A Fabulous Five

The CarPort went live just five years ago this week. This post makes 255 features in that time, just shy of one per week for the entire period. I'm not a great fan of "best of" lists, but I do wallow in nostalgia now and then, so please indulge me while I reflect on the CarPort's first half-decade.

We launched with a piece on French flatheads, something I had intended to use in print journalism before my principal outlet canceled my column. Who knew that the Ford flathead was being produced for Gallic armies right into the 1970s...

We've highlighted many discoveries of Wayne Graefen, our Texas Ranger, as well as those of St. Louis Bureau Chief Fred Summers. Dennis David has been a ready source of sad Saabs and ostracized Opels, and we shared several readers' cars, like Frank McMullen's DeSoto and Michael Della Gala's Barnette Chevy ambulance. I was sad to learn of the sudden passing, this last July, of faithful follower Randy Poole, before he was able to complete much work on his DeSoto Suburban.

We've covered auto events from Greenwich to Hershey to Amelia to Beaulieu, even Paris and Nairobi. Notable scoops have included the Ghia Centurion and Alain Cerf's Cugnot replica, and along the way I've introduced you to several members of my family and some of the cars in their lives.

We can take satisfaction, too, in the destiny of some of our featured vehicles. The Wayward Bus, for example, is now being restored and I'm hoping to show it again when it's finished. Others have been rescued, whether for restoration or parts.

Steady CarPorters will have noticed that I take the term "automotive" pretty broadly, including such peripheral vehicles as snowmobiles and agricultural machinery. In fact, the single most popular item, judging from reader comments, was the posting on Gravely tractors.

So, with thanks to all who have had a part in making the CarPort what it is, we look forward to another five years and more.

A Car for Christmas

I don't expect Father Christmas or anyone else to bring me a new car this season, much as I would welcome it. But sixty years ago today something like that happened to my family, although it was the local dealer, not Santa, who delivered a new Mercury.

The 1949 Mercury was "All New" - though ours was one of the later models: the '49s had been introduced in March 1948. Originally intended to be the 1949 Ford, it was the last design from the studio of E.T. Gregorie before he left Ford Motor Company., When the smaller Ford from the consultancy of George Walker was chosen, the "old Ford" was bumped upstairs to be a Mercury, and the putative Mercury became the entry-level Lincoln.

Just four body styles were offered, a two door Coupe that was more of a sedan and a handsome station wagon of half-timbered construction with a lovely woodgrain dashboard - friends of ours had one. At the top of the line was a convertible, but the most popular was our model, the four-door Sport Sedan. The 110 bhp engine was a larger, 255 cid version of Ford's venerable flathead V8. Priced from $1,979 to $2,716, they were competing with Oldsmobile, DeSoto, Chrysler and even the Packard Eight.

For 1950, Mercury got a cosmetic facelift and a new dashboard. The 1951 cars were more heavily facelifted, and lengthened with longer rear fenders. A prestige model for 1950 and '51 was the fabric-roofed Monterey, a stopgap measure to counter GM's hardtops.

Our Sport Sedan was black, like this one, but lacking whitewalls and fender skirts. The interior and dashboard were almost opulent for the day - our car had green where this one is blue, but otherwise was the same.

It was logical for us to buy a car that winter - more than a year earlier we had replaced Mommycar, the 1935 Ford, with a Willys Jeep. Intended to be truck, tractor and passenger car, it proved more of the former than the latter. I had never understood, however, just how the transaction came about.

My mother kept a daily journal for nearly 50 years. I was recently reading the 1949 volume, and therein lay the answer. My uncle was being married on the 23rd of December that year. On the 22nd she wrote: "Frank Howe brought the Mercury over for us to borrow for the afternoon and took the Jeep back to work on." Frank was the sales manager at the local garage; "the afternoon" presumably referred to the following day's wedding. On Saturday the 24th, we learn "When Phil called Frank Howe to ask if we might keep the car over the weekend, he said 'Well, you better keep it at least a year'."

We kept it for nine years, until it was traded on the Peugeot 403. Oddly, we took few pictures of it, and most of those were during our "Polaroid period," the products of which faded badly. Here it is outside our house, and here at my cousin's in New Jersey.

Part of my puzzle was how we paid for two new vehicles in little more than a year. We were of modest means, but my father had an aversion to debt. The entry for Thursday, December 29, 1949, tells all: "We took out a note with the garage to pay for the car. It was so nice to be able to handle it all through Mr. Tracy [the bank manager] and Frank Howe. I still can't believe that we can own such a beautiful bit of luxury. But we have waited a long time for such an indulgence. We are like snails, putting our house money on wheels and riding around in it."

The Jackrabbit

Who among us hasn't wanted to build his own car at one time or another. Most of us have only thought about it. My cousin Tom is one of the few who actually did it, at least part way. When Tom was in his early teens he bought a Crosley two-door sedan (like this one). He managed to get it running, but rather quickly became bored, so he took the body off. For a while he drove the naked chassis around in the fields and woods near his home.Then things got adventurous, as Tom learned to weld.

The two-seat body-less Crosley became a monoposto machine, with the engine and rear axle mounted on a sprung subframe. Then he happened upon the rear axle from a 1950 Dodge, so he designed a tubular frame that would accept the Dodge rear and the much narrower Crosley front axle. It was made up out of threaded steel pipe, screwed together and welded at the joints.

Then he purchased a worn-out 1935 Ford, like our old Mommycar. The Ford's V8 was transplanted into this new car, overwhelming the Crosley front suspension, so the Ford front axle and wishbone were adapted. About the only Crosley parts that remained were the steering wheel and the seats; its engine was relegated to running the arc welder.

He called it the Jackrabbit, not to pay homage to the Apperson car by that name but to describe its demeanor. With virtually no weight, the engine was basically pulling itself, and the car fair bounded over hill and dale. The brakes were two-wheel hydraulics, operated with a hand lever, and the shift lever was relocated to the rearward cockpit with a parallelogram linkage.

I helped him with some of the welding, here in October 1956. After a time, Tom tired of the Jackrabbit and sold it to his younger brother Dennis. Tom's later projects included a Benson gyrocopter and a Bradley GT, both from kits. He went on to found his own computer company.

There were many such home-built cars created in the 1950s. Some of the more sophisticated ones were given fiberglass bodies, a good medium for one-offs and small lot production. Geoff Hacker, a guru of fiberglass cars has an awesome website devoted to them.

The Jackrabbit was eventually scrapped, never having had a body. One wonders what it might have looked like clothed in fiberglass. One impediment to making it street legal would have been the position of seating relative to the engine, making forward vision difficult. At the very least, a lower radiator would have been required.

403

The summer I turned 14, my parents bought a new car. It was 1958, and we were in the second Eisenhower Recession; economy cars were hot. It seemed an opportune time to trade in our 1949 Mercury, which, though it had fewer than 60,000 miles, was anything but economical. The popular Volkswagen was too small and we were not a Microbus family. We looked at the Triumph Ten, but found it almost as cramped as the VW. Peugeot, however, had just hit the American market with their 403 model, still drawing raves in France three years after its introduction. After a few test drives and appropriate deliberations, we bought a Peugeot 403 Grand Luxe Berline (sedan) from Hamzy's Garage, the local dealer. Hamzy's also dealt in two other imports that were becoming popular, Renault and Borgward.

The 403 was mechanically a refinement of the 203 model introduced in 1948, and which continued in production. The engine, a hemi-head inline four, was enlarged from the 203's 1,290 cc to 1,468, but the car retained a four-speed column-shift overdrive gearbox and worm gear rear axle. Suspension was a somewhat unconventional setup, independent in front with a transverse leaf spring and rack-and-pinion steering, and a coil-sprung live axle in the rear with "wishbone" radius arms. Whatever, it handled superbly, in part due to the standard Michelin X radial tires. The body was an entirely new design by Pininfarina. US models could have whitewalls as a no-cost option, but the handling suffered since they were not radials.

There were five different models of 403s, at least in the home market. In addition to the Berline there was a natty little Cabriolet, beloved of Peter Falk in the Columbo series, and an eight-seat Familiale station wagon. The Limousine Commerciale was a utility version of the wagon, and there was also a Camionette Bachée (covered van). Only the Berline, Familiale and a few Cabriolets came to the United States.

Our car, in the soft green shown in the brochures, had the standard features of manual sunroof, reclining seats (which made a lumpy bed) and large trunk with readily accessible spare tire. It took us everywhere, to church (Easter Sunday 1960), on vacation, around town, for more than ten years. By that time it was still running well despite having covered 100,000 miles, but the salt of northeastern winters had taken its toll on the unibody. Eventually they gave it away. You don't often see them restored (think salt on unibody), but every time I do I get nostalgic.

Sweptside

Undoubtedly the most flamboyant of 1950s pickups, Dodge's Sweptside was a clever innovation by one of America's more conservative truck manufacturers. In the early years of the decade, Dodge pickups were upright and utilitarian, much more staid than the Advance Design Chevys and F-series Fords. Even a new greenhouse for 1955 didn't shake off the "Backward Look" for which the trucks had been known, although a dressed-up Town Panel was available for upmarket businesses.

For 1957, the updated cab was mated to a Forward Look nose, but Dodge was still upstaged, for pickups lagged the competition in style. In 1955 Chevrolet had introduced the snazzy Cameo Carrier to complement its standard pickups. The Cameo covered the pickup's bulbous haunches with gently-sculpted fiberglass panels. Dodge product planners responded with their own commercial version of the Exner look, the 1957 Sweptside pickup.

Implementation was deceptively simple. Steel side panels, complete with Swept Wing fins and taillights, were adapted from the station wagon line. The standard bed and tailgate were used.

Ford bypassed the prestige pickup phase entirely, bringing out its Styleside bed, with full-width cargo area, for 1957. International did likewise with the mid-1957 A (for "Anniversary") Series.

Sweptside pickups were built in 1957, '58 and '59. By that time all makers were following Ford, Chevy having introduced the Fleetside pickup in 1958 and phased out Cameo production. Dodge followed suit in 1959 with the Sweptline pickup, and the last Sweptside was built that January.

Total Sweptside production is believed to be about 1,250, compared to more than 10,000 Cameos. It was a noble experiment, and can probably be considered a success, because, even though sales were few, engineering and tooling costs were minuscule.

This 1959 Dodge Sweptside was offered for sale in the 2009 Hershey Car Corral. A V8-engined, four speed truck, it had been driven but 31,000 miles. For less than $42,000, you could have driven it home.