Here is my rule. A car has three areas. Mechanical, interior and body. If two of the three are bad I stay away. The car is a loser in most cases. Old cars are no longer a hobby but a major business and everyone that has your part thinks it's gold. The price they get for wide white tires just can't be justified. Most of the time they are B C rated. That is the lowest rating the government allows. So what are they selling? ... View more

There is nothing nicer than a 1958-1966 Tbird convertible with the top down. What happened by the way to the Auburn boat tail speedster? ... View more

Lois Lane's Nash convertible and Broderick Crawford's Buick police car. Other than Kojak and Highway patrol were there other Buick police cars? Does anybody ever watch the original Perry Mason? I watch it every night just to see the cars. ... View more

I didn't know that because I only had convertibles. I did have one that not only had a/c but a tilt telescopic imitation wood wheel. That I never saw on another one. I bought them at the time because they were cheap. I could buy a clean one for $200-$500. I originally bought them because I thought they were good on gas but that really wasn't the case. They were fun to drive around. ... View more

I owned 7 Corvair convertibles from 1965-1968 models in the 70's with all different engine arrangements. Here is what I can tell you 1. the fan belt would occasionally come flying off no matter what you did. 2. Don't park on a concrete driveway unless you are into oil spots 3. They would run hot and ping if the weather was above 90 degrees 4. They never had power brakes and were not the greatest at high speed stops. 5. On the 4 carb engine you could spend a lifetime getting them sync as things wore over the years 6. despite everything else I never found the car to be unstable but there were weights on all 4 corners of these later models ... View more

The 32 Ford coupe was one of the most simplistic and beautiful designs of all time. The V-8 was the cherry on the cake. All the Dueces look great because they started with greatness to begin with. The builders would be hard pressed to jazz up a 1948 Kaiser. ... View more

When I first got into car collecting 50 years ago Hemmings Motor News was divided between Ford and non Ford for listings. In that time period most Chevies have buried Fords in value. 1957 Chevy convertible is worth alot more than 1957 Fairlane 500 convertible or even a 1957 Skyliner. 1955-1957 Corvettes easily bring double of 1955-1957 Thunderbirds. 1960's Impala Super Sports are worth much more than any Galaxy XL. I once traded a clean 1957 Belair V8 convertible for a clean 1959 Thunderbird convertible in the late 1970's. Looking back that was a bad move. ... View more

Without the Independent car companies who had to fight for market share everyday and were willing to take design chances there is no real innovation. AMC in the late fifties with the concept of a small economy car. Their use of dual system master cylinders which every car has today. Studebaker with postwar design, Loewy coupe, wild 2 tone coloring, hill holder(decades before Suburu) and the 1959 Lark which launched Corvair, Falcon, Valiant and Lancer by the big guys. The Avanti speaks for itself. Small personal fast luxury car. Hudson's low center of gravity. Packard's self-leveling suspension, side marker lights and automatic overdrive transmission. Kaiser's anatomic interiors and early supercharging. Cars didn't have safe reliable heaters until Nash's Weather Eye hit the market. American Bantam's Jeep 4 wheel drive vehicle. It amazes me how with such small budgets for R&D what the Independents were able to come up with. I remember reading on a plane ride on the back of napkin Studebaker designer Duncan McCrea came up with the complete design for the 1959 Lark which pulled the company out of extinction. Dick Teague's 1955 Packard facelift. It didn't even look like its predecessor for minimal money . Except for Packard the other independents weren't Detroit based and had more freedom of thought. Not always good but certainly not mainstream. The 1958 Studebaker line comes to mind immediately but no worse than AMC's bathtub cars. ... View more

When dealing with collector cars COLOR IS ALMOST EVERYTHING. A wisteria 1957 Thunderbird will bring more money than any other color for that model. When it comes to color the 1955 Studebaker Speedster in lemon and lime has to be the king. My 1956 Golden Hawk in pink and white stands out like jewel. ... View more

I saw a program on the history channel about a year ago. Ford actually stole his Trimotor from Fokker. The Fokker had cut a corner on wing strut strength and it was prone to failure. Ford improved on this. The two planes are identical in most respects. ... View more

I worked at Ford when the Mustang 2 had a 302. Most people didn't realize it had longer fenders. I still don't know how they got that engine in there. Mustang 2 with a V-6 or V-8 you had to remove the upper hose, fan, fan shroud , release the motor mounts jack up engine and remove the rack and pinion to change a starter. A 4 hour job. In that respect the car was 40 years ahead of everyone else in no accessibility. To all you Chevy Colorado owners out there. If your vehicle is a 4 wheel drive V-6 they give you 16 hours to change a starter. By time it needs a starter good luck getting out the bolts. ... View more

E15 voids most new car warrantees as well as Briggs and Stratton's warranty. My state uses ethanol and every year I suck all the gas out of the tanks before I lay my cars up for the winter. The E10-15 eats and corrodes the carburetor casting. I wonder where Biden gets the gas to run his Corvette with the 327 , 365 horsepower high compression engine? You know Biden the big environmentalist who drives a car that would choke you to death if you stood behind it for 5 minutes. That Corvette he has is probably one of the biggest cars ever made for emitting Nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons. A good gesture on his part if he is serious about clean air would be to crush the car. ... View more

As a professional mechanic for 45 years and owning my own shop for 42 years I'm very leery about cars getting head jobs. By time you need a valve job the timing chain and guides are stretched and worn out respectively. The rings are worn and the bearings are badly worn too. Cracked heads are sometimes due to design fault but most of the time overheating. Most of the time doing a head job is like only changing your tee shirt and never changing your jockey shorts. I have to guarantee my work and the end result. We do the whole motor considering today most valve jobs require engine removal. Years ago, the pre-front wheel drive cars, life was easy. We would take the heads off, drop the oil pan new rings and bearing right in the car if the crankshaft was good. Those days are over. ... View more

Looks like a 1951 Frazer Manhattan to me. Except uglier. In all fairness except for Ford and Studebaker earlier 50's styling left much to be desired. I love Buick but the front of a 1950 model had to be the most grotesque thing ever designed. ... View more

I can only offer four pieces of advice. 1. If the car is advertised as mint. Don't go anywhere near it. This is the most misused word in the collector car business. Notice I didn't say hobby because it's not a hobby any more. 2. If the car is advertised as a driver my experience is it's barely able to drive and needs a ton of work. 3. Some networking. See if someone you know can look at the vehicle or actually knows the vehicle. I was looking at a 1951 Studebaker Champion convertible and while discussing the car with the owner he happened to mention the motor was rebuilt. I asked who did the engine. It turned out the number one guy rebuilding Champion engines did the work. I know this man very well even though he is many states away. I called this fellow and asked if he knew this Stude I was looking at. He told me the car was a garaged kept rust free beauty. Called the owner back and bought the car sight unseen. When the vehicle arrived it met my every expectation. 4. But cars in the dead of winter. Especially in January and February. That's when the bargains surface. Don't go looking for a convertible in May. ... View more

I always thought the AMC Eagle was the first crossover. Car body, car interior, car platform but a 300 pound 4 wheel drive system added. My understanding is a CUV is a vehicle that has 4 wheel drive on a car platform. Edge vs. Explorer for example. 4 Runner vs. Highlander. ... View more

Take all the convertible top parts, maybe the windshield, pull the Lincoln only transmission and power steering pump and all the brake drums. Then sell the rest of the car by the pound. ... View more

I have a 1957 Lincoln Premiere convertible, a 1960 Lincoln Continental MarkV convertible, a 1965,1966 and 1967 Lincoln 4 door convertibles. All garaged in beautiful condition. Should I quit my job? I really don't think so. When I see these cars go for six figures then I'll believe it. Lincolns were produced in such small numbers compared to Cadillac parts are becoming scarcer and scarcer.. This is no 67 Camaro where you open up a catalogue and can build a car. Every time I got a chance to buy a parts car I did. Stripped them to the bone. I have a ton of parts. Especially top parts. Anyone trying to restore that wreck in the barn will spend at least $100,000 preying the unibody isn't collapsed. ... View more

I'm always amazed even in their stock form how big block motors were able to propel heavy full size 60's cars as fast as they did. It was raw power. . A few that come to mind. My 430 CID 1960 Thunderbird, 1962 Odlsmobile Starfire 394 CID , 1965 Olds 98 425 CID, 1967 Electra 430 CID and 1969 Mercury Colony Park with a 429CID. They were all missiles. One reason all these cars were so fast except for the Electra they ran on 14" tires. A 14" tire took the place of 3.56 gears. Another reason was high compression. I can tell you if I didn't put in hi-test gas those cars they would ping like marbles in the motor. To this day the Starfire was one of fastest cars I ever drove. As a repair shop owner of 50 years I have driven plenty of cars. A employee of mine had a 1970 400 GTO and the Starfire would beat him in a drag race every time. He would be enraged. I have a smirk on my face every time I think about it. ... View more

My family has owned GM cars since the beginning of time. I can tell as a mechanic of 50 years since the bankruptcy they make some real garbage. My last two Suburbans 2017 and 2020 are junk compared to my 1990, 1996 and 2004. The major problems I have had with the 17 and 20 unheard of. Why are their vehicles garbage. Outsourcing to the lowest bidder. Prior to 2008 GM practically made the whole car except for the tires. Whenever at my repair shop business we get GM parts from the dealer you would be hard pressed to see made in USA on the box. The parts come from some places I never heard of. Barra has done a wonderful job. Outsourcing, feeding the mechanics at dealerships to the wolves by cutting factory warranty times so low nobody wants to work there. GM used to be the best engineered and easiest vehicles to work on. NINETEEN HOURS TO CHANGE A STARTER ON A 4 WHEEL DRIVE V6 COLORADO. TEN HOURS FOR A THERMOSTAT. Is the GM engineering department working for the competition to destroy GM? .My friend who used to work for me is now the service manager at a Toyota/ Lexus dealer. He has told me over and over "Our cars don't come back". It killed me but when my son needed a new car we bought a new Toyota. Not a single problem with the car in 18 months. I could never imagine buying a foreign make of vehicle but I bit the bullet.. Buy an electric vehicle from GM? Wasn't the Chevy Bolt the only electric car with exploding batteries??? Who made those batteries? Obviously not the supplier to Toyota on their hybrids. ... View more

I know this for a fact from people I've talked to in my 49 year career as an auto mechanic. You can be the best mechanic in the whole wide world working at a new car dealership. You can know every inch of the cars you work on and you will never have the opportunity to buy a dealership. Dealership owners all come out of the sales department. So what does that say about the standing and stature of mechanics in general? ... View more

Great article but the conclusion is wrong. I opened my shop in 1979 and now that I'm 67 I'm retiring soon. In 1979 my income was on parity with electricians and plumbers. I have a 9 bay shop in Queens NY which is rare in its large size.. It's busy however over the 40 years what plumbers and electricians make dwarf my income. Here is a big part of the problem. The auto industry has little regulation and few standards. Electricians and plumbers are licensed. Their work must meet local codes. What are the codes for auto repairs? Is a brake job just pads? Is it pads over resurfaced rotors.? Is it pads over new rotors? Is the mechanic greasing the slides? If ten electricians wire a building the job will be done exactly same to meet code. Their price for the job will not vary more than 3%. Regulation compliance raises consumer costs because only certain people can perform it. Therefore raising wages for the industry doing the necessary work. The next point I'd like to make was pointed out to me by a customer sitting in my office. A friend of mine is a licensed plumber. When he installs a natural gas boiler he tells me the boiler costs about $2500. When all is said and done he gets between $10,000-$12,000 for the whole job and it takes about less than a day. He has to register the job with the gas company, be licensed to pull a permit, it may be inspected by the city but most of all because of home owner's insurance he has to be certified. No certification you lost your insurance. I always ask my plumber friend how does he get these prices for the jobs he does whether it's a sink or toilet? He says "It's what the market will bare". There is no job in the auto industry with profits and margins like this. One day I'm trying to sell a customer a $1200 job on his car that he desperately needed. I eventually got the job but it was like pulling teeth.. I know for a fact that this same customer just put a new kitchen in his house for $30,000. The customer who had been sitting in the office listened to the whole conversation He saw I was a little twisted and aggravated. He said to me "don't get so aggravated". I said to the customer "This guy has grinding brakes and ball joint ready to jump out and he is not sure he wants to fix it??????????" He was telling me all about his great new kitchen and how much it was but he doesn't have $1200 to make his car safe?". Then this customer said something to me that changed my life. He said "How much is the guys house worth"? I answered about $800,000. "What's his car worth?" he asked. I said about $5000. The customer said to me "There you go. He probably paid $30,000 for kitchen that could be done for $20,000 but doesn't want to pay an honest $1200 on something that's worth $1200 because the car is only worth $5000 and its value can only go down while the house goes up. " I said to myself that's how my friend gets that money for a boiler ,the electrician gets $200 just to show up and the concrete guy gets big money for a trade where there has been no real change in technology since Roman days. So when the author at the end of the article lumps mechanics, plumbers and electricians all together this is a wrong conclusion. 99.999999% of all mechanics don't get to work on $800,000 cars. In conclusion because mechanics can't charge what other trades charge we can't afford the much higher wages other trades pay an can't attract new mechanics into the field. ... View more

I had a 1962 Olds Starfire convertible. What beautiful car. Fast for its size. I have 25 cars and ran out of garage space and had to let it go. I sold it about 28 years ago and got $12,500 for it then. So $50,000 now isn't so bad. It's an extremely hard car to restore because body trim was impossible to find even back then. The over-riding decision to sell the car was the Slim Jim transmission it used. It was just a matter of time before it would go bad. When these cars were new and used as daily driver's the trans would last 2-3 years if you were lucky. The unique aspect of the car it was built on a Dynamic 88 small chassis with all the crossmembers in the center removed to lighten the car. Then Olds put in the 345 horsepower Ninety -Eight motor. That's why it was so fast. This car would burn rubber until you took your foot off the gas. Great fun car. ... View more

The easier way to find parasitic draws is a little tool I made. Go to radio shack and buy a small Piezo buzzer. Solder two leads to the buzzer with alligator clips at the ends. Take off one of the battery cables. Clip one alligator to the cable and one to the battery. The Piezo will buzz loudly if there ia short. It will hardly have an audible buzz if there is a natural draw. Natural draws are memory for clock, memory for radio or computer memory. If you have a loud ear piercing buzz just keep pulling fuses until the buzzing stops. The fuse that stops the buzzing is the circuit with the short. SIMPLE. ... View more

I worked for Ford when the Pinto came out in 1971. Originally they came with a 1.6 or a 2.0. The 1.6 had no power. The 2.0 was fast revving motor that was indestructible except they used oil. I don't remember the Pinto having any other inherent problems. Then in 1974 they introduced the 2.3. This to me made the Pinto a perfect car. Great fuel economy and power. Easy to work on and service was breeze. I bought a beat up 1974 Pinto MPG on trade. No power steering or brakes. No air and a 4speed stick. I will say one thing. It got over 30 miles to the gallon and gave me no problems. I just can't understand where the Pinto got a bad reputation compared to the Plymouth Cricket, Chevy Vega and Dodge Colt. They were real junk. Ford is a huge manufacturer in Europe and the Pinto was basically the same as a European Ford. Millions of miles of tried and true testing. ... View more

I worked on those old Imperials of late 50's , 60's and 70's.. Other than engines, transmissions, charging systems and ignition systems they had no interchangeable parts with other Chryslers. Completely different front end parts. Switches, exhaust etc etc was all different. Just like most Lincoln parts up to 1969 ONLY fit Lincoln the same was true with Imperial. The big difference was Lincoln had replacement parts for the car they sold. We could rarely get parts for Imperials that were more than 7 years old. Tie rod ends, pitman arms and idler arms were non-existent. Body parts were don't even try. If you didn't have a pipe bender don't even attempt to do an exhaust job. They had some crazy heater control valve in the 70's that I believe only fit Imperial and everyone leaked. They were truly a problem to service. Besides a Lincoln didn't look like any other Ford. Alot Imperials in certain years just looked like bloated New Yorkers.. ... View more

Isn't a 914 a glorified VW Fastback/Squareback? I worked on quite a few 914s years ago. I remember the clutch cable ripping out the rear firewall behind the driver's seat. We would weld in a much heavier steel plate. The pressure sensors went bad all the time and the car would hesitate or go full rich. . ... View more

I was preying it had a supercharged F code engine. I know Studebaker sold a lot of police cars with the supercharged 289's in 57 and 58. Especially in their home state of Indiana. ... View more

I once scored a barn full of 1964-1966 Thunderbird convertibles and parts. I knew I did good when one of the first boxes I opened was an NOS AM/FM factory radio. Finds like this are far and few between today. Believe me I've been looking. ... View more

I totally disagree with electronic fuel injection. Where are you going to get the parts for a after market kit that's ten years old? Map sensors, ECM, fuel pressure regulator etc. Carburetors are reliable, easy to fix and pretty generic. ... View more

Nobody would ever confuse a Hudson Jet for a 53 Ford. The dimension on the Jet were just disproportional. It has however been stated many times the Volvo pv444 is a copy of a 1948 Ford. ... View more

When I read the headline I thought this was going to an article on Maxwell Smart and his Karmann Ghia. I guess the key word is "created". ... View more

When I first started working for Ford in 1974 the Mustang 2 came out. The car sold like they were giving something away. I was one of the junior guys in the shop. So I got "stuck" working on them. The old timers hated them. Too compact. You had to take the battery out to change the spark plugs on the left side. You had to lift the motor and drop the rack to do a starter. The cam gear would shred and the engine once again had to be lifted in the car and take half the car apart. The car was way ahead of its time. Today every car you have to take out everything to get to what you need to take out. ... View more

These motors could be used for paint mixers until 1988 when Buick added a balance shaft. Then they idled like Swiss watches. One problem I remember with these motors they would eat up timing chains. The plastic chain gear would break up and fragments would get stuck in the oil pump relief valve keeping it open. Let's face it. A V-6 is not a naturally balanced motor unless an extremely heavy crankshaft is used like the Ford 2.8 motor. Then the trade off is the motor tach up quickly. ... View more

My family has owned dozens of GM cars since 1953. Including 3 1964 Chevelles, 1967 SS396 Chevelle , 1969 427 Corvette, 1973 454 Kingswood Estate, 2006 SSR, 2008 G8 Pontiac Two years ago I bought my fifth Suburban. All my other Suburbans went 250,000 miles or better with few problems. This 2018 Suburban has been a trip. In the first 15,000 it got an alternator, a melted shift cable because of a missing ground cable, one of the engine oil cooler lines blew off, my wife go stranded with it 800 miles from home because of an ecm malfunction and one window motors had to be replace. Let me tell you what is going on. I own a repair shop for 41 years. 90% of the time we get parts from a GM dealer the parts are made everywhere but the U.S. If anyone has had the misfortune of going to Rochester, NY there are nothing but miles and miles of closed up GM parts factories. Has anyone ever seen a 40 story office building boarded up? That is the old GM building in downtown Rochester. GM makes very little. Like Chrysler they outsource everything to the lowest bidder. The old pre bankrupt GM made the car bumper to bumper except for tires, glass and a few other things. This is how GM repays the government for bailing them out. Barra and GM management should be hanged. GM invented the automatic transmission. They sold major components to their competitors like transmissions, gear boxes, power steering pumps, A/C compressors, alternators and brake systems. GM in the 1970's invented and manufactured the best and most sophisticated ignition control module. It not only eliminated points but varied dwell with RPM for a smooth acceleration sequence. It was the size of a matchbook when Mercedes had a box under the hood to do the same job the size of a breadbox. Today, GM is suffering from a chip shortage because they don't produce anything themselves. How could a company that use to sell 750,000 Buicks every year barely sell 200,000 Buicks when there are more cars on the road than ever. Simple, they make junk since the bankruptcy. ... View more

Talk about coincidence. Two days ago a long time customer to my repair just brought in a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am with 42,000 miles. He bought it new. The vehicle has a 6.6 400 , T-tops, Factory 4 SPEED HURST SHIFTER, A/C, Formula package, hood scoop, decal option and AM/FM radio. The sticker was $7,800 and he paid $6,600 because he said with the price of gas the dealer was dying to get rid of it. The Firebird is in breathtaking pristine condition. The interior is so perfect that when I went to drive it in the shop it felt like it was 1978 again and I was in a time machine. It is so rare to find any original unmolested car anywhere in showroom condition let alone a Trans Am Firebird. NICE CAR !!!! ... View more

I have a 1956 DeSoto Fireflite 2door Sportsman hardtop with a 330 cid 4 barrel hemi. You would be hard pressed to find a quieter and smoother engine anywhere. It makes plenty of power to pull that big boat around. Great engine. I read one time that Chrysler lost money on every hemi produced because they could never attain sales to the break even point. I guess that's why they came out with the poly motor. ... View more

Looks like everyone missed the 1958-1959 Mercury 383 and Chrysler 383. ... View more

I don't remember Ford going through a government bail out once let alone twice. ... View more

Chrysler has been in decline since 1957 when the bean counters took the helm. When in that year the Plymouth was a hot selling car and the body dies were only geared up for 500,000 cars. Plymouth had orders for 100,000's more cars than the dies could handle without stamping the sheet metal too thin. When the engineers told the bean counters this is how management handled the problem. Any engineer that held that view was fired. Within a few years 1957 to 1959 Plymouth owners were sitting with piles of rust in their driveways. Did they learn their lesson? They did the same exact thing with the Aspen and Volare. Except consumers and the government changed. They had to replace millions of fenders free of charge. Some other Chrysler highlights were peeling paint in the late 60's and early 70's. Darts and Valiants were aquariums on rainy days they leaked so bad. Moving up to modern times a 3.6 engine that stretches connecting rod bolts, wipes out lifters and camshafts and suffers from two stage oil pump failure. My friend is a 30 year Chrysler Jeep salesman. He tells me the new hemi has to be warmed up before delivery so the customer won't hear the lifters tapping after it sits for a week on the lot. As a 50 year mechanic Chrysler vehicles lack quality. ... View more

The Aerostar was a terror to work on and the first few years of production you replaced transmissions like they were spark plugs. ... View more

Nostalgia must be setting in to whoever wrote this article. I'm I suffering from amnesia or was the 4100 family of Cadillac engines total pieces of junk. The water pump looked like something off a washing machine and the pullies would go in orbit. In my repair shop I can't count how many camshafts we had to put in these engines because of inadequate low rpm oiling. The stepper motors kept stripping the gears. The intake manifolds would spit the gaskets on the ends causing an antifreeze leak and overheating condition. Thanks to the wonderful drivetrain in these cars the impossible happened. Lincoln for the first time in history outsold Cadillac. by 1986. These are the very 4100 engines that destroyed Cadillac's reputation. . ... View more

Most kids today aren't interested in cars. Most kids today have no mechanical ability. Most trades go begging for workers. Look at the purchases of this younger generation.. Computers, cell phones ,Play stations, sushi and Thai food. I rarely see anybody young roaming the aisles of Harbor Freight. I'm 66 and when I go to car shows I'm like the kid there. I have no doubts my 1955 Packard Caribbean will some day be melted for scrap. ... View more

The 1958-1960 Thunderbird hood scoop was pure elegance. ... View more

No Packard Swan?????? ... View more

1959 and 1960 Ford Thunderbirds were some of the most beautiful, sturdy, well made and trouble free cars ever made by any manufacturer.  The FE block motor was smooth and whisper quiet. I own 5 of these cars in convertible and I also have every year of Thunderbird from 1955 to 1966 in convertible.  59 and 60 are my favorite because of their reliability. They also ride beautifully and handle turns very well compared to autos made in the same time period. These Thunderbirds were like little tanks because of their weight. ... View more

My dad who if were alive today would be a 125 years old always spoke of a Wills St. Claire. He remembered a dealership in downtown Brooklyn , NY where they were sold.  Dad always boasted what unbelievable and fast cars they were. I was never able to get much information on the mark. A few weeks ago Jay Leno's Garage featured a fully restored 1922 Wills St. Claire. The vehicle had a four cam overhead valve V-8 with a cooling system that ran a remarkable 180 degrees despite any weather condition. The Wills was faster than 99% of the cars on the road in 1922.  Check out the video at Leno's Garage and then ask how is it not on the list? By the way why isn't the Duesenberg Model J supercharged engine not on the list? ... View more

I worked in foundry in Brooklyn 40 years ago. We cast aluminum, brass and bronze. The microwave oven was developed during WW2 to quickly dry the sand cores. The old timers told me that's where they got the idea to heat their lunches.  The temperature in the foundry by the blast furnace was over 130 degrees. I remember there was a glass roof that opened up to release the heat. We were given a periodic beer ration because we perspired so profusely. It was probably the only place on earth you were allowed to drink on the job. The City of New York eventually shut down the place because of the EPA.  ... View more

The 1966-1970 Chargers were such good looking cars it is hard to believe they are Mopars. The fuel fill requires special mention. ... View more