1934-1937 Chrysler Airflow

Source: Chrysler



Introduced in the depths of the Great Depression, the Chrysler Airflow was one of the most advanced cars in the world — and a complete flop. At a time when Ford and General Motors were still using wood construction in their cars, the all-steel Airflow looked like it came from another planet.

It was the first mass-market American production car to be streamlined for aerodynamics, its suspension was lower and far more advanced than anything offered by Ford and GM, and its near 50-50 weight distribution gave it incredible handling for its era.

Unfortunately, a high price and polarizing looks made the Airflow a disastrous flop for the brand, and the car was discontinued in 1937. Despite never being as popular (or gaining widespread collector status) as Fords and Chevrolets from the 1930s, the Airflow is now respected as a landmark of automotive engineering, and because of its rarity, well-

On top of being fascinating cars, each of these models poses a unique “what if?” question. What if the Airflow instantly revolutionized automotive design? What if the G8 EXP saved Pontiac? We’ll never know the answers to these questions, but they make great debate fodder for gearheads.

Not every great car gets the respect its due, and for every legend, there is a capable and willing contender still trying to overtake it.

 

[h=1]Why the Jaguar XKSS Deserved a Second Chance[/h]

• James Derek Sapienza

1957 Jaguar XKSS | Jaguar



It isn’t every day that you get a second chance, and it’s even rarer that it comes 60 years after the fact. On February 12, 1957, a devastating fire broke out at Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant, destroying dozens of new cars. Among those were nine of its newest sports model, the XKSS, along with all of its tooling. As a result, just 16 made it to customers, and in these past 60 years, the car has gone on to become one of the most sought after classics ever built, and an important part of Jaguar’s history. Now, Jaguar is finishing what it started, and the results are nothing short of spectacular.


There’s a certain inevitability to history that obscures just how strange things can turn out; this rings especially true for the XKSS. From 1954 to 1957, the Jaguar D-Type was one of the most dominant racing cars in the world. Blending design and technology from the aerospace industry with one of the finest engineering teams in Europe, the lightweight D-Type won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1955, ’56, and ’57. Sharing its XK engine and then-radical disc brakes with the ’51-’53 C-Type, the program abruptly came to a halt when Jaguar brass announced that the company would be retiring from endurance racing before 1958. After 71 cars (18 factory works cars, 53 customer cars) had been built, the company had a problem: It had too many leftover parts. And in an era when a car was largely forgotten once the last one rolled out of the factory, the D-Type was old news, and Jaguar needed to figure out what to do with them.
1956 Jaguar D-Type | Jaguar



The solution was a D-Type tuned for the streets, with designer Malcolm Sayer tapped to turn his endurance racer into a road car. Sayer was an ex-engineer at Bristol Aerospace Company who worked on plane designs during World War II. He joined Jaguar to work on the XK120-based C-Type, but by the time a replacement was needed, Sayer designed something completely radical. It shared the XK straight-six and disc brakes with the outgoing racer, but almost everything else was new. The D-Type had an aluminum-intensive construction and monocoque body. In 1955, it benefited from a longer, more aerodynamic hood, and changes made to the engine from year-to-year kept it competitive. With enough parts left to build 25 cars, the company began converting its remaining D-Types to road cars.
1957 Jaguar XKSS | Jaguar



Sayer and his team added a wraparound windshield, wipers, and delicate chrome frame to replace the cut-down plexiglass screen. A bulbous folding top and side screens were thrown in for inclement weather too. Since the fuel bladder was kept in the trunk, the driver’s side headrest and faring were ditched and a luggage rack was mounted behind the rear seats. The front end got chrome rings around the headlights, small turn signals, and simple quarter bumpers. A second seat and door were added for a passenger, and the interior was made to be a little more civilized. In all, the modifications only added around 100 pounds to the D-Type’s fighting weight.


Under the long hood was a 3.4 liter straight-six with three Weber carburetors, putting out 250 horsepower and 242 pound-feet of torque — a serious amount of power for a 2,000 pound car. Jaguar wanted to move the cars in a big way too: Depending on sources, it had plans to build 100 to 300 cars. And at $7,000 (around $60K today), it was about as expensive as a Cadillac, but more than $3,000 cheaper than a competition-spec D-Type.
1957 Jaguar XKSS | Jaguar



The XKSS debuted on January 21, 1957 to a positive response from the automotive press. Road and Track clocked its zero to 60 time at a seriously quick 5.2 seconds. It ran the quarter mile in 14.1 at over 100 miles per hour, and had a top speed of 144. Less than a month later, XKSS production would end for good.


The fire started in a mechanic’s bay, but quickly spread along the assembly line and eventually ended up engulfing a mass of cars that were being prepped for shipping. When production was restarted just three weeks later, the XKSS was history. Despite its limited appeal and tragic ending, the car caught on with well-heeled enthusiasts, and its relative scarcity and racing pedigree quickly made the car a hot commodity.


Steve McQueen bought one from a friend in 1958. Dubbed the “Green Rat,” he drove the car on the street well into the mid-’60s, before making the leap to a Ferrari Lusso. He sold it to Hurrah’s in 1968 (then the world’s largest car collection), but had a change of heart, and bought it back in the late ’70s.

Even without the cult of McQueen, the XKSS legacy has loomed large, prized as the bridge between the D- and E-Type Jaguars, for their gorgeous, sinewy looks, and incredible (if sometimes unwieldy) performance. Today, the surviving cars are well accounted for, and they rarely change hands publicly.

2017 Jaguar XKSS | Jaguar



This year, an ex-works Jaguar D-Type sold for $21.78 million, becoming the most expensive British car ever sold at auction. Analysts expect that if McQueen’s XKSS ever sold (which isn’t likely), it could fetch upwards of $30 million. Seeing the reverence (and demand) for the car, Jaguar Land Rover’s new Jaguar Classic department began planning to use the serial numbers of the destroyed XKSSs to build nine exact replicas.

A full 60 years later, these cars are almost indistinguishable from the originals, right down to the size of the rivets and the decals on the Dunlop pressed-steel wheels. All nine were snapped up months before they were built, and reportedly at the bargain price of $1.5 million apiece.


The XKSS has a pretty big place in automotive history for a car that was officially in production for less than a month. But its combination of racing pedigree and timeless looks has made it one of the most lust-worthy cars ever built, and deservedly so. The nine 2017 models may be the only ones with real ’50s-era serial numbers, but we wouldn’t complain if Jaguar decided to build a few more. We’re sure we could scrape up enough buyers to fill that rumored 300 car production run.

 

[h=2]Nash[/h] 1950 Nash Rambler convertible | Micah Wright/Autos Cheat Sheet

Nash is little known outside collector circles today, but from 1916 to 1957, it was one of the most innovative automakers in the world. In 1939, it introduced the “Weather Eye,” a heating and ventilation system that became the template for every modern HVAC system since (Weather Eye remained in production into the 1980s). In 1941, it introduced the 600, the first unibody model built in America. Today, virtually every car uses the same construction methods. In 1950, it introduced the Rambler, the first American-built car sold as a compact. It was also offered seat belts in its cars that year, another first. And it launched the Nash-Healey in 1951, a Pininfarina-designed sports car that predated the Corvette by two years.
But in 1954, the Kenosha, Wisconsin-based automaker merged with Hudson to form American Motors Corporation, becoming America’s fourth-largest automaker. By 1957, all Nash models were renamed Ramblers. In 1988, AMC disappeared after it was bought by Chrysler.

 

[h=2]1958-1960 Edsel[/h] 1958 Edsel | M. McKeown/Express/Getty Images



In 1956, Ford became a publicly traded company, taking on a board of directors whose last names weren’t Ford. One of its first decisions was that the company wasn’t big enough; While Chrysler had DeSoto and GM had Oldsmobile and Buick to slot below their flagship brands, they believed Ford’s Lincoln brand was sliding downmarket. So in order to prop Lincoln up, it proposed a new brand to slot above mid-level Mercury. After millions of dollars in development and market research, it bought a prime time slot on CBS and declared September 4, 1957 “E Day.”







That night, amid performances by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Bob Hope and Rosemary Clooney on The Edsel Show, Ford debuted its new brand. The TV show won an Emmy. The Edsel became shorthand for failure. By the time Edsel got the axe 25 months later, it had sold less than 120,000 cars, and had cost the company $350 million, or roughly $2.8 billion today.

 

GM Special Vehicles Collection with Dennis Gage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4vUjWXvUvg

MyClassicCarTV
Published on Aug 22, 2016

1:30 - 2002 Sunfire 2:05 - Cheyenne Pickup Truck 2:44 - Buick Bengal 3:25 - GM Historics 3:35 - 1905 Buick Model C 3:49 - 1939 Buick Roadmaster 4:10 - 1932 Oldsmobile Sport Coupe 6:34 - 1936 Suburban Carry All 8:34 - 1953 Buick Skylark Anniversary Convertible 13:36 - GM Production Concepts 13:54 - 1992 Chevy Impala SS 14:25 - Camaro Z28 Drag Car 14:46 - Chevy Highlander 15:15 - Chevy Silverado SST 17:46 - Oldsmobile Outrage 19:46 - Corvette Tiger Shark 24:49 - GM Design Concepts 24:50 - 1954 Firebird I 25:22 - 1954 Buick Wildcat II 25:50 - 1956 Centurion 26:07 - 1956 Firebird II 26:41 - 1959 Cadillac Cyclone 27:12 - 1973 Aero Vette 27:37 - 1990 Corvette Cerv III 27:54 - 2002 Autonomy 28:12 - 1951 Buick LeSabre 31:33 - Firebird III 35:31 - Buick Lacrosse 37:51

 

My Classic Car Season 11 Episode 6 - Gene Winfield's Legendary Customs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVWt5SvKy8

From the "My Classic Car" archives, travel with Dennis Gage to Mojave, California to meet legendary racer and custom car builder Gene Winfield.

 

Michael Adams


When I was about 14 years old, a few decades back, my older sister and her family lived in Modesto, CA. Her husband was going to college to be a phys-ed teacher (and cheating on my sister at the same, as I would learn later). He took me after his classes one day to see Gene Winfield’s shop in Modesto, which I think is where he got started.

I think the building had a custom Mercury in the front window and he just walked in to the shop area, and started looking at the stuff. Turns out, he hadn’t asked anyone if he could visit with a teenage relative but he did know the brother of a guy in school. We stayed maybe 20 minutes and there really wasn’t lots to see. Winfield wasn’t there and no one seemed to care that we were.

I didn’t see much that I remember except for the Mercury and I remember that the next month or so, I saw a new issue of Rod & Custom Magazine at the store and it had that car on the cover. I talked my mom into buying it for me, maybe 25Cents at that time. I’ve always been interested in his work.

 

[h=1]142 Weird Cars You Won’t Believe Exist! 2018 - Amazing Unique Car Design Part.81[/h]87,468 views
316 64 Share
Best Car & Top 10 Compilation
Published on Apr 9, 2018
142 Weird Cars You Won’t Believe Exist! 2018 - Amazing Unique Car Design Part.81 This video is a photo slide about weird car .PHOTO IS FROM INTERNET.If you are an owner of photo please contact me for tag you or if you wish to delete.
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[h=1]Insane Rat Rods - Craziest Rat Rod Cars & Trucks[/h]2,142,089 views
17K 1.4K Share
DIY Garage
Published on Apr 27, 2018
In this video you will see some crazy and badass rat rods.
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Rare car threads are scattered over Tampa Racing.

I'm going to start looking and see if I can bring them under one thread.