Antique & Classic Cars Blog

“Wouldn’t it be cool if….” How many inventions get underway with this simple inquiry?

Because most cars today are not handmade but mass produced by the thousands or millions, the car-loving driver is always on the lookout for ways to make the 89,452nd one produced look unique.

Wheels are one obvious way, with “big” being the operative term in recent years. The wider the rim, the lower the tire’s profile until eventually you can’t really tell one type of tire from another… until somebody at Michelin said, “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

Their see-through tires have a bit in common with a spoked wheel in that there is ample space to look through when the tire is still. Set it in motion and the open spaces blur together, all but erasing the supportive components from view.

Will also be cool when someone makes a tire the other sort of see-thru, where we look directly through a translucent material, rather than between tire components–i.e., a tire of translucent rubber. Tire chemists will no doubt come up with one, if they haven’t already. The trick will be making all of the tire’s components in look-through material.

These Michelin meats were developed several years ago. Haven’t seen any on the road yet, nor some searching on their site pull them up. More R&D must lie between “wouldn’t it be cool” and market release.

(Thanks to jb for bringing up these unusual tires.)

When the aisles get crowded, it’s nice at a big show like World of Wheels to duck into one of the smaller displays. Few in the gearhead camp didn’t build a few models before the bucks and the space came along to wrench full-size.

Here’s a few samples that were onhand in St. Paul. I like the road dust on the windshield of this tow truck…

The old-school design of this hot rod (reminds me of the hobby-store offerings from the 1970s)…

This collection because it’s got a number of nice models within…

And this assortment. (It’s a cool accident of the photograph that the vehicles in the background, left, look like real cars.)

In a prior post, we showed a Ural motorcycle and sidecar out for a cold winter spin. I had said it was a driven-wheel sidecar and Paul asked if I was sure.

This rider is rugged, so I found the bike again by Diamond’s Coffee Shop on Central Ave. This Ural is a powered-sidecar model. Pictured is the driveshaft arrangement from the motorcycle to the sidecar wheel.

There was another bike there this visit–a 1944 Harley Davidson WLA, stilled owned and ridden by its original buyer. Its sidecar is the typical non-powered kind.

It’s easy to fool the eye with a camera. Toy guns, fake armor, half-cars sitting on flat beds to film actors, gaffer tape holding things on, etc., are commonplace and seldom noticeable. Movie cars–selectively shot, usually moving, cleaned up in post–just don’t need to be that nice. Where a car is featured, the studios will have several to drive, a few to wreck if necessary, and then one or more “picture cars,” which are promotional, kept very nice, and used to pimp the production.

Amidst all the no-dollars-spared hot rods, customs, and restored stock eye-morsels at the World of Wheels, the Mach 5 from the new film looked weak. This presumably was a picture car, one built for display only. Fans who grew up watching the original Speed Racer from the 1960s–which admittedly was from a 2-dimensional cartoon–couldn’t help but be disappointed. The drawn car had flowing lines, sweeping curves, and an interior akin to those of its real-life sports counterparts of the time.

The movie car looked just like what it was–a one-off fiberglass body plopped onto a late-model Corvette. It appears they even kept the Vette windshield, which looked about as classic as, well, a late-model Vette. The interior is busy, packed with air-conditioning vents and other modern features that look neither classic nor cinematic. And the lines just didn’t hold up when the car’s sitting still and you can walk around it like a drill sergeant during basic-training inspections.

There’s no blaming the builders. When crunch time comes, Hollywood car builders work as hard as anyone on the planet, meeting impossible demands on impossible timeframes with every job they take. They can make cars look like anything and do anything, keeping in mind the health and safety of the stunt personnel who climb in and make the money footage possible. The disappointment viewing a car like that up close is just the nature of the beast. A Mach 5 that satisfies the middle-aged kids who grew up with the Trans-Luxe cartoon would need to be manufactured by a top-notch custom coachbuilder on a budget of . . . unlimited. It would have hand-beaten panels, custom everything, gauges and dash and wheel and seats to rival the fastest, sexiest Ferraris and Aston Martins and Jaguars of the day. (I would have started with an E-type Jaguar, not a Vette.) Just building a one-off, polished, period-looking engine would probably run half a million bucks.

When studios are paying human stars 5, 10, 20 million dollars a picture, they’re not investing in hand-shaped aluminum-bodied one-off racers that will win at Pebble Beach and make your jaw fall on the ground and shatter when you see them. Turn off the camera and lights, send the cinematographer and editor home and push a movie car into the middle of a car show and your surprise will be just like seeing a big name actor in person. “Hmm. I thought he’d be taller.”

The metal bodies Chip Foose (P32) and Old Skool Kustoms (chopped ’36 Pontiac 3-window) displayed struck a lot closer to my idea of beautiful coachwork–but then, these are cars built to be seen up close in real life.

The fact that this is Minnesota and it’s 2009 has no bearing on what you can find here in terms of amazing cars and bikes. Hidden behind the anonymous facades of houses scattered throughout the state are vehicles of all ages from all parts of the globe.

Last Saturday, Gene, a bike owner going into my current book project, Survivor II: The Unrestored Collector Motorcycle, invited me to see some really great bikes he’s accumulated over the years. He has roots tracing to the very heart of the American auto industry–his grandfather started working for Henry Ford pre-Model T. In the shot above, Gene’s grandfather is on the far left with moustache; Ford is on the far right in topcoat.

Gene has an extremely original, unrestored 1938 Velocette he bought at the St. Paul auction. (I’ve included my feet because I don’t have Photoshop.) That bike came over from England for the event.

The Norton International below is also an incredible bike. His father Lee had one in 1949, which he raced with a partner in Michigan. When Gene went hunting for this rare model several years ago, the one he found worth buying–in England–was also a ‘49. It still wears the original paint. The pinstripes have been redone–but by an original factory pinstriper whom a prior owner of the bike had do it before the man retired.

The Honda Dream was a bit nerdy in ‘66, but today it’s pure classic cool. For a 43-year-old sheet of plastic, the original windshield still looks great. This bike has less than 3,000 miles and, like all of Gene’s bikes, runs like new. That’s thanks in part to his tuner, ace mechanic and Bonneville recordholder, Steve Hamel, another valuable asset in the Twin Cities bike community.

It’s not just bikes at Gene’s place. He also loves E-type Jaguars and has one of the best 3.8’s in the world. You would never want to set a sandwich on this engine as oils from the bread might get it dirty. Calling this car immaculate is like saying Usain Bolt is quick.

A full restoration is a fun project to undertake and to watch. Seeing everything so clean, like you’re the original builder, is a nice experience after years of oily wrench turning or rust dropping on your face when you scoot underneath.

This is a ‘62 Karmann Ghia owned by my friend John, in whose heated garage my ‘69 MGB GT is quietly slumbering over the winter. His mechanic, Matt, has just fitted the wiring harness.

The black car in the back corner is a parts car John bought for $300. He’s going to take everything mechanical off of it, plus the full interior, but there’s a guy who still wants what remains. John told him, “It’s really rusty,” but the guy claims, from photos, that the car he owns is far worse.

Kinda cool that many stylish old cars are worth something even as stripped-down hulks. It encourages folks to keep reviving them, which preserves history and makes the roads at summertime more interesting, when the old collector stuff comes out to play.

View enough museums and collections and certain spaces just cry out for cars, bikes, and other collectible vehicles.

This space on Central Avenue just north of downtown Minneapolis really caught my eye. They were manufacturing for the war effort here in the 1940s and it has the feel that almost nothing has changed since the men and women laboring to stop the Nazis finally moved on to post-war careers and families. You can easily picture the assembly lines at full tilt.

Once that image fades, I look at all this space and dream of rows and rows of gorgeous cars sheltered from the snow and rain–Bugatti, Duesenberg, Stutz, Auburn, Delage and more modern fare too, the E-Type’s iconic nose, Cobra’s bold wide-mouth grille, a GT-350, and what about the glorious ’50s–the near perfect first generation Corvette and T-Bird, a Chrysler 300, and how ’bout some period Nascar and drag-racing offerings….

The building’s maintenance man was kind enough to let me wander and shoot a few pictures. I could have stood there filling in dream cars for another hour. Here’s a flyer describing what was once made in this space. The well-known aircraft data tool, “the black box,” was apparently developed here. Lotta history….

Sports Car Market posted on all the big recent auctions in the south, which demonstrate that at least at these venues, prices are holding.

RM attracted record bidders and made over $18 million; Russo and Steele moved $17 million; Kruse saw $4.6 million in action, Gooding $32 million, and Barrett-Jackson had sales of $60 million (according to SCM).

The fact that something in the economy is posting good numbers is encouraging–though it probably means the $10,000 genuine Cobra many of us daydream about…ain’t happening.

…For some. Eleven below is a bit crisp for most of us, but this diehard cyclist had the sidecar-equipped Ural out yesterday morning.

A sidecar is a near must in a low-friction environment like snow–keeping you upright and lending a little traction for going uphill too. This sidecar has a driven wheel with its own brake.

What that extra wheel won’t help with is the frigid, frigid wind flying at you like a flock of samurai swords. Not only does this rider have a constitution like the Founders wrote, he’s also got some very effective winter riding gear.

Kudos for staring Old Man Winter in the face on a subzero morning and saying, “Think I’ll take the bike.”

It’s no news flash that cell phones cause accidents. Why? Because they’re distracting. In fact, there even more distracting than they need to be–a lot more.

By 2009 most of us have had a few cell phones. While this device, like virtually all modern technology, is pitched as a time saver, a life simplifier, the truth of those descriptions curiously diminishes over time. Computer software follows the same path.

How? Pointless complification (the process of making something more complicated under the pretense of making it easier to use). Word processing software took this path in the 1990s. Every time you learned how to use one program, its manufacturer would release some new version. The original one had 10 features you never used; the new version had 50. And so here you are at your job trying to grow better and more efficient at it, yet your employer keeps handing you software every six months that makes you relearn everything you knew how to do, wading through new menus and features you didn’t use before and that now take even more time and effort to get out of the way–features that would start changing the capitalization or spelling of words on you or throwing in formatting you didn’t want or need. So you’d have to learn how to undo these invasive time-wasters.

Cell phones now do the same thing. Mine claimed freedom last week, leaping from its belt hook as I ran for the bus and disappearing forever into an untraceable lost-and-found, under a car tire or into someone else’s care until they realized I’d canceled the service and chucked it.

The new one looks nice but is twice as hard to use. Like the word-processing software of old, it now does uncountable things I don’t want or need. It’s a phone. The obvious things I want from it are a phone book to save numbers, a ringtones menu so I can set it to one I can stand, and immediate access to ringer volume and vibrate as to hear it or not annoy others, as necessary, and for libraries or movies when it needs to make no sound at all.

These functions are buried beneath uncountable–unfathomable–others. Who would have thought 20 years ago that a time would come when you’d need an instruction manual to figure out your telephone? It’s de-progress, a great leap forward into the past.

And lots of people are trying to handle it from the driver’s seat. No wonder accidents rise. You’re trying to make a quick call from a “modern convenience” but some dope has made your telephone more complicated than your taxes.