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The quality of aftermarket blades has gone to hell in recent years. My antiques have not needed blades. God knows how old they are, but they keep working. My two daily drivers are Ford products. After the replacement blades proved deficient, I started buying OEM Motorcraft blades from the dealer. They are not that expensive and far outlast the parts store blades. The Ford owners' manual recommends cleaning your rubber blades with rubbing alcohol. It seems to remove the "dead" rubber and expose a fresh surface. You might try that.

Wasn't Kingsway a Canadian Dodge that was a Plymouth with Dodge trim?

A good counterman today is a rarity to be treasured. They actually take pride in figuring out what will interchange with or replace whatever you are looking for. There are fewer and fewer around. Most people behind the counter today do not want to be bothered.

For what it's worth, new cars did not come with window stickers until the 1959 model year. They were the result of a Federal law sponsored by a NY senator named Monroney. For years they were called Monroney stickers. Up until that time, individual cars did not have a list price. A dealer was free to demand what the traffic would bear.

Remember Lee Oil Filters with the "acid fighting feridium anode"? I would bet that any decent oil today has additives to neutralize acids.

Exxon was never AAA, but had its own competing motor club. The name Exxon only dates to about 1970. Before that, they were still Esso. That dates your sticker to the early seventies at the oldest.

I gave my 1940 LaSalle to a glass shop to replace the windshield and the gasket. When I got it back, the stainless trim on the center bar was standing up about 1/2 inch higher than the glass. You could see daylight between the bar and the trim. About a third of the trim screws around the inside opening were missing, and the top of the dash had chips in the paint. To add insult to injury, the windshield leaked worse than before. This was a local shop that has a good reputation and has been in business for about 80 years. I gave the fool a 1940 Fisher Body manual to refer to, but he was so smart he didn't need to look at it. Ultimately, I redid the job myself, following the instructions in the shop manual. There are 5 holes in the division bar for screws to go through. Three of them were empty. The water was coming through the empty holes and flowing down the dash. My redo turned out well. I have no leaks. It looks good, except for the chips on the top of the dash, which I will have to deal with some day. The moral of this is that referrals don't mean much and the reputation of the shop doesn't mean much. The owner gave the job to a man who had no idea how to do it and who was too proud to ask. Unless you actually talk to the person who is going to do the work, and get very specific about what is to be done, you are bound to be screwed. I also believe that your best chance to get a good job is to use somebody who is in the car hobby himself. Commercial shops are just interested in getting cars out the door in the minimum amount of time. The quality of the work is a secondary consideration.

What a strange quote from the cop "if you're stealing a car to get from point a to point b you're not going to take a gas guzzler"! I wasn't aware that economy of operation was a prime concern of car thieves. Silly me!

There was also less traffic and fewer heavy trucks. I don't believe that they used as much salt on the roads years ago. All of these things add up.

I thought that the Corvair was a poor seller only in its last few years. My recollection is that they sold big numbers in the early sixties. It was a winner at the time. The HT 4100 Cadillac V-8 deserves mention. It was a stinker on a par with the Vega. They sold lots of them at the time, and most of them were troublesome. These were the cars that drove America's upper classes into Lexus and Mercedes. The Cimarron sold well for the first few years. It must have been profitable, since it was a tarted up Cavalier being sold at a Cadillac price. Once it got a V-6 and actually became a performer, GM killed it.

<dt> </dt><dd> </dd><dt> </dt><dd> </dd> "Hey Pete, the side trim also says 1952, since it hooks up with the rocker trim, as in a loop. The 1951 doesn't do that, it goes back onto the rear fender, with no rocker trim." Amazing! In sixty years I never noticed that!

I am sure I am offending everyone, but I always thought that that car was butt ugly. Earl was losing it by then. Most of the great GM designs of the postwar era were done by other people with Earl taking the credit. By 1959, they were glad to see him go.

I think that is Ben Blue, the comedian. He was a star in the thirties who is not much remembered today. You may recall him as the pilot in "Mad, Mad, Mad, World"

Dynaflow was a very inefficient transmission. I doubt that the car ever got much better mileage than that.

Definitely not Ford. Not shaped like a Model T. Doesn't have gas tank in cowl like a Model A.

They must have ended up with a lot of blue paint when the USSR had its going out of business sale!

My grandfather, David Harris, sold his chicken store at 527 Kaighn Avenue in Camden NJ to Victor Potamkin in about 1935. This was long before he was in the car business. My father told me that Victor started in business as a delivery boy for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He won a trip to the 1933 Chicago Worlds' Fair by signing up more new subscribers than any other delivery boy. The Lincoln agency came after the war. During that time, the King of Romania visited the US. Victor Potamkin actually got in to see him and sold him a Lincoln. The Lincoln that went to Israel was a different story. Chaim Weitzman was the first President of Israel. Weitzman was British by birth and Oxford-educated. By all accounts, he was a very vain and pretentious person. Victor Potamkin got American Jews to contribute to build Weitzman a Lincoln Phaeton identical to the one used by the White House for President Truman. When Weitzman got the car, he used it a few times. The Israeli public was very disapproving of such an ostentatious display in a new and struggling country. Weitzman stopped using the Lincoln. It is my understanding that nobody knew what to do with it and that it sat outside for many years and was finally junked. The Chevrolet dealership on South Broad Street was originally Robinson Chevrolet. I believe that Potamkin was married at the time to Robinson's daughter and that she inherited the business. I was told that for many years, every Potamkin Chevrolet had a Motorola radio installed by Potamkin because there was more profit in them than there was in the Delco radios from GM. Victor Potamkin sold enough cars that GM allowed him to get away with this. The other dealerships and the Cadillac agency in Manhattan came later. People that watched New York television remember Luba, Victor's wife, doing the Potamkin Cadillac commercials on TV. Victor Potamkin was very friendly with Edward Cole, father of the Chevy V-8 and later President of GM. When Cole retired from GM, he and Victor bought Checker Motors. Victor turned the running of the dealerships over to his son and began working with Cole to develop and market a successor to the famous Checker Taxi. When Ed Cole died in a plane crash, that business ended. Luba got Alzheimer's disease and Victor retired. I believe they are both gone now. It was fun to see his name come up. They don't make car dealers like him any more.

At least they made her take her heels off before she climbed up on the car.

It is a beautiful Buick and you are so lucky to live where where cars can be enjoyed at this time of year. Up here in the rust belt, we are suffering through until after Easter.

All of this have run into people like this. There is a kind of high that they get from being in control of a situation where they have something that somebody else wants. They enjoy having people come around and offer them money for something that they have no intention of selling. It makes them the center of attention. In their little pea brains, it reinforces their ideas of their own importance.

Good steering wheel and one wire wheel. Makes sense to me!

City Hall is a great tour. It is a fascinating building full of quirky architecture and interesting art work. If you have a taste for nineteenth century weirdness, the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities is located at 21st and Chestnut. It is full of skulls, bones, mummified body parts, old medical equipment and the like. The Reading Terminal Market at 12th and Market Streets is a perfect place to go for lunch after the Saturday meeting. Every kind of food that you can imagine is served there. It is unique and has been there for over 100 years. Chinatown is very close to our hotel and has all kinds and price levels of Asian food.

I would imagine that it would be difficult to get a clearcoat to adhere to the old paint, especially in the corroded areas where it is most needed. I have been wondering about what to put on the bottom of my driver cars to slow down the rust. My two antiques, thank God, don't have to go out in the salt.

Since they assured you that it would work, I would ask them how to connect it.