Photo Gallery 1

All photos by Neil Settle (except my "Aunt Pat's" Royal Amethyst Metallic 1959 Bonneville Vista) c2017.

It's never good to get your antique or collectible car wet, but I love to see wax bead on wet paint.  I also love the contrast between the gargantuan 1961 Cadillac Fleetwood and the BMW Isetta!

Mascot on this Classic-era Chrysler Imperial resembles a leaping gazelle.  Or maybe an Impala (wink, wink).

To paraphrase Paul Harvey, here's "the rest of the car".

Virgil Exner gone wild!  His controversial design for the 1961 Dodge. Exner's faith in the tailfin, never wavering, drove him to put the fins on backwards!  The deeply-frenched taillights in their chrome bezels aided reflectivity and brightness of the stoplights.  An unintentional safety feature. 

I guess "From A Pontiac Eight" wasn't a scary enough title for Stephen King.  This one even has a Silver Streak down the trunk!

"It was a four-light, loud-horned flying purple people eater" . . .
A friend of my mom's, who I called "Aunt Pat" as a child, with her brand-new 1959 Pontiac  Bonneville Vista four -door pillarless flattop.  The color was called "Royal Amethyst Metallic.  Buick called the same color "Lido Lavender". She drove this car until she wrecked it in 1968.

I see a red Dodge Charger in your future!  With a Hemi!

Don't know the official name of the color of this '68 Imperial, but I'm calling it "Honey Gold"

1973 Pontiac Grand Prix. Disco-era cruiser. In the family since it was five years old. Owned by the same person from age 19 and sold just recently by him at age 57.  New owner painted it a different color and is trying to flip it at a much higher price.

What 19 yr old in 1978 wouldn't want an 8-track player in his car!

Courtesy light detail.

Blood is thicker than water?  Not in this case!  Car was originally white with a red vinyl top. Was bought by this young man from his half-sister's used car salesman husband (red flag one).  1973 GM cars had the worst corrosion protection since the 1957 Chrysler line-up (red flag two).  Car looked gorgeous and the young man fell in love with it.  Little did he know all the rust was covered by metal tape and resprayed until 6 months later, when all the rust came back

Young man asks best body man around to properly repair and repaint the car. Being the best, the bodyman is backed-up.  Gives our poor owner a name of another body shop, without really knowing if the guy does good work or not.  The body shop owner is supposed to use metal patch panels, not bondo.  Job is supposed to be done in 30 days.  6 months later, after several angry confrontations involving the owner pulling a shotgun and cops being called the car is finally finished.  It's not the right shade of red. The jambs are painted a different shade of red!  Bondo is used!  A court case ensues and our beleaguered owner makes a partial recovery of funds and has the satisfaction of driving the body shop owner out of business, as his license is pulled.  He heads to Florida to rip other people off, never to be heard from again.  Car spends many years in the garage in the background, which keeps the frame solid and arrests deterioration of the bad repairs.  Owner hates to see it go, due to owning it so long and it's comfortable ride, but the body issues are too expensive to make restoration practical.

Electric cars are nothing new.  This was snapped at the 2016 Pumpkin Run.

Baker and Waverly were also makers of electric cars.  There were probably other manufacturers, as well.

In the first third of the 20th Century, three technologies for powering "horseless carriages": internal combustion, steam and electric.  I guess we all know which technology won-out.  Electric cars seemed to be aimed at females and had curtains and brocade interiors.

Subtlety-rodded 1946 Ford in Tweety Bird Yellow.  Also at the 2016 Pumpkin Run.

Sharp as a tack!

And now for an Imperial Interlude: Coral '55 snapped in 1996 in Morrow Bay, California

A "Nugget Gold" over white 2-door "Southampton" (that's Imperialese for pillarless hardtop) with factory A/C on the street where I lived in Ocean City, NJ in the 1990's.  Had some friends over after the local AACA meet and Boardwalk parade.

Snapped in Fleming's Junkyard during a Pumpkin Run. This is what happens to a car when you dont follow the maintenance intervals in the owner's manual.  Waste of a once-majestic car.

Imperial and DeSoto taillights.  Both 1955 models.

1958 Imperial and 1960 DeSoto taken at the AACA show in Plantation, FL in 1992.

Cue the theme from "Jaws".  Rehoboth Beach, DE, 1990s.  1961 Imperial fin.

British-made Lanchester.  High on the cute factor.

1948 Mercury, Rehoboth Beach DE, 1990s.

Ford called their automatic transmission Ford-O-Matic early on.  Mercury called theirs Merc-O-Matic.  Lincoln bought Hydramatics from GM until 1955, when their own transmission was developed.

1954 glassed-topped Mercury "Sun Valley" details.  Ford had a glass-topped version of it's own for 1954.  Mercury dropped the idea after 1955.  Ford persevered through 1956.  "Excessive heat transfer to passengers" and the expense and inefficiency of early A/C systems made this a rarely-ordered option.  Oddly, in 1978 and 1979 Lincoln revived the idea on it's full-sized sedans and coupes.  The "fixed glass moonroof" option was about as popular 25 years later as it was originally.  This time around, it was probably because people preferred power-retractable sunroofs, which had become a very popular option by the late 1970s.

1954 Nash wagon.  In another post, an engineering triumph for Nash was the location of all components of the optional air-conditioning under the hood of the car.  Having refrigerator manufacturer Kelvinator under your corporate umbrella didn't hurt.  Nash really pushed the option, touted as less expensive than competing systems, which ran a towering $500.00 to $600.00 1950's dollars. Kelvinator had a prototype A/C system fitted to a Nash as early as 1930!  Packard gets the prize for the first manufacturer to offer it to the public in 1940.

                                                   



                                                  Dig the detail!

                   

Nash, enlisted Italian coachbuilder Pinin Farina to style it's cars, starting with the 1952 models.

               




 Look at this armrest detail!  Very Mid-Century Modern!

Car sports the "Marilyn Monroe" Option: A bare-breasted female hood mascot.

1957 Nash grille detail.  1957 Was the last year for Nash-badged cars.

1955 Packard Clipper.  As colorful and attractive as this car is, it's medium-price tarnished Packard's image and contributed to Packard's demise.

If I recall correctly, 1955 was the year "Clipper" was registered as a separate make and "Packard" badging was removed from Clippers.  It was a too-little-too late attempt to restore prestige to the Packard name.  An attempt to distance the Clipper from it's upscale sibling.  It didn't work.  The dealers had a fit! Upper management bowed to pressure and little "Packard" badges returned to the decklids of Clippers. The abstract shot above shows how, by this time, the two names were inextricably-linked.     

1961 Plymouth Fury detail.  Great font, though not as cool as the script used on Imperials of the time.  My interpretation of the gold symbol is a rocket taking off (much like Oldsmobile's symbol of the time).  However, I was reading an article on Allpar.com that seems to indicate that, like Dodge's symbol, this was also called a "Fratzog"???

Thanks to the 1962 Lincoln Continental owner's choice of car wax, I was able to capture a pretty detailed reflection of a pink 1957 Thunderbird.  1957 was the last year of the 1st generation T-bird.  It was also the last of the two seater T-birds until a 21st Century version was introduced circa 2005.  The modern version borrowed heavily from the 1955-56 version. The 2nd gen 'birds were introduced in 1958 by singer/actor/director Dick Powell. These were 4-seaters, sold like hotcakes, were nicknamed "Squarebirds" and were the first "Personal Luxury" cars. 

American Bantam roadster and Pickup.  An early attempt at a compact (if not subcompact) car in the USA.  I recall catching a scene from a flick from the early 1930's.  The scene was an emergency room and two doctors exchange dialogue about car crash victims being brought in.  "One of the cars was a Bantam", one said to the other, with the implication that the American Bantam probably didn't survive.