My invitation to Bay Ridge

MY INVITATION TO BAY RIDGE

I've been apartment hunting lately and my search has brought me through several neighborhoods. I stepped out of a viewing thinking to myself how much I liked the place. As I was making the decision that I'd just seen my future apartment I found this car parked on the same block. Kismet!

This is a 1950 Chrysler Windsor Club Coupe in Racine Blue. It is just beautiful in this deep color with brightwork that isn't overly chromed.

Chrysler had a surprising array of models and body styles in 1950. There was the base Chrysler Royal below this in stature, and the Saratoga, New Yorker, and Town and Country above it. They all looked very similar but the higher end models had a solid chrome panel surrounding the square turn signals where this is body colored.

The Club Coupe was the 2 door non-hardtop style.

For no reason other than it's one of my favorite front ends I'm including the above pic. It is the Chrysler Windsor Club Coupe from 1942 and I love the front so much I want to hug my computer.

This is a classy ride for someone who's made it. The bank manager might drive this car is Cadillac wasn't his thing. Smooth, quiet, and powerful were hallmarks of this sweet rig.

You can tell this is a 1950 because the taillights on the '49 were on top of the rear fenders. The 1951 had a very simple grill with only one vertical bar in the center.

Back-up lights (as they were called in their brochure) were standard in 1950! Most cars built mid century only offered them as an option if at all. Advances in engineering were many, with improved water-resistant brakes, independent front spring suspension, Hydra-Lizard(!) rear shock absorbers, waterproof ignition, padded dash, and Super Cushion tires all being mentioned.

Wide white walls need a real car to look appropriate. That formal roofline allows for the business man to drive with his hat on!

This year Chrysler came with the Prestomatic Fluid Drive transmission. This was a semi-auto where you used the clutch to set off from stopped but then shift without the clutch to high gear at speed.

That speedo cluster in the center of the dashboard was marketed as a safety feature as well, with a compliment of gauges all in one easily viewed space. Seems like common sense but it was advanced thinking for the time.

Original hubcaps complete the tone. I had the feeling that this car was restored carefully many years ago and kept up since. The fit and finish were overall very good with only the slightest of door alignment called for.

Dig this copy from the original brochure: "You'll thrill to a new kind of riding pleasure when you first try the Chrysler ride! For, truly, here is riding magic!"

Obviously Chrysler was confident in their product and they had good reason to be. This was the company who produced the Imperial; a car whose only possible competition in the domestic luxury market was Cadillac. They also brought acres of innovation to their rides while Ford and Chevy were glitzing out their relatively primitive lineup.

Being a 67 year old mid tier offering from a high end brand makes this car pretty rare today. There is currently one on eBay for only $18,900 in great shape with only 49,000 miles on it so they're still not a super hot commodity. I'm looking forward to meeting the owner of this ride once I settle in to my new place.

Extremely Cosmopolitan

EXTREMELY COSMOPOLITAN 

I was driving around the furthest corner of Brooklyn where the edges of neighborhoods are bordered by marshes leading into Jamaica Bay when this beached whale presented itself. Gadzooks!

This improbable beauty is a 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan in Admiral Blue.There weren't many produced (I found a production number of just 1,315 for the 2 door Club Coupe) and to find one today in NYC is crazy.

This has a slightly unnerving leer from the front. That wide grill not only cools the Flathead 337 V8 within but also contains a modern (for the time) fresh air ventilation system. The Flathead replaced the trouble-prone if awesome V12 from previous years! 12 cylinder engines can be smooth as silk when tuned perfectly but they are a handful to maintain. The distributor cap for a V12 looks like a flying spaghetti monster with all its wires coming out of everywhere.

This generation was introduced in 1949 and represented a vast leap from the timeworn designs carried over from pre and post WWII. The '50 Mercurys are some of the most popular cars for customization, usually by chopping the top and making each one into a Lead Sled. The Lincolns were always more luxurious than their sibling Mercury. In 1951 power windows became standard which was unheard of for the era.

Here we can see the headlights which are frenched from the factory (when something is frenched it means it is set into the body as opposed to attached to the exterior). The paint looks pretty correct for such an old car. Clearcoat wasn't a thing 66 years ago so the paint would have this thick look. Getting paint of this vintage to a show car shine requires lots of polishing by hand.
That jet hood ornament ushers in the Jet Age when airplane motifs became ubiquitous.

Those fuzzy dice are the worst. The interior is in great shape overall with seats and door panels in fine condition. This ride is fitted with the optional GM Hydramatic transmission! By 1949 the Ford motor company had to eat humble pie and order transmissions from their archrival as they hadn't developed one to that point.
There is a space for the original radio but with the knobs and station memory buttons missing I'm guessing the unit has been removed. You can just see the speaker grill under the dash.

Clean and clear style was the order of the day. Compare these understated taillights to those of 10 years later in the era of fins.

Here we see the bathtub shape in full display. The trunk, like everything in this ride, is massive.
I pulled over and asked some folks standing across the street if they minded if I took some pictures. The response was "yeah sure, it belongs to our neighbor. Maybe he'd want to sell it; he owes me money!".
The owner of this Lincoln pulled up just in time to hear this and they got in a huge cursing and screaming match all the while both being nice to me. It was totally bizarre and had something to do with an electric bill or something so I snapped my pics and took off. I did however learn that this car was from Southern California (which explains the condition) and that it was heading back there with the owner the following week. I can only assume it is there now so I was lucky to see it when I did.

Brown Streak

THE ULTIMATE RAT ROD SLEEPER

I found myself in a far corner of Astoria recently when I saw a rotted old hulk crouching at the curb. I mean look at this thing!

This is a 1950 Pontiac Straight-Eight (or Silver Streak as it was alternately called) that might have been black 65 years ago. At first glance it is the most beat up ride in town.

The Straight-Eight got its name from the inline 8 cylinder engine beneath the hood. The big straight eights were common from the 1930s with most domestic auto makers. By 1950 they were heading towards extinction thanks to the more powerful and efficient V8s. Packard was the last to produce one in 1954, a year after Pontiac went for the V8.
Even the wheels are tired on this thing, but they match. After looking at them for a minute it dawned on me that they were very much on purpose.

This logo is so futuristic! Nobody did the future as well as the past during the '40s and '50s.

Oh yeah look at this monster! This is like a big muddy catfish trolling the lakebed looking for children to eat. Those headlights confirm what the wheels were hinting at; this is actually somebody's ultimate rat rod. I like this so much better than the standard flat black paint with red wheels and baby moon caps. Every second of the 65 years this has existed is written on its rusty mug.

That fat chrome stripe is where the Silver Streak name originated. This was also the last gasp for split windshields. In many ways this car has more in common with cars from the '20s than even those built 5 years later.

It's obscured behind the scratched glass covering but within that circle is the stylized head of Chief Pontiac residing within. Originally his image would've been the hood ornament too (in chrome on this car but in lit-up amber glass on the Super Chief!). 

Grumpy punk.

For a 2-door coupe this ride is pretty huge. I imagine fitting 4 people in the backseat wouldn't be an issue.

That little blue sticker on the vent window is the only other visual clue that this is a well loved car.

Inside we can see what's really going on here! There is a very short stick shift hiding beneath some terrible but newer seats. That massive dash mounted aftermarket tach with the red light telling the driver when to shift, the 4 gauges below, and the two red switches amidst those gauges all tell me this is a serious drag racing machine!

The dual exhaust is barely visible here as they used dark or possibly rust-treated metal. It looks to me to be 2.5" or 3" exhaust though so whatever's under the hood these days has plenty of grunt. I really like how the pipes angle outward in an effort at even more subtlety. The taillights have a blue dot in the center which is a classic hot rod detail.

You can just make out EIGHT in art deco lettering on that half circle over the propeller. Even better is the cheesiest/worst/best license plate holder I've ever seen!
Hats off to the mystery owner of this masterpiece hiding in plain sight. I've seen a lot of junky cars, rat rods, and hot rods, but this is the single best combination of the three I've witnessed. I would love to see this pull up to a light and get challenged by some chump in a Mustang only to blow its doors off.
Bravo, Pontiac owner!

Kicking off the weekend with a wicked patina!

NIFTY FIFTY 

In the South Slope portion of Brooklyn I recently ran across the following beautifully patinated ride:

This is a 1950 Dodge Coronet that is still wearing most of its original Island Green color. This particular one is special though.

This beast has every one of its 65 years on display! While rat rods aren't a new concept it takes someone with vision to hold back on the typical flat-black-with-red-wheels look and celebrate the well worn remnants of the original finish.

The Coronet was introduced in 1949 as the highest-end offering from Dodge. In an odd twist of fate it became the lowest-end trim line in 1955 before finally landing square in the middle of the pecking order in the '60s. This coupe body style was elegant and fresh when new, with just enough chrome trim to make a fancy entrance. The vintage 100 spoke wire wheels on this ride are a lowrider original but were not offered on this car.

This car proudly boasts the Gyro-Matic transmission which is essentially the same as the Fluid Drive from years previous. This would be a semi automatic trans where you use the clutch to pull away from a stop in first gear, but shift without the clutch into 2nd and 3rd. They were usually mounted on the column like a 3 on the tree.

In true rat rod fashion this car obviously has a different driveline in it. What looks to be a B&M floor mounted shifter sits in front of 3 aftermarket gauges, all complimented by the column-mounted tachometer. This could really have any engine you can imagine in it due to the colossal engine bay.
That beige thing attached to the center windshield bar is probably a period-correct compass. The dice are awful, because I hate car dice, and why would you put stupid dice in such a great car, and dice are the dumbest cliche in the book, and another thing . . .
That steering wheel sure is pretty though!

I love the presentation of this car. All the chrome and stainless are in fine shape without being too mirror-like. It looks like they spayed a clear coat over the patina as well since it manages to have a waxed look.

There is even a reverse light on the drivers side! This was not a common thing in 1950.

My guess is that this beast was resting fully exposed to the elements in the southwest somewhere since the paint is totally blown out from the top down. 

This generation Coronet represented the first new design for Dodge since the end of World War II. I breifly had a 1947 Dodge that looked like a car from the '30s with fenders completely separate from the body and a hood that was hinged in the center, opening on each side like wings.

For a car of this age the dimensions aren't crazy huge. This seems pretty manageable in traffic compared to many cars from the late '50s.

Aww she's grumpy! This frumpy face is just great, especially with the crazed and cracked paint job.

Close up of some mysterious spot where 4 rivets were called for. This patina is out of control!

From this angle you can see the vent that's popped up just under the center of the windshield. My '47 had this feature too; you simply grabbed a grip under the dash very much like a pistol and pushed forward, opening a scoop for cabin ventilation.

Fitting enough that the Ds are missing, leaving O G E (though I'd almost want to remove the E at this point). This cruiser is one of my favorites I've run across in NYC, and easily takes the prize for best finish. Hopefully I'll see it parked with the owner one day so I can find out what lurks under the hood.