Happy Anniversary

...to us. This week, the CarPort celebrates two years in business. Our first feature was published on the last Wednesday of 2004, establishing a tradition to which we've adhered, with few exceptions, ever since. In that time there have been 103 "issues" of this cybermagazine (I don't call it a blog), usually uploaded shortly after midnight on Wednesdays. (The one "missing issue" was due to launching problems from an overseas location.) Occasionally the deadline slips a day or so, sometimes to commemorate a particular anniversary but sometimes just from publisher overload.

There are many people to thank, without whom we probably wouldn't have reached the toddling age of two. First and foremost is my son Nick, whom you've met before (seen here with Fuggle the feline oveseer). Nick, webmaster of wefunkradio.com and popular DJ "Professor Groove" on radio station CKUT in Montréal, insisted I learn to write html, a dictum for which I am now grateful though I was skeptical at first. My younger son Edward is a computer engineer and helps with all my system integration problems, and their sister Harriet, who can fix Subarus equally as well as VW Beetles, is ever on the lookout for new material. Jill, my Morgan-connected spouse, understands why I'm often up late on Tuesday nights (a special prize for the first CarPorter to identify her car by make and model).

I'm blessed with a cadre of faithful contributors, including St. Louis Bureau Chief Fred Summers, Wayne Graefen, our Texas Ranger, and Dennis David, who prowls the western Connecticut beat. Steve McManus, seen here with his family, is our Kentucky Colonel, and Gregg Merksamer serves as our Professional Car Consultant. Randy Poole (at right, with Joel Horne) is our Blue Ridge reporter-in-training. Without their regular supply of new ideas and photos the CarPort would be duller indeed.

There are two individuals who've earned the title "Godfather of the CarPort," having served as inspiration for this multifaceted medium. Joris Bergsma (at left, receiving award from yours truly), founder and editor of PreWarCar.com, furnished the muse for a website worth re-visiting. In 2003, PreWarCar became the first website to earn the E.P. Ingersoll Award from the Society of Automotive Historians for presentation of automotive history in other than print media. Joris does daily updates, a schedule I could not manage, but the CarPort regime of weekly installments has worked for me. Dave Duricy, creator and webmaster of DeSotoland.com, gave me the encouragement to take a concept that played well in print journalism and give it the additional depth that cyberspace can provide.

In the last two years, hopefully, the CarPort has told you something you didn't know about self-propelled vehicles and their history. I certainly have learned a lot from it. Interestingly, the feature that provoked the most comment was the item on Gravely tractors. Many regular CarPorters, it seems, have Gravelys and are very fond of them.

The celebration will continue through this weekend, when I'll pour Angus the Hudson a glass of Marvel Mystery Oil. Then we'll see the new year in together. I hope that 2007 imparts more inspiration and enjoyment to all of us.

'Tis the Season

...to be jolly; falalalalah, la lah-lah-lah! On Saturday, Jill and I harvested boughs of holly, with which to deck our halls. Yuletide is nearly upon us.

Our neighborhood is a festival of lights, from the very simple to the more ambitious, to a coveside extravaganza. My favorite display is over on Stoddard's Wharf Road, where a fellow has decorated his Ford pickup, keeping company with an electric snowman.

Automobiles as seasonal yard art are fairly common. A farm stand over in Wallingford attracts autumn customers with a 1929 Chevy, and entertains with machinery inside the barn (there's a tractor in there somewhere). A guy in Vermont finds his Crosley a perfect companion for goblins at Hallowe'en. Over in Watertown, at the Peter Cura salvage yard, they light up their Chevy truck every Christmas.

Some people make their cars into highway greetings. These range from subtle to trite to rolling greenery.

Our decor is simple: a rustic wreath, that I make myself, beside the door, and some modest lights up on the housetop. We don't decorate our cars, but Angus the Hudson is nevertheless excited. He's already hung his stocking by the Motometer with care.

Angus

Last week brought an anniversary to our household: thirty years ago on the 3rd of December Angus the Hudson came to live with us.

Angus was not our first Hudson; I had been dabbling at restoring a 1939 Hudson that I had rescued from the woods about three years earlier, but I realized that at my rate of progress it would be decades before I had an old car to drive. Thus I began combing issues of White Triangle News, magazine of the Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Club, for presentable running cars in my price range. I envisioned another 1930s Hudson, until I spied a 1925 Super Six Brougham at just the price I was prepared to pay. Jill and I made a quick trip to Cape Cod to check it out, and a deal was struck on the spot. My friend Ed Bernier took me out in his ramp truck to fetch it, and home we came, arriving just as snow began to fall.

We named the car "Angus," after Angus Hudson, the butler played by Gordon Jackson in the long-running ITV/PBS series "Upstairs, Downstairs." An early example of the Brougham, a niche model introduced by Hudson in May 1925, Angus has an aluminum-skinned body by Biddle and Smart of Amesbury, Massachusetts. He was repainted around 1960, at which time a naugahyde roof replaced the original leather, He is otherwise original, down to the mohair upholstery that remains in good condition today. The dashboard leather has cracked and nickel trim is thin, but Angus has served us well, taking us on countless tours, picnics and shows while the children were small. Although not a high point car, he has taken home his share of trophies, albeit "People's Choice" or "Best Unrestored Car" rather than "First in Class."

The secret in Hudson's Super Six engine was a counterbalanced crankshaft that vanquished vibration and friction, according to the ads. Angus's Super Six could stand detailing, but runs well, though he doesn't like to cruise much above 45.

Hudson continued the Brougham into 1926, integrating the visor into the roof and offered additional colors. Early in 1925 production the door handles were changed from Angus's "bow tie" design to the smooth handles of 1926 style. In 1927, it got acorn headlamps and landau irons were added to the Brougham in mid-year. By 1929 the Brougham was gone, but a semblance of the style can be seen in the Club Sedan, a Murphy-designed body built by Biddle and Smart. By 1935, "Brougham" had been demoted to describe a two-door sedan.

We didn't give Angus an anniversary party. He's hibernating, but when he wakens in the spring we'll take him on a celebratory ramble. He'll be 82 in July. Perhaps we'll have a party then.

No Trailer Queen

I believe that cars belong on roads, not trailers. I used to think nothing of driving Angus the Hudson fifty miles each way to attend a show, but I've softened somewhat. I've owned trailers for more than thirty years, principally for moving cars that don't run or are unregistered, so now sometimes I'll load Angus and haul him, so as to travel at freeway speeds. Trailers are cumbersome, though. So how about a car that needs no trailer, is easily carried in the back of a pickup? Consider, friends, consider the Crosley.

Powel Crosley, Jr. was a marketing and inventing genius. Pioneering the low-cost radio receiver he then founded WLW, a high power broadcasting station in Cincinnati, Ohio, to give his radios something to receive. His Crosley Shelvador refrigerator set the pattern for all modern fridges. In the late 1930s, he sought to bring America a small, low-cost car. His Crosley automobile, introduced in 1939, was a spartan roadster powered by an air-cooled Waukesha flat twin engine.

After World War II, Crosley brought his car somewhat upmarket, with a four-cylinder engine designed by Lloyd Taylor for military use. With a block of steel cylinders and tin-plated sheet metal water jacket, and shaft driven overhead cam, the Crosley Cobra (COpper BRAzed) weighed 58 pounds in fighting trim. A whole line of automobiles - the only totally new 1946 cars - was built around it. There were two-door sedans (this a '47), station wagons ('48 and '51), convertibles ('49 and '51) and pickup trucks ('47). In 1949, a sports model, the Hotshot, was introduced - later the Hotshot was joined by a Super Sports model with doors. There was a panel delivery and a Jeep-like thing called the FarmOroad. By 1952, though, it was all over. Sales, which had topped 25,000 in 1948, shrank to less than a tenth of that. Powel pulled the plug on the car business.

The Cobra engine had a fatal flaw in that electolysis destroyed the lightweight blocks. The fix was the CIBA engine - Cast Iron Block Assembly. With an iron block the little Crosley cammer became a high-revving competition engine and eventually found service as an outboard motor under the Homelite name, and as the Fisher-Pierce Bearcat by the builder of Boston Whaler boats. The FarmOroad, too, saw later life as an industrial vehicle called the Crofton Bug. There's tons more information on Crosleys at the website of the Crosley Automobile Club.

My high school friend Tod had a Crosley, a 1949 sedan with the CIBA engine - and disc brakes. The week after graduation in 1962 we drove it to Cape Cod, a 200-mile trip. Even for a couple of hormone-charged adolescents, the Crosley was uncomfortable. Girls thought it cute, and would wave when we honked, but they preferred to ride in cars with V8s and glass packs. We challenged a Vespa scooter to a stoplight drag - and lost.

Tod had a parts car, a '51 station wagon whose transmission and rear axle had been removed to build a tractor. When he moved to the west coast, I bought it and took it home in my Chevy pickup - no trailer needed.