The greatest wrong car at the wrong time

E FOR EXPERIMENTAL, EDSEL, AND EXTINCT

Big thanks to Neen from the Empire Region who sent these lovely snaps in of a landmark footnote brightening up a driveway in Glens Falls, NY!
There are a few automobiles in history that have a reputation that transcends reality. Not every Ford Pinto is going to explode if hit in the rear. Not every Rolls Royce is a great car (I'm looking at you, Carmague). The hardest sell to the general public will be this statement: The Edsel is not and never was a bad car!

This is a 1958 Edsel Pacer in two-tone Snow White over Spruce Green Poly. This beast is a Greatest Hits of late '50s styling; flashy chrome, tall and wide shape, and Jet Age features like the head and tail lights jutting out in their own enclosures. Still there is one big, rounded design elephant in the room that the public couldn't see past. 

That wide open Horse Collar center grill looks like a jet engine intake to me, and I'm sure that was the intention of the lead designers. I don't know if it was too advanced or too ugly, but once an auto journalist proclaimed that it looked "like an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon", that's all the public could see.

Horse collar was one commonly used term, toilet seat was another. Regardless this center grill opening proved too daring for 1958. The following year would see this same basic look toned way down. The 1959 Edsel had no space between the three grill components and the center collar was much smaller. The hood ornament is an E suspended in glass which is a neat look.
*E was the given name for this ride while it was in development, standing for Experimental. After a committee within Ford tossed around dozens of potential names they chose Edsel. The name proved too hard to place for the public, one of the many missteps in this sad story.

The dimensions are pure Ford of this era. This one is as minty fresh as can be! The fit and finish where the grill and headlight surrounds meet the body is flawless. That chrome spear running along the fender is laser straight. Everything about this Edsel says "show winner".

The shape of the vent window shows just how far the wrap-around windshield goes. That green upholstery is perfect and correct.
The Edsel was the most expensive car to build up to that point at 250 million dollars just in research and design. This made it all the more tragic once it was deemed a flop after just 2 years (not to mention it takes its name from Edsel Ford; son of the company founder Henry Ford.

All that design money went into myriad innovations, some of them downright bonkers. For instance take a look at the center of the steering wheel. Where 99% of auto makers put the horn the '58 Edsel had their Teletouch system; a push button automatic transmission. That's all fine and good when operating under normal conditions, but when you truly need the horn you're instead slamming your palm into a cluster of buttons, throwing the car out of gear in the process! As you might imagine this lasted only 1 year before switching to a traditional column shifter.

Another cool feature was the speedometer which is barely visible in the pic above. Through the vent window there is a round dial identical to the one on the other side of the wheel. Above that dial you can just about see what looks to be a glass dome laying flat with a chrome band along the bottom. Within that dome is a round speedometer where the numbers are written around the angled edge. The inner dome would circle around while the needle was stationary. 

From this angle all we see is a beautiful 1950s sedan with its two-tone cove and rear panel.

The wheel wells lean forward giving the impression of movement. The trunk is gargantuan!

Unfortunately the Edsel was such a horrific disaster that its name became synonymous with failure. Not only did it look odd, but it was released into the now-forgotten mini recession of 1958. They never had their own dedicated factory, with Edsel being built in Ford and Mercury plants, usually at the same time. Imagine assembling 30 Mercurys in a row and then 3 Edsels come along on the assembly line! As a worker you have to grab the necessary tools for the Edsel out of another bin, perform your tasks, and then switch back to your usual Mercury gear. As a result there was great variation in build quality.
I had an Edsel once. When I was home from college I passed by a 1959 Edsel Ranger 2 door with $450 written on the windshield. Being a '59 it wasn't quite as odd as the '58 but it still captured everyones imagination who saw it. Registering it involved forging the signature of a man who'd been dead over 10 years as it had been sold several times but never registered after the 1st owner. My ownership of this heavily neglected beast was brief but entertaining. One day while driving I realized there was a mini pedal under the dash to the right of the accelerator. I stepped on it and the windshield wipers moved once! A great and forgotten feature from a maligned and wrongly accused car.

Freak show in the Rockaways

FREAK SHOW IN THE ROCKAWAYS

I was making my way to the beach at Fort Tilden in the Rockaways on a brutally hot day when I happened upon a minuscule car show!

It was a motley lineup to be sure. I only snapped a few pics due to it being a humid 92+ degrees and the beach a few hundred yards away.
On the end of this brace of classics we have a 1961 Chevrolet Impala Bubble Coupe in Twilight Turquoise.
One step closer is a 1958 Ford Ranchero* done up in the sort of Kool Kustom So Cal Hot Rod pinstriping action that made Von Dutch famous. The mini whitewalls and vintage mag rims are a nice touch too.
*The El Camino is by far the most famous car/truck combo but the Ranchero actually beat it to the marketplace by 2 years. Hudson had a truck with the front of a sedan back in the late '30s-'40s but it had a separate bed unlike the integrated Ford & Chevy.

And then there's THIS!
I'm guessing this is a 1928-1931 Ford Model A Club Wagon Woody with a homemade replacement body from the cab back. In addition they mounted the headlights onto what seems to be correct fenders (the headlights would be mounted on a metal bar spanning the space between the fenders in front of the radiator). 

Now that I'm really looking at it it also seems to be widened so perhaps it's all mounted on a more modern chassis? Who knows? I like it in its weird half-finished look. The running boards are just too wide as are the rear fenders for it to be from the era of the front clip. Yes those are tiki torches mounted to the rear corners folks! Fire up some Martin Denny and bug out!

I wanted to drive this rig away with the hat I'd borrowed.

On the other side we have a 1950 Ford Tudor Bullet Nose that calls itself The Jade Grenade. I've always like the center bullet on the grills of the '49 and '50 Fords. The Tudor literally stands for two door (there was a Fordor too). For whatever reason they have rear quarter windows that make them look like 4 door sedans. The next car is much more interesting as far as I'm concerned:

This ferocious beast is a 1970 Buick Electra 225 convertible in rattle can Black. The chrome front bumper is either a primed replacement or the owner just wanted less brightness in the world.

The black front seats and chili pepper hanging from the mirror let everyone know that this ride is no longer the plaything of the gentry, but rather a rough and tumble beach cruiser hell bent on ruining reputations. I would love to fire up the mighty 455 that lies under the hood of this tank and roll through the city at night.
Well there we have it; a slapdash gathering of classics in a hot beach parking lot. Maybe if this was a blog named something like "honoring the timeless classics" (The tag line of Dennis Gage in My Classic Car) I'd feature some of those flashier paint jobs you might've noticed in the lineup. However this is NYCHoopties people so the tattered, battered, duct tape adorned, and spray painted get preferential treatment here. Hope you enjoyed this interlude, now get to the beach stat!

ALFA ROMEO TIPO 102 - testarossa bella!

ALFA ROMEO TIPO 102 - testarossa bella!

Robin of Omaha was recently walking the increasingly pleasant streets of Gowanus when he encountered one of the most beautiful cars ever produced. Just look at this sexy ride:

Dayum! This is a 1959 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider in Alfa Red. The company referred to this car as the Tipo 102 (Tipo meaning Type). This is just an insanely good looking car on par with the 007 Aston Martin DB5 in my opinion.

That shield shaped center grill is now as iconic to the brand as the kidney grill is to BMW. Alfa Romeo started producing cars in 1910 but it wasn't until 1939 that the shield debuted. This entire front end is fantastic with it's side grills inset into openings that protrude slightly. The turn signal/running lights are more complicated than first glance might suggest. That double snorkel hood feeds air to a 1,975cc inline 4 cylinder. Top speed was 110mph in stock form but Alfas are really race cars waiting to be tuned up.

This car was only built from 1958-1961 and less than 3,500 total were produced. It's always interesting how certain classic cars end up where they do. There's obviously a concentration of wealth in NYC but why should this ride be parked between 3rd Ave and the Gowanus Canal? The "Oldest Italian Restaurant in Brooklyn" is on this block (their claim) so maybe it has something to do with that?
There ought to be a soft convertible top under that boot. Most seem to have a removable hardtop as well that looks great when installed. This is a pure Grand Tourer as it's a 2 seater.

From the rear quarter angle this has more than a passing resemblance to the Ferrari GT California made famous in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Italian cars tend to be beautiful more often than not (especially in this era) and most convertibles were handbill by separate coachworks. This car was bodied by either Bertone or Touring. Bertone is also responsible for legendary models from Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati so we're talking first class all the way.
Take a good look at those legit and mint spoke wheels with knock off spinners.

The Giulietta was Alfa Romeo's more common and popular car in the late '50s. It was available in both hardtop and Spider versions but it was smaller than the 2000. This ride sports unibody construction which makes for a combination of rigidity and relatively light weight.
*Dig the taillights with their graduated step.

As befitting a classic Tourer the interior is perfect. The dash has a straightforward cluster of big gauges flanked by old school toggle switches. An AM radio even roosts below the dash mounted rearview mirror! The window crank is plainly visible but the door handle placement is bizarre; all the way up at the front of the door panel. I guess you have to pull the handle and kind of use your elbow to open the door from within?

Since it is so rare I could only find one listing for a '59 2000 and the European auction estimate was €90,000 - €110,000 ($102,816 - $125,664). If I had a car this nice I wouldn't park it on a street with so much loose gravel and dirt but then again I might as well decide on a color for my personal plane.
This is far and away one of the most attractive rides that's ever graced the NYCHoopties blog. In the realm of hand built exotic classics the price is very fair (considering that similar Ferraris are well into the millions these days). If I ever see the owner I will do my damnedest to score a ride in it at least once. Bellissimo!   

Coulda been a Rebel!

COULDA BEEN A REBEL!

Contributor Max encountered a film shoot on the island of Manhattan recently. Waiting for its cue was this sweet little jukebox:

Every car from the '50s should be a shade of aqua!
This is a 1957 Rambler De Luxe 6 in Bermuda Green. This was the lowest trim level, most economical car Rambler produced in '57. In fact the Rambler 6 boasted the highest MPG of any domestic car that year.
*In New York State you can register your classic ride with a matching set of license plates as long as they're from the same year as the car. Since the ride is wearing 1958 plates it must not have been titled until the turn of the calendar year. This is definitely a '57 as opposed to '58 though as the newer cars had quad headlights. 

This car is in perfect shape! Every inch looks like it just drove off the dealership floor. Those are the poverty caps you got if you went for the cheapest car they make.

The huge wraparound back window made visibility some of the best in the business. Dig that R gas cap! Boo hiss on the 1980s-era rear deck speakers.

This car was smartly designed in that it is a unibody. Unlike a traditional body on frame the unibody incorporates the metal shell into its structural makeup. The result is increased rigidity and (they claim) safety. Side impact crashes were helped by the door pillar being a part of the overall frame. The rocker panels were referred as Battleship Box Girders! Sounds safe anyways.

Everyone's always talking about the '57 Chevy but there was a hardtop version of this exact ride called the Rebel that was the fastest American production car that year! The Rebel was a lightweight 6 pillarless body outfitted with a 327 V8. Every one of them had a gold accented side trim piece and metallic paint. Being a big block in a mid size body meant that the Rebel makes a good claim to be the very first muscle car (I know you Buick Skylark and Olds 88 fans will say different but those were huge cars).
I love the unique frumpiness of the '50s Ramblers. To have a single car that claims highest gas mileage and top speed for the year depending on the engine alone is remarkable. The fact that there are no fins and barely any chrome made this perhaps the most subtle car for 1957 as well. To have a base model grocery getter in such spectacular shape after 60 years is just insane. Hats off Rambler!

Love letter to a neighborhood, bar, & truck

LOVE LETTER TO A NEIGHBORHOOD, BAR, & TRUCK

There are businesses around town that have a vehicle mascot parked out in front for eternity. The Caliente Cab Company in the West Village has a 1950 Studebaker Champion just like Fozzy drove in The Muppet Movie (it's by FAR the best part of the C.C.C.). The Green Space in Gowanus has a 1928 Ford pickup truck roosting out front. Today I'm featuring a vehicle iconic to weary Brooklynites looking for the Greatest Bar on Earth:

For some of you this is giving you a hangover just looking at it. For others it's making you feel like it's been too long since you've meandered out to this almost-inaccessible corner of Brooklyn. Regardless this is a 1953 Willy's 475 truck in Willow Green. It is permanently parked in front of Sunny's Bar in Red Hook.
In 1953 the number of horizontal bars on the grill went from 5 to 3 (this one is missing the lower bar). That combined with the smaller rear window on this truck pinpoints it as a '53 as 1954 would introduce a window that covered the entire rear of the cab.

If you don't know now you know; this is the Greatest Bar on Earth (or at least has a very strong contender). In the modern Brooklyn everybody knows and complains about this stalwart has soldiered on against true adversity. In 2012 Hurricane Sandy flooded the entire neighborhood with Sunny's having water almost up to the ceiling. It was closed for 8 months and it took volunteers and a benefit concert to reopen it. In 2016 the beloved owner Sunny Balzano passed away at age 81. After that most of the 18 (!) related owners wanted to sell the bar but it seems that his widow has won a chance to buy everybody out. Come and visit. Tip your bartender.

Back to the rig at hand; check this beast out! There's the speedometer but does it have a lens of even a needle? Nah! There's an extremely rare factory radio (to the left of the steering wheel no less). Before you ask if it works look at that exposed $3 speaker laying on the floor! The seat looks surprisingly decent and must have been redone at some point. For all I know this was parked in 8 feet of ocean water back in '12.

This is parked at the edge of the world a solid 25 minute walk from the closest subway station. the cobblestones are most likely here to stay.

Like the neighborhood around it this truck has seen some shit! This fender is doing its best to hold on but the rocker panel disappeared long ago. One look at that ancient wheel with the sort of tire you can't even buy anymore tells you everything you need to know.

The rear fender and lower bed are holding up remarkably well. This is my favorite spare tire placement for trucks. Those leaf springs are ready for hard work; this little truck was rated as a 1 ton when new.

I'm going to say that those taillights are from a mid '70s to early '80s Chevrolet. Rear bumpers were optional when this rig was built.

This is the classic Willys logo. Willys was started in 1908 and has been folded into and taken over a dizzying amount of other companies, currently a part of the greater Fiat-Chrysler corporation. Every body panel on this ride is simple stamped steel like this.

You can see the Freedom Tower in the distance which gives you a sense of this location. At one point this area of Red Hook was one of the busiest ports in the world. Originally called Roode Hoek in the 1600s by the Dutch, the name means "point" or promontory. There was a Revolutionary War fort here known as Fort Defiance which is memorialized today by a restaurant/bar of the same name. By 1990 Life Magazine called this one of the worst neighborhoods in the country and the Crack Capital of America. A lot has changed since! For those of you who constantly bemoan the loss of "old New York" I point out the fact that the principal of the local school was killed in 1992 when he got caught in a drug war crossfire. Change isn't all bad.

Back to this sweet rig. It seems to be always filled with fresh garbage so I'm assuming the sanitation guys pull bags directly from the bed. That little reflector is a sweet notion as I think this fender has been facing the building protected by benches for decades.

As I mentioned briefly the year after this brought a rear window that was expanded almost down to the top of the bed.

From this angle you can clearly see the handsome lines of this ride.

The split windshield lasted until 1959 when a single pane was used on a special model. In 1960 they started switching all Willys trucks over to the non-split windshield but the date isn't exact. They just kept building the splits until old parts ran out so 1960 models can be either way.

Well that's where I'll leave this beast with its homemade wooden bumper and incredible life story. I have a feeling that even if this doesn't move for the next 20 years there will always be a fresh inspection sticker in the window. I support that 100%. I also think that if a rookie cop wrote a parking ticket for this rig his hand would burst into flames.
I realize this was a long-winded post more about the neighborhood than this actual vehicle but to me the two are inseparable. Some folks who are so painfully cool that they're really no fun to hang out with might say things like "Don't tell everybody about this cool spot or it will get ruined!", but to them I say this; Sunny's has been here for just shy of 100 years. The world is unrecognizable now from when these buildings were built in the 1850s. I might be a romantic but I think this little corner operates outside of the normal constraints of gentrification. Hopefully anyway!

"AS ALWAYS - THE STANDARD OF THE WORLD!"

"AS ALWAYS - THE STANDARD OF THE WORLD!"

I was on a brief field trip to Connecticut when this ocean liner presented itself:

This is a 1953 Cadillac Series 62 sedan in (mostly) Black. Normally I would write that hood off as primer but I think it's the handsome factory color Court Gray. This car is basically a building.
I ran across the original salesman's booklet that Cadillac gave to their dealers so this post will be sprinkled with quotation marks. They copy was great!

Try to let it sink in just how much metal and chrome we're talking about here. The bumper is absolutely monumental! That V on the hood was originally gold in color. Those two chrome rockets jutting out of the sides are Dagmars named after a voluptuous actress of the same name who was basically a blonde Jessica Rabbit. Here she is singing on the Frank Sinatra show back in 1951. I always thought they looked a bit like cigars on the side of some old time gangsters snarl. 

There are styling cues here that will show up on other GM vehicles in the coming years. In particular this lidded headlights would be mimicked somewhat on the 1955-1958 Chevrolet Bel-Aire/Impala series. The Dagmars would appear in more modest form on the '57 Chevy.
What looks like turn signals are actually the newly optional fog lights bragged about in their sales brochure of the day. If the option wasn't chosen there would be a metal filler plate in that space with a small round turn signal in the center.

This stylized hood ornament is simply known as The Goddess.

When this beast was built it was the mountaintop for styling and engineering in a luxury car. Packard was still around and producing high end rides as well but there lack of innovation was starting to show. Chrysler was making Imperials and they were great cars but not produced on the same scale as Cadillac. If you were someone important or of serious means it was either a Caddy or a Rolls Royce.

The interior is nicely laid out and relatively free of flash for '53. A 331 overhead valve V8 engine mated to a 4 speed Hydra-Matic transmission was standard. I can't tell if this one is so equipped but air conditioning was available as an option for the first time. This one sports a clock and radio. Power steering was standard too. Check out the little crank for the vent window!

This funky little lens is mounted on the dash to the right of the steering wheel. It is the Autronic Eye! This device would sense oncoming headlights and automatically dim your brights for you. Remember that this was 64 years ago to get a feel for how futuristic this was at the time.

For an enormous vehicle this has great lines and nice proportions. The fins are still subtle compared to what was to come later in the decade. These smaller fins were first introduced in 1948 and were almost identical to these.

The exhaust comes out of those holes on the lower corners of the bumper. The brochure refers to the "big, husky rear deck" of the trunk which has a "luggage compartment of cross-country proportions."  

One of the coolest features of this ride is the location of the gas cap, which is hidden within the drivers side taillight! Press that small reflector button and the top lens pops up on a hinge, exposing the cap underneath. I explained this to a fellow gawker who was walking around the car barking out questions like "I wonder what this is?". I would answer each one of them and then I mentioned the gas cap. He pressed the button and it opened. I wouldn't recommend doing this without permission!

If this were the "magnificently luxurious" Fleetwood 60 Special there would be a series of chrome gills in front of the rear wheels. It's a shame the fender skirts are off the car because they add to the formality.

These hubcaps were optional in '53. Known as the Aerodynamic Wheel Discs, they were said to reduce wind noise and drag. I just think they're cool.

I'm including this interior shot because the floor is busy with switches. There is a headlight dimmer switch on the far edge and above that there ought to be the on/off switch for the Autronic Eye. There is yet another floor mounted button that's next to the brake pedal that activates the signal seeking Wonderbar radio. Again, in 1953 stepping on a switch to change the station was unheard of!

That vertical chrome bar at the front of the rear fender is marketed as a simulated air scoop gravel guard. Up close it does indeed have 10 little fins giving it the look of a huge intake.
"And here in this car is new massiveness, new strength, and new beauty for 1953" reads the copy of the sales book given to dealers for that year. Every page of that booklet boasts about the sheer size of the car, using the word massive at least 6 times.

10 minutes into Netflix and Chill the Caddy leans over and gives you this look.
This is where I respectfully back away from this majestic craft. Sales were fantastic for Cadillac in 1953, with a record-breaking 85,446 Series 62 cars sold. These heady times wouldn't be gone anytime soon as the prestige of the brand continued through the '70s unabated while other historical marques continued to fold. Hudson, Packard, Rambler, Nash, Kaiser, and DeSoto would all be gone by the turn of the next decade. Ford tried to crack into the luxury market with the Continental Mark II in '55-'56 but they lost money on each one and surrendered quickly. Imperial would become a stand alone brand from '55-'75 but the numbers could never quite compete and they, too, went back into their parent company. Somehow Cadillac soldiers on as the top of the heap in the domestic market to this day.