A Spare on the Side

Wayne Graefen has found this nifty little custom in Junction, Texas, one of the hamlets in Greater Wayne's World, which comprises much of the central part of the Lone Star State. Built probably in the 1950s, it's based on a 1941 Ford coupe body and sports a '53 Studebaker windshield and 1935 Ford wire wheels. The lines and the workmanship are both pretty nice, better than found on many customized automobiles. The instrument panel reprises the front end theme, a nice touch. Original power came from a 354 cid Chrysler hemi, through original Ford trans to Columbia overdrive. The car now has a 428 cid Ford engine and 9-inch rear.

Wayne's only quibble is with the vestigial sidemount bulges, which he says are "too far back in the fenders to possibly hold tires - if they are going to be there they should be functional." I agree, and would add that the refrigerator-like door hinges look tacky, too.

Sidemounted spares are an American institution. Conceived as a simple and functional way to carry a spare tire, sitting on the running board and lashed to the body, as time went on they nestled into the front fender and became more streamlined, finally fully-enclosed in metal covers. The last General Motors cars with sidemounts were the 1940 Buicks and Cadillacs, by which time the tires were mostly styling devices. Packard, getting full use of the old-style bodies on their senior series, used them until 1942.

This little Ford custom is not the last American car to use sidemounts, though. Racing driver John Fitch, who after retirement from the track built modified "Sprint" versions of the Corvair with handling enhancements and four-carb engines, envisioned a more sophisticated car. The Phoenix, also Corvair-based but with special body penned by Coby Whitmore and built in Italy by Frank Reisner's Costruzione Automobili Intermeccanica, featured real sidemounts, gentle blisters on the front fenders but with real tires under removable covers. The concept was intended to house different size spares, as the Phoenix was to have narrower tires on the front than on the rear. In the end, it didn't, and production never started because Federal motor vehicle standards inconveniently intervened.

The Phoenix was built in 1966, and I believe it to be the last American car with sidemounts. If you can think of a later example, please contact the CarPort.

Say Thanks

Thanksgiving is a time to express gratitude for the good things in our lives. A modern expression of the harvest festivals that have taken place since the beginning of civilization, it recognizes the role of the sun, moon and rain that have brought plenteous crops and raised fatted beasts, as well as the divine providence that caused them to arrive in the correct proportions. In our post-industrial age, however, the plenty that feeds us is rarely grown in our back yards. More often it comes in boats and trains and planes - and automobiles. Thus it's appropriate to give thanks, too, for our self-propelled transportation.

I was given a car when I was fourteen. It was not my first car - I had purchased a 1937 Ford when I was nine, but it was not sufficiently complete to function. This second car had belonged to Stanley Pratt, a family friend, and we had agreed that when he entered the Army after high school I would buy it for $75. When enlistment day came, however, the car refused to run, and a few weeks later his father pushed it down the road to our house. He was so glad to see the end of it that he refused my $75.

My benefactor had left me a 1947 Ford Super Deluxe fordor sedan. It was not rotten, but was rather battered and the interior was a shambles. It didn't take much to get it running - a fresh battery and a new fuel pump made it start; a rebuilt carburetor made it run fine. I read extensively about what made it tick, and drove it in the fields near my home for over two years.

Thinking it might be more useful as a truck, I cut off the back end and constructed a dump body out of 2x6s and plywood. In theory it was fine, but in practice I had failed to allow clearance for the rear tires when the suspension was loaded, so its useful capacity was less than a wheelbarrow's worth of sand.

When I finally received my driver's license I wanted a car fit for the road, one with an interior that my friends might want to ride in, so I bought a 1940 DeSoto for $30 and gave the Ford to a friend. When he moved out of town he gave it to our high school as an auto shop project.

I've been given other cars in my lifetime, some in need of surgery (and which I later put on the road), and some as running parts cars (which I didn't). I've also given away a Rover that I drove for 15 years, its companion parts car and a Ford van that was an arrested project. If you've got a car that's surplus to your needs and doesn't owe you any money, consider giving it to a young person who can learn from it. That boy or girl will thank you, even if their parents don't.

Come to think of it, I've got a car to give away, and I'd be thankful if you wanted it. Contact the CarPort for details.

Bunny's Birthday

Eighty-five years ago today, Gertrude Marguerite Bates was born in Morristown, New Jersey. Called "Bunny" by the family, a tradition accorded the youngest child, she was known to kith and kin by that name her entire life, since she never had younger siblings.

She didn't have a particular interest in cars, but she drove them from the time she was eligible for a license, and Philip Foster often lent her his Model A Ford during their courtship. Their firstborn arrived in 1944, and showed an immediate and unexpected attraction to wheeled vehicles, including the 1935 Ford sedan, which he called "Mommycar" and the Model A, dubbed the "Little Truck" because Dad had installed a pickup box to make it useful in his woodworking business. The war was on, and she, a horticulturalist, grew Belladonna and other medicinal plants for the armed forces while his wood shop built test models of radar antennas. She started to write a book on herbs, but put it aside when her son began escaping his basinette.

The three of us moved to Connecticut in the summer of 1946; my sister arrived in December. We had a small farm at Falls Village, with room to grow seed crops and create a show garden which she enjoyed showing visitors. The next year her journalistic engery found an outlet in The Herb Grower, a small quarterly they would publish for the next forty years. Dad bought a printing press and other publishing machinery, and production of the magazine became a family affair. Her book was finally published the year I graduated from college. Her articles on herbs also appeared in magazines such as House Beautiful, Flower and Garden, The Herbarist, and occasionally in the New York Times, something her son has never achieved.

In April 1954, quite out of character, Dad bought her a three-year-old red Nash Rambler convertible. She was very fond of it, passing it on to her children when they learned to drive. Her last car was a Volkswagen Beetle, purchased new in 1965. She drove it until the onset of Alzheimer's took her off the road in 1991. My daughter Harriet is presently in the process of restoring it.

In 1975, Gertrude "Bunny" Foster was honored by her colleagues in the Herb Society of America with the Helen deConway Little Medal of Honor for her years of growing, researching and writing about herbs. After her passing in November 1997, HSA's Connecticut Unit established the Gertrude B. Foster Award for Excellence in Herbal Literature in her memory.

She loved her grandchildren, teaching them important life skills as they grew older. We don't have too many pictures of our whole family, since someone was usually behind the camera operating the shutter. This one, taken by visitors at Cape Cod in 1954, shows my sister Rosemary in the middle and me at lower right. At left are Dad's friend Ralph Musser and his daughter Nancy. The Chevy wagon is Ralph's; he worked for GM's Turnstedt hardware division.

Fosters value their heirlooms. Many things from this picture are still in the family. The desk, the chair, the lamp and the cuckoo clock are here with us, the hutch cabinet, which we called "Welsh dresser," is with my niece in Colorodo. And we still have the Nash, too.

The Philanthropist's Ford

In 1907, Edward and Mary Harkness bought a summer cottage at Waterford, Connecticut, on the shore of Long Island Sound. They named it " Eolia," after the Greek god of wind, appropriate since the sea breezes and gales were ever whistling though their porch.

Edward S. Harkness was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune, Mary Emma Stillman Harkness the granddaughter of Thomas Greenman, prosperous shipbuilder of Mystic, Connecticut. Their principal residence was in New York City, but they spent their summers at Eolia, where Mary had landscape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand design extensive gardens. The Harknesses were quiet, unassuming people, and very philanthropic, contributing some $120 million to various causes during their lifetimes. Edward Harkness died in 1940; his widow left the 200-acre Eolia property to the State of Connecticut upon her passing in 1950. It is now Harkness Memorial State Park.

Although Eolia, the mansion, is the centerpiece of the park, it is not a museum, per se. The grounds are open year-round, for walking, picnicking, kite flying, enjoying the restored gardens. One day each year, however, the Friends of Harkness, a volunteer support association, holds Harkness Family Day, giving tours of the mansion and outbuildings. It is then that the true nature of early Twentieth Century understated elegance can be seen. The carriage house (which, given that it was built in 1906, must have soon become a motor house) is fitted with a turntable made in Canton, Ohio, so that neither carriages nor automobiles had to back out into the yard. The tools left behind by the Harknesses are carefully preserved, along with certain machinery, such as a gasoline-powered water pump. A feature that would give today's fire marshall a fit is the gas pump carefully concealed in a closet.

The Harknesses' automobiles are long gone, but the estate's 1932 Ford Model BB truck is there, in much the same condition as when it plied the Boston Post Road (aka U.S. Route 1) to New York, taking Connecticut-grown produce to the house "in town." It has a platform stake body, a type once common but seldom seen today. Its garage mate is a McCormick Deering 10-20 tractor, a series built by International Harvester between 1923 and 1940. In ingenious Connecticut Yankee fashion, it has been fitted with a winter cab and an attachment for plowing snow.

Family Day is held the second Sunday of September every year. It's a rare opportunity to see how modest millionaires lived.

Step in the Right Direction

My neighbor Dale Treadway snapped this Hudson while vacationing at Cape Cod last summer. It's a 1948 or '49 Commodore - only the interiors differed between those two years. He spotted it in the parking lot at Rock Harbor in Orleans, and noted that it carries a regular passenger registration, a number issued in November of 2001. That implies that it's in everyday use, not a collector car.

It could be what I call a "summer car." When I was young I spent many summers at The Cape, and it was common to see older cars, often touring cars or woodie wagons, on the road. Massachusetts allowed six-month renewals for registration and insurance, so many folk kept a car at their summer cottage for use from July until Labor Day. Friends of ours on Nantucket had a 1930 Lincoln "summer car" in the 1950s and it may still be on the island. In eastern Massachusetts the woodies were called "beach wagons" for obvious reasons.

Alternatively, it could be in regular use by somebody who simply prefers old cars. For six years we drove a 1963 Ford Falcon as our family car, and it was replaced by a 1970 Chevy Impala that was so roomy and useful we found we didn't need a minivan. These cars were 16 to 21 years old when we had them, nowhere near automotive senility. In fact, a 56-year-old Hudson is entirely satisfactory for everday use.

In 1948, Hudson introduced its new "Step-down" design, so named because the floor was level with the bottom of the outer frame rail. Thus one stepped down to get into it. Overbuilt by today's standards, the Step-down had a steel cage that completely surrounded the passenger compartment. A high belt line gave the "greenhouse" small windows, unusual at the time but now coming into vogue with the Chrysler C300. Hudson also had a new six-cylinder engine for 1948, with full pressure lubrication for the first time in any Hudson.

In 1951, Hudson introduced the Hornet, a new top-of-the-line model with an enlarged six. It not only had plenty of luggage space, with the new optional "Twin H-Power" dual carburetion it had plenty of power. Marshall Teague, Herb Thomas and Tim Flock were among the Hudson drivers to knock Oldsmobile out of the NASCAR championship in 1951 and retain the title through 1954. With the new 308 cubic inch Hornet engine setting records, the old eight, a pre-war design with splash oiling, was redundant and was dropped after 1952.

Hudson's 1954 marriage with Nash to form American Motors resulted in 1955 models that were more Nash than Hudson. In fact, the best-selling Hudson in '55 was a rebadged Rambler Cross Country wagon. The 1954 cars were the last Step-downs and, to many, the last real Hudsons. The final automobile to wear a Hudson badge was the 1957 Hornet, a car familiar to all CarPort regulars.