Fifty-nine years later and four states away, Ohio man finds his first car

Posted on Dec 14, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Everybody remembers their first car, whether it be a second-hand clunker or a fine piece of machinery – typically, as the years pass, the cars somehow transform from the former into the latter. But not everybody gets to hang on to that first car, and even fewer people care enough to track down that first car decades later. Hemmings reader John Swigart, however,...

Considering “what-if” buildups of “never-was” cars

Posted on Nov 27, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Hiking the rows upon rows of show cars at the Street Machine Nationals in Du Quoin with Hemmings Daily Editor Kurt Ernst, we saw plenty of buildups that stood out from the crowd with wall-to-wall rear tires, wild paint and graphics and blowers, sometimes one stacked on top of another and popping out of the hood. However, one of many cars that caught my...

AMX GT redux – popular concept car in the midst of re-creation

Posted on Oct 14, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Couldn’t be that hard, many people think, to slam an AMX and a Gremlin together to re-create the long-lost 1968 AMX GT concept car, right? Except that nobody has ever whipped up such an automotive portmanteau, given it the requisite red white, and blue paint scheme, and rolled it out to see the light of day—until now. We first got word of the project through...

Regal Regie: 1956 Renault Dauphine brochure

Posted on Aug 2, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Before the Volkswagen Sedan became an American best-seller, the title of the best-selling imported car was held by an attractive little rear-engined French car — the Renault Dauphine. This product of Renault Régie Nationale France was designed from the start as a car for the masses, as the automaker itself explained in rather self-deprecating fashion in this...

The Ford Dealership Volume I: 1903-1954

Posted on Jul 16, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

All photographs and captions, courtesy of The Ford Dealership Volume I: 1903-1954. Car dealerships are, to most people, forgettable places. They exist simply to display inventory and, if all goes well, provide a place where paperwork can be signed. But automotive enthusiasts like Henry Dominguez, author of several Ford-focused books, tend to feel differently...

Spinning vinyl while cruising the interstate

Posted on May 18, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

I spotted this in-car record player mounted under the instrument panel of a late-1950s Dodge this past weekend at a car show, and it just stopped me in my tracks. Though Chrysler had its optional Highway Hi-Fi beginning in 1956, this unit is instead an aftermarket Philips Norelco Auto Mignon that was produced a few years later. Unlike the early Chrysler system...

From A to X – all the different cars that could have, and did, become the AMX

Posted on Apr 23, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

AMX/3 pushmobile. AMC photo. Between 1965 and 1981—a relatively short 16 years—American Motors had no shortage of mockups, prototypes and production cars that carried the name AMX. One would think, given that American Motors designers kept appending suffixes to the various iterations, that they had some sort of naming convention in mind, but as it quickly...

Ford introduces the wonderful new world of its 1960 models

Posted on Mar 14, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

New car introductions were quite a bit different in 1960 than they are today, and to roll out its space-age 1960 models, Ford spared no expense. Complete with its own musical score and revelers bedecked in formal attire, this short video is a glimpse at the zeitgeist of postwar, pre-Cuban Missile Crisis America. The 1960 model year was an important one for...

Electric Mustang records 1.94-second 0-60 time, builder sets 200 MPH goal

Posted on Feb 7, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

In the old George Romero zombie flicks, the living dead shuffled around like narcoleptic grannies in their bunny slippers. More recent movies have the undead jumping, climbing and running as fast or faster than those fighting them off. Mitch Medford’s zombi-fied electric Mustang falls squarely into that latter camp, as shown by the 0-60 time of 1.94 seconds...

a Cadillac to span the country and generations

Posted on Jan 13, 2018 in Featured | 2 comments

Sean Mathis never got the chance to drive his grandfather’s 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville – hadn’t even sat behind the wheel – until, that is, the day an auto transporter dropped it off near his house in North Carolina and he took possession of it. Already an old car enthusiast, he now has the car that means the most to him in his garage and has already started...

Rust never sleeps, but sometimes it takes a vacation: the dilapidated beauty of Desert Valley Auto Parts

Posted on Dec 12, 2017 in Featured | 2 comments

At first glance, Desert Valley Auto Parts looks something like a post-apocalyptic wasteland if the end times had occurred in conjunction with the Age of Aquarius: Cars from the Sixties and earlier scattered about a dry desert backdrop, missing parts and looking about as busted and broke as could be. But old car nuts know it instead as a paradise, one full of...

Along came a topless 850: 1967 Fiat 850 Spider brochure

Posted on Oct 24, 2017 in Featured | 2 comments

Fiat created an inexpensive and youthful masterpiece with their new-in-the-USA-for-1967 850 Spider, an open-top sibling to the equally new and pretty 850 Sport Coupe. While the Sport Coupe was styled by Felice and Gian Boano and built in-house at Fiat, the Spider came from the pens and craftsmen at Bertone. Its design was clever, combining the 850 platform’s...