Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Thanks to reader Jerome for sending in this photo of him and his son in their Model A trying–and succeeding!–to balance on a see-saw in a gymkhana event.

Guess they got ‘er balanced by getting the car’s center of gravity as close as possible to dead center over the fulcrum and then leaning back and forth in their seats to fine tune.

You know you’re a car lover when someone asks if you want to play on the see-saw and you reply, “Can I bring my Ford?”

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. I have no idea what they mean by that.

But a change all Minneapolis classics fans will note—and rue—is the closing of Yesterday’s Auto on Lyndale. No, it hasn’t gone bankrupt. Owner Al Hagen has simply decided to move on, leasing the building he owns to other business interests.

I got lucky dropping by today. Al was around when I pulled up to leave the characteristic side-of-pinky-and-palm and tip-of-nose print on the big glass gawkin’ windows one last time.

He invited me in and I listened as he talked about the biz, the cars, the future. How strange to see that showroom, crammed with classics for as long as I’ve lived in this wondrous wintry state, now mostly empty.

He showed me the top floor, which he has businesses I can’t mention tentatively lined up to occupy. Once it was filled with storage-clients’ cars. It’s a coooool space, big and old with huge windows looking out on Lyndale and the surrounding neighborhood. To the northeast, the skyline is visible 3 miles away. Al paid for those windows, double insulated and made to look old, and they’re staying, retaining views future tenants will enjoy.

We ventured to the basement too, long a storage area for local vehicles from mint classics to roll-cage equipped Carrera Panamericana race cars.

The Mustang below got rolled on a shorter race, the Chihuahua Express. Yes, it might make more sense to get another body shell than rebuild a rolled one (though ‘66 coupes are hard to come by), but this car has sentimental value. Besides, anything’s fixable and the memories are more important to the owner than the money.

Only a few cars remain in a space that once held close to 100 on all three floors. Among them is this curious Corvette, a reproduction of a Greenwood IMSA racer, with genuine panels. Not my style–more David Hasselhoff’s, I’d say–but you can bet this thing sticks to the ground like a warm wad of gum.

Also on hand are a couple of Hagen’s own cars, including a Nash Metropolitan he bought for his wife, and the ‘62 Vette he’s owned since he was 20 years old.

There’s a bit of the vintage automobilia that jazzed up the shop still on hand too. I loved these three radios, two by Crosley–yeah, that Crosley, and the third a bakelite Montgomery Wards set with FM band from the late ’40s. One of the Crosleys is an old clock radio with a curious feature–a clock-controlled outlet you could plug your coffee maker into to kick on the old java machine at the early hour of your choosing.

Lot of great car memories still hang in the air, if not on the walls. Funny thing is, now that he’s getting out of the car business, Al finally has time to enjoy cars. He’s going to redo that Metropolitan, as well as his Vette. And he’s hoping to have a little fun on the Carrera Panamericana himself.

Best of luck to you, Al, and thanks for supporting the classic car hobby for so many great years.

Here’s something cool. A collection of zero-emissions racers up for online auction. They include gravity, pneumatic and electric powered vehicles.

Presently the Chinese-built Taichi Rhythm China Beat pneumatic racer has the highest bid. It’s the coolest looking in my book, though Porsche’s creation’s got a lotta style. And you gotta love a gravity-powered Bentley styled like a Formula One car:

http://motors.shop.ebay.com/merchant/zer.collection

(Thanks to Sports Car Market for the heads-up on this one.)

We all have friends whose hard work pays off. Some of these guys, the car fans, line up something with a prancing horse on it.

My friend Mark detailed Ferraris in high school and house-sat for the dealership’s owner. He got to wash some amazing cars and get behind the wheel of a few too. But his plans were a little bigger. Someday he was going to own his own Italian sports car–one with Enzo’s last name on it.

When the time came, he had a wife and son, so a two-seater had one bucket too few. The answer was a Mondial. Here it is. As you might expect of a seasoned detailer, he has it looking like it was built last week.

The Mondial is an interesting car. A little off radar with the four-place seating, but that exposed-gate shifter and 180 mph speedometer remind you you’re in a Ferrari. If he throws me the keys, I’ll catch ‘em. (Course, he’s on the other side of the world, so it’ll have to be a pretty big throw.)

Here’s some interesting links on the Mondial. In this piece, MSN calls it one of the top 50 cars of the 1980s, while here, Time Magazine had a different impression. IMHO, whoever wrote the Time piece isn’t much fun at a party.

In the 100 years-plus since there have been cars, a lot of names have come and gone. We’ve talked about them here. Some were small, mostly novelties; others were serious machines in their time. Duesenberg built a wonderful car, Tucker had the right idea, Plymouth slugged it out for years and Oldmobile even more years.

All are gone, as are Triumph, Austin, Sunbeam….

Reader JB asks that we touch upon this momentous time when all of the Big Three are imperiled and the chance of at least one of them disappearing in the near future seems possible if not probable.

There are volumes to be written here. A piece in the NYTimes compared the Big Three today with British Leyland in the 1980s. It had labor troubles, deep debt; its cars were not keeping pace with the imports in sales or technology. The government stepped up with billions but it did not save the collection of brands gathered under the name.

It’s no secret that manufacturing is a vanishing segment of our economy. I laugh sometimes that Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s biography is called Made in America. As with any other store, a team of trained investigators will have some searching to do finding a non-food product in Wal-Mart that lives up to the bio’s name.

Our auto workers have made the machines that hauled our goods and families and visitors, and did our work building this country, for generation upon generation. Now, other countries can pay their workers less. Newer manufacturers have newer facilities. Their countries impose fewer restrictions. Yet their cars are not selling well now either. Imported cars are piling up in U.S. ports without buyers. Dealers don’t have room for them.

All of the auto makers in the world are lean right now. Many are asking for help.  There are exciting ideas, and public demand, for new technologies but R&D is an expensive enterprise that takes years to make back the investment.

Some consolidation in our market seems inevitable, sooner or later. No matter how good current models or plans or designs, the Big Three are all short on capital. Fighting back in a competitive market and rising above competitors takes money—for new technology, upgrading facilities, paying down debt, meeting salaries, recruiting new talent, and selling both your brand and your product to a financially strapped public.

There are some harsh words being traded on the Hill about bailing out the white collar segment and letting blue collar workers founder. And other voices asking whether the money will lead to recovery, or just prolong the period before restructuring.

Obviously this is a dark time for car fans, classic fans in particular. We revere these brands that we have known and loved and learned all our lives.

When we were kids, my mother would sometimes say as she walked out of an unusual movie with my brother and me, “whoever wrote that must have been on drugs.”

She never learned to use a computer, but if she were around using one today, I’m sure she’d have that comment for most of the spam that plagues our inboxes. I’ve spoken of this before.

The one that caught my eye today says, “Your guestbook is example of middle-class guestbooks. Congratulation!” (no “s”).

I think more than drugs is at work here.

These words do form a sentence but they communicate no intelligible thought. They convey no meaning. Either they have been typed and propagated by a person heckling us from some remote country where no English is spoken and the words are just jumbled together from English internet content, or it’s randomly generated by a computer.

Either way, someone is responsible for it, which is incomprehensible. Those advertising something, OK, you’re just annoying me and I’m going to delete your post like every other living being who receives it without even considering opening it.

But these scores of messages that communicate nothing really top the list for fruitless human behavior. Some artists, like Yeats, for example, and a meaningful percentage of the rock ‘n’ roll catalog, were in fact on drugs. Saying that of spam writers gives them too much credit. They’re on a campaign to squander human productivity.

[Reader Vern found the new n2a offering very Aston Martin-y. So I’ve posted their road rocket below the Anteros for comparison. Thanks, K]

Because of their superlative out-of-the-box performance, Corvettes make a great base for a custom car. If you didn’t blow that spare 200,000 bucks on the ex-drag car Tempest in the post below, maybe you’d like to consider an Anteros.

This new look for the Vette comes from n2A Motors, the crew who brought us the 789, a custom design inspired by Chevy models from the last 3 years of the ’50s. (We talked about that car at the start of the year.) Anteros looks like a lotta go for the money.

[Body double–the Aston Martin DBS? I love British cars and a DB5 will never get booted outta my garage. In this contest though, I kinda like the Anteros–little more curve, little less busy.]

The internet world has expanded the venues where dreamers imagine hitting the jackpot, getting that Irish Sweepstakes/Powerball/Gold at the Rainbow’s End score that makes all our cares of meeting the mortgage, paying for college, covering that repair bill or health emergency recede from our minds.

The ‘63 Pontiac Tempest hasn’t lit up the collector car world like its kin, the ‘64-on GTO or the early Firebird or Trans-Am have. This car and its Buick and Olds cousins, the Skylark, Special and F-85, regularly trade hands for several thousand bucks in decent shape.

Imagine then posting a faded, dinged up, engine- and transmission-free ‘63 Tempest on eBay and watching the bids climb from lawn-mowing money to a very respectable year’s salary.

This is what just happened on eBay for a Michigan seller who bought an ex-drag car Tempest when its previous owner passed away. Bidding started at 500 bucks. The seller must have fallen off his chair when the winning bidder pushed that by another $226,000.

In their exchanges with the seller, bidders hot for old race machines sleuthed their way to the conclusion that this anonymous, faded Tempest was likely the former drag-race champion car campaigned by Stan Antlocer.

For a one-of-kind car like that, souring economy or no, deep-pocket collectors are willing to smash their biggest piggy bank. At least until eBay takes down the post, here’s the auction. Check out the Q&A…. (For comparison, here’s a complete ‘63 Tempest drag car — built up and very non-stock — that runs sub-10 in the 1/4.)

Exciting day in cyberspace.

Hot rodders, customizers and restorers look at cars through transformative eyes, seeing not just what is but what shall be.

Nowhere is the mind’s drafting table more active than in the low-rider community. Yeah, low rider fans do paint; yeah they do ’glass work; yeah they refurbish and hop up and engrave, embroider, pinstripe and chrome. But this crew also re-crafts the very way that automobiles move.

Take hopping. Frogs hop. Grasshoppers hop. Kids hop. Walk into a Lexus or Mercedes dealer and ask to see an LS 460 or S-Class sedan hop and you’ll get some pretty strange looks. Those cars do many things well, but they don’t hop. No car does—unless it’s a low rider.

With undercarriage reinforcements and some serious hydraulic lifts at the corners, a low rider can hop. It can pop the front end five feet off the ground. Some can leap up, all four wheels at once. Or they can rock back on one wheel and pull the diagonal tire all the way off the ground—a foot or more. Even the show cars, not built for hard knocks, can rise up to clear the deepest driveway dip or drop down low enough to make Jiminy doff his cricket top hat.

And low riders can dance too, gyrating and pivoting like a living artist.

For a hard-copy “Locals in Motion” piece, I talked to Rollerz Only’s Minnesota chapter founder, Rickie Sanders. With a couple phone calls, Rickie put together a half-dozen cars and a lot of cool guys who are into their rides. The ’59 Impala here was a trophy winner at last month’s Low-Rider Magazine Super Show in Las Vegas. My aunt had a ’59 Impala. While it was a convertible, black with red interior and a white top, it wasn’t this cool.

Even Sanders’ kids have low rider bikes. I’ve probably owned ten bicycles in my life, but nothing had flash like this. These low fliers got more style than all the scooters in Quadrophenia.

In the summer months, the Rollerz cruise with the guys and their families whenever they can. Come winter, it’s time to turn wrenches and build cars for next year. Keep an eye out for this club. You’re gonna see some sweet rides with different strides.

Several years ago, my California-based mother-in-law was bicycling along Minnehaha Creek when it started to hail (small pieces). It was such a funny experience, she called a West Coast friend who has lived only in Hawaii and California.

There was a pause from the receiver. “Pieces of ice . . . are falling from the sky?”

Yes, not everyone takes for granted the frosty wonders that drop on us in the north. A week ago, it seemed winter might be napping and we’d get another few weeks of classic-car and bike weather. Luckily, the weatherfolks were on the ball and I saw their forecast for today.

My friend John trades in collector cars and has a heated garage with an MGB GT’s worth of extra space. We got Maggie, my red B GT, tucked in at 9:00 last night, as close to experiencing snow as most any classic owner who doesn’t drive it year round wishes his car to get.

As the photos reveal, John is one of the Volkswagen faithful, a fan of all their now-classic models: Beetle, Thing, Karmann Ghia, Bus. He’s got an eye on the street and an ear to the ground at all times for their characteristic rounded shapes and air-cooled brumbling. He’s even got a Bradley GT–the racy aftermarket fiberglass body set on Bug running gear. The seats and interior on that car ooze ’70s glittery-plasticky charm.

For VW watchers, the cars here include ‘57 oval-window bug with sunroof, ‘59 Bug convertible, ‘72 convertible, ‘58 bus, ‘79 bus, ‘56 bus, ‘60 Karmann Ghia, ‘78 Bradley GT, ‘74 Thing (plus ‘67 GT500 clone and ‘67 Dodge Coronet 500).

Sales are brisk for John. Owners may be wary of troubled economic times or fearful values will drop, so they’re turning some cars into cash. This Shelby GT500 clone, mocked up like the car Nicholas Cage drove in the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, is bound for Russia.

Gotta love the license plate. John also picked up a Dodge Coronet 500 convertible for himself. Always liked the late ’60s Mopar convertibles. Lotta style and room for two couples to cruise top-down on warm summer nights. (Given our short window for those each year, perhaps we enjoy them more than warm-climate dwellers.)