1955 Packard Patrician

The Patrician was the last "Senior Packard", the company's top-of-the-line model, intended to go head to head against Lincolns, Imperials, and Cadillacs on the American market.

For 1955, the Patrician above, with its Agate-over-Topaz Metallic two tone paint job, would have featured Packard's first... and only ...V-8 engine. Displacing 352 cubic inches and topped with a Rochester 4bbl carburetor, the overhead valve V-8 put out 260 SAE gross horsepower in the Patrician.

The Patrician also features a "Twin-Ultramatic" transmission, an improvement on the existing Ultramatic, designed by a young Packard engineer who had been lured away from his job at Chrysler by a $14,000-a-year salary offer. The engineer's name: John DeLorean.

Talk about a different era. You can tell the image the manufacturer wished to project with a vehicle name like "Patrician". Bunches of chrome gingerbread, a two-tone paint job, and sweeping ribbed stainless steel accent panels on the sides. It even says "The Patrician" in script on the fenders behind the front wheel wells.

The photo above was taking in southeastern Colorado in October of 2013 using a Sony Cybershot DSC-W650.

1984 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country

To someone growing up in 6th or 7th Century England, the world must have seemed overshadowed by a glorious past. Like Tolkein's Gondor, the reminders of a previous lost level of civilization were all around: in grand villas with no-longer-functional plumbing; huge, decrepit public buildings looted for stone to make pasture fences; and ruler-straight, board-flat paved roads, with weeds and trees growing between the frost-heaved pavers.

How similar the life of the auto enthusiast on these shores in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Performance was a thing of the past, strangled by emissions and fuel economy needs and gun-shy insurers. When the last '76 Eldorado rolled off the line, it was marketed as "The Last American Convertible"*. By the early Eighties, the base Camaro and Mustang each came with a 4-cylinder engine and 1980 Corvette buyers in California had one powertrain option: A low-tune 305c.i.d. mill with a slushbox and fake dual exhausts.

Enjoyable cars were slow to return and the early steps were halting, as witnessed by the '84 LeBaron above. Chrysler brought domestic convertibles back to the U.S. market by giving roofectomies to its highest-zoot K-Car variants in 1982. Initially only available with the 2.6L Mitsubishi "Silent Shaft" 4-cylinder, they soon offered a turbocharged 142bhp 2.2L motor, distinguished by hood louvers as seen on the car in the photo. The incongruous woodgrain vinyl siding on the top-of-the-line Town & Country models was by order of Lido Iaccoca hisownself. The self-consciously retro-themed packaging wasn't a very big hit on the FWD cars, consistently comprising less than 10% of the annual sales total.

Don't see many survivors from that era. Rust-resistance wasn't really a thing yet, and build quality was wildly varying, but the dude in the picture seems to have a pretty well-maintained ride. Bets he's the original owner?

Photographed in a Lowe's parking lot in Indianapolis in July of 2015 with a Nikon D1X & 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D zoom lens.

*There was a lawsuit when Caddy reintroduced convertibles to their lineup in 1984, of course. Because America is the land of the litigious!

1991 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Convertible

By the early 1990s, the third generation F-bodies from GM were getting long in the tooth. Work was already underway on their 4th gen replacements, but it was decided to give the Firebird and Camaro a light styling refresh to keep interest going until the new versions debuted.

Pontiac replaced the nosecone on the 1991 Firebirds with a urethane "droop snoot" reminiscent of the aero one on the Banshee IV concept car. The ground effects were also changed to match the newer rakish look. Personally, I don't think either was an improvement. The "lidded eyes" of the closed headlights on the '82-'90 Firebirds, done by Jerry Palmer and Bill Porter, were iconic.

While Firebird convertibles were still done at American Sunroof Corporation by performing roofectomies on regular t-top cars, dealers could order them from the factory as convertibles now, rather than having to special order them and have them drop-shipped to ASC.

For a 1991 Trans Am convertible, like the Arctic White one photographed here, you could get any engine you wanted as long as it was the LB9 Tuned-Port Injected 305, rated at 205 horsepower. The vast majority were 4-speed automatic cars, but a 5-speed manual was available.

This one was photographed in July of 2024 with a Nikon D700 and 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G zoom lens.

1947 Dodge DeLuxe

I'm calling this a 1947, but pinning an exact date on it is hard. Dodge was slow in getting new models in the showroom in the immediate postwar years and the '46-'48 Dodges were only slightly cosmetically refreshed versions of the prewar D22-series Dodges, and didn't differ externally from year to year. There was really no need to, since pent-up civilian demand made it a seller's market.

The lower trim level was the DeLuxe, like this Air Cruiser Red 4-door sedan, and the higher-zoot variant was the Custom. From the outside the only easily distinguishable difference was that the Custom had chrome trim around the windows.

Under the hood was Dodge's staid 102 horsepower 230 cubic inch inline six flathead motor. Buyers could get either a 3-speed manual gearbox standard, or upgrade to a Chrysler "Fluid Drive", which inserted a viscous coupling between the standard clutch and the crank, where the flywheel would normally reside. The driver still had to use the clutch to select gears manually, but there was no need to use it when stopping and starting, which simplified urban driving. 

This one was photographed with a Nikon Coolpix S6500 in July of 2014.

1966 Chevrolet Corvair Monza

All through the Fifties, Detroit's "Big Three" produced pretty much nothing but big cars. Longer, lower, and wider were the watchwords for every model year.

While the various marques of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler sold varying models in that decade, they were all just variations on the same full-size platforms.

Not every consumer wanted a car that big, though, and they came with other problems. If you live in a neighborhood like Broad Ripple, where many of the garages predate the '50s, you can see the alterations that were made to some garages that had been built during the age of the Model A to allow them to accommodate the much longer new cars. It's also daunting to imagine navigating these narrow streets in a tailfin-bedecked twenty-foot chromasaurus with numb on-center steering and a hood ornament 'way out there in another zip code from the front seat.

The smaller manufacturers like American Motors and Studebaker offered smaller cars, and sales of imports like Germany's Volkswagen began to take off and Detroit realized they were leaving money on the table, so all the Big Three launched compacts in the early Sixties. The Fords and Mopars were fairly conventional shrunken versions of their full-size cars, but Chevy went with something truly different.

The Corvair used an air-cooled horizontally-opposed six cylinder motor mounted aft of the rear axle. In an era of increasingly large V-8s, the 140cid 80hp Turbo-Air six in the 1960 Corvair was a little twee. Note, please, that "Turbo-Air" was just the name hung on by the marketing department; actual turbocharged Corvairs were still a couple years off.

Chevrolet launched the Corvair as a full line of vehicles: Sedans, coupes, convertibles, station wagons, even vans and pickup trucks.

While sales started off briskly, they started trailing off almost immediately. The non-turbo Corvairs were woefully underpowered, handling could be quirky, and the sedan and coupe versions lacked any pillarless hardtops which were very much in vogue at the time. The wagons and pickups had to have higher load floors to clear the engine.

The cars were redesigned for the 1965 model year. The wagons and trucks were dropped, hardtops were added, and the new cars had gorgeous lines, more power, independent rear suspensions...but nobody cared much.

Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed is sometimes credited with the demise of the Corvair, but when it came out in '65, it was basically just throwing dirt on the coffin. Small sedan buyers were buying Falcons and Valiants, while sporty coupe buyers were snapping up Ford Mustangs as fast as Dearborn could churn them out.

Chevy halted further development of the rear-engined oddity and concentrated on their Chevy II compact and the forthcoming Camaro small sporty coupe. The Corvair was left to coast through the 1969 model year before finally getting the axe.

The pictured car is a 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Monza 110 convertible in Regal Red with the 164 cubic inch flat-six in 2x1bbl 110hp trim.

It was photographed in November of 2023 with a 36MP Nikon D800 & 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens, so those photos can be embiggenated rather a lot.

1947 Studebaker Commander DeLuxe

Eventually one of everything will drive by the corner of College Avenue and 54th Street. In this case, it's a late Forties Studebaker coupe. Specifically, it's a 1947 Studebaker Commander DeLuxe 3 Passenger Coupe, what other manufacturers referred to as a "business coupe".

3 Passenger Coupes had a bench seat in the front and no back seat, just a cargo area. They were popular with traveling salesmen (hence the name), doctors, retired couples on a budget, and other folks who just didn't see much need to haul passengers. They mostly went away in the mid Fifties with the end of the era of the traveling salesman and the rise of air travel.

The 1947 Studebakers were some of the first all-new postwar car designs to hit showrooms, and their lines, largely owed to Virgil Exner, are still distinctive.

Riding on a 112 inch wheelbase, the '47 Champion 3 Passenger Coupe was relatively light by the standards of American cars, weighing in at only 2770 pounds. Power was provided by Studebaker's 170 cubic inch flathead inline six, rated at 80 SAE gross horsepower with a 1-barrel Carter carb and available 3-speed or 4-speed (with overdrive!) manual gearboxes.

This super-clean Velvet Black example is certainly noticeable when surrounded by modern traffic; I photographed it with a Nikon 1 V2 and 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 lens. 

I'm getting increasingly fascinated by the early postwar pontoon-fender styling, before the rolling Wurlitzer chrome excesses of the Fifties and their subsequent bat-winged tail-finned successors. It wasn't until the "fuselage" styling of the late Sixties that Detroit cars would again have such clean lines.

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this car was probably about 39 years old when I graduated high school, and that, relatively speaking, that's how old a 1985 Plymouth Reliant would be to a member of the Class of 2024. (In an eerie parallel, Studebaker had been defunct nineteen years at the time, and Plymouth was shuttered in 2001...)

Cargo Cult Car Stop Cult

I don't know exactly when the red caliper thing started. Italian brake manufacturer Brembo was an OEM supplier to a lot of companies dating way back before brightly colored calipers were a thing.

Late Eighties and early Nineties supercars may have had Brembo brakes, but the calipers were fairly normal colors: black, gray, metallic, whatever. Some were finished in a gold color. It was hard to tell, though, because wheels were 17" and smaller and also tended to have a more "aero" appearance; a flat disc with fewer, smaller holes.

While I don't know who Patient Zero in the Red Plague was, I do know that by the close of the Millennium, as larger wheels with spindlier spokes left more of the braking system in view, racy cars started getting brightly-colored calipers, most often in red.

This, of course, led to goobers spray-painting calipers with high-temperature engine paint, a "performance enhancement" along the lines of a fat exhaust tip and a J.C. Whitney decklid wing.

Possibly my favorite example of this was the dude I saw in the Meijer parking lot who had rattlecanned the rear drums on his early '90s Toyota Corolla red.

I hadn't given it a lot of thought, assuming the fad would kind of reach peak silly with spray paint, but I was wrong.

The other day I spotted what I initially thought was a pretty trick Volkswagen Golf GTI in the parking lot at the Preston Safeway.

As I was processing the RAW files in P-shop, I first noticed that it wasn't a GTI. The calipers looked unusual, too. I zoomed in to read the lettering on them...

"MGP? I've never heard of a brake manufacturer with that name..."

Which was because MGP doesn't make brakes; they make anodized aluminum bolt-on caliper covers. They sell them on Amazon and they ain't cheap.

I guess they must add more horsepower than a spray can of engine paint. They'd sure better, for that price, at least.

Car Links

1972 MG Midget at 49th & Pennsylvania in Indy

• Car and Driver drives each generation of VW GTI.


• Iain Banks (yes, that Iain Banks) drives a Formula 1 car.


• P.J. O'Rourke drives a Ferrari 308GTS.

1988 Volvo 780

Volvo is a company historically known for sober-sided, serious sedans and station wagons. Every now and again, though, they let their Scandinavian hair down and offer something a little...coupe-ier, putting a little Italian marinara sauce on the ol' Swedish meatballs.

There was the Ghia-influenced P1800 through the Sixties and early Seventies. Then from 1977 to 1981, they sold the 262C, which was assembled by Bertone in Italy. While most of the body panels were shipped from suburban Göteborg, straight off the 200-series sedan assembly line, the oddly squooshed roofline was all Italian. People were doing a lot of drugs at the time, I suppose. It would explain disco, too. Anyway, they built 6,622 over the five year run, and most went to America.

When the hangover wore off, Volvo teamed up with Bertone again in the late Eighties to offer another luxury coupe, the 780, like the one seen in the photo.

Unlike the earlier coupe, the 780's body panels were all unique to it, and it featured a lower hood and faster windshield than the regular sedans, as well as that very un-Volvo-ly raked B-pillar.

Power was initially supplied by the B280F 2.8L version of the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V-6. (The same engine as the DeLorean, for those keeping score.) Installed in a 780 in American trim, the PRV motor motor put out 145 SAE net bhp and 173 lb-ft of torque. The price tag was over thirty-five grand, which was seven g's over the sticker on an optioned-out 760 Turbo Wagon.

This was ten grand more than an Eldorado Touring Coupe with a similarly-potent 155bhp HT-4500 V-8. It was also ten grand more than a Lincoln Mark VII LSC, which could be had with the 225bhp H.O. Ford 5.0L. However it was well under the price for a BMW 635 or SEC Benz.

By 1988, you could get a 780 Turbo, with a 175bhp turbo four-cylinder. The rear suspension had been upgraded, too, from a live axle to a modern multilink independent suspension, but these increased the price on the top model to nearly forty grand.

In the end, 8,518 Volvo 780s of all versions were built by Bertone over its six-year model run, and 5,700 of those were sold in the US, making the Champagne Metallic one in the picture a decidedly uncommon sight.

Photographed in April of 2023 with a Nikon D3 and 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D zoom lens.

1962 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster

The third generation of the Ford Thunderbird, which debuted as a 1961 model, sported super-clean lines that were a tremendous improvement over the baroque rolling Wurlitzer look of the '58-'60 models.

The one in the photos is a 1962 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster in Diamond Blue.

The Sports Roadsters shipped with a hard fiberglass tonneau cover that faired into the front seat headrests, turning the car into a two-seater. It didn't interfere with the operation of the convertible top while installed and could be removed if you wanted to use the rear seat, like the car in the photos.

Other telltales for the Sports Roadster model are the unique badges under the "Thunderbird" script on the front fenders, and the 48-spoke Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels with genuine knock-off hubs.

You know who had a '62 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster? Elvis Presley, that's who.

The 3rd Generation T-birds featured prominently in JFK's Inauguration Day parade (no doubt helped by Ford man McNamara getting tapped for Kennedy's cabinet.) Sporting only vestigial tail fins and large round taillights reminiscent of turbine exhausts, their jet-age lines were perfect for the era.

Ford made over 78,000 T-birds for the 1962 model year, of which only 1,427 were Sports Roadsters. All but a handful were powered by a 390 cubic inch version of Ford's FE big-block V-8, with a 4-barrel carb and a 9.6:1 compression ratio, rated at 300 SAE gross horsepower. That handful were the ultra-rare "M-code" cars, with three 2-bbl carburetors, 10.6:1 compression, and 340 horses. Only 120 Sports Roadsters were built with the tri-power M-code motor.

These photos were taken with a Nikon D2X and 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II zoom lens in October of 2023.

1995 Mercedes-Benz E320

It's a size of car that the British call a "spanner"... no, wait, that's what they call a biscuit. This size car they call "Executive", meaning it's larger than a compact but smaller than a "Luxury Saloon".

In America it's a midsize, and Mercedes has been making them since the Fifties. Nowadays it's referred to as their "E-class", sized between the compact C-class and full-size S-class. It's the equivalent to BMW's 5-series or a Ford Taurus or whatever Chevy's currently calling the Maluminpala.

When the generation shown in the picture debuted back in the mid-'80s, it was just the known in-house as the W124 platform. Back then the letters went on the end of Mercedes model, and the "E" in 320E would have stood for "einspritzmotor", signifying a 3.2 liter fuel-injected car.

For the '94 model year, the letters got moved to the front of the model designation on Benzes*, since referring to a car as having an "einspritzmotor" in 1994 would have been as redundant as referring to it as a "vierräder". So from '94 on, the E320, like the '94-'96 wagon in the picture, was a midsize E-class with a 3.2 liter motor.

In this case, that 3.2L motor was a DOHC inline six putting out 217bhp. The '96 E-class was the last hurrah for the classic M-B straight six, with six cylinder Benzos using V-6 motors until 2017 saw the revival of the inline, with the turbocharged M276.

This one was photographed in January 2024 using a Nikon D700 & 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G lens.

*Causing a great deal of distress for car nerds like me who had actually gone to the trouble of cracking the alphanumeric code on Jerry decklids. Don't get me started on how the numeric designations on Mercedes and BMW models only have the most tangential relationship to engine displacement now.

1972 De Tomaso Pantera

Loiter on the patio of one of the restaurants at 54th and College and sooner or later, one of everything will drive by, like this very early De Tomaso Pantera. The earliest '71 models are identifiable by push-button door releases shared with the earlier Mangusta. Production using the old style manufacturing methods was having a hard time keeping up with the output required by Ford (to say nothing of indifferent quality control) so Ford invested a bunch of money in new tooling for the Italian maker, taking an 84 percent stake in the company.

From this distance, most visible sign of the cars made on the newer tooling are the flat-latch door handles.

You can tell it's a '72 from the flat door latches and the graceful chrome bumpers, replaced for the '73 models (called the Pantera L), with large rubber federally-mandated energy absorbing 5mph bumpers.

The blue and white De Tomaso logo is visible in the grille and the wheel center caps. The colors are from the Argentinian flag, where Alejandro de Tomaso was born.

The aftermarket wing looks nice on this car, and the sound crackling from those exhausts was that of a Ford 351 Cleveland V8 that meant business. The original '71 models were imported with an 11.0:1 compression Cleveland motor rated at 310hp, but that was dropped to 266hp in the 1972 cars, with a lower 8.6:1 compression ratio for reasons of emissions and fuel economy.

Panteras were actually sold through Lincoln-Mercury dealerships here in the U.S. through 1974...

Photographed in September of 2021 using a Nikon D2X and 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D zoom lens.

1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III

The fifth generation of Ford's Thunderbird featured a full redesign on a unique platform. Launched in 1966 as a '67 model, it was bigger than earlier T-birds and was of body-on-frame design rather than the unibody construction of the previous generation.

Sales did not soar, so in order to spread the design costs out, FoMoCo Vice President Lee Iaccoca ordered Ford's design department to "put a Rolls-Royce grill on a Thunderbird". The resulting car was loaded with every luxury appointment available at the time and launched as the Continental Mark III, aimed to go head-to-head with the Cadillac Eldorado as the premium American luxury coupe.

The 1969 Continental Mark III debuted Ford's then-new 460cid 4-bbl big block V-8, rated at 365 SAE gross horsepower and 500 foot-pounds of torque in its 10.5:1 compression, pre-emissions configuration.

While it was sold at Lincoln-Mercury dealers, the Lincoln name appeared nowhere on the car. It was positioned as a successor to the ultra-luxe Continental Mark II from early Sixties, which had been sold by the now-defunct Continental division of Ford.

It was priced at over 6,700 bucks, nearly sixty grand in today's dollars. This was more than a Mercedes-Benz 280 SEL, although only a third the tariff of a Rolls Silver Shadow.

I like that it still has a bit of that Sixties coke bottle style in the haunches.

Just five years later Detroit was gaga over the "formal" look and everything was right angles. Ford would have put square wheels on the Granada if they could have got them to roll.

Apologies for the potato-quality photos. I left the house without a camera that September day in 2023 and these were taken with an iPhone 13 Pro Max.

1996 Mercury Cougar

The Mercury Cougar, over its 35-year run, was the Car of a Thousand Faces.

It started life in 1967 as a more highly-optioned, Euro-feeling Mercury alternative to the original pony car, Ford's Mustang. The Cougar and Mustang shared a platform and bloated right alongside each other until the 1974 model year, by which time the duo had reached almost Torino-esque proportions.

At that point the Mustang got shrunk back to something like its original small sporty coupe size while the Cougar leaned right in to the bloat, becoming a midsize "personal luxury coupe" that shared a chassis with the midsize Ford Torino and Mercury Montego. Now competing with the Olds Cutlass Supreme and Chevy Monte Carlo, the big cat from Mercury added plushness and, well, flab.

For the '77 model year the Cougar was moved to the same platform as the LTD II and Thunderbird. Now there were sedan and wagon versions offered, while the Cougar XR7 coupe was basically a Mercury-badged T-bird.

Downsized in 1980 to use the then-new Fox platform, the fifth generation of Cougar retained the sedan and station wagon versions (based on the Ford Granada) while the two-door XR7 remained a rebadged Thunderbird.

The '83 Cougar finally shed the brand-diluting sedans. It was now only offered as a coupe on the Fox platform, with all-new rounded lines, albeit with a roof-ectomy in order to give it a jarringly vertical "formal" rear window. This was to distinguish it from the cheaper, sportier Thunderbird and spendier, sportier Continental Mark VII, with whom it otherwise shared underpinnings.

The Cougar in the picture is from the penultimate iteration of the nameplate. Based on the new independent rear suspension MN12 platform, which it again shared with the T-bird and Lincoln Mark VIII, the Laser Red 1996 coupe in the photo would have either had the base 145bhp 3.8L pushrod Essex V6 or the 205bhp 4.6L SOHC Modular V8.

After the 1997 model year, the Cougar badge was moved to a little FWD hatchback coupe based on the European Ford Mondeo. It was something of a consolation prize for Mercury, as it was originally going to be the next Ford Probe, but Ford was axing all the coupes from its lineup other than the Mustang and Escort ones.

The Cougar was discontinued after the 2002 model year, followed nine years later by the rest of the Mercury division of FoMoCo.

The one in the photo was captured in November of 2023 with a Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 16-80mm f/4 R WR OIS zoom lens.

1971 Buick GS 350 Convertible

The lack of "455" badges would indicate that this 1971 Fire Red ragtop is a base GS 350.

For 1971 the 4bbl small-block Buick 350 in the GS had its compression reduced from 10.25:1 to 8.5:1, although it still had a functional cold air intake and dual exhausts. For that model year, General Motors ad copy quoted both SAE gross and net horsepower figures, and the GS 350's mill was rated at 260 and 195 bhp, respectively, down from the 315 SAE gross of 1970.

That 195 net horsepower had to propel more than 3600 pounds of convertible, so the Buick GS 350 was hardly the stoplight terror its bigger 455 cube sibling was, but it's still a pretty grand sport.

This one was photographed with a Canon EOS-1D Mark III and EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens in May of 2023.

1969 Datsun Sports 1600

Produced from 1965 to 1970, the side marker lights and taller windscreen with top-mounted rearview mirror mark this particular Datsun 1600 (known in its home market as the "Nissan Fairlady 1600") as a post-MVSS car, built between 1968 and 1970. This particular one is a '69 according to the owner.

Under the hood is a 96 horsepower OHV 1.6L inline four that'll let it squeak past the 100mph mark on the top end.

Yes, seeing this parked up on the side of the street in SoBro will cause me to pull to the curb, un-ass the Bimmer, and stand in the middle of the road taking pictures like a moron. This car just makes my heart go pitter-pat. Look at the way it squats on those Minilite wheels! You just know this thing is far from stock under the sheet metal. Among other mods are dual Weber sidedraft carbs and 300ZX front brakes.

These photos were taken with a Nikon Coolpix P7000 in August of 2015.

1953 Packard Clipper Deluxe

When the "Clipper" name was brought back for the 1953 model year, it was originally intended to be peeled off as a separate brand, leaving Packards free to be marketed exclusively as competitors to ultra-luxury market rival Cadillac.

Packard dealers were worried, though, that the loss of the lower priced models from their showrooms would hurt sales, so it remained as the entry-level Packard line. "Entry-level", of course, was relative, since the Clipper was still priced and optioned to compete with upscale-ish nameplates like Buick, Olds, and Chrysler.

Available in regular or Deluxe trim levels, the Clipper sold well.

Both versions were powered by Packard's Thunderbolt engine, a flathead straight eight, with a 289 cid engine in the standard models and the one in the Deluxe displacing 327 cubic inches. Breathing through a 2-bbl Carter carb and featuring a then-racy 8.0:1 compression ratio, the larger Thunderbolt was already a little archaic in 1953, since Oldsmobile was selling their 88 with the overhead valve 303 cubic inch Rocket V-8 and Dodge was offering the Red Ram 241 cube hemi-head V-8 in their Coronet, both of which were priced lower than the Clipper.

The slightly undersquare 327 Thunderbolt was rated at 160 SAE gross horsepower, only twenty more than the much smaller, lighter Dodge Red Ram, with its more modern heads, intake, and oversquare dimensions, while the Olds Rocket put out 165 SAE gross in its 4bbl configuration.

The Dresden Gray 1953 Clipper Deluxe Touring Sedan in the photos wound up being the next-to-last year for the Thunderbolt, with Packard debuting their own OHV V-8 in 1955.

For the 1956 model year, Clipper did become its own brand, before being subsumed along with the rest of Packard into the Studebaker lineup.

The photos in this post were taken with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens in October of 2023.

1979 Alfa Romeo Sprint Veloce

In the '70s, Alfa Romeo started selling a fastback coupe version of its compact Alfetta sedan as the Alfetta GT. Its Giugiaro-penned lines were very swoopy, very disco.

For the '78 model year the North American version was renamed the Sprint Veloce. This China White 1979 Sprint Veloce would have had a 2.0L DOHC inline four up front driving the rear wheels through a 5-speed rear mounted transaxle. The EPA-compliant version was down a bit more than a dozen ponies from the Euro mill, being rated at 111 SAE net horsepower.

Between the rear-mounted transaxle, DeDion tube rear suspension, and inboard rear brakes, these Alfas had plenty of exotica to make sporty car fans of the era salivate.

The funky nose-up stance on this is a product of NHTSA regs. The front bumper and headlights needed to be a certain height, so Alfa of North America just cranked the front torsion bars to the max.

Most buyers headed to a suspension shop first thing from the dealership. This one, however, is bone stock and had been parked for thirty years before this summer.

These photos were taken in June of 2024 with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X & Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 lens.

Wheels of Time

I got my driver's license in 1985. My folks had been holding it back as an incentive for good grades, but I was an incorrigible slacker and daydreamer and the GPA stayed relentlessly mediocre. With my 18th birthday approaching (and with it, my ability to go get it on my own stick) they relented and granted permission before I could present them with a fait accompli.

I bring this up because the year 1985 was nineteen years after the last Studebaker, a 1966 Cruiser, rolled off their Canadian assembly line. Their South Bend, Indiana plant had been shuttered a few years earlier, in December of '63.

Growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, Studebakers were old cars. I don't really recollect seeing any around when I was in high school, but this was still the era when domestic cars had five-digit odometers and were considered a pretty well-knackered hooptie when one passed the 100k mile mark. This was also the days before galvanized body panels; it wasn't too bad down south, but north of the Ohio River, cars would often be rotting before your eyes before the note was paid off. (I vaguely remember family members exclaiming at visible rust on my uncle's fairly new mid-'70s Camaro during a holiday visit back north.)

Anyway, if a high school student in 2024 goes to get her driver's license, nineteen years in the past is 2005.

Oldsmobile produced its last vehicle in 2004.

Plymouth went under in 2001, and Eagle...the last non-Jeep vestige of AMC, by then just a division of Chrysler...in 1998.

To the Zoomer, the names "Oldsmobile" and "Plymouth" are as quaint as "Studebaker" and "Packard" are to Gen X, with the difference being that by the 1990s rust-proofing and cars that would run with some degree of reliability for a couple hundred thousand miles had become a thing. I don't recollect seeing Packards when I was a teenager, but you can't swing a jumper cable in a grocery store parking lot today without hitting a clapped-out Oldsmobile still limping along.

The Olds in the photo is an '01-'04 Silhouette in Light Sanddrift Metallic, a thoroughly forgettable badge-engineered GM minivan of the era. It was photographed in December of 2021 with a Canon EOS Rebel T3 & EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II zoom lens.

1964 Buick Electra 225

Did you know that the Buick Electra was named after somebody?

That's right, in 1959 Buick juggled the names of their models and the top-of-the-line Roadmaster became the Buick Electra 225.

The "Electra" name came from Electra Waggoner Biggs, Texas socialite, sculptor, and land baroness, who was the sister-in-law of then-GM president Harlowe H. Curtice. The "225" appellation was the overall length in inches of the big 1959 Buick, from gleaming chrome snout to rakishly finned tail.

The Arctic White 1964 Electra 225 hardtop coupe in these photos represents the final iteration of the second generation of the famed "Deuce and a Quarter", which spanned the '61-'64 model years.

The base motor was the 401 cubic inch Buick "Nailhead" V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor, rated at 325 SAE gross horsepower. (Buick’s overhead valve V-8 was dubbed the “Nailhead” by period hot-rodders because of the small valves relative to the long stems, reminiscent of nails.) The only transmission available for '64 was the 3-speed GM Turbo-Hydramatic 400, which Buick sold under the "Super Turbine" moniker.

Buyers could opt for the bigger version of the Nailhead, in 425 cubic inch guise. The 425 was offered in regular format, rated at 340 bhp with a 10.25:1 compression ratio and a single Carter 4bbl carb, or a "Power Pack" version with a pair of Carter 4bbls and dual exhaust, rated at 360 bhp.

The car in the picture doesn't have dual pipes, so it's either a 401 or the regular 425.

An interesting bit of trivia regarding the 401 cid Buick Nailhead: The United States Air Force used a special starter cart with a pair of the big V-8s to spin up the Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojets on the SR-71 Blackbird. (Later versions of the cart used a brace of Chevy 454's.)

This Electra was snapped with a Nikon D2X & 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II in May of 2023.

1961 Ford Falcon

Two major factors drove the big Detroit automakers into designing smaller cars around the end of the Fifties. The first was that smaller imports were starting to make a dent in the domestic market. As Detroit's rolling Wurlitzers had ballooned in size, not everyone wanted to navigate tight urban streets in a giant Chromasaurus.

Second, increasing economic prosperity during the postwar economic boom meant more and more families were adding a second car, and a small inexpensive new car could be an attractive alternative to an older used model.

Ford's small car offering, launched in 1959 for the 1960 model year was named the Falcon. It was a unibody design, which was still somewhat novel for Ford at the time, but otherwise conventional. Coil springs in the front and a live rear axle on leaf prings in the back, the Falcon had drum brakes all around. Power, such as it was, came from a 144 cubic inch 95hp Mileage Maker straight six under the hood driving the rear wheels through either a column-shifted 3-speed manual or a 2-speed Ford-O-Matic slushbox.

The Raven Black pillared sedan in the photo above is a 1961 model. The '61s added a new engine option to the lineup, a 170 cube version of the Mileage Maker rated at 101 SAE gross horsepower.

The photo was taken in July of 2019 using a Nikon D700 and a 24-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR Nikon zoom lens.

1983 Toyota Celica Supra

The car that eventually became known as just the Supra started out as a zhuzhed-up Celica with a snout stretched to accommodate an inline six. In Japan it was the Celica XX, but export models were sold as the Celica Supra.

For the 1982 model year a whole new generation of Celica Supra debuted, the A60. In the North American market these came in two flavors, the P-type and L-type, for Performance and Luxury. The fender flares, rear spoiler above the hatchback, and wide wheels indicate that this Dark Blue Metallic 1983 Celica Supra is a P-type.

For 1983, power would be provided by Toyota's 5M-GE 2.8 liter inline six. A DOHC motor with two valves per cylinder, for 1983 it was rated at 150 SAE net horsepower and 159 lb-ft of torque in U.S. trim.

While not threatening the Corvette on American streets, this generation of Supra was able to give the late Malaise Era Mustangs and Camaros a run for their money, at least in their lower-spec versions. Car and Driver got 0-60 times in the mid 8-second range and clocked a top speed of 115mph, which is pretty comparable to what my 1984 Pontiac Trans Am would do. Unsurprising since that Trans Am had the sluggish carbureted 150hp LG4 305 V-8 and weighed something like 300 pounds more than the Toyota.

The A60 was one of a number of Japanese performance cars in the early Eighties that announced that the era of cars from Japan being viewed as cut-rate econoboxes was well and truly over. Heck, my orthodontist at the time drove a black A60 Celica Supra.

These photos were taken in July of 2024 with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and a Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.

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1955 Plymouth Plaza

The Plaza was the de-contented base model of the 1950's Plymouth, below the midrange Savoy and the high-zoot Belvedere. Mostly intended for fleet purchases, although also purchased by frugal individuals, it had a very limited option list.

The 1955 model, like this Miami Blue 2-door club sedan... well, it may be a business coupe, since the only differences are the lack of a back seat and rear roll-down windows in the latter ...shows off the first year of Virgil Exner's "Forward Look" styling.

The factory motors would have been either the 230 cubic inch PowerFlow inline six rated at 117 SAE gross horsepower, or the optional 157 horsepower 241cid Hy-Fire V-8.

However, if the MoonEyes tank, leaf springs up front, enormous headers ahead of exhaust cutouts, and six-bolt rear wheels that indicate a truck rear end is under there aren't enough of a giveaway that there's something more serious going on under the hood, then the "Hemi" decal on the fender sure should.

Classic gasser, very period-correct drag car.

Photo snapped in June of '24 with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X & Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 lens.

1971 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray coupe

Here's a 1971 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray coupe in War Bonnet Yellow with a black interior. It's got the base L48 350cid small-block, which saw its compression lowered to 8.5:1 for the '71 model year so it could run on lower-octane fuel. Rated at 270 SAE gross horsepower, this one's putting its power to the rear wheels via a 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic slushbox.

Car and Driver tested a 1971 L48 Stingray coupe with the 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic and the standard 3.08:1 rear end and recorded a zero-to-sixty time of 7.1 seconds and a 15.6 quarter at 90 miles per hour. With air conditioning, power brakes, AM/FM radio, and power windows, the nicely-optioned base 'Vette stickered at $6,539.

1971 was the last year that GM used SAE gross horsepower numbers in their advertising. For '72 the L48 would be advertised with a 200hp SAE net output, despite being identical in terms of carb, cam, and compression.

These photos were shot in September of 2023, using a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM zoom lens.

1980 Chevrolet Chevette SL

It's something of an achievement in itself to drive a Chevette long enough that it becomes head-turningly cool, like this guy did. It definitely caught the attention of most folks eating lunch on the patio at Twenty Tap.

I hollered "Nice 'Vette! What year?" to the driver, who grinned and answered "1980!"

There was something about it that made my car nerd itch, though. The front end was a little... off. The bumpers seemed a little slim. And, wait, there were no side-marker lights up front.

The cue is in the vintage license plates...

Those are Sao Paolo license plates... from Brazil, because this is a 1980 Chevette SL from General Motors do Brasil.

The Brazilian model used a 1.4L (85 cubic inch) inline four just like the base domestic Chevette, but the Latin American version had a single overhead cam instead of pushrods. The Brazilian market version could be ordered in either ethanol (called "gasoól" in Brazil) or gasoline-burning versions, putting out 60 and 59 SAE net horsepower, respectively. With its huge sugarcane production, Brazil's been running its light vehicle fleet on biofuels longer than anyone.

This Chevy was photographed in April of 2022 using a Fujifilm X-T2 and an XF 16-80mm f/4 R WR OIS zoom lens.