Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Last evening I was sitting outside by Parkway Theater in South Minneapolis. Right beside me was a parking space on the curb–not a gap that could be a spot for the professional test driver, but a regular ol’ more-than-a-car-length gap between two other vehicles.

Didn’t even register until a BMW SUV backed into it–sorta. He cut the wheel all wrong and straigthened into the spot about 3 feet from the curb. So he left.

Then a Camry pulled up. The driver stopped next to the spot, directly across from me, which confirmed that the car would fit there without undue effort. But she and her passenger drove off.

Now I was paying attention. A minivan pulled up. It too would fit. The driver squared up next to the Ford F150 ahead of the space, started to back in, had the cut just right–perfect distance from the curb. Suddenly she stopped.

I watched and waited. There was a trailer hitch off the back but it was not threatening the car behind it nor was it near the curb. She was in. Totally. I had the vantage point. Another 18 inches back, cut the wheel right and square up and the deed was done.

But she pulled back out and drove away, slowing at a few other gaps up the street.

Wish I had filmed it: a driver with an expensive vehicle and no skill at parallel parking, someone with poor perception of her own vehicle’s size, and a driver with perfect approach who gave up when the game was won.

These events were so curious, I got up to read the sign next to the spot thinking maybe it was a valet-parking-only sign. Nope. It said 2 hour parking.

Is parallel parking a vanishing art? Do they still teach it here?

At the wheel of a classic burbling quietly at a traffic light on a warm Memorial Day, it’s easy to forget that some drivers are angry–or some angry people are driving.

I had been painting a friend’s fence in return for his building me a website and had to run out for another can of primer. Initially I was planning to turn left at the light, but something–perhaps the urge to be as American as possible on this holiday–inspired me to visit the McDonald’s drive-thru across the way for a Coke.

This is not my neighborhood and I thought I would need to go straight to enter McDonald’s but just before the light changed, I could see that I needed to go right and then left. There was an SUV at the opposite light across the street.

When the light turned green I pulled out and he pulled out. I went right and he went left, directly at me. I was able to avoid him–it was two lanes–but I shrugged at this apparent error on his part.

He exploded in colorful shouting, leaning out his passenger window and flailing one of his fingers at me. Amidst the wordblast I detected the phrase “signaled the other way.” I pulled into McDonald’s and he whipped into the next business and raced across its empty parking lot back toward me, with apparently violent intentions.

I pulled up to the drive-thru speaker and he didn’t appear. I realized then that my 40-year-old MG turn signal was winking away for a left turn, and I had turned right.

I had misled him at the intersection plain and simple. I was wrong, he was right.

I wonder, though, if he may have overreacted….

After a long (long, long) winter, one drive in a classic is all a person needs to remember these vehicles’ appeal. It’s just a different philosophy and feel.Modern vehicles are built for quiet and comfort, tasks they perform well. Yet the same automation and insulation that gives them those qualities also hides their true nature from us. Classics wear their mechanization on their sleeve. You hear the gears whine, feel them engage, sense when you press the pedal and turn the wheel that levers and rods and pivots are directing your inputs to the brakes and wheels to go and do what you command.Lake of refinement is not a classic’s drawback. It’s part of the appeal.  Â

Two posts ago we were talking about people walking into the road without looking–a seemingly growing trend in town.

Spent the day helping friends paint their fence in South Minneapolis and on the way home a woman got out of her car on the right side of the street and walked right in front of me. I had to hit the brakes so hard my wheels almost locked up!

I was in my ‘69 MG on an otherwise quiet street. Cars 40 years ago made a lot more noise than they do today. When did we stop looking to see if a ton of rolling steel is about to ruin our whole day? 

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On one of the last nice days of ‘07 I went to get the MGB GT out of the garage where I store it and it wouldn’t start.

This season, with the battery freshly charged, it did tick over but the fuel pump looked a little anemic–you can see its splishes and splashes of fuel in the clear gas filter at the back of the engine bay.

The car had hesitated a few times last season, acting as though it wanted to stall–behaving like a vehicle not getting enough gas–so I was suspicious of the fuel pump anyway. Not wanting to get stranded on the way home, I pulled the pump and took it round to Quality Coaches.

Randy, who’s been through hundreds of these cars or more, threw it on a battery and said the putter it made had the normal sound. I reinstalled it and the car started and ran fine. I’ll look at the points, plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor.

Yesterday I took it to a little coffee shop gearhead gathering. Although the best solution would have been to have the battery at my house on a trickle charger, apart from that the spring routine went well and is one I’m sure all of you are following:

–put air in the tires

–put some fresh fuel in the tank

–check brake fluid and pedal feel, both fine

–ensure car in neutral to start and that no tools or other objects are underneath

–open hood for start-up and warm up to make sure nothing looks amiss

–check underneath for evidence of leaks

–forgot to check the radiator fluid level but there was no coolant on the garage floor and I kept careful watch on the temp guage.

Today I’ll get a helper to check brake lights, headlights, turn signals, back-up lights, etc.

The amount of dust you see here is not desirable, however my last move in the fall was to wash the car and get a good coat of carnauba wax on there, so it should be fine. Will wash it off this weekend.

Hope everyone’s getting their classics out for some summer fun. Luckily this little car gets 45 mpg. Not.

Three times this week, I’ve had to brake for a pedestrian crossing the road without looking. Morally or legally, they are right–juries cast a mean frown at drivers who mow down pedestrians.

Still, on the logic scales at my house, Not Having a Shattered Pelvis and Punctured Aorta handily outweighs Morally Correct.

There’s a certain assertion of right here that I understand. Cars should always stop for pedestrians, especially at a cross walk–where two of the three crossed–albeit not one at a controlled intersection.

We all might occasionally step out expecting a car to stop when we’ve been kept waiting a while and the cross walk serves as notice that we’re right. I try to keep an eye on the car, though. None of these people–a runner, a woman with her dog, and a guy in a shirt and tie–looked at me as I braked. They may have seen the truck earlier, but they acted on faith when they moved in front of me.

Sure, motorists are obligated to stop. Sure, experience and reason tell us they’re looking forward as they navigate down the street. Yet even a conscientious driver can get struck with a sneezing fit, a seizure, or sudden blinding light as the setting sun emerges from clouds. At those moments, it’s better to note a distracted driver from the safety of the curb, or be ready to high-step if you observe the vehicle holding its pace.

A good friend now living abroad has long talked of touring the US in a 1950s Cadillac. While he owns a couple sports cars, he loves cruisers, the meaty, beaty, big and bouncy vehicles that sail the navigable roadways as much as drive them.

Perhaps the reason that style of vehicle never occurs to me is a difference in the fantasy. He is picturing the plains and desert thoroughfares across the Heartland and West, roads so long and straight they disappear from view, front and rear, due to the earth’s curvature and not bends or obstructions, natural or manmade. He’d have Elvis on and the top down, the needle hovering around 80 all day long.

My touring fantasy is more narrow roads and hilly to mountainous terrain. For this only the nimble car will do. I imagine the incremental rise in engine note downshifting into sweeping turns and blind switchbacks, the view ahead a surprise to be revealed after each stand of trees or hillside goes past.

Obviously, these two visions require different wheels. (Let’s pretend gas is cheap. Prius touring doesn’t cut it as a fantasy.) His choice feels about right for the long desert highway. Of course Vanishing Point and Gumball Rally air out some other choices, but they’re racing around, and we’re talking cruising. Would a Challenger be as fun as a Caddy for that?

For my mountain tour, I’m thinking an E-Jag with a tight suspension and good, modern tires. A coupe would look great and have a bit more rigidity, but the drop top has a trunk to hide some small luggage. Either would be just fine. The car was built for such work and nothing looks better parked on a scenic roadside than a Jaguar E-type.

Anybody got another car you’ve always dreamed of taking off in for an extended tour?

Last night I dug into Netflix’s lastest arrival–The Haunting (1963). Wow. Talk about great cinematography. The sprawling mansion, lavishly eclectic interior and cool camera angles are a feast for the horror film fan.

But this is a classic car site, so I can’t gas on about that too long. Fortunately, moving some stuff around in my office I came across the January ‘07 issue of Octane–one of the last magazines I bought at the downtown Shinder’s, the best, most missed newstand of my life. In it is Octane’s “totally biased and subjective guide to the best car movies ever.”

Seems like a list worth sharing because there have to be flicks here many of us have not seen:

American Graffiti (1973) (one of the TBirds from which is here in MN)

The Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

The Blue Lamp (1950)

The Blues Brothers (1980) (Yeah baby. Got my vote, there.)

Brannigan (1975)

Bullitt (1968) (we’ve talked about it often)

The Car (1978)

Chase a Crooked Shadow (1957) (They really liked this and man, great title)

Checkpoint (1956)

Christine (1983)

Danger Diabolik (1968)

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

The Devil’s Hairpin (1957)

Duel (1971)

Echappement Libre (Backfire) (1964)

The Fast Lady (1962)

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

The French Connection (1971)

Genevieve (1953)

Goldfinger (1964) (good year for car writers :^)

Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

Goodbye Pork Pie (1980)

[Gumball Rally (1976) (OK, Octane omitted this, but come on…)]

Grand Prix (1966)

The Green Helmet (1961)

Hell Drivers (1957)

Une Homme et Une Femme (we can all translate that) (1966)

The Italian Job (1969)

Johnny Dark (1954)

The Last Run (1971)

Le Mans (1971)

Life at the Top (1965)

The Lively Set (1964)

The Love Bug (1968)

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

The Mechanic (1972)

Psychomania (1971)

Red Line 7000 (1965)

Robbery (1967)

Ronin (1998)

The Running Man (1963) (no, not the Stephen King/Arnold Schwarzenegger one)

The Seven Ups (1973)

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) (1962)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Topkapi (1964)

Two for the Road (1967)

Vanishing Point (1971)

Weekend (1967)

The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964)
Wow. Cool list from Octane (one of the best car mags out there, for those unfamiliar with it–particularly for the classic car fan).

Got some new names for the Netflix queue.

While I treated the wing cars with kid gloves (see post below), this looked more like an earth vehicle, so I asked if I could sit in it.

This is one of the best ‘71 Hemi Challengers left in the world–low mileage, very original, four-speed–and doggone it, if my banker and doctor friends can buy these suckers, at least I can get a snap in one.

Vroom vroom!

If you said “Britney Spears,” not only are you wrong, I don’t think you’re taking the quiz very seriously.

The correct answer of course is these little beauties, which Chrysler built 40 years ago to kick the competition’s butt in NASCAR. That’s exactly what the Plymouth Superbird and Dodge Daytona did–so the competition got them banned.

Both belong to my friend Greg Nelsen, and he was kind enough to allow some photographs today for the book I’m working on on unrestored cars. These have both seen a little cleaning up, e.g., paint, but most of the original parts are still there.

Fortunately to reach homologation as “stock” production cars, Chrysler had to build over 2,000 of them. While some were destroyed on the track and elsewhere, and more than a few fakes have been built, these two genuine cars survived.

Just as they were built to do, these cars hunker down the faster you go. Riding in one is FUN.