CarPort

A few years ago at Beaulieu Autojumble, I bought some interesting photos. Filed in a folder labeled “Checker” and stamped on the back as Ghia publicity pix, they showed four views of a very un-Checkerlike car. There was no nameplate visible, but a small checkered emblem on the grille exhibited a small section of the….
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There’s a new Taurus at your local Ford store. You may have noticed, however, that it’s pretty much the same as the car Formerly Known as Five Hundred. Depending on whom you believe, the new Taurus has been improved in 300 or 500 ways from the old Five Hundred, itself based on the architecture of….
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We go to Hershey in search of treasures, and some of us find them. This year, Joris, popular proprietor of PreWarCar.com, the intriguing website dedicated to pre-1940 cars and their knowledge, found a treasure of his own: a 1918 Canadian-built Model T roadster. Complete and running, albeit with burlap upholstery, Joris’s new car will make….
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The years 1963 to ’68 are what I call my “sports car period.” That interval of youth might, for reasons I’m about to impart, also be called the “Spridget years.” During the winter of 1964-65, my younger sister bought a well-used Austin-Healey Sprite. One of first to reach our shores in 1959, the Sprite had….
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Today we instinctively think “green” at the words “car with a conscience,” something like a Toyota Prius hybrid or one of GM’s much-ballyhooed Flex Fuel vehicles. In 1911, the car with a conscience was the Oakland, a thoroughly conventional four-cylinder gasoline car, part of Billy Durant’s new General Motors empire. Oakland explained to its employees….
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