Category: Times Were
Jam Handy, maker of ‘educational’ films that just happened to feature Chevrolets
A note left for the milkman, three boys bouncing on the back seat—one brandishing a toy gun—and planning a route with multiple turns, it’s How to Go Places, an educational film brought to you by Your Chevrolet Dealer. How to Go Places tells how to take a vacation by car, which isn’t as ludicrous as [...]
1970 Maserati Ghibli Spyder: Driving under the influence
Summer nights are special magic, a sorcery that suspends time and makes déjà vu the common experience. A web of warmth and darkness and fantasy. The weatherman may say it is warm and humid, but anyone with a soul knows it’s not meteorology, but mood. A time to lower the top of a Maserati [...]
1954 Volkswagen Beetle Cabriolet: Top down and fast…sorta
Perhaps it’s not what it once was, but the cult of the radically modified VW Beetle approached minor religion status in Southern California, but then what doesn’t? It’s easy to forget that in the 1950′s the Volkswagen was just another imported car and that buying an imported car was like shopping in the weird fruit [...]
1970 Datsun 240Z review: Beginning a dynasty
The 1970 Datsun 240Z debuted to a world very different than today. Datsun and Toyota were enjoying a budding sales success, and indeed, other Japanese makers were beginning to crowd into an expanding subcompact market that had once been the sole province of cars from Britain and the Continent…and dominated by one German marque in [...]
1975 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega: Expectations, oft…
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where it most promises. –William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well How odd that the Bard of Avon, writing at the beginning of the 17th century, should so aptly describe the 1975 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega. Expectations great and otherwise were the order of the day when rumors of [...]
Vintage racing and the Formula Ford: Merlyn means magic
Attempting to catalog automotive design under the umbrella of ‘purity’ doesn’t – regrettably – build a very large file. Everyone will have an opinion, but in the last century (or so) designs remaining ‘top of mind’ are relatively few: Ford’s Model T and A, the Bugatti Type 57, ’49 Ford, ’55 Chevy, Chapman’s Lotus Seven, [...]
1967 Mazda Cosmo Sport 110S: Honorable rotary origins
The thrill was back, they told us, and how right they were. Emissions controls, beginning in the 1968 model year, had gradually turned most new cars into performance eunuchs. But Mazda was different, and the power of its Wankel engine made the phrase “rotary rocket” part of the automotive lexicon. The humdrum sedans the engines [...]
1960-1976 Dodge Dart history: Putting the Dart before the Dart
Remember the Dodge Dart? No, not the Dodge Dart that was introduced at the Detroit Auto Show but the original Dodge Dart from the 1960s. The Dodge Dart that debuted at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit is a front-drive compact four-door sedan based on an Alfa-Romeo platform and powered by an engine [...]
1969 Dodge Dart GTS 383: Hot Dart from the ’60s
Crank the steering wheel around at least a couple times, gingerly let out the heavy clutch and edge up the revs just a bit. The big V8 chuffles and the car chuffles forward and around, out onto the narrow two-lane blacktop road. With all that lock in the steering system, there’s no choice but to [...]
1966 Ferrari 330 GTC: Special
Special is a word for the 1966 Ferrari 330 GTC. It came from an era when Ferrari grand touring cars were coming into their own. The separation between racing and road cars was complete, and touring cars no longer suffered under the compromises imposed by competition siblings. The Ferrari 330 GTC was introduced at the [...]
