Snow Job

The response to last week's snow feature has been remarkable - the topic clearly resonates with our visitors, and not a few of you are as tired of snow as I am. Jim Benjaminson reports that there's still plenty of snow in North Dakota, where this Orient Buckboard was photographed about a hundred years ago on the streets of Milton. They didn't have snow tires, so our inventive Dakotans wrapped some rope around the rear tires.

Maybe skittishness about snow is a New World thing. Joris Bergsma, our mentor who runs the inspirational PreWarCar.com, says the Dutch don't have problems driving their old cars in snow. He sent this pic of Bas Jansen exercising his Austin Seven special in the recent snowfalls in The Netherlands. Bas, with his father Gerrit, runs Carrosserie Bouw Jansen (not to be confused with Jensen Motors, the British coachbuilders who bodied many well-known 1950s-70s cars). Bas and his father built the anatomically-correct aluminum body for this special.

Europeans seem to revel in winter driving. Who else would organize a February rally for historic cars, the Neige et Glace, held annually in France.

Mother Nature did not take kindly to my last week's comments. Hardly had I posted to the CarPort than she sent another helping of wet snow to Connecticut. It's melting now, though. Soon we'll be able to start our spring plowing.

'Sno Problem

The CarPort emanates from southern Connecticut, where winters are typically mild and snow melts between storms. This year, however, we've been plagued with weeks of every-day snow, and many of us are suffering from cabin fever. Steve McManus reports that even Kentucky has been snowbound. His family and his '31 Hudson, seen here, long for warm weather so they can go touring.

This causes me to wonder about old cars and snow. When our old cars were new we didn't hesitate to drive them in snow. We had no choice, if we wanted to go anywhere. It snowed plenty in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I spent my college years. My 1957 Studebaker braved the weather without trouble. In New Jersey, where I was born, my parents kept their Model A outside, and when they needed to go out wielded the business end of a shovel.

The venerable Stanley Steamer could travel in snow. While researching my book The Stanley Steamer - America's Legendary Steam Car, Stanley Museum archivist Jim Merrick and I discovered plenty of Stanleys braving the winter wilds. Even at the beginning of the 20th Century cars would go out in the snow, as did this American Berliet taking actresses Agnes Cain Brown and Lillian Hudson to New York's Majestic Theater for "The Rose of Alhambra" in 1907 (thanks to Andy Watt and PreWarCar.com).

Why don't we take old cars out in the snow? In two words, road salt. Snow is just crystallized water, and will wash off harmlessly. Salt, which melts snow and ice, also makes a nifty electrolyte, which eats metal. My Studebaker eventually died of it.

This past Sunday, Spring came to the northern hemisphere. Soon we'll be able to take our old cars out for exercise. There's only one complication. In New England, Spring is also known as "Mud Season."

Some of these Stanley photos are from The Stanley Steamer - America's Legendary Steam Car, recently awarded the prestigious Thomas McKean Memorial Cup by the Antique Automobile Club of America. The book, which has over 500 additional historic photos, can be ordered here.

French Dressing

If we were car breeders, we might describe this vehicle as out of Austin Seven by 1938 Ford. It's neither British nor American, though, and it has nothing to do with Ford. It's a 1940 Rosengart Supercinq, seen at Rétromobile last month in Paris. Lucien Rosengart was a French industrialist whose first car was a licensed version of the Austin Seven (check out the Austin Seven Owners Club). By the end of the thirties, he was building larger models like the front wheel drive Supertraction. The Supercinq was made in small numbers as war came to France.

Rétromobile, France's premier old car show, returns every year to the Parc des Exhibitions at Paris's Porte de Versailles. The 30th edition took place from 11th to 20th February 2005, centerpiece of which was a display of prototype automobiles from the 1930s and 40s. Among them, looking from the rear much like a '35 Ford coupe, was the 1941 STELA (Service de la Traction Electrique Légère et Agricole). An electric vehicle built to counter wartime fuel shortages, it is the sole example built. French engineer Jean Albert Grégoire was a pioneer of front wheel drive and a proponent of aluminum chassis. One of his designs was adopted by Hotchkiss as the Hotchkiss-Grégoire; another, more radical exercise was the SOCEMA (Société de Constructions et d'Equipements Méchaniques pour l'Aviation) Grégoire turbo coupe, powered by a gas turbine engine and claimed to be the world's first.

The Mathis 666 (6 seats, 6 cylinders, 6 speeds) was shown at France's 1948 motor show. Strikingly modern, even for the French, it was judged too radical for its times, when the nation was still recovering from wartime deprivation.

Retromobile exhibitors include vintage car dealers, auction houses like Bonhams and Christie's (the latter staging a sale on Saturday), marque clubs, and sellers of parts and literature. Automobiles as diverse as the Lagonda Rapide and 1932 Nash 1070 abound. Think of Hershey indoors, moved upscale with a French accent.

A faithful Rétromobilist for the last four years, I was unable to make the trip in 2005. Roving correspondent Taylor Vinson was on hand, though, and we have him to thank for these photos and his impressions of the event.

Cargo Cars

In 1957, Ford introduced the Ranchero, in one stroke of genius inventing the car-based pickup and forcing Chevrolet into a crash program that resulted in the El Camino. So goes a version of conventional wisdom that is, unfortunately, completely wrong. Car-based pickups have a much longer history than that. Hudson had them in the 1940s, as did Studebaker in the 30s. In fact, the coupe utility or "ute" has been a staple of the Australian outback since 1934. This 1949 Ford makes one wonder if the Ranchero doesn't have much deeper roots in Dearborn.

In fact it does, much farther back than 1949. In 1931 Ford sold a deluxe version of the Model A pickup that certainly qualifies. The original Ranchero had a short run, 1957 to 1959, but it returned in 1960 as a Falcon and last appeared in the intermediate Torino lineup in the 1970s.

I photographed the "pre-Ranchero" above at Hershey a few years ago. It was a nicely-finished conversion, apparently from a standard Tudor sedan. The rear window looks like it came from a Step-down Hudson. This idea seems to have appealed to several people, as Marian Dinwiddie discovered a "stepside" version at the Early Bird Swap Meet in Puyallup, Washington. Converted from a Custom Fordor sedan, it has a 1947-53 Advance Design Chevy box and fenders.

Where have all the car-pickups gone? Chevy held on the longest, the El Camino leaving production at the end of the 1988 model year. I suspect that we simply don't need them any more. After all, for the last 25 years the best selling American vehicle has been a pickup, and even Cadillac now offers a crew cab.

Here's Looking at You

This man looks like he's staring down his automobile. Which one do you think will blink first? Actually, he's working on the Airfoil headlights on his 1942 DeSoto.

Before World War II, DeSoto was very much Chrysler Corporation's "idea car." Innovative features were tried out on DeSoto, things like the handsome Miller-inspired grilles of the 1932 and 1933 models - though few of them ever made it into the Mopar mainstream. For 1942, DeSoto pulled out all the stops.

Most obvious from the outside were the Airfoil lights ("Out of Sight Except at Night"). The lights were concealed behind "eyelids," which opened at the command of an under-dash lever that also illuminated the sealed-beam lamps. DeSoto was at the forefront of accessory merchandising, offering twelve items "bundled" into the Fifth Avenue Ensemble. In addition to the standard Airfoil lights, one got directional signals, a lighted hood ornament, Fluid Drive with a Simplimatic (semi-automatic) transmission, electric clock, eight-tube high fidelity radio with electric antenna, steamlined rear fender shields (skirts), a plastic steering wheel with built-in cigarette case, white wheel trim rings (phony whitewalls), pushbutton starter, cigar lighter, bumper bars (guards) and exhaust extension. Furthermore, if you didn't want the whole Fifth Avenue routine you could order any combination of the accessories individually.

Little known is the fact that Chrysler was dabbling at air conditioning before the war. Some 1941 Chryslers were built with it, and the option was extended to DeSoto for 1942, but it's uncertain whether, due to the war-shortened model year, any were built.

After the War, the stylish Suburban apart, the far-out ideas pretty much left DeSoto. One has to wonder whether the marque might have fared better in the 1950s had that innovative spirit been allowed to continue. Fortunately, DeSoto does not want for faithful followers, who are well looked after by the National DeSoto Club and Dave Duricy's DeStinctive DeSotoland.

DeSoto's Airfoil lights were not the first American production hidden headlights. Cord had introduced them on the 810 model in 1936, although their implementation fastened the lamp to the inside of the "lid" and rotated it into place. Operation was much more convoluted, too, as each lamp had to be cranked individually and then switched on. A number of prototype cars, both at Chrysler and at General Motors, used hidden lamps in the 1940s. CarPort visitors are invited to tell us what was the next American production car to use hidden headlamps. See our contact page for details - extra credit if you send some pix of that car, both wide open and eyes wide shut!