify:

stephen987

Of the barn finds, the one I find most intriguing is the white one with the red top and suicide doors. Not sure what it is, but if anyone comes up with a definitive ID, I'd be very interested.

imidazol97

How can you tell the white one with the red top (British Ford? Cortina?) has suicide doors? :surprise: There's one on the right that has suicide doors but it's blue and older... :confuse:

jlbl

My humble one cent is the yellow postwar VW Beetle. :P

Regards,
Jose

lemko

The only cars I can clearly identify is the dust covered 1959 Chevrolet sedan in the center and the yellow VW Bug in the back.

fintail

The 59 Chevy in the middle is the most noticeable, with a 46-48 Ford Tudor in front of it and a ca. 50 Hudson behind it and a VW beside it. Do I see an Isetta way back there too?

To the right of those, the light blue car under a tarp appears to be an early 30s Dodge or Plymouth, followed by a late (24-27) Model T Tudor, and an unknown behind it.

On the left, the first car is unknown, the rust-red/white car is stumping me - reminds me of a Simca Aronde or maybe a British product, then an Austin A40 Devon, then an unknown, then a Model T coupe.

andys120

Nice going Fin...I didn't even notice the Isetta back there (no way to tell if it's an Iso or a BMW). I was going to post a better picture of the red/white car but you've nailed it, it's a Simca Aronde and the other car is indeed an Austin>



You're a little off on the Ford tudor, Hemmings sez it's a '47.
Here's a better look>

imidazol97

And a 1950 Studebaker.

andys120

stever

Looks like an early 60's Schwinn American leaning against the Model T.

tmart

Looks like a 53 Ford Sunliner, but the trim doesn't appear to be US, so maybe a Canadian model, or Mercury.

lemko

...in the grille leads me to believe it's a Meteor - the Canadian version of a Ford. As for the year, I would guess it's a 1952-54.

andys120

Yep it's a 1953 Meteor Crestline. I find it interesting that FoMoCo's Canadian marketers thought there was a niche between Ford and Mercury and filled it with Meteors from '49 to '76 but the USA marketers tried it with the Edsel and it only lasted from '58-'61. Go figure :confuse: ?

andys120

kyfdx

It looks a lot like a Carrera GT, but different somehow... Some kind of tuner version? RUF?

andre1969

Canada's market was funny like that. They tended to have dealer structures that were better suited to smaller towns. Meteor was a "junior" car line, to allow Mercury dealers something to sell at Ford's price point. So that way, if a small town only had a Mercury dealer and no Ford dealer, they still had a Ford-price car to sell.

To reciprocate, Ford dealers had a car line called the Monarch, which was basically Mercury-level cars. The Monarch line was replaced by the Edsel in 1958, but the Edsel was so disastrous that it was revived as the Monarch II for 1959! Fords got a bit bigger in 1960, and for 1961, Mercury moved way down in status...more like a '58-60 Edsel than a '57-60 Mercury, so suddenly there wasn't that big a difference between a Ford and a Mercury. As a result, the Monarch was dropped after 1961. I guess Mercury held onto the Meteor line longer though, because while a top-line Galaxie was priced about the same as a top-line Monterrey, there was a much wider disparity at the lower end.

GM did something similar with Pontiac in Canada, making it more of an equal to Chevy, rather than a step up. That's partly because in Canada, they paired the divisions up. I think it was Chevy-Oldsmobile and Pontiac-Buick. But also partly because in those days, there were stiff tariffs on imported cars and parts. I think the Oldsmobiles and Buicks were imported in those days, but Chevies were built in Canada. While Olds/Buick were viewed as more of a luxury car, they could get away with having a tariff slapped on them. But to avoid the tariffs and save as much money as possible, the Pontiacs were more home-grown. The midsized and compact cars were little more than Chevy II"s and Chevelles with different grilles and taillights slapped on, but the big cars, where there was more profit, were more of a hybrid. They'd take Chevy frames and drivetrains, and put Pontiac sheetmetal and interiors on them.

I guess it was sometime in the 1970's that this trend stopped. They started importing real Pontiacs to add to the home-grown models in the late 1960's, which really must have been confusing. By the mid 1970's, I think they were all on the same wheelbase. Must have been really confusing having both a Laurentian and Catalina in the lineup. Or a Parisienne and Bonneville.

I guess Ford/Mercury started running into the same problem. I googled some pics of 1970's Meteors, and by that time, it looked like they were based on the longer Mercury, rather than the shorter Fords. At that point, why bother?

bumpy

The trucks were that way, too. GMC was basically Pontiac's truck division on both sides of the border, but Canadian GMCs were Chevy trucks with different badges (unless you ordered the V6, in which case you got a US-built GMC shipped over the border). Mercury sold rebadged Ford trucks in Canada, and Fargo was rebadged Dodge trucks (for Plymouth dealers?).

andre1969

In the case of some of these badge-jobs, I wonder if it was really worth it? For example, with the Monarch, I read somewhere on the web that they sold 95,000 of them total, from like 1949 through 1961. Is that enough to even justify the cost of changing the grille and whatever other details? Plus, they still had to advertise the things, and put out sales brochures and such.

As for Chrysler in Canada, I'm not sure exactly how they operated. Did they even have Plymouths up there? I've seen cars badged as Chrysler Valiants...basically a Dodge Dart with a Valiant grille. And I've seen Dodge Crusaders...Plymouths with Dodge grilles. More recently, I've seen Chrysler Intrepids. Is there really a need for a Chrysler Intrepid, when they had the Concorde? Or by that time, did they not sell Dodges in Canada anymore?

Definitely a strange market, at least when you view it through United States archetypes, I guess.

andys120

It's a Ruf but more of a design unto itself than previous Ruf cars, it's called the Ruf CTR3 and it is spectacular. Read all about it.

andys120

In the case of some of these badge-jobs, I wonder if it was really worth it?

I wonder even more if it was worth it to make the engineering changes necessary to
mount a Pontiac body over a shorter Chevy Chassis and drivetrain as was done by GM thru at least the 1970s, IIRC. That seems like a lot of trouble to serve the small Canadian market (about the size of California?).

What was the reason for not using real Pontiacs?

andre1969

Yeah, to make those full-sized Canadian Pontiacs definitely took some effort, since they were doing a lot more than just changing something easy like a grille or taillight.

My understanding of it though, is that the way import tariffs were at the time, it was still cheaper for them to make these "home grown" Pontiacs than it was to import the real thing from the US. Also, it might not have been as difficult as it seems to get the Pontiac sheetmetal on the Chevy frames. To use an example, in 1969 a full-size Chevy was on a 119" wheelbase, while Pontiac Catalinas were on a 122" wb. Bonnevilles and Executives were on a 125". However, they were still all on the B-body platform, so the actual passenger cabins were the same size. I know with the Bonneville, they tacked that extra 3" of wheelbase on towards the back. It's really noticeable on the 4-door cars, as the little piece between the rear wheel opening and the back door is 3" longer on the Bonneville/Executive. But on a 2-door, that extra 3" in the rear quarter, ahead of the rear wheel opening, isn't as noticeable. However, another tell-tale sign is where the C-pillar is, in relation to the rear axle.

I'm not sure though, where the extra 3" is, on a Catalina versus a Chevy. If it's ahead of the firewall, then to make the Canadian Pontiacs, they would have just needed to shorten the front fenders and hood by 3", behind the front axle. If they just took another 3" out in back, then they would have had to modify the quarter panels, and shorten that piece that goes between the trunk lid and the rear window.

Other items, like the doors and interiors, would have most likely been a direct swap.

In 1971, when GM redesigned its big cars, I think the Canadian Pontiacs actually used the longer Pontiac wheelbases, so no sheetmetal mods were needed, but they were still using Chevy engines.

I imagine the 1959-1964 period might have been a pain though, because Pontiacs and Chevies were more unique then. Chevies used an X-frame, shared with Buick, while Pontiacs used a perimeter frame, shared with Oldsmobile. That definitely had an effect on stuff like the floor pans, but maybe it didn't matter so much when it came to swapping sheetmetal?

andys120

Besides the make/model/year of this Presidential Limousine, do you know which President used it?

kyfdx

It looks like a mid-'60s Mercury, so I'm going with LBJ.

andys120

Sorry Kyfdx, you're wrong on all counts, wrong make/year and wrong President.

tmart

It's a Lincoln.

scscars

The limo is a 1969 Lincoln Continental that was used by President Nixon. It seems to me that I've seen this limo "in the flesh" at Greenfield Village (Henry Ford Museum) outside of Detroit.

karsick

Yes, it was Nixon's limo......... which was also the very same (infamous) Lincoln in which JFK was killed (from what I've read).

The roof was added and the paint color changed to lower the creepiness factor.

wgrafer

Well, while the Kennedy limo (known as X-100) was rebuilt with a new solid roof and interior, this is not it. As stated, this is a 1969 used by Nixon and 'retired' to Greenfield Village in 1977.