Scroll down through this blog and you’ll see the artifacts of dearly departed American automakers. In fact, sometimes it seems like all we write about around here are automakers that aren’t around anymore: Studebaker, Packard, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Pierce Arrow, International-Harvester, AMC, etc.
So when serious talk about a Detroit bailout began with the focus being on GM’s increasingly dire condition, I thought: This is a no brainer. Of course taxpayers will want to bailout GM. Who would want...
If you’ve read any car enthusiast magazine in the last decade, you know about Dynamat and you’ve seen one or two or a dozen tech stories on how to install it. The company has some good PR folk, first popularizing it among the bass-thumping crowd, then pitching it to the rest of us car nuts. Doesn’t hurt that ol’ Chip Foose has lent his visage to it as well. So I’m giving it a shot.
So with a new star bit, I continued the interior removal that I started last time...
Early in 2005, I made contact with the owner of what he called the first domestic sports car, an underslung AMC - American Motorcar Co. of Indianapolis - roadster. After 40-odd months of planning, I finally got to shoot it.
Now, “first sports car” is a relative term, although AMC did market their Model 40 as a sporting vehicle. But this one was “first” in another respect, too: It’s the second American built, and the oldest surviving. Engine No. 1402 does sit in...
For a split second after I opened the image file, my heart skipped a beat. A bead of sweat formed on my brow. Breath whooshed out of my lungs. Could it be my arch-nemesis, the dreaded Tornado, reworked, repainted and presented as a legitimate car at an RM auction? After all, Red Baron has since gone belly-up, and RM made the mistake of including it in their auction catalog before.
Thankfully, the RM Auctions press release relieved me of my fears by setting the record straight. According to the...
Note: I write up driving impressions of virtually every car I photograph, within a couple of days of the drive, so everything is fresh in my memory. Occasionally, because of the constraints of format (ie, buyers’ guide) the prepared text doesn’t run. Now, thanks to the joys of the blogosphere, it can.
The new-for-’79 Eldorado is within an inch or two of GM’s A-bodies in the mid-’60s—considered intermediates, mind—though when these cars were new, the fuel-gunshy motoring...
I was going through my inbox when I found these photos a reader named Steve Seiwald of Molalla, Oregon, sent in of his 1977 Dodge Aspen. Steve was responding to something that I’d written about my Rover, where I tried to explain why I felt it was my duty and honor to give a home to this car, which had been driven just 71,000 miles by its original, loving owner and parked since 1978. Steve wrote,
You mirrored my sentiments when it comes to rescuing cars. I have a ‘59 Buick convert...
The number that counts here is 1,500. That, roughly, is the number of American racing drivers who have lost their lives in open-cockpit cars since the earliest days of the sport. Most serious followers of the sport can already look at a photo of the green flag at an Indianapolis 500 from the early 1950s with the knowledge that a lot of those drivers didn’t live to see John F. Kennedy elected to the White House. The book we’re announcing here forces the reader to realize that while...
Hemmings Auto Blog reader Paul Bellefeuille, who’s contributed several times here in the past, recently spotted this Bonneville-nosed El Camino up near Newmarket, New Hampshire, at right about the same time reader Louis pointed us to some photos of a similar Pontiac-nosed El Camino in an Orlando junkyard. Paul, however, actually found the man responsible for his find.
The owner Jay Stillman, just happened to be working on his garage when I stopped by. He was very gracious and told me...
Still digging through my 154 gigs of photographs from my mid-summer trip, this time uncovering perhaps the best sport ute “what if” inside the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum, which occupies the former administration building of the Auburn Automobile Company in downtown Auburn, Indiana. Tucked away in a wing on the second floor - dedicated to Indiana vehicle production - is this handsomely designed 1979 International Scout prototype.
According to the plaque, this is actually the...
How long do you suppose it took Special Interest Autos to dig into Harley Earl’s sketches and renderings? Well, if you’ve been paying attention to our SIA Flashbacks, you’ll see we’re up to SIA #34, May-June 1976, published nearly six years after SIA began its historic run. But time is no obstacle to us, looking back, so rather than lambaste Michael Lamm for taking so long, we can enjoy Lamm’s diligent research and Earl’s (and his staff’s)...
* Our friend Rich Campbell from the Minutia blog sent along a link this week to photos he took of the Vintage Sports Car Club’s recent Lakeland Trials. If you’re not familiar with British trialling, check out the photos for all the mud-splattered fun. “It’s pretty amazing what the English do with their vintage cars,” Rich wrote. “Can you imagine someone in the US driving a Bentley through the mud and up a 25 degree incline?”
* There’s a lotta...
in 
Oldsmobile
If you’ve read any car enthusiast magazine in the last decade, you know about Dynamat and you’ve seen one or two or a dozen tech stories on how to install it. The company has some good PR folk, first popularizing it among the bass-thumping crowd, then pitching it to the rest of us car nuts. Doesn’t hurt that ol’ Chip Foose has lent his visage to it as well. So I’m giving it a shot.
So with a new star bit, I continued the interior removal that I started last time...
Early in 2005, I made contact with the owner of what he called the first domestic sports car, an underslung AMC - American Motorcar Co. of Indianapolis - roadster. After 40-odd months of planning, I finally got to shoot it.
Now, “first sports car” is a relative term, although AMC did market their Model 40 as a sporting vehicle. But this one was “first” in another respect, too: It’s the second American built, and the oldest surviving. Engine No. 1402 does sit in...
For a split second after I opened the image file, my heart skipped a beat. A bead of sweat formed on my brow. Breath whooshed out of my lungs. Could it be my arch-nemesis, the dreaded Tornado, reworked, repainted and presented as a legitimate car at an RM auction? After all, Red Baron has since gone belly-up, and RM made the mistake of including it in their auction catalog before.
Thankfully, the RM Auctions press release relieved me of my fears by setting the record straight. According to the...
Note: I write up driving impressions of virtually every car I photograph, within a couple of days of the drive, so everything is fresh in my memory. Occasionally, because of the constraints of format (ie, buyers’ guide) the prepared text doesn’t run. Now, thanks to the joys of the blogosphere, it can.
The new-for-’79 Eldorado is within an inch or two of GM’s A-bodies in the mid-’60s—considered intermediates, mind—though when these cars were new, the fuel-gunshy motoring...
I was going through my inbox when I found these photos a reader named Steve Seiwald of Molalla, Oregon, sent in of his 1977 
The number that counts here is 1,500. That, roughly, is the number of American racing drivers who have lost their lives in open-cockpit cars since the earliest days of the sport. Most serious followers of the sport can already look at a photo of the green flag at an Indianapolis 500 from the early 1950s with the knowledge that a lot of those drivers didn’t live to see John F. Kennedy elected to the White House. The book we’re announcing here forces the reader to realize that while...
Hemmings Auto Blog reader Paul Bellefeuille, who’s contributed several times here in the past, recently spotted this Bonneville-nosed El Camino up near Newmarket, New Hampshire, at right about the same time reader Louis pointed us to some photos of a similar 
Still digging through my 154 gigs of photographs from my mid-summer trip, this time uncovering perhaps the best sport ute “what if” inside the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum, which occupies the former administration building of the Auburn Automobile Company in downtown Auburn, Indiana. Tucked away in a wing on the second floor - dedicated to Indiana vehicle production - is this handsomely designed 1979 International Scout prototype.
According to the plaque, this is actually the...
How long do you suppose it took Special Interest Autos to dig into Harley Earl’s sketches and renderings? Well, if you’ve been paying attention to our SIA Flashbacks, you’ll see we’re up to SIA #34, May-June 1976, published nearly six years after SIA began its historic run. But time is no obstacle to us, looking back, so rather than lambaste Michael Lamm for taking so long, we can enjoy Lamm’s diligent research and Earl’s (and his staff’s)...
* Our friend Rich Campbell from the Minutia blog sent along a link this week to photos he took of the Vintage Sports Car Club’s recent Lakeland Trials. If you’re not familiar with British trialling, check out the photos for all the mud-splattered fun. “It’s pretty amazing what the English do with their vintage cars,” Rich wrote. “Can you imagine someone in the US driving a Bentley through the mud and up a 25 degree incline?”
* There’s a lotta...