Dosmo

Pontiac dashboards from this era are some of the sharpest looking from any of the American manufacturers. This trend continued into the 1960s. Mom had a '59 Bonneville, I had a '60 Bonneville, while a relative had a '63 Grand Prix and a '64 Bonneville. Loved them all, but the '49-'54 Pontiac with that dramatic speaker grille surrounding the clock is very memorable. Sorry, don't want to get your thread off track, but I love these dashboard shots.

A very impressive ride. Here are a couple of quotes from 1950s Chrysler sales ads that seem appropriate for this car.

I'm wondering if there is any significance to the transmission selector not being in the "Park" position. It could be that a kid was playing in the car. It could be that someone backed the car in, shut off the switch, and simply neglected to put the selector up into Park. It does make me wonder.

Most of the folks who, like me, prefer older original cars are dropping like flies due to age. Our old car publications have become diluted with stuff from the muscle car age, not to mention exotic sports cars from other countries. This is the natural order of things, and the bickering of a few old fogies like me isn't going to stop it. But, I love coming here to read and co-exist with others who appear to share at least some of my peculiarities in this area. The individual who started this post is probably a fine person, and to him/her, the question is appropriate and legitimate. But, I don't often see these types of posts make their way onto the pages of this community. Questions about performance, torque, braking, handling? Sure, they have their place. But, the rationale behind asking about which of two completely different cars has the greatest speed & power? Not interested in anything else but those two bullet points? Not interested in styling? Not interested in how the cars were designed? No questions about competing makes and how they stacked up? I love the AACA forums because there appears to be a number of others who are interested in the history of this hobby. There is so much more to consider on this forum than the answer to a narrowly focused question of raw speed and power. These types of discussions are more suited to a racing/performance type community. I hate to think about seeing more of this popping up in our forums. I'm perfectly fine knowing that there are those who disagree with me. Yes, I could have scrolled past this post without commenting since I have no interest in such topics. But, actually, I have a great deal of interest in hoping this doesn't become the norm on the AACA forums.

It’s possible that you can find a more appropriate forum for this question. There may be a lot of old fahhhtts on here that couldn’t care less. I could be one of them. It’s sort of like asking which 4WD diesel truck looks the coolest, sounds the most throaty, and belches the greatest amount of thick sooty smoke. I guess there is nothing wrong with your question. I enjoy this forum because muscle cars don’t seem to receive a great deal of attention here, and I’d just as soon keep things this way.

I recall reading that John North Willys made the statement that he did not care which way the name was pronounced, so long as people continued to buy his cars.

This is from the publication "Willys - The Complete Illustrated History 1903-1963".

Diggin’ on this era of Nash!

^^Exactly^^

I was noticing the leather with fabric insert in the front seat upholstery vs. what appears to be full leather in the rear seat. Would this car have come from the factory with leather/fabric in the front and full leather in the rear? Wow, I really love this Imperial! What a time capsule!

For me, the ‘63 gets the nod over the ‘64 because of the hooded headlamps and the tail lamps nestled into the horizontal panel extending across the rear of the car.

My uncle bought a '63 brand new - red, 389, 4 speed. Kept it one year - the clutch was extremely stiff and kept causing a pin to shear off in the linkage. Traded it in on a '64 Bonny, which he never liked. That red '63 was the bomb, though. I like this '64 with the 4 speed. Such great dashboards from this era of Pontiacs.

My sister's '70 was a base model, and it did have a tiny back seat. Not really useable for any reasonably sized adult, it was better suited for a couple of small bags of groceries or the like. I had forgotten about the non-synchro low gear in that car. Sheesh!

I like the Mercury cars of this era. They seem to be fairly uncommon, which I find appealing. I think I prefer the dual-headlight look to the single light on each side, which sort of gives the car a "bug-eyed" look.

I always preferred the chopped-off rear end styling of the Gremlin to the Pinto or the Vega - however, my sister's '70 Gremlin was not a car that I liked very much. The seats seemed to have little padding, and they were firm to the point of wearing your butt out after a while. The front passenger floorboard would become uncomfortably warm in all but the coldest weather. The factory transmission shifter locked up, and had to be replaced. It had some of the slowest vacuum windshield wipers known to man. But, the inline 6-cylinder hooked up to a three speed manual delivered decent performance. Factory A/C worked well. It was a nice driving and handling little car, although it rode like a log wagon.

"A real barn find!!!!" Ah yes - it's another barn find. Sellers love to use the "barn find" phraseology whenever possible to start the automotive juices percolating within the minds of any interested collectors. This phrase is so faded, over-used, and so passé. The seller's photos don't show the Imp sitting in a barn, but rather, an open-sided pole shed, along with a host of other hulks. I guess it's subjective, but, in my opinion, the term "barn find" is not applicable to this car.

Your post is like a mirror into what I was thinking.

I’m thinking that the dashboard cover is supposed to be a slick faux-leather type material. This one looks to have been covered with the same material as the seats. I like the car itself, but I’m not wild about the upholstery.

Photo sent to me by a friend - not familiar enough with the era to be able to tell if it is original or has been modified. Something about it doesn't look quite right to me. I asked the sender if it was a diorama, ha ha.

This seems totally out of character for this, otherwise, remarkably stock-appearing car.

In the 1970s, I had a roommate who loved to tell our numerous drunk and druggy friends that every time he heard Little Feat's "Fat Man In the Bathtub", he would think of me. This usually elicited hearty bursts of laughter from everyone present. I learned how to take and dish out a lot of ribbing in those halcyon days.

These days, I never listen to music from a dedicated stereo. I gave away my amplifier and stereo speakers over 10 years ago to some dreadlocked nitwit my daughter was seeing at that time - I must have thought he would stick around for the long term. Not the first miscalculation I have made in that regard, nor her, either. I have a ton of music downloaded on my computer or iPod that I can stream through a portable bluetooth speaker. This is handy if I'm in the garage, and I can take the iPod and speaker with me if I want to listen to music in the car, which I seldom want to do unless I'm with the wife on a long trip, or by myself on a local backroad, just to get away from the house. I have three Amazon Alexa Echodots that we use for multiple purposes. I turn on one in the mornings, playing low in the background as my wife and I enjoy our coffee before her 93-year old mother arises, forcing my wife to clock in for the day. One cool thing about having an Amazon Prime subscription - I have access to Amazon Music. There are NO annoying DJs on Amazon, unlike Sirius XM. My XM subscription will be allowed to lapse when it expires. Another thing about Amazon Music is that it allows one to create his/her own playlist. I have three separate Amazon Playlists - two of them featuring Rock/Pop from the 1960s to 1980s, and one with Classic Country from the 1950s to about 1985 or so. The country music I like seemed to end around this time. My wife uses one of the Alexa Echodots in the room where her mother spends her days in front of a TV. She programs Alexa to remind her mother to go to the bathroom. Her poor mother is battling dementia, and some days are much worse than others. She can never remember the name Alexa, so she calls her Amanda. "Amanda" will come on about once an hour, saying "This is a reminder - blankblank needs to go to the bathroom". Without fail, my MIL says, "Thank ya, dear". One particularly bad day, my wife was even more stressed out than usual when she programmed the Alexa reminders. She said "Alexa, please set a reminder for blankblank to take a ---- in one hour. Alexa, please set a reminder for blankblank to take a ---- in two hours". I know this was in bad taste, but for those who have been or have lived with caregivers, you can understand how the frustration level can overwhelm even the most evenhanded of us. Sure enough, in an hour, Alexa came on saying - "This is a reminder - ---- needs to take a ----". I heard my MIL reply "Thank ya, dear". I hope I didn't hijack this thread too badly.

I saw this piece for the first time a little over a year ago. I guess it would be fair to say it's a pretty obscure item. For some reason, from the moment I saw it, I wanted it. My Uncle Bob was a lifelong bachelor. After being discharged from the military in the early 1940s, he became a devoted fisherman. He loved spending time in the national park campgrounds of East Tennessee. He owned numerous camper trailers in his life, and for a time, he owned a couple of old passenger buses that had been converted into campers. I remember seeing the buses once, and the odd name "Fitzjohn" stuck with me. That's what I thought of when I saw this hanging in a guy's garage. I thought I'd post a photo, just for the fact that it is such an oddball item.

For nearly ten years, I drove a 1954 Chrysler New Yorker Wagon with the 331 Hemi V8 and Powerflite automatic transmission. I did no towing with it, but I agree that, with the V8, it would have pulled a trailer of moderate size without too much difficulty. I would be leery of considering using a flathead 6 for the same task, especially in mountainous areas. But, my major hesitancy in considering towing with a vintage vehicle has to do with the braking systems, especially the single chamber master cylinders in vehicles of this era. I would not have complete faith in the reliability of knowing that a firm brake pedal was always going to be there every time I needed it. I had far more issues with the brakes on my Chrysler than any other system. Every single component had been replaced. The brakes stopped the car reasonably well, but when you consider how much quicker the cars around you can stop, especially if you have a trailer in tow, that should be taken into consideration.