Antique & Classic Cars Blog

It isn’t the sky or the air or even the ground that heralds classic-car weather’s return. It’s the road: icy, snowy, gritty, grimey pavement–not classics time; warm, smooth, shiny street–classics time is at hand.

Neenah Foundry was kind enough to install one of their cast-iron classics-weather indicators on my corner. While I am not the original owner, and therefore don’t have the manual, all classics enthusiasts learn to read these things early on. This display, grungy frosty encrustment, means “winter: keep treasured vehicle inside.”

This is the signal we’ve been waiting for. Water splashing over bars and dancing in the sunlight means “spring: commence summer-fun planning immediately.”

Sustained puddles are beginning to appear outdoors. That means the ancient oracles may be right–the ice and snow may indeed recede, producing a period of milder weather across much of the hemisphere.If this prediction proves true, we can actually use our classic vehicles again! Anybody open the garage door and start up anything interesting lately?  

Thought folks might be interested in seeing how another half lives. My friend Mark was in Burma, where he snapped some of the odd and unlikely classics that have ended up there. They include this lineup of 1960s Mazda B360 pickup trucks. Probably get a good deal here–though shipping from other side of world extra.

This Benz looks like a W120 from the 1950s. Sharp car. (Guess I could have cropped Mark out, but that wouldn’t be nice, would it? “Thanks for the photos but, er, stay out of the shot, would you? We’re running a blog here.”)

Porsche 944 made it to Burma, though not clear if it’s a runner. The boy is Mark’s son and the green 4×4(?) is not something I recognize. Anybody know it?

These Willys Jeeps are likely war cast-offs. Not sure why one photo is black and white–artistic flair?–but it’s the same lineup, as zooming in on a higher-res version confirms.

And Mini Mokes are on-road/off-road fun in many countries stretching from England to Australia. I rented one Down Under in the ’80s. They’re about half go-kart, half Jeep.

**This line is from a Monty Python sketch. Can you name it?

Rust is the bane of the classic car world. It’s ugly, it’s destructive and left festering long enough, it can gnaw important chassis or steering components to the point where they are no longer strong enough to trust.

But surface rust is rust you can beat. This slip yoke was bolted to the back of a 45-year-old Borg Warner T10 that sat on a wrecking yard’s shelf in want of a buyer (a lucky buyer!) for decades. It looked rough–in other words, perfect for my favorite rust removing tools, a bench grinder with wire wheel and a glass-bead cabinet.

The wire wheel buzzes off rust with aplomb, leaving a polished shine on this steel casting.

It’s a wheel though, and while careful angling can get its rust-scrubbing bristles into some nooks, others are too tight for a large spinning disk to reach into.

That’s where the glass-bead cabinet shines (figuratively). In fact, it leaves a satin finish, but its gritty blasts can reach tight gaps and corners and blow rust into the ether.

These two shop bulwarks and about ten minutes’ effort brought a piece rough enough you might throw it in the scrap bin back to like-new condition. Now that’s just fun.

Owed my friend Tom a hand for helping me rebuild an old T10 four-speed, so I went out to his shop to assist with a clutch-swap on his S10 pickup.Naturally, I brought the Triumph bumper with the bolt from Krypton to see what Tom made of it.He had a drill story too–a cheap bit that “back twisted” in its own metal drilling encounter. “I felt something give,” he said, “but it didn’t feel like a broken bit.”

In a lifetime of shop work, Tom had never seen this–neither have I.

Remember the last time you saw a Nash Snowmopolitan? Was it the late ’60s when the kids were little and Dick and Nona had one up at their winter cabin? Or maybe it was on TV–one of the last episodes of Arcticman, caped hero of the Northland.

If the vehicle looks familiar, it’s because builders Tommy Huttunen and Steve Anderson did a fine job of merging snowmobile parts into a cute little road car. Huttunen always thought a Metropolitan’s front end looked like a snow vehicle, so a rusty one sitting in a back yard got his wheels turning.

The lower half was too rotted to restore but Huttunen’s an experienced mechanic, Anderson is a skilled welder and fabricator and some other friends have a snowmobile salvage place. It all fit together… with two years’ work. A Yamaha 700 triple provides the juice–probably twice what the stock Nash had.

As cool looking as this rig is, once it was all together and out on the Alaska snowfields–the builders live in Anchorage–Huttunen decided the most drama to be had from this hybrid was a spectacular crash. Wrecking it or himself was not among his plans. He put it up on eBay and some fan of … whatever you’d call this thing … snapped it up.

There’s a car cruising south Minneapolis with the oldy-but-goody bumper sticker, “Horn Broken, Watch for Finger.” The sticker is a funny reminder that the horn is the only feature on your car that can offend people when you use it. “Turn signal broken, watch for finger” just doesn’t work. 

My brother, who’s been making noise for a decade about buying a convertible to maximize his California lifestyle–sometimes he hunts for sympathy when the temp drops into the 50s, asked me about a drop-top 356. “Think I could get one for $10,000 to $15,000?”No–but it’d been a while since I checked the market on ‘em. Have you?Leaping Laramie Equalizers!  Those simple little air-cooled sports cars are sitting out in cyberspace with price tags of $80,000 to $100,000. One of my wife’s best friends from high school and her sister have a coupe and a cabriolet. Time to put a bigger lock on the garage!  

Since most people don’t drive their classics daily, there isn’t a strong link between classics prices and fuel prices. In fact by a twisted form of logic that goes like this–we won’t always have gas, so I better get hold of the car I always wanted and drive it soon–gasoline becoming more dear might even help classics values.Still, it’s an interesting question. Anything critical becoming more expensive seems to have the power to slow spending across the board. Anybody thinking–or hoping–a rise in fuel prices will bring more classics within reach?