Since the maiden voyage of the Mercer late last winter, the thoroughbred has remained with our friend David Greenlees in Brattleboro, Vermont, not for additional work (though he did add fenders and headlamps), but simply for its break-in period, which David describes:
After the trip back from Florida last winter the Mercer sat for a while I took care of little things on it and waited for spring to arrive here. After the mud on the dirt roads around here had dried up and it got up to about 65...
This dreams-do-come-true story appeared in the Hemmings Motor News e-mailbag recently. Here’s the unmolested account directly from the Hemmings true believer who sent it in…
“What’s better than a barn find? How about, preserved under a Ponderosa Pine tree! The second owner of this early ‘54 Vette drove this car to a friend’s house to have the seats reupholstered and took them out, set an old wooden Pepsi pop bottle case in place of the driver’s seat and drove it home and parked it...
My 1973 MGB Tourer, named “Blaze” after its groovy Seventies Tupperware orange color, spent last summer sitting under a tarp in my parents’ driveway because, despite my whining, it steadfastly refused to start.
I was happy to enlist the help of the capable and gregarious David Clark, proprietor of Sports Car Services; I accompanied him on a roundabout tour of the Northeast one Saturday last November as he dropped off one MGB to a customer in New Jersey and picked up my recalcitrant...
Just recently, Hugo90 posted the above photo of a shortened Toronado to the Hemmings Nation Flickr pool, with the caption that he’d seen it at the 75th anniversary celebration for Oldsmobile in 1972. “Probably built by Oldsmobile, but I don’t know what for,” he wrote. Nifty. I bookmarked it, intending to get back to it and dig deeper. But while selecting SIA Flashbacks for the next few weeks, the digging deeper part just fell into my lap.
In a larger story about the...
Just came across mention that Richard’s Auto Sales and Salvage in Denton, North Carolina, is going out of business at the end of the year and plans on crushing all unsold inventory starting December 1. It’s a shame when any junkyard closes, but this is compounded by Richard’s old-car inventory, judging from the company’s website. For example, the 1966 Rambler Classic four-door above is on the site for sale at just $575.
And he has a whole row of 1949-1951 Fords ripe...
It’s been a while - okay, a really long time - since I last posted something about the Rover. But I have been making some progress in the meantime.
While I had the engine out, I decided to spruce it up a bit, and to do a little preventive maintenance. The cast-iron block of the Rover four has steel side covers, and if I was ever going to pull them off to see what kind of shape they were in, now was the time.
As you can see, it wasn’t too bad in there, although a little bit of...
Wayne Kilpatrick has only ever owned one old car in his life, his 1935 Hupmobile 531D. Why? His dad had one, up on blocks, during WWII when Wayne was a kid.
It took him 50 years to find another, a 38,000-mile original from the Midwest, and all he wants to do is care for it for another generation, until someday his own son takes custody.
The aerodynamic Hupp was an Airflow competitor, with six rather than eight-cylinder power. It ran beautifully with a great exhaust note, at least until...
In the November issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines, I reviewed AutoArt’s 1/18th-scale Mad Max Interceptor - an awesome model of the car from the second movie that comes with a number of accessories, including the blue heeler, the Dinki-Di dog food and a couple machetes. But my major complaint with it was that it was too clean. I can see why AutoArt did that - who, they had to have reasoned, would have bought a dirtied-up model?
Enter Paul Miller, a California-based modeler who...
Believe it or not, I photographed this thing on a street along the harbor in Monaco, as a Rolls Corniche, Bentley Azure and a rent-a-lap Ferrari F430 Spyder rolled past behind me. This is a Perestroika Special, a VAZ 2121 Lada Niva, with selectable four-wheel drive, which probably dates from a little before 1985. The Niva first appeared in its native Soviet Union in 1980, with 1,600cc power, and eventually made it to the liberated side of the Berlin Wall. In the U.K., for instance, it was sold...
Yes, I missed Hershey this year, despite pleadings from just about everybody I know in the old car hobby to attend. And I probably should have listened to them, because by missing Hershey, I missed the debut of the restored 1938 Walker Dynamotive 500 gas-electric hybrid delivery truck that we blogged about earlier this year. Jay Crist, who picked up two of the rare trucks from the NATMUS museum late last year, rebuilt one from the skeleton up in just 10 months, an amazing accomplishment for...
Continuing with the season-long recap of material that has yet to make a public appearance, the swap meet fields at the Spring Charlotte Auto Fair turned up a few potential projects that could have been placed in the car corral. And aside from a spectacular parts car, there was an unusual desktop item tucked among the plethora of parts.
1964 Chevy Chevelle station wagon equipped with an unknown V-8 backed by an automatic; asking $3,995.
Even when the rain pelted the fields for hours, we still...
Since the maiden voyage of the Mercer late last winter, the thoroughbred has remained with our friend David Greenlees in Brattleboro, Vermont, not for additional work (though he did add fenders and headlamps), but simply for its break-in period, which David describes:
After the trip back from Florida last winter the Mercer sat for a while I took care of little things on it and waited for spring to arrive here. After the mud on the dirt roads around here had dried up and it got up to about 65...
This dreams-do-come-true story appeared in the Hemmings Motor News e-mailbag recently. Here’s the unmolested account directly from the Hemmings true believer who sent it in…
“What’s better than a barn find? How about, preserved under a Ponderosa Pine tree! The second owner of this early ‘54 Vette drove this car to a friend’s house to have the seats reupholstered and took them out, set an old wooden Pepsi pop bottle case in place of the driver’s seat and drove it home and parked it...
My 1973 MGB Tourer, named “Blaze” after its groovy Seventies Tupperware orange color, spent last summer sitting under a tarp in my parents’ driveway because, despite my whining, it steadfastly refused to start.
I was happy to enlist the help of the capable and gregarious David Clark, proprietor of Sports Car Services; I accompanied him on a roundabout tour of the Northeast one Saturday last November as he dropped off one MGB to a customer in New Jersey and picked up my recalcitrant...
Just recently, Hugo90 posted the above photo of a shortened Toronado to the Hemmings Nation Flickr pool, with the caption that he’d seen it at the 75th anniversary celebration for 
Oldsmobile
Just came across mention that Richard’s Auto Sales and Salvage in Denton, North Carolina, is going out of business at the end of the year and plans on crushing all unsold inventory starting December 1. It’s a shame when any junkyard closes, but this is compounded by Richard’s old-car inventory, judging from the company’s website. For example, the 1966 Rambler Classic four-door above is on the site for sale at just $575.
And he has a whole row of 1949-1951 Fords ripe...
It’s been a while - okay, a really long time - since I last posted something about the Rover. But I have been making some progress in the meantime.
While I had the engine out, I decided to spruce it up a bit, and to do a little preventive maintenance. The cast-iron block of the Rover four has steel side covers, and if I was ever going to pull them off to see what kind of shape they were in, now was the time.
As you can see, it wasn’t too bad in there, although a little bit of...
Wayne Kilpatrick has only ever owned one old car in his life, his 1935 Hupmobile 531D. Why? His dad had one, up on blocks, during WWII when Wayne was a kid.
It took him 50 years to find another, a 38,000-mile original from the Midwest, and all he wants to do is care for it for another generation, until someday his own son takes custody.
The aerodynamic Hupp was an Airflow competitor, with six rather than eight-cylinder power. It ran beautifully with a great exhaust note, at least until...
In the November issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines, I reviewed AutoArt’s 1/18th-scale Mad Max Interceptor - an awesome model of the car from the second movie that comes with a number of accessories, including the blue heeler, the Dinki-Di dog food and a couple machetes. But my major complaint with it was that it was too clean. I can see why AutoArt did that - who, they had to have reasoned, would have bought a dirtied-up model?
Enter Paul Miller, a California-based modeler who...
Believe it or not, I photographed this thing on a street along the harbor in Monaco, as a Rolls Corniche, Bentley Azure and a rent-a-lap 
Yes, I missed Hershey this year, despite pleadings from just about everybody I know in the old car hobby to attend. And I probably should have listened to them, because by missing Hershey, I missed the debut of the restored 1938 Walker Dynamotive 500 gas-electric hybrid delivery truck that we blogged about earlier this year. Jay Crist, who picked up two of the rare trucks from the NATMUS museum late last year, rebuilt one from the skeleton up in just 10 months, an amazing accomplishment for...
Continuing with the season-long recap of material that has yet to make a public appearance, the swap meet fields at the Spring Charlotte Auto Fair turned up a few potential projects that could have been placed in the car corral. And aside from a spectacular parts car, there was an unusual desktop item tucked among the plethora of parts.
1964 Chevy Chevelle station wagon equipped with an unknown V-8 backed by an automatic; asking $3,995.
Even when the rain pelted the fields for hours, we still...