Excerpts taken from world famous ‘Hemmings Auto Blog’
No guessing on the reason for the traffic backup at the intersection of SE Powell Boulevard and 17th Avenue in Portland, as depicted in this 1964 photo that we came across on Vintage Portland: As VP and its commenters noted, trains would frequently block the intersection (and pretty much all Read more
Mercury’s Comet, and its more pedestrian cousin, the Ford Maverick, were once staples of parking lots and driveways across America. Their near-disappearance from the automotive landscape in recent years has had an odd effect on many of us who once ignored the Ford compacts: Suddenly, they look good, with near-ideal Read more
The Moir family’s 1930 Cadillac V16 Roadster. Photo by Daniel Strohl. Launched in 1930, Cadillac’s V-16 models immediately elevated the automaker to the head of the luxury car class, but with pricing roughly 10 times the cost of a similar Chevrolet, the big Cadillacs proved to be a tough sell Read more
Workers preparing the surface on the five-mile high-speed circle at Goodyear’s San Angelo, Texas, proving ground. Photos courtesy of Goodyear. Recognizing 70 years of successful tire testing in the Southwest, Goodyear this past weekend celebrated with employees, retirees and families at their San Angelo, Texas, proving ground. One of seven Read more
Photography by the author. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, some of the car magazines featured columns on collecting or finding rare muscle cars for rock-bottom prices. I used to read them and get inspired by the stories, but jealous at the same time. It seemed to me Read more
Bradley GT and GT II ads appeared regularly in car magazines, targeting the D-I-Y sports car enthusiast. Brochures followed suit. In the early 1970s, any dolt with an eye for a wallet-friendly, sporty vehicle and about $3,500 to plunk down could drive home an hour later in, say, a new Read more
From right about the same time as our recent 1965 look at the parking lot of the Latham Circle Mall was snapped, the Mohawk-Hudson region of the SCCA used the same parking lot for its gymkahanas and for a starting point for its road rallies. Greg Rickes of Team McClumpha Read more
Another piece of evidence to our maxim that the more expensive a car was when new, the more likely it is to be preserved than less expensive cars, is this 1959 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special for sale on Hemmings.com, an unrestored car that has remained complete and kept in running Read more
“Rat Rod.” There are few monikers more polarizing than this one in the old-car universe. Twenty-five years ago, it was used (sparingly) to describe a scene that began on the West Coast with kids who’d applied the DIY ethics of Punk Rock culture to hotrodding. Sort of a finger in Read more
Jamie Moore with the Shampine Supermodified. Photos courtesy Saratoga Automobile Museum. The phrase, “the rules are that there aren’t any rules” may well have been coined to describe the sport of Supermodified racing. When this Supermodified specimen was built, it was part of a particularly nasty, macho breed of unlimited Read more