Monday, June 29, 2009

1931 Hupmobile Sedan

1931 Hupmobile Sedan, click picture to enlarge.



Hupmobiles were built from 1909 through 1940 at the Hupp Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan. The company's philosophy was to build a tough and dependable car and sell it at a working man's price range. This philosophy paid off well and production and sales soared to over 50,000 cars by 1929. The Great Depression that hit in 1929 slowed sales down. A workers strike in 1937 also hurt sales and few cars were produced between 1937 and 1940.Production of the Hupmobile cars ceased in July of 1940 due to financial difficulties and the pressures of the impending war years of 1941 to 1945.The 1931 Hupmobile came in a variety of body styles including the Model S 4-door sedan shown here. The model S sedan was priced at $995 in 1931.

An interesting personal story about the Hupmobile occurred in Atlant, Georgia in the early 1960's time frame. My wife and I were living on Matthews Avenue, just off of Dekalb Avenue, and I was going to a nearby convenience store. At the intersection of Mathews and Dekalb Avenues an older lady was sitting in a 1917 Hupmobile that was broke down. I stopped to see if I could help her and she thanked me and said no, that her mechanic was on the way and should be there soon. Now I gathered from her conversation that she was the only owner of that car and that her mechanic was the only person to ever work on it. Now when you consider that this was a 1917 car and the year then as in the early 1960's that car had only been driven by one lady and worked on by one man for over forty years. Astounding and amazing!!! Another odd thing that I noticed about that car was that it was chain driven like a bicycle. It did not have a regular transmission, drive shaft and rear end gearbox like most other cars have. My, my, these times, they are a changing.

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1929 Duesenberg Model J Derham

1929 Duesenberg Model J Derham, click picture to enlarge.

This car was a legend in its time. I don't remember ever seeing one of these cars but that was probably because the people in my area did not have the money that it took to buy thses cars. In my research for this car I found a statement that said this car had a base price of around twelve thousand dollars and could go up to twenty five thousand dollars with a custom made coach and other options. The thing about that statement that struck my attention was that this was at a time when the average doctor only earned about three thousand dollars a year. The Duesenberg was featured in some of the ritzy movies of that time. Captain Eddie Rickenbacher, a famous WWI ace fighter pilot that was downed in the Pacific during the war, drove a Duesenber in the Indianapolis 500 race once. The Duesenberg also won the Le Mans Open race in Europe three or four times.

In February 1928 the Model J designation was born.
The newly revived Duesenberg company set about to produce the Model J, which debuted in December at the New York Car Show of 1928. In unsupercharged form, it produced a whopping 265 horsepower (198 kW) from a dual overhead camshaft straight 8 and was capable of a top speed of 119 mph (192 km/h), and 94 mph (151 km/h) in 2nd gear. Other cars featured a bigger engine but none of them surpassed its power which was three times bigger and was also both the fastest and most expensive automobile in the market. All these unique features, glamour and style found an inspiration in the expression; "It's a Duesy".

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Sunday, June 28, 2009

1928 Austin Seven

1928 Austin Seven, click picture to enlarge image.



This Austin is from the time frame when I was born and came onto the scene in "automobilia". I say that because I rememer the Austin pretty well from younger days. You may be able to tell that it had regular battery ignition powered headlights and not the older oil burning lamps of earlier years. The headlights were then a more integral part of the fenders and had a clean look about them instead o looking like they were an afterthought and just hanging from a frame mounted somewhere near the front of the car. Notice also that this Austin had the sporty looking steel spokes, similar to bicycle wheels, and they were not solid wheels or wooden spoke wheels as was common in those days.



I don't remember the Austin Seven, as this car is, but I remember The Austin-Healy, which was a low slung sporty car and looked much better to me than this car does.

Engine: four cylinder, side valve, 747cc, 11 bhp; Gearbox: three-speed sliding mesh; Suspension: transverse semi-elliptic front, quarter elliptic, live axle rear; Brakes: four-wheel non-interlinked mechanical. Right hand drive.

From its introduction in 1922 the Austin Seven carried lightweight open tourer bodywork, earning the nickname "Chummy" due to its small proportions meaning passengers had to be fairly friendly to travel anywhere! As production developed many different forms of bodywork were offered; the Chummy remained popular, and the confines of its bodywork became slightly more accommodating. Later Chummies are distinguishable by their upright windscreens, flat sided scuttle, and deeper hood arrangement. By the year of production of this example the Seven was in its heyday, and continued to sell extremely well into the mid-1930s. The Austin cars, and the different offshoots such as the Austin Healey and finally the MG sports car, were British or English made cars.

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Friday, June 26, 2009

1926 Chrysler Sedan

1926 Chrysler Sedan, click picture to enlarge.



All right all you Chrysler fans out there. Here is one of your own that is just for you. The Chrysler cars have always been among the best cars on the road in America for as long as I can remember, and hey people that is a long time now.

The 1926 Chrysler sedan had a 109 inch wheelbase and weighed 2840 pounds. It had a six cylinder cast iron engine with a 180.325 cubic inch displacement and 54 horsepower at 3300 rpm.

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

1925 Ford Model T, tripic

1925 Ford Model T, click picture to enlarge.

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

1923 Dodge Roadster

1923 Dodge Roadster, click picture to enlarge



1923 Dodge built by the Dodge Brothers. Black with black top and interior. 4cyl, 25hp, and 3 speed manual transmission. The Dodge was the first cars to be built with an all steel body. Dodge was far more advanced than most of the cars of this era. It has a fuel pump system and an oiling system.

I never did much with Dodge products myself except for one old Dodge pickup truck that I bought from someone that I was working with at the time. I bought that old Dodge truck for ten dollars and had to go to his house and get it. I think that it was drivable so I could drive it home. At that time I was trying to make do with an old Ford Falcon that had lost so much compression that it would not crank by itself. After I got the Dodge pickup I started using it instead of the Falcon and I drove that old pickup probably for about another year. One thing in particular about that pickup that I remember that irritated me was that the lugs on the passenger side had reverse threads on them so when I thought I was loosening the lugs I was tightening them. I never did get used to that and I had to think about it each time I changed tires on that side. The purpose of that was to use the forward motion of the car to keep all of the lugs tight.

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Monday, June 22, 2009

1913 Ford Model T Speedster

1913 Ford Model T Speedster, click picture to enlarge.

You may remember from the write up on the 1931 Model A that I discussed the Model T in that post. The Model T may well be the car that really made the Ford Motor Company thrive and do well in their first few years during the hard times of startup. If you notice closely in the picture you can see the slot in the lower front of the radiator housing that the driver would put the crank handle through to engage with pulley and turn the engine to start the car. That reminds me of a commercial that says "You've come a long way baby". Thank goodness that we don't have to start our cars like that with a crank handle anymore.

Henry Ford began producing the Model T in 1908 in Detroit at the Piquette Avenue plant and continued the run of Model T's until 1927 for nineteen years making it the longest running production of a single model car ever in history except for the German made Volkswagon Beetle. It has been said that Henry Ford said of the Model T, "You can paint it any color, so long as it's black". Whether he said that or not has not been proven but the saying has hung around longer than the car did and it does testify to the continuing "sameness" of the car. This sameness characteristic of the car was one of the features that made it affordable to the masses. Over the 19 years of production there were 15,000,000 Model T's sold, far outselling any other car made in those years.

The car had a 4 cylinder, 20 hp engine and seated three people in its regal high backed seats. it sold for $850.00 new in Detroint in 1913.

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Sincerely,
Maynard Wright, the Georgia Boy

Friday, June 19, 2009

1937 Chrysler Airflow

1937 Chrysler Airflow four door sedan, click picture to enlarge.

Chrysler had offered the Airflow series of cars before 1937 but this year was the first true Airflow produced that actually had pneumatic, and/or hydraulic, shocks and brakes. This was the 1937 Chrysler Airflow Series C-17 only. This car had a 128 inch wheelbase and a 130 hp, 323 cid 8 cylinder engine and a 3 speed manual overdive transmission. Other features included hydraulic brakes and telescoping air shocks and a hypoid gear rear axle. Some of the cosmetic changes were a more V-shaped front grill and horizontal hood louvers. There were only 4,600 of these cars produced in 1937.

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1931 Model A Ford

1931 Model A Ford 2-door sedan and Cabriolet coupe, click picture to enlarge.

How many of you people still driving today remember being able to adjust the "spark advance" from the steering column? That's like setting the ignition points closer or wider even while you're driving down the road in order to get more power or to save gas. Well, we did that on these old Model A cars and it was just as normal as mashing the gas pedal to go faster is to us today. As I have said before the Model A was the car that my generation grew up with so it is very familiar to many of us. It was said about the old Model A that if you had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and a roll of baling wire and just a little bit of mechanical aptitude that you fix about anything that might go wrong with it. That was more true than it was not true.

The Model A was,in effect, the transition from the very successful older Model T Fords with the old hand cranked starting where you put a crank handle that was shaped like a bent steel rod that had two bends in it, and a pin through the end of it that engaed with a notch in a pulley on the end of the crankshaft. When the handle was turned by hand it turned the motor enough to get it started. This way of cranking the old Model T was nicknamed as the "arm breaker" because if you did not remove the crank handle quickly as the engine fired up the handle would be engaged with the engine and would fly around and hit you if you still had hold of it. As I said the Model A was a transition from the Model T to the newer, more powerful V-8 cars that came along later. The Model A had a 200.5 cid, 40 hp four cylinder engine and a 3 speed floor mounted gearshift. It had expanding shoe and drum brakes on all four wheels and safety glass in the windows which was the first time that safety glass was used in cars. Some style changes in the 1931 Model A included a new radiator shell and running boards with single piece splash aprons. The two door sedan shown here was the most popular of the model A's and the Cabriolet Coupe was next to it. The sedan sold for $490 and the voupe for $430.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

1948 Chrysler Town And Country Convertible

1948 Chrysler Town And Country Convertible, click picture to enlarge.

When this car came out I was in my mid-teens and had already bought my first car which was a 1940 Ford four door "humpbacked" sedan, a black one. I remember that we didn't have much money in our family and I could only dream and wish for a car as nice as this one was. This model of Chrysler was a real beauty and possibly one of the nicest cars made in America in those years.

Of all of the post war cars to hit the streete in America, the Chrysler Town And Country Convertible was probably the best looking and most wanted car of them all. The uncommon attractiveness that made it so appealing to so many people was the sides of the body that featured real genuine white ash wood framework and mahogany veneer panels. The interior featured all leather fittings with pleated leather inserts and bolsters. This "Woodie" shown here had a 323.5 cid straight 8 engine that turned 135 hp at 3400 rpm. It weighed 4332 pounds, had a Fluid Drive transmission and a 127.5 inch wheelbase chassis. In 1948 this car, with the availabe options, sold for $3,420.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

1917 Pierce Arrow Runabout

1917 Pierce Arrow Runabout, click picture to enlarge.

Hi people. This time the bridge behind the car may be more interesting than the old car is to many people. The sign above the bridge in the picture says, "Thompson Bridge 1832". I feel like I am as old as the Rock of Gibralta sometimes but this bridge is even older than me; how about that, all you sports fans? Besides that, this is also the only covered bridge that I know of that is still around anywhere in the country. I can vaguely or faintly remember seeing one or two old covered bridges but I don't remember where they might have been.

But now a little bit about the car.The Pierce Arrow may have been best known for its new type fender mounted headlights that were a tremendous advancement over the older oil burning lamps that were common in those days. The Pierce Arrow Motor Company rapidly gained a good reputation for building high quality, well built luxury cars that competed well in the market with cars like the Cadillac, Duesenberg, LaSalle, Lincoln, Marmon and Packard. The 3 passenger runabout shown here came with a 38 hp 6 cylinder engine with a selective sliding gear transmission. The car had both a battery and magneto electrical system, a power driven air pump to keep the pneumatic tires pumped up and it had a cone type leather faced clutch and a cast aluminum body. In 1917 the Pierce Arrow Runabout sold for $4,600.00; a fairly high price then.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

1956 Ford Thunderbird

1956 Ford Thunderbird, click picture to enlarge.

The rivalry between the Ford Thunderbird and the Chevrolet Corvette has been the strongest of any other two cars ever made for people of my generation. This is a strange feat considering that the cars are not classed the same by the manufacturers. The Corvette has always been called an American Sports Car as opposed to a European Sports Car. The Thunderbird, on the other hand, was called a personal luxury car. It was called a personal car because it was first made as a one seater that could carry two people. To compare the two cars, at first the Thunderbird outsold the Corvette in 1955 and 56 but since then the Corvette has generally outsold the "T-bird" judging by the number of each car that you see while just driving around. Performancewise the Corvette has more power and speed than the Thunderbird and the Corvette has been more of a consistant production car than the Thunderbird since the Thunderbird was stopped and restarted a few times during the production years from 1955 through 2005. Even with these factors showing the Corvette to be the better performer in many categories I still liked the Thunderbird the best, probably because I am just a strong Ford man anyway.

The 1956 Thunderbird had an optional 312 cid engine but the standard engine was the 292 cid V-8 with a Ford-O-Matic transmission. The open top convertible, by far the most popular model, came with two tops, a removable hardtop and the conventionl cloth top. The hard top had a round port hole window on both sides of the rear of the top that made it very appealing to the public. The car had a 12 volt ignition system that was a change from the six volt systems of the 1955 series.

If you want to comment or add to this post just use the comment button in the "posted by" line at the bottom of each post. You may also enjoy using the older posts link to see the rest of the old cars on this blog. Spread the word about this site to all of the old car enthusiasts that you know.

Sincerely,
Maynard Wright, Georgia Boy
mrw-ss@hughesnet

Saturday, June 13, 2009

1929 Model A Ford Town Sedan

1929 Model A Ford Town Sedan, click picture to enlarge.

Since this is my blog about old cars I feel like I have the liberty to tell some personal experience stories here if I want to now and then. The Model A was the car that my generation grew up with so we can spin a many a yarn about what all we did with them. I remember one time that a friend of mine and I had taken a Model A way back into the Everglades of Florida for a camping trip for a few days. We left the car in a good place and then went on foot for a few more miles and stayed there in the Everglades for maybe a week before returning to the car to go back home to Belle Glade, Florida where we both lived. We had enjoyed a good time and was happy to get back to the car and go home. But.....the car wouldn't start!!!

Back then it was usually easy to push one of those cars by hand and it it would crank pretty easy. Not this time. We pushed and we pushed until we turned blue in the face but that Model A would not start. Finally, we pushed that car up into a man's yard and asked him if we could leave it there for a day or two so we could hitch hike on back home and get a big truck and come back after the car. When we got back with truck and loaded the Model A into the truck and brought it back home we went over that car with a fine toothed comb until we found what the trouble was and we fixed it. What was wrong? We fixed that car by putting a new rotor button in the distributor. For a 3 cent rotor button we had spent a whole day in pushing that car and another two days to go home, get the truck and come back after it. For 3 cents.

There was another unusual thing about a Model A that happened too. Several years later, in the late 1940's or 1950's there was a friend of ours that lived close by and his dad had bought the boy a Model A replica because they were a fashionable fad at the time. It was a kit car that needed to be assembled. The problem was that the day the kit arrived at the boy's house his family was moving from Florida to Ohio because his dad was being transferred on his job. Well, to finish the story quickly, the boy sold that kit car to me and another friend for $10. We put that car together and drove it all over South Florida for several more years after that.

!929 was the second year of production for the Model A and there were several body styles introduced that year including the town sedan shown here, the convertible Cabriolet, the two door coupe and three or four different four door sedans. The Model A had a 200 cid, 40 hp four cylinder engine and a 103.5 inch wheelbase. The one shown in this picture had a Murray body, we had a Murray two door coupe at one time, and was priced new at $840. This car has been driven 6,300 miles since it was fully restored in 1985.

If you want to comment on some of these old cars just use the comment button in the posted by line at the bottom of each post. You can also email me using the address in the profile block. Spread the word and tell any old car enthusiasts about this old car blog.

Friday, June 12, 2009

1957 Cadillac Eldorado

1957 Cadillac Eldorado Coupe Deville, click picture to enlarge.

This is undoubtedly The Car that poor people dream of owning but never do. The car is known for class and luxury and cost. The Cadillac Eldorado has long been synonymous with elegance and prestige and money. I dated a girl in Atlanta a few times that owned one of these 1957 Cadillacs but hers were usually four or five years old when she got them. She just wanted to enjoy the feeling of being "high class" by driving Cadillacs. Her passions were Cadillacs and pink champagne. Needless to say we did not have many dates because I didn't care for that attitude.

This car had a 365 cid cast iron V-8 OHV 300 hp engine with a 4.00 X 3.625 inch bore and stroke and a 10.0 to 1 compression ratio. It had 5 main bearings and hydraulic valve lifters and a Rochester four barrel carburetor.

One thing about the Cadillac name that has disappointed me has been the recent change to making other type vehicles such as SUV's, pickups and vans just to be able to stay afloat in a very unstable economic downturn of the national economy. It just seems sad to me that the distinction of class and luxury has to suffer the deterioration of name that these "survival strategies" have caused. This is not peculiar to Cadillac alone though because some other luxury cars such as the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln cars have also gone into making "bread and butter" vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks.

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Thursday, June 11, 2009

1958 Studebaker Commander



1958 Studebaker Commander, click picture to enlarge.


One of my uncles used to drive a Studebaker for many years. The particular one that I remember was a Studebaker President series which was the largest, most luxurious and most expensive of the Studebaker lineup. I also knew a good friend that liked the smaller Studebaker Champion series with its famous "bullet nose" aerodynamic design. As I said in my last post about the 1955 Desoto, the Studebaker, along with the Desoto, Packard and Hudson, was one of the old cars that died by the wayside, mainly because many of the feaures they introduced were just too far advanced ahead of their time and the public just did not accept the "new-fangled gadgets". Some of the things that they introduced were the new aerodynamic design that I just mentioned and a feature called "hillholder brakes" that allowed the driver to pull up to a stop sign or a redlight on a hill and mash the brake peddle and then take his foot off of the peddle and the brakes would still hold until the gas peddle was mashed which released the brakes. The Commander had a 259 cid V-8 180 hp engine and a three speed, three speed overdive or Flight-o-matic Transmission

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

1955 Desoto Fireflight

1955 Desoto Fireflight, click picture to enlarge.

I am glad that I was born at a time where I was old enough to live through and enjoy what was the golden age of automotive history in the 1950's and 1960's. As you can tell by these old car pictures the cars made before WWII were mostly drab and bleak looking with a garish boxxy appearance. After the war when the manufacturers started producing cars for the public they still had much of that same blahness to them. But in the 1950's they changed all of that and started designing style and flash and glamour in the cars. This 1955 Desoto is a good example of that.

But there was an unorseen problem in that. Many of the manufacturers outdid themselves to their own hurt. What I mean by that is that they introduced new and improved features in the cars that were just too far in advance of what the public was ready to accept and so they rejected all of "these new-fangled gadgets" in favor of what they were more familiar with. Some examples of this were the Desoto, Packard, Hudson and Studebaker cars that died by the wayside.

The 1955 Desoto was a thing of beauty and a real pleasure to drive. It sported a powerful 291 cid Hemi-head V-8 that would literally flat out fly with you if you pressed the petal to the metal. The Hemi-head V-8 was very popular in those years and many different cars had them.

Monday, June 8, 2009

1956 Ford Sunliner

1956 Ford Sunliner Convertible, click picture to enlarge.

The 1956 Ford was my all time favorite car out of all of the different cars that I have owned. I have had two different1956 Fords at different times and I really did like both of them. The ones that I had were the less expensive four door
town sedans, not the Sunliner or Crestliner or the Crown Victoria, all of which were more expensive than I could afford back then. These cars all had a 292 cid 225 hp Y block engine with a three speed Fordamatic automatic transmission. The speedometer registered up to 120 mph and both cars that I had would hide the speedometer needle down behind the 120 mph mark so I know that they would run at least 130 mph or better. I can remember that there were two girls in Atlanta that had a red and white 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air that I used to see somewhere aound the Varsity Drivein. they would pull up beside me and indicate, "Let's drag". The red light changed and there was a cloud of smoke and schreeching rubber and that Chevrolet would beat my Ford taking off but I was ahead of them by the time we got to the next red light. Yep, that Chevrolet, with a hopped up 327 id engine would beat my Ford in the drag but not on a flat out top speed run. I said that their 327 was hopped up because when it was sitting still you could hear it lopeing like it had 3/4 turned racing crankshaft an maybe oversized pistons too. There were two other body styles for the Ford line that were less expensive. One was the Customline and the other was the Mainline models. The 1956 Ford also offered two other engine choices, one was a 272 cid Y-block and a 260 cid six cylinder. Ah, but those were good times.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

1937 And 1938 Bentley Roadster And Coupe

1937 And 1938 Bentley Roadster And Coupe

The Bentley was created in 1919 by Walter Owen and H.M. Bentley, brothers with a desire to design and build a thoroughbred sports car. Although the company survived as an independent company for only ten years before being bought out by Rolls-Royce, it swiftly rose to the forefront of competitive motor cars. The 2-seat Bentley Roadster pictured is powered by a 110 bhp 4.25 litre in line 6 cylinder engine and a four speed transmission and had a top speed of over 100 mph. The Coupe deVillars of Paris had the same power train with a four speed overdrive transmission. These cars sold for about $15,000 each when they were new.

Friday, June 5, 2009

1922 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost

1922 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost

This is the car that dreams and legends are made of. I remember one legend, (it really must be a legend because I don't see how it could possibly be true) was a story that my English teacher told to the class when I was still in grammar school; that a Rolls-Royce would ride so smooth and quite that you could put a penny on the hood and drive at 100 miles an hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats and the penny would not move. There are many other equally dubious tales that still lingon on about this fabulous old car.

After WWI the company built a production plant in Springfield, Massachusetts to try to gain a part of the American market. By 1922 they had made 230 Rolls-Royce cars. The U.S. version was just about the same as the British version and was powered by an in-line 6 cylinder engine rated at 85-bhp at 2,250 rpm. Rolls-Royce also built a coach body plant in America that produced a variety of body types, mostly with English names such as Piccadilly, Oxford and Stratford. The one shown here was called the Piccadilly and was made in America

1954 Plymouth Belmont Convertible


This 2 door sports convertible was designed by Chrysler for the 1954 auto shows. Made of reinforced fibreglass, the Belmont uses the chassis from Dodge's 114" wheelbase convertible and two-door cars. The car was fitted with Dodge's 150hp, 241ci V8, with a Plymouth Hy-Drive semi-automatic transmission.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

1932 Lincoln Convertible Coupe

1932 Lincoln Convertible Coupe, click image to enlarge

In a long line of classic automobiles, arguably the most elegant of all Lincolns was the KB Series introduced in 1932. The KB had a 145 inch wheelbase and a new 447.9 cid V-12 egine and a 3 speed Silent Synchromeshed transmission that could move the car at speeds better than 100 miles per hour. New for the outside appearance was a V-type radiator with a rounded shell, a five door vented hood, twin horns, front fender parking lights and a sloping windshield. this Lincoln KB pictured here has a custom built body by LeBaron. There were only eighteen of these built in 1932.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

1933 Dodge Business Coupe

1933 Dodge Business Coupe, click picture to enlarge

The Dodge company made a number of appealing changes to the 1933 models. The flat radiator of the 1932 models was replaced with a gracefully curving V-shaped grill, and the old rear opening doors were replaced with the increasingly popular front opening doors, often referred to as "suicide doors". Some other changes included double interior sun visors, single bar front and rear bumpers, rounded front fenders, chrome plated headlights and the elimination of the old cowl lamps.This Business Coupe pictured here had a 70 horsepower 210 cubic inch in-line straight six cylinder engine and a three speed transmission that featured silent, smooth operating helical gears.