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Posts tagged ‘Oldsmobile’

February 7th, 2013

…it’s Hélica! Between 1913 and 1925, Frenchman Marcel Leyat built some 30 propeller-driven automobiles. He called them “Hélica,” from the French for propeller, but they also acquired the nickname “plane without wings.” Through this weekend, six examples are on display at Rétromobile, Europe’s premier old car event, at Paris Expo at the Porte de Versailles.….
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October 11th, 2012

Three years ago I devoted a post to buying a car at Hershey for less than $3,000. I found the pickings were pretty slim, and that the only one I’d have been able to drive home was a Studebaker Lark for which the owner was asking $3,800. Yesterday in 2012’s Car Corral, however, I was….
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July 25th, 2011

Time was when any town worth its salt had a dirt track race course. Aspiring young drivers, especially those who would never become Ralph dePalma or Russ Snowberger, could buy a junkyard special, probably a Ford or Chevy coupe, weld in a roll cage and go Saturday night racing, with and against their friends. Jalopy….
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January 12th, 2011

October 3, 1963, is a red letter day for many car enthusiasts, but few of them know about it. It can be considered the birth date of the Pontiac GTO, as far as the public is concerned, but because the GTO was a stealth project its actual “birth” came unheralded on new-car-introduction day, a check-box….
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January 20th, 2010

I’ve heard it said that in the upper reaches of collector car circles it’s considered coarse and crass to refer to a Rolls-Royce as a “Roller,” although “Rolls” is generally acceptable. The same goes for Hispano-Suiza: “Hispano,” certainly, but never “Hisso.” Why, then, does everyone refer to a Duesenberg as a “Duesie”? In fact, the….
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December 23rd, 2009

I don’t expect Father Christmas or anyone else to bring me a new car this season, much as I would welcome it. But sixty years ago today something like that happened to my family, although it was the local dealer, not Santa, who delivered a new Mercury. The 1949 Mercury was “All New” – though….
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Serendipity: n. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
“They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
Horace Walpole, The Three Princes of Serendip
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