1948 Car Show Pictures

I found the following pictures in an "odd lot" box I purchased a few years ago. The license plates appear to be from NY and Massachusetts - one of the NY plates is dated 1948 and background vehicles seem to match... an odd ball assortment of cars seldom seen at today's shows.

Number six is a 1905 or '06 Orient Buckboard, manufactured in Waltham, MA and billed as 'The lightest, cheapest car in America." Single cylinder, air-cooled, friction drive.

Looks to be in nice original condition with the exception of missing LR fender and addition of non-factory running board.

I see a 1949 plate on the Orient.

The curved dash Olds,,Al Garganigo,,Princeton museum

Pope Hartford,,Clarence Huggins Concord NH,,Firedept/Buick Dealer,,

Orient,,,Procktor Acadamy,,School project car,,usually at Peterboro meet

Packard 48 runabout,WITH Westinghouse shocks,gotta be the only one

Walter Liveno,,Somewhere around Peekskill Ny

1906 Caddy,,,Probably George Wallice Fitchburg [Fitchberg Paper co]

He auctioned his cars at Wallice Civic Center,,donation to lay cornerstone of

Astro Physics lab at MIT,,was the lab connected to Hubbell Telescope

Dean Kruse an co auctioneers at Civic ctr,,

All these cars drove to the meet,,and Al s Olds also drove to the auto show

in Boston in JANUARY one year,,an gas was 5 for a buck

gonna cry now,,,,,,,,Has anyone got pics of the 2 Anderson chauffers that

were there that day,,,,Sam Mitchill and ??? a smaller red hair French fellow

We only saw him that one time,,,There might be errors here,,This is all

from memory,,,,,Cheers,,Ben,,,,,,,,,,whadddid I forget,,,D

The buildings in the background are the Larz Anderson Museum in Brookline, Mass. It's a great car museum, only a few miles from downtown Boston, worth a visit if you're in town. They still have car shows on the lawn most weekends, spring through October. See http://www.larzanderson.org.

Thank you all so much .... I'm glad that I put them on and that there is so much information available on a car meet that happened 65 years ago (I was born in 1949 so I didn't have to do the math). Sad that so many cars like this were lost to the World War II scrap drives but I understand the need for both the material and the patriotism.

A question please...I noticed that several of the cars shown have right hand drives. Why? Did some places in the U.S. drive on the same side as the Brits?

A question please...I noticed that several of the cars shown have right hand drives. Why? Did some places in the U.S. drive on the same side as the Brits?

Many of the early auto companies put out right-hand drive cars and gradually went over to left-hand drive. I think it may have been a carry over from wagons and buggies where the driver sat on the right a lot.

Horse and buggy drivers were seated to the right and held the reigns in their left hand... sitting on the right in an early automobile allowed the driver to disembark on the curb side and not knee deep in mud and stuff. Nothing to do with which side of the road you drove on, which was always the right in the US.

Interestingly enough in the US Virgin Islands the cars are left hand drive like in the US but you drive on the left like in England. It is very easy to get used to. The locals claim it is to allow for drivers to stop and talk to those on the sidewalk, a rather common occurrence down there.

You can still see many cars from those early years at the Larz Anderson Museum. Here's a link to a QuickTime panorama. It might take a bit of time to load, but then you can click, drag, and see a number of the old cars on the lower floor of the museum. The Andersons bought cars before 1900, only the best and biggest, kept them all.

http://larzanderson.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/LA-Collection.mov

We still get some of the older ones at meets at the museum. Here are some from the Studebaker club meets in 2006 and 2007. Same lawn, same building as the 1948 pics.