CarPort

Cyclecars were all the rage in 1914. It started in France with the Bedélia and spread to Britain where the GN became popular on the road and on the race track. They were cheap to buy and inexpensive to operate, so soon the fad spread to the United States. Soon such gangly creatures as the….
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Ed Cole had a different idea. While competitors Ford and Chrysler were developing conventional compact cars in the late 1950s, Chevrolet general manager Cole instead channeled from Volkswagen. Instead of a front-engine, rear-drive water-cooled car, Chevrolet would build a rear-engine air-cooled design, but in keeping with American mores it would have six cylinders, not four.….
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If you’ve read my bio page you know I’m a UConn alum, but I’m not much of a sports fan so, as much as I’m pleased that my alma mater boasts championship teams, this item is not about basketball. The Husky, as people my age know, was a tremendously useful Hillman station wagon. In our….
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When I was growing up, every Labor Day we’d attend the Goshen Fair, the nearest thing to a county fair in our part of Connecticut. Among the cows and sheep, not far from the midway of games and rides and exhibits of prize vegetables were a number of tractor dealers from whom I’d always collect….
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Dirk Burrowes has been involved with Rovers for some 30 years, and he has about that many cars to show for it. Since 2003, he’s been seriously into collecting and restoring, and reaching out to other enthusiasts of the the “Poor Man’s Rolls” in order to share knowledge and build camaraderie. Each year he holds….
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The French have a name for it: concours d’elegance. Loosely translated it means beauty contest, a competition of elegance. This contrasts with most old car shows,which are concours e’tat, contests of condition or state. In true concours d’elegance judging, cars are judged on their overall appearance, condition being one of several contributing factors. And so….
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General Motors declared bankruptcy this week, and with the filing came news of all the franchise terminations. This was the other shoe dropping, for we’d already seen the list of ex-Chrysler dealers. As I expected, our closest Chrysler-Jeep store, a fairly small operation, was on the hit list – it wasn’t all that long ago….
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At first glance you might think this is a Morgan Plus Four. The resemblance is such that you may be forgiven for doing so, but this is about as unMorgan a car as you could imagine. A look at the front reveals no familiar cowled radiator grille. A closer look reveals a differential lurking behind….
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We’ve posted at the CarPort before about Packard’s postwar price point problem (yoiks, sorry for the aggravated alliteration). Indeed, the Clipper, which competed with the Buick Super, might have fared better if further differentiated from the big Packards, but the upper end of the range had identity problems of its own. In the “Pregnant Elephant”….
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Donald Healey’s career was blessed with a number of fortuitous meetings. His shipboard encounter with George Mason we’ve covered before. That led to the Nash-Healey. We also devoted a CarPort to his collaboration with Colin Chapman on the Jensen-Healey. More successful than either of those meetings was his conversation with Austin’s chairman Leonard Lord at….
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