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I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)
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I think it spurred the world on, to do better things, even if nobody directly copied this very unusual car in all its aspects.
The suspension and braking technology was good enough for Rolls Royce to license it, as well as Maserati.
Look at so many cars today---aero body, 4 cylinder, FWD, radial tires, power disk brakes, great ride, great handling, adjustable suspensions, excellent visibility, 30+ mpg, comfortable and roomy passenger compartments.
All done in the CS in 1955. Remarkable.
I don't yearn to have one either, but I can admit the positives when I see them. Huge milestone car, that nobody really saw coming.
Among other cars this cousin owned, at various times were a Porsche, a Mini snf s Golf Diesel.
Back to driving styles, I've noticed that many Europeans drive at higher speeds than Americans do, but more gently. This may be a generalization, but it describes what I've observed in many countries of western and central Europe. I haven't observed the maximum acceleration at low speed style that Americans exhibit, in Europe. The last 1/3 of accelerator travel is reserved for passing maneuvers or coming out of curves. In fact, the last 10% is virtually never used by some drivers, and I've ridden with many.
Does your experience in Europe support what I'm saying, or not?
I don't know how mid-sizers Fiat will sell here, but I expect to see a lot of 500s in our large cities. That'll be partially due to the fact that, like the MINI and the new Beetle, the 500 gets noticed. Unlike Sentras snd Lancers, say, you take note of these retro-syle cars when they cross your line of vision.
Actually, CD has nothing to do with how tall a vehicle is, merely how well it slices through the air. To get the whole story, I think it's something like CD x frontal area.
So you can have a car that has poor CD, but not a lot of frontal area, or a car that has excellent CD and a lot of frontal area, and end up with the same result.
And, I don't really know how they measure frontal area. I'm sure it's not as simple as width x height. Perhaps you could get a close approximation if you drew a box that was the width and height of the car, took a pic of the front of the car, made a silhouette out of it, put it in the box, and calculated what percentage of the box that silhouette filled up?
So, say you had a car that was 78" wide, 60" tall, and the silhouette took up 75% of that box. That would give you frontal area of 3510 square inches, or 29.25 square feet, or 3.25 square yards.
I wonder what speed coefficient of drag really comes into play, anyway? I doubt if it makes much difference until you get up above 65-70 mph or so in most cars, although it would probably vary by weight to hp, overall weight, frontal area, gearing, tires, etc.
For instance, I know that if I get one of my old 70's crates up to 80 mph on level ground, take my foot off the gas and put it into neutral, it keeps coasting for a good long time. So that's a pretty good indication that the brick-like aerodynamics of my '79 NYer or '76 LeMans probably don't matter much, unless I want to take it on the NASCAR circuit!
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/2204198158.html
I haven't seen one in so many years that I feared they'd all be rusted away by now. Typical early '80s Fiat.
Shifty - if these Stradas are set up right can they be a fun weekend car to have?
My (completely unscientific) take on this:
Fiat is returning to the US because they now have a built in dealer network through Chrysler. Also, the 500 that will be sold here will be built in Chrysler's plant in Mexico.
Both French manufacturers would either have to partner with a brand that already has a dealer network or establish one from scratch. I don't see the latter option happening due to the costs.
The same is true with manufacturing .. I don't know if Renault or PSA have any manufacturing capabilities in either North, Central or South America. Otherwise, due to the weak dollar, the cost of these cars would be much higher if they were imported from Europe (anyone remember the Saturn Astra?).
From a product standpoint, I don't know if there is anything unique about the models currently offered that would have the same type of effect as the MINI, VW New Beetle or the Fiat 500. Mostly just A-, B- and C-class sedans and hatches.
I note that the height and width dimensions of the Citroen and Studebaker coupe are very similar. The Citroen has a height of 57.9 in and width of 70.5 in , The Studebaker has a height of 56.4 inches and a width of 71 inches. Therefore, the Stude is the lower of the two. Here are my
sources. http://www.carsession.com/car-specs/1955-citroen-ds-19.html and
http://www.ehow.com/list_7612795_1953-studebaker-specs.html
I'll defer to Shifty, but I'm afraid "old Strada", "set up right" and "weekend fun" is full of contradictions.
I like Fiats, but I think that Rabbits were more fun to drive in a sporty manner. If I recall correctly, Stradas were more softly sprung than Rabbits (maybe not the Rabbits assembled in Pennsylvania), and arguably were better cruisers. Stradas were also a bit roomier than Rabbits, if you could deal with the Italian driving position (stretched arms, tucked in legs).
One advantage is that you'd have a rare car for little money, so it could be fun for a short time.
A coupe
And a cabrio
Regarding Citroen ever coming back to NA...I doubt it. Nothing really cutesy enough to go like a Mini or 500, no dealer network, high prices.
When it's a contest between numbers on a page and who actually wins the race, pick the race.
One factor could be how much hp each engine puts out, at any given rpm. For instance, the Citroen might be designed to rev better, and have gearing that puts it in its sweet spot, so, say at 90 mph or whatever it's putting out its full 75 hp. Whereas the Studebaker might be geared less effectively, so, say, it might get its 120 hp at 75, and by 90 mph perhaps it's down to 100 hp, but struggling more because of the less aerodynamic body and greater weight?
Now I'm just guessing on those speeds and hp numbers, just using them as a hypothetical example.
Remember these top speeds you see listed are done by math, so again, paying attention to the real world might tell a different story.
Now, if the Studebaker were a diesel engine, I'd be more inclined to be right in line with your thinking.
I just looked up the specs online, and yeah, that Stude engine hit that 120 peak hp at 4000 rpm. For some reason I was thinking it would be a much lower rpm, but then that engine had a fairly short stroke, so I guess it didn't have problems revving.
Found the specs here:
http://www.carfolio.com/specifications/models/car/?car=45705#a_engine
A few performance tidbits:
0-60 in 16.9 seconds
1/4 mile in 20.4 seconds
Top speed 93 mph.
For comparison, here's what I found for a 1956 Citroen DS19 (they didn't list a 1955):
http://www.carfolio.com/specifications/models/car/?car=35794#a_engine
0-60 in 21.2 seconds
1/4 mile in 22.3 seconds
Top speed 98 mph.
And it got its 83 hp at 4500 rpm, really not too far off from the Stude.
Those figures might sound laughable, but when you factor in that's gross hp, and not today's net, I think they're actually pretty impressive. That Stude probably put out around 90-95 hp net, while I'd imagine that Citroen would be more like 65-70?
and anything more than about 8 secs. 0-60 is like taking a death ride!
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Disc brakes in 1955 were quite the exotic thing. Some magazines called them "dangerous" and thought a car would "flip over" if the disc brakes were applied too forcefully---LOL!
that was fun to experience! But since no damage done, it was a good lesson learned, and from then on I was real careful about wet brakes.
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If most of your driving is local, or the highways are low-volume enough that there are breaks in the traffic that you can merge in, it probably wouldn't be a problem.
Still, it's incredible how we get addicted to faster and faster speeds, and suddenly they seem so mundane. For example, when I first started driving, I thought my Granddad's '85 Silverado was pretty fast. It has a 305 V-8 with 165 hp, 3-speed automatic, and, according to the scale at the local landfill, weighs about 4200 lb. I've timed 0-60 in about 12 seconds with a stopwatch. Well, when I started driving, I had a 1980 Malibu with a V-6 that wasn't nearly as fast. And most of my friends had cars that made the Malibu look almost like a musclecar!
But, back in 2002 when the truck got handed down to me, the first time I had to really stomp on it, I was thinking damn this sucker is slow! But, in the intervening years I had gotten used to faster cars, like my '68 Dart V-8, '67 Catalina, '86 Monte Carlo (another 305 with only 150 hp, but a LOT lighter than the truck), '89 Gran Fury copcar, and '00 Intrepid. Initially I was thinking damn, what's it taking this truck to get up to 60, like 20 seconds?! But that's when I put the stopwatch to it.
I think my '00 Park Ave Ultra is the fastest car I've ever had, in 0-60 at least. I think something like 7.6 seconds? But even that, once I got used to it, it didn't seem all that. But then part of it could be that the Buick tends to isolate you, so you don't feel like you're taking off as fast as you really are. If my old rattletrap Dart did 0-60 that fast, it probably would've seemed like much more of an adventure!
Now that I have criticized the Citroen, I have to admit that it is a very streamlined shape for a four-door car. Studebaker never figured out how to make its four door cars low and streamlined like its Lowey coupes and hardtops. Stude's coupes and hardtops were amazing low considering the body-on-frame construction and they were riding on 15 inch wheels. But they could not make that shape into a 4 door model without making it taller, which also made it look narrower. Therefore, I admit that Citroen had the most streamlined four door car of the 1950s.
Nobody makes RWD, body-on-frame, drum brake, leaf spring suspension cars anymore.
But they still make Citroens.
Citroën was weak and unable to withstand the softening of the automobile market thataccompanied the 1973 oil crisis. That year FIAT withdrew from PARDEVI and returned its 49% stake to Michelin. This was an ominous sign of things to come and, less than a year later, Citroën went bankrupt. The French government feared large job losses and arranged talks between Michelin and Peugeot, in which it was decided to merge Automobiles Citroën and Automobiles Peugeot into a single company. In 1974, Peugeot purchased 38.2% of Citroën and became responsible for managing the combined activities, in particular their research, purchasing, and investments departments.
The goverment did not bail out Studebaker or merge it with another company. Nobody kept the Citroen DS in production after the parent company closed, as was done with the Avanti. The Avanti "coke bottle" shape is still seen on cars today, while the Citroen taco bell shape went nowhere.
To be fair, those 2/4 door sedans and wagons probably WERE pretty low-slung for 1953. But as time marched on and everybody else got lower, longer, and wider, Studebaker simply couldn't afford to do that thorough of a redesign.
In all fairness though, I thought that the '56-58 Studes (and Packardbakers) didn't seem too out-of-date, style-wise. My only real issue with them was those horribly grafted-on quad headlights for '58. If they had the money to actually design new fenders properly, they wouldn't have been bad looking cars.
Studebaker isn't on the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_of_the_Century
Sorry but....hey, if you like 'em, that's great. :shades:
The twenty six cars on the Car of the Century list are very impressive, and it is nice to see that four American cars made the cut along with twenty-two European designs. But I suppose one has to expect that coming from the experts at the Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Geneva auto shows, under the presidency of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.
The four American cars are the Corvette Sting Ray, Ford Model T, Ford Mustang and Willys Jeep. There are three Citroens, two Volkswagens (Beetle and Golf) and two Jaguars, but no Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Chrysler, Lincoln, Packard, Auburn, Dusenberg or Cord made the list, so I
guess those cars are as historically insignificant as Studebaker.
I favor this wikipedia review of the 1953 Studebaker filed under Raymond Lowey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Loewy
In addition to the iconic bullet-nosed Studebakers of 1950 and 1951, the team created the 1953 Studebaker line, highlighted by the Starliner and Starlight coupes. The Starlight has consistently ranked as one of the best-designed cars of the 1950s in lists compiled since by Collectible Automobile, Car and Driver, and Motor Trend. At the time, however, the Starlight was ridiculed as bizarre, due to its being very similar in front or back. The '53 Starliner, recognized today as "one of the most beautiful cars ever made", was radical in appearance, as radical in its way as the 1934 Airflow.
Calling any car "one of the most beautiful cars ever made" is rather...er...hyperbolic to say the least and should be uttered with caution. One of a 1,000 maybe. But not 'one of' a few. If said car were that beautiful, it would be priceless, n'est pas?
If you call *everything* historical or influential or beautiful, you then render *nothing* historical or influential or beautiful. In order to avoid the perils of language inflation, one has to discriminate, and that's probably why so few American cars make the cut I think. American cars are judged, wisely I think, to have been traditionally somewhat backward compared to European cars despite being produced in incredible numbers.
Having said that, surely in evolutionary terms, the Tyrannosaurus does deserve a high order of respect, but he wasn't particularly innovative. Ferocious to be sure, outlandish at times, biggest kid on the block, highly successful at what he did--all that---but still just a larger version of a previous reptile.
American cars would do better in polls about power, numbers made, durability, outlandish styling---things like that, IMO.
The 1955 Citroen had the power of a 1939, Champion, the front drive and semi-automatic transmission of the Cord, the front end of the '55 Studebaker, the reliability of all French cars and a hydraulic suspension system that made it the world's first "low rider." (Maybe that is why it made the list.)
And they tried to sell it in America for the price of a Cadillac!
Packard used to say, "Ask the man who owns one."I owned four Studebakers because I really liked them. I certainly would not own four cars of the same make that I did not like.
ON ANOTHER SUBJECT----
I saw one of these today. Influential? Perhaps, as (I think) the world's first mass-produced hatchback coupe ??
And they tried to sell it in America for the price of a Cadillac!
I think that's a problem with a lot of European cars. They might be high-tech, very well-built, etc, but they simply aren't suited to American needs. For example, it's techinically impressive that a 1955 Citroen can reach a top speed similar to a 1953 Studebaker despite having half the displacement and about 3/4 the hp, but the typical American driver probably didn't give a rat's patootie about that. And FWD, rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, etc, really don't mean THAT much, if you're accustomed to RWD, recirculating ball, and drums. Some drum setups are actually pretty good. And so are some recirculating ball setups. And the real kicker is that they were trying to sell this odd French Pastry thing for the price of a Cadillac, yet the typical American driver probably saw it as not even comparable to a 6-cyl Chevy, Ford, or Plymouth, as any of them were bigger and had more standard hp (even if performance was tame in them, too)
American cars, while not always the most innoative things in the world, always gave you a lot of bang for your buck.
Same name, but the name doesn't fit
This probably seats about 20...
I can't see why it didn't sell
Brand getting lots of discussion here...just an old used car in Europe
Compact truck
"Roadster"
"Hard to find"
Little gnat
Not one to "restore", but for the money, no harm done
High price
Not many left like this
"Woody"
Odd diesel
Frankenbenz
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
I am in complete agreement with that statement. I came home from the army with my first wife and she had a 1967 MGBGT just like that one sitting in the garage waiting for me to get it running. What a hassle that was!
The car was designed like the Brits stayed up late nights thinking of difficult ways to do things. Lucas electrical systems are a curse. They say Brits like warm beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.
The MG had two six-volt batteries located under the rear seat, wired in series to give 12 volts, positive "earth" (i.e. ground.) Her brother put a negative ground radio in the dash and tried to insulate it with styrofoam to keep it from shorting out, but it did short out and blew fuses, usually at night, sometimes when we were on the freeway.
The oil filter came apart in three pieces with two gaskets that were hard to seal and a rod running through the middle of it. To change the oil filter, I had to get the starter motor out of the way, and that was twice as long as it needed to be because the starter gear was on the opposite side of the flywheel ring gear and pulled into it. Every time I tried to seal the oil filter I had to pull the starter motor too.
The brakes and hydraulic clutch did not work, so I cleaned them and put in brake fluid. After the brake fluid leaked all over the place, I found out that I had to use Girling fluid. Si I did that after I replaced all rubber parts that were ruined by using the regular brake fluid. There went another weekend.
It all seemed so simple at first. Just put in a new battery, change the oil and put in some brake fluid. Basic maintenance, nothing complicated, sure, I can do that, easy. No problem.
Once I finally got the car running and stopping without leaking oil and brake fluid, it was fun to drive, had wonderful steering and disc brakes. But I gave up working on the thing and when we got divorced I was glad to see her take it with her. If she had a car that was easy to work on (like a Studebaker or a Citroen), we might still be married now. :shades:
Regards;
Oldengineer
1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster Town Sedan
Love that big Chrysler wagon obviously, but I have seen it before. It was advertised in Hemmings a couple of months back. Don't know if it didn't sell or if the buyer is trying to flip it. Maybe it has some disappointments hidden away.
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Thinking back on it, seems such a shame, but back then it was just a big, cheap, old busted car.
Here's the Shiftright Simple Survival Kit for MGs:
1. Replace the battery cables
2. Replace all the fuses
3. Get an SU carburetor service manual and do what it says
4. Pretend the engine is American and remember it is bullet-proof
5. Don't let your father in law "adjust it" for you.
I'd rate this as a #3 car with unrestored undercarriage and I'd value it at $6000 to $7500 if it runs really well.
Also I don't know what he means by "matching numbers"---matching to what?
This earlier car is pretty
The most expensive fintail for sale in Germany right now...wow. Several others over 30K Euro as well.