Items tagged with: oddities

Hemmings Find of the Day – 1947 Ford Super DeLuxe convertible

From the seller’s description: 1947 Ford Super Deluxe Factory Convertible added Wood *Over $50,000 Invested (Minus the Labor on Wood) “First and Only made”- “I made it” 1950 Mercury V8 Flathead Motor...

“The world’s fastest motorcycle,” E.J. Potter’s 1971 Widowmaker 7, heads to auction in Las Vegas

Photos courtesy Bonhams. In 1957, 16-year old Elon Jack “E.J.” Potter had the crazy, brilliant idea to drop a small-block Chevy V-8 into a motorcycle frame. It took another three years for Potter to ...

From gasoline to gasification, or why we don’t power cars with wood today

1929 Ford Model A Tudor with wood gas system attached. Photos by author. The efforts to find a sustainable replacement for gasoline precede the term “e-mobility” that currently dominates press releas...

A bike brand grows in Brooklyn: The Vanguard Roadster, America’s newest premium motorcycle

Vanguard Roadster. Photos by Kurt Ernst and Jim O’Clair. Since bottoming out in 2010, the U.S. motorcycle market has begun a gradual climb back to pre-recession sales numbers, but 2015’s 500,000 sale...

Four-Links – auto advent, Fiesta variants, Ford’s assembly line workers, the origins of the model year

As he has for the last several years, artist Stefan Marjoram has taken on an auto advent calendar project, with a new piece of art each day until Christmas. * New Fiesta coming, so Adrian Flux’s Infl...

Open Diff: Automotive obscurities

1985 Ford LTD LX. Photo by Jeff Koch. In 1984 and 1985, Ford build a four-door, 5.0-liter Mustang. It wasn’t called a Mustang, of course, but it carried a Mustang V-8 (albeit the de-tuned one that ca...

Four Links—Totally tagged Rambler, hot rod art of Stefan Marjoram, vintage filling stations, reviving a rusty Ranchero, and direct-injection flatheads

From Curbside Classic comes the interesting tail of an old-car owner who put his or her neighborhood vandals street artists to work preserving a ’61 Rambler American. Apparently the unidentified owne...

Verbotene Frucht – Volkswagen’s New Beetle RSi

The Volkswagen New Beetle RSi attracts loads of attention, but it’s not the kind you really want. Even in Germany most people don’t know Volkswagen built a super Bug. Motorists and passerby quickly w...

Predicting the (near) future – Mercury’s 1956 XM Turnpike Cruiser concept

Mercury’s 1956 XM Turnpike Cruiser concept. Images courtesy The Old Car Manual Project. In April of 1954, John Najjar, then head of Lincoln’s pre-production studios, sketched a series of five futuris...

Classic cars play a starring role at the 2016 Paris Motor Show

A Peugeot 403 convertible, similar to the one driven by TV detective Frank Columbo (which was a faded gray). Photos by Nick Kurczewski. What does a Columbo-style battered Peugeot 403 convertible and ...

Fifty years on, the GM Electrovan foretold a future that never was (but still might be)

Cutaway rendering of the GM Electrovan. Image courtesy General Motors. Though it looked like a normal GMC Handi-Van from the outside, the hydrogen fuel cell powered Electrovan, introduced to the publ...

An eight-horsepower, three-speed, 1951… elephant?

Convinced that the world needed gasoline and electric-powered mechanical elephants, British theatrical prop builder Frank Stuart founded a company called Mechanimals, which put these powered pachyder...

A walk through the Saab Museum

Visiting the official Saab museum in Trollhattan, Sweden, shouldn’t be taken for granted. The museum was on the brink of shutting down for good when Saab collapsed a couple of years ago, and it would...

Practical prancing horse: The one-of-one Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Shooting Brake

1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Shooting Brake. Photos by Matt Howell, courtesy Gooding & Company. When real estate developer and builder Bob Gittleman paid a circa-1973 visit to Chinetti-Garthwaite Motors in...

Photochops: the more = better edition

Our recent story on the Futurliner had me looking through my file of saved photos and bookmarks for images to illustrate it, and while I couldn’t use the above rendering by James DonVito, it did get ...

What if Volkswagen built the first Mini? VW’s EA-48 prototype

Volkswagen’s EA-48 prototype. Photos courtesy Volkswagen AG, unless otherwise noted. The original Mini is often credited for laying the foundations of the city car as we know it today. However, that ...

It came from outer space and landed in Detroit. But what is it?

The latest Forgotten Fiberglass mystery car. Photos by author. I’ve always been a fan of the space age era from cool plastic stereos and wild “biomorphic” designs. This interest crystallized when I w...

Four Links – Far-Out Pontiac Concepts, Defender Reborn, Imbued with Hues, Auto Camps

With concept cars like the 1977 Firebird Type K station wagon, the Corvette-challenging 1964 Banshee XP-833 coupe and the 1954 Bonneville Special, GM’s Pontiac division continually demonstrated a wil...

A mystery no more – the Fabulous Ferber

The mystery motorhome is a 1971 Ferber Motor Coach. Photos and scans by Geoff Hacker. I love adventures. Those that have to do with cars, that is. And sometimes, trucks and RV’s ( like this Ultravan,...

A dream that never came true – Borgward’s Traumwagen

The Borgward Traumwagen (Dream Car). Photo courtesy Borgward. While 1950s concept cars are typically associated with American automakers, a few European companies were pushing the design and engineer...

Four-Links – Curator on the Go, Acrobatic Auto, NYC to Boston in 12 Hours, Bloodhound goes Supersonic

Miguel Llorente is the former curator of the Al Ain Classic Car Museum in the UAE, but he’s also the explorer that “discovered” the Cuban Gullwing. His dream is to open a new museum, the “Petersen of...

The Tenth Decade: 1988 Oldsmobile full line brochure

Images are from the brochure collection of Hemmings Motor News Oldsmobile’s 1988 model year lineup showcased this GM division’s past and future, all sharing space on dealership lots. The veteran rear...

Hemmings Find of the Day – 1908 Ford Model T “Dizzy Lizzy”

Though this 1908 Ford Model T for sale on Hemmings.com may not have been an original stunt parade car from the first half of the 20th Century, it has its own unique history – specifically as a stunt ...

Sporting saloon – The handsome little Y-type saloon that MG built

Roaming the promenade during the Lake Mirror Classic that is held in downtown Lakeland, Florida each October, among the big Lincolns, Buicks and Chryslers sat this unusual small-scale four-door sedan...

Because too much still isn’t enough – the one-of-one Packard Royal roadster

The 1940 Packard Royal roadster. Photos by Patrick Ernzen, courtesy Auctions America. It measures 31.5-feet from end-to-end, nearly 10-feet longer than a Ford Super Duty pickup. Despite the mostly al...

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