CarPort

School opened in our town today. Twenty-four years ago, my son Nick set off for his first day of school. After a hearty breakfast, seen off by his mother and younger sister, he boarded Bus 19, a big yellow International. I remember my first school bus, too. As it happened, it was a Plymouth station….
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“Jaguar” means sports cars to most people my age (and for the moment let’s imagine the British pronunciation – JAG-you-ur, three syllables, not JAG-wahr as most Yanks say it). The XK-120 gave great speed (120 mph), thanks to an advanced twin-overhead-cam six-cylinder engine, at a bargain price. The voluptuous E-Type (XK-E in America) aroused the….
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Wayne Graefen is the CarPort’s Texas ranger. He roams the range in search of interesting automobiles, and this time he’s come up with a 1960 Mercury Park Lane Crusier hardtop coupe. It is, says Wayne, “one of those ’60 Ford products that were federally illegal to be on the highway due to width.” Indeed, the….
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It has become the conventional wisdom that Henry J. Kaiser, despite his success with concrete, shipbuilding and healthcare, was a failed automaker. Even with the help of industry veteran Joseph Frazer, formerly with Willys and Graham-Paige, Kaiser was unable to sustain what author Richard Langworth has called the “last onslaught on Detroit.” The onslaught, if….
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Chances are, if you’re of certain age you associate the name “White” with trucks. For over seven decades, the White Motor Company built commercial vehicles, with very few exceptions. In the beginning, however, White vehicles were passenger cars. In 1900, Rollin, Walter and Windsor White began building steam cars in their father’s Cleveland sewing machine….
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