1948 MG TC

1948 MG TC, click picture to enlarge.

The MG, which was the second generation removed from the older Austin, was probably the car that turned many Americans on to the notion of wanting to own and drive the European sports cars. This sporty MG TC sports car, with its sweeping front fenders, cutaway doors, fold down windshield and knockoff wire wheels was a type of car not often seen on the American roads. The MG TC had a 1250 cc 4-cylinder engine that turned 54 horsepower at 5,200 rpm which is a comparatively high rate of rpm. It had a 3 speed transmission and 4 wheel Lockheed hydraulic brakes. It also came with a telescoping steering column and a six volt electrical system. The interior had leather upholstery and a wood grain dash panel.

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Packard Plant destroyed by weekend fires

I just noticed this story in the Old Cars Weekly Blog and quickly decided that I need to post this here and let our readers know that this part of our old car history is now gone up in smoke. This article is excerpted from the Old Car Weekly Blog and is used here for information purposes only and is not intended or used in any way as an infringement of their ownership rights. For your information I have a picture of the last car made at the plant which was a centenniel edition made in 1999 to celebrate 100 years of Packard History. The plant closed down in 1956 and has been in shambles since then.

According to several online sources, the sprawling, five-story, 3.5 million square feet complex has been abandoned for a number of years, and firefighters have made nearly weekly visits to the fire-plagued site in recent months. On Sunday, a two-alarm fire sent firefighters there to battle a blaze that started on the fourth floor. Jason Frattinni of Firehouse.com reported that Sunday’s fire raged most of the day and through the night before it eventually burned out. Crews worked through the night and continued to work into Monday. Causes of the recent fires at the site have stemmed from scrappers working with acetylene torches and by vandals.Concerned with hazards, the Detroit Fire Department had ordered personnel to stay out of the interior of the complex while fighting a fire. They had held special training sessions there so neighboring fire units would be familiar with the plant.The complex, consisting of 43 buildings, was designed by Albert Kahn and opened on Detroit’s eastside in 1907. Luxury vehicles were made there until 1956. It was sold the following year for $750,000. From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, the building was used as the Motor City Industrial Park. According to the Detroit Free Press it was most recently owned by Bioresource Inc., which emerged with the title after a lengthy court battle with the City of Detroit. The company was declared dissolved by the state in 2003 after failing to pay city taxes.

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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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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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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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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.

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.

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

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.