Su8overdrive
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Posts posted by Su8overdrive
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Remember, otherwise thoughtful HPH, Packard once advertised in the National Geographic, the New Yorker, and Literary Digest. Let's keep the bar well raised. Neither can we imagine most Pierce-Arrow owners so communicating. Certainly not Bentley owners, nor Delahaye, Delage, Invicta, Railton, and the dean of a local college owned a well-tended '41 Buick Roadmaster. Erudition does not = out of touch w/ the latest teenybopism; rather, something they might aspire to, even as there's more to autodom than dumping a crate SBC 350, TurboHydramatic, tilt wheel into everything built before our greatest ever magnanimity of the Marshall Plan.
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"No problem." What are we, 16?
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Demco, the same miasma you experience in PA we suffer here in Kaleefornyuh. Only Stockholm Syndrome keeps me here. But you did inspire me to call my congressman. Call yours today. Let's start a groundswell.
Ok, it's 45 minutes after my above line. I called and spoke with one of my congressman's staff, with the news desk of my local and large newspaper, and our local CBS radio affiliate. Feel free to use some variant of what i also emailed the latter (below), wanting to be multiple voices. We, Demco, and anyone else on this forum, have to do this because let's face it, most people would rather grouse on chatrooms, forums, then act. It is easy enough to Google phone numbers, emails, and use both. Have your wife/girlfriend (or both) do the same.
Report to the commissioner. Break a leg. It starts here, today. Remember the adage about making your luck. We fix this:
"It is i m p o s s i b l e for any of us, and i speak for friends, neighbors, coworkers, area residents at dinner and cocktail parties, to get a live agent, a live clerk, a live rep on the phone when calling DMV. The pandemic is over. But this was the case BC; before Covid. There is no reason for us taxpayers to put up with this, treat it like a sitcom routine, roll our eyes, and let it continue. Enough is enough. We are subsidizing a mutiny.
This is a long overdue story. It is not sexy or exciting. But let's see if there's a pre-corporate journalism spark left at CBS, once the crown jewel of reportage in this nation.
Profound thanks, and believe me, this story will garner attention, praise, appreciation and evermore thanks from listeners if you put some effort into it.
Start with broadcasting what happens when your own reporter tries to get a live agent at 'our' DMV."
HumanTuber, thanks for the Vermont update so others with that problem do not spin their wheels.
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In 1974, when i lived on College Hill in Easton, PA midway 'twixt my old NYC and Philadelphia, i bought a '40 Packard One-Twenty needing the full treatment, including a registration, and could then get a "reconstructive title" via the state of Vermont, which i think cost then all of $15.
Kept that car nearly a decade. Nice ride, including driving cross-continent without a hitch February '76, back up to greater NYC to see old friends and relatives, down to Jamestown/Colonial Williamsburg, Charlotte, cross country via I-40, much of that formerly Route 66, caught Highway 58 at Barstow, briefly Highway 99 North 'til crossing over to I-5 North up to the East Bay Area in 5 1/2 days. Nice to be able to have a relaxed trip in an old car when you had the safety net of so many fellows still around at gas stations, small garages across the nation who knew how to work on vintage cars, and did sans big production or charging more than attending to anything current-- less even. Texas was the only bore. Even the cows looked demoralized.
"The sun is riz,
the sun is set,
and here we is,
in Texas yet.
Burma Shave."
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Walt asks a good question. I did not mean to sound tart above, but really, in this day and age of retro rods, Frankencars, utter ignorance of what prewar, even pre-1950s automobiles, are all about, it behooves us to make such gatherings welcoming and affordable, even free, for those with or without CCCA-eligible automobiles, to swing by, park with if not interspersed among the registrants, hobnob for a few hours, and drive home. Think about it. We've even seen mid-'30s senior Packards, and a once lovely '34 Pierce-Arrow 8 club sedan, ruined with crate Chevy V-8s, Turbo HydraMatics, huge chrome wheels. Let's be welcoming to those driving or interested in the real thing, sharing our cars, knowledge with a rapidly declining segment of society, so fewer authentic cars are butchered in ignorance.
The CCCA remains insular at its own peril. There are many....owners of "Full Classics" long since bored with judging, points, trophies, ceremonies; still more of us with decades, a half century, in this hobby who well know there is no such thing as a "100-point" car. Somewhere, West of Laramie--- no, wait -- between clear coated jalopies and the alleged interest in "barn finds" simply as few fiscal mortals can afford full restorations these days, and over-restored cars trailered to such events like beached whale carcasses, are many lovely older rebuilds, restorations, well-tended survivors relegated to private garages because their owners have other interests than self-congratulatory rubber chicken award dinners, drinking, mincing around with clipboards.
Meanwhile, the CCCA is right to adhere to their present historical window, and n o t allow any post-'48 cars. There are clubs and organizations aplenty for such. Watering down for the sake of attracting more members is self-destruction. Tanglewood presents classical music. Newport Jazz Festival that. Both are fine and revered. Not complicated. What's interesting is that some of the most enthused members and sticklers for accuracy among the HCCA (Horseless Carriage Club of America) are 20- and 30-somethings. Freely sharing knowledge and disseminating experience remain the best ways to remain vital.
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How much if you have no earthly interest in judging, clipboards, trophies, awards, luncheon, dinner, breakfast, soft drinks, golf, alcohol, and are vegan, avoid sugar;
just want an excuse to drive your well-tended, CCCA-accepted car, park, look at other well-fettled survivors, visit the Babinsky museum, go home?
No wonder cars and coffees replaced most "concours d' elegance."
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Cailyn, AuburnSeeker above makes strong points, just as it often proved safer to leave asbestos behind old walls alone. EVs are no panacea. The overarching threat to our i.c. cars, and the planet, are simply too many people, and as Sir David Attenborough points out, "The planet cannot handle millions of meat eaters." I refer you to my above posts.
Meanwhile, gasoline is a terrific fuel, higher BTUs than alcohol, the latter a net energy consumer, unless produced entirely from agwaste as in Brazil, not corn as in the US. Agwaste ethanol is what Henry Ford wanted to power his Model T and Fordson tractor, which comprised fully half the vehicles on the world's roads and fields by 1920. But with J.D. Rockefeller controlling over 85% of all bulk oil shipping, gasoline as low as a 12 cents a gallon, Ford went along with the program. Otherwise, Maxwell, Hudson, Reo, the Dodge brothers, Auburn, Marmon, Studebaker, Chandler, Jordan, Hupp, Willys, Nash, GM, Packard, Pierce, and others would've likely followed suit.There are not enough raw materials for the world to swap all i.c. (internal combustion) cars for EVs. EVs run on petroleum tires, producing most of the dust in urban areas, and use six (6) times as many minerals as i.c. cars, including cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, manganese, graphite, thallium, titanium, zinc, rare earths like neodymium and dysprosium, the latters' extraction requiring huge amounts of carcinogens like ammonia, hydrochloric acid, sulphates. Much of these minerals are imported from politically unstable regions.Do you expect cabals of young bureaucrats, narrowly educated strangers to technology, buried in student debt, perhaps still living with parents and so hating cars because they cannot afford a decent one, to connect thallium as a common ingredient in rat poison? That it's tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless? While those who tested positive hadn't consumed poisonous levels of the metal, it was enough to cause fatigue, heart arrhythmia, nausea, digestive trouble, neurological problems, and hair loss. The scariest part is that even after patients completed detoxification regiments, thallium continued to show up in their systems."We now know that heavy metals are additive and synergistic," says David Quid, the lead scientist at Doctors Data, PhD in nutritional biochemistry. "If you get a little thallium, and a little lead, and a little cadmium in your system, you've got one plus one plus one equals five or six, not just three." In other words, these metals do more damage when they're combined."This stuff bioaccumulates," he added. "Down the road, it's going to kick you in the ass one way or another."Soichiro Honda produced an internal combustion auto engine the exhaust of which cleaner than the ambient Tokyo air. A Swiss engineer, Michael May, did the same at Jaguar 30 years ago.UN studies show animals raised for meat and dairy produce more greenhouse gas than all the world's cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, ships combined. Meat eaters still coo over pets no more or as sentient, social, intelligent as the creatures facing a million daily Dachaus and Auschwitzes.And so, being vegan, having only "one or none," adopting, or being child-free, are our only hope. But it's easier to make i.c. cars the whipping boy, to "round up the usual suspects."-
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Jon, cogent expansion, thank you, sir. Grimy, i'd be irate to get such a lame letter as they sent you, but remember, 'twasn't personal; you just popped up amongst the myriad DMV registrations with a car "of a certain age."
I owe you an apology for not singling out you, and of course, the thoughtful author of this post, 1935Packard, when i alluded to reactionaries. Meanwhile, i meant to say i like your crisp response to the DMV minion, and would like to use it as template when and if they ask if i'd like to surrender my 78-year-old rolling alter ego. Happy New Year, sports fans.
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In their us/them zeal, it seems none of the above reactionaries grasp what 1935Packard explained; Aaron Robinson's column about CARB's effort being on their behalf. Bureaucracies being just that, such letters as Grimy received asking if he'd be interested in crushing his Pierce-Arrows are inevitable. So let's park the black helicopters, tinfoil hats, and Ayn Rand, give our computers a rest, and use the winter doldrums as opportunity to go out to the garage and finesse our survivors.
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Edinmass well sums the Pebble Beach cracker's abomination, the "look at me crowd," empty money; deep pockets but no depth. Charm, history, the feel of the times, all lost. It's bad enough to see old Fords, Chevies, prosaic fare retro rodded, Frankencars. But when crate V-8s, Turbo HydraMatics dropped into L-29s, even what were once senior Packard 8s and V-12s, all the more heartbreaking. Automotive Covid.
What's odd is we've heard some of the most active members of the Horseless Carriage Club of America, for pre-1916 cars, are in their 20s, early 30s. Yet these young folks are entrenched in not just preserving originality, but the spirit of the unaltered, carefully, authentically rebuilt cars. Meanwhile, senior Packards of the '30s and L-29 Cords are butchered, become parodies.
How do we cure this disease? Our K-12 trails at least 16 other modern industrial democracies. We don't see fine old cars in Europe, Britain, Scandinavia butchered, retro rodded.
Happy New Year and 10th day of Christmas.
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Thank you, sir. T h a t was one of the first things double-checked. Which is why we remain flummoxed. I shouldn't hijack a Lincoln forum with my peccadillo as my focus coming here was to get info on my longtime friend and neighbor's '38 Zephyr gas tank plug. Hard to imagine a nice, upper-medium-priced barouche would use iron and steel together, but apparently figured tanks not often drained? My Packard had a steel plug, which i replaced with brass hex.
For all my vintage knowledge, my mechanical skill limited to polishing metal, routine maintenance, working a grease gun 'til it airlocks. There's a dearth of knowing old car mechanics in the East Bay, as throughout the nation, hence all the "retro rods" and Frankencars w/ ubiquitous SBC 350/Turbo Hydramatic. Charm, history scrapped, lost, forgotten. Curiously, i've heard some of the most "devout" members of the Horseless Carriage Club (pre-1916 automobiles) are those in their 20s, early 30s.
Happy New Year and 10th day of Christmas to you and the other gentlemen on this fine site.
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19tom40, t h a n k y o u, Sir! I'm a Packard guy trying to help my ex-Navy long-retired offline neighbor, whose immaculate '38 Zephyr town sedan this is. Once this plug out, he's on easy street.
I envy his soft life. My '47 Packard Super Clipper despite rebuilt engine, good camshaft, new rebuilt WDO-531SA carburetor, new timing chain, good power, revs smoothly, easily, all that work, but only 12 inches vacuum idle. In fact, because of the low vacuum, the idle's set at 850 rpm, over t w i c e what it should be. And it still dies every other intersection, so is undriveable. Once on the freeway, you could drive it coast to coast in overdrive 75 mph at only 2,500 rpm all the way. Wit's end.
I also thank GD & 40ZephSedan for their comments. I long ago had a '40 Packard One-Twenty sedan. Zephyrs get a bad rap simply as their engines need clean oil and open road running; appropriately named cars because with their short stroke engines, they can run like the wind, same top speed as unblown 1936-37 Cords, which several friends had. Zephyrs put out less torque per cubic inch than every engine of their day, Crosley included. They are not low speed luggers. But i knew of a fellow who drove his Zephyr back and forth between NYC and Boston in the day; 80,000 miles without major work. Atalanta in England built some Zephyr-powered road cars, and three Jensen Model Hs used Zephyr engines instead of ohv nine-mained 260-ci Nash inline eights. All these cars used Columbia rear axles, being built before the war.
You know how well Lincolns did in the La Carrera Panamericanas. Uncle Tom McCahill liked them. Pardon the ramble. Trying to distract myself from yesterday's drive, taking advantage of most people staying home, hung over, watching football. New Year's Day and Stupor Bowl Sunday the only two (2) days a year in the greater Bay Area you can drive an old manual shift car relatively relaxed other than before 9am weekends.
But mine, per above, undriveable, and we are all stumped. Happy New Year and thanks again.
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Thanks, but............................................................................. what s i z e is this square '38 Zephyr gas tank drain plug? No one's giving us the s i z e.
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No, crescent wrenches will not work on this one. Not snug enough. We've tried a couple. We know to replace with brass hex. But for now, need to know what exact size is this four-sided/square fitting.
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Yes, please. We need the size!
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Need to remove the rusted drain plug from '38 Zephyr. It is the factory original, four sides/square, not hex. What is the exact size? I need to put a lot of leverage on the wrench and don't want to round it. What wrench did you use? I've rapped it with hammer after repeatedly squirting rust buster. Need to drain tank yesterday. Thanks
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Why are we critiquing this fellow's asking price? It's none of our business. Are any of you going to buy it? No. Worry about your own cars. Jaysus, these forums are like a bunch of nosy old gossips, Madam Defarges.
How much would it cost to replicate the amazingly sound original interior? Maybe it drives well despite an engine that could externally use at least a good scrubbing with kerosene-dipped towel, etc. It's interesting to see the sort of cars we don't often see posted. When someone does, the shut ins camped by their computers chime in like a Greek chorus. Hilarious.
Appreciate the fellow's car or don't, but his price is of no concern unless you personally are negotiating purchase with him.
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Right. If you had a job, you pulled out all the stops, whether working on the line, in the boardroom, or design studio.
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Always interesting to see automotive historical records, but where does the amazing come in? The nation was devastated by a financial crash that quickly crossed the Atlantic. Few had money for huge, fancy cars.
Unemployment in the Eastern and Midwestern US reached 25%. John Bloom raises a good point, about those able to keep their jobs in those dark days. The "shovel nose" Light Eight was not at all profitable, which is why the next year, planning for what became the One Twenty began in earnest. Oft wonder what Pierce's proposed, Hayes-bodied 25,000 1938 juniors at their higher price point of $1,200 base would've been like, had Buffalo been helmed since the early teens by ex-cash register and Hudson executives as Packard was who knew how to better milk tooling and retain higher profit margins, Packard the most widely held automotive stock before the war after only GM, Ford not going public 'til New Year's Day, 1956.
BTW, what became the '32 "Twin Six," Twelve 1933-on, was never intended to replace the big 385-ci Custom Eight. The initial 376-ci Packard V-12 was meant as a FWD Buick 90 contender, sub-luxe. Packard's most profitable year would remain 1929, despite the funky little six of 1937, and bucket milling all their products but a few leftover Twelves from 1939-on, guided by former GM big B-O-Ppers brought in to cost the excellent 120, even Chevrolet's sales mgr. Bill Packer recruited to teach Packard dealers how to sell on credit.
Cadillac unveiled, to Packard's chagrin, after years of crowing over their V-8, essentially a straight eight with the firing impulses halved for less crankpin loading, the V-16 simply as more power required to move custom bodies approaching three tons and a bigger V-8 would only present increased torque, vibration, and thermodynamic woes, yet able to share the existing Cad V-8 driveline. Packard couldn't be outdone -- the Six that comprised 84 or so percent of their 1920s sales had been slickly one-upped by Cad's crisp '27 LaSalle -- so hurriedly dropped a stroked V-12 into the existing Custom 8 chassis, with resulting initial cooling problems. Packard's thorough engineering and refinement were so ingrained that even with four main bearings, their 1932-39 Twelve was one of the finest luxe engines of the decade, tho' it used Cadillac's fiendishly complex hydraulic valve s i l e n c e r s, while Pierce-Arrow's robust 385-ci straight 8 and 462-ci V-12 their own patented hydraulic valve lifters Pierce's V-12 was designed from the outset to launch massive luxury barges as seven mains attest.
But Packard's chassis was nonpareil, and allied with Werner Gubitz's crisp, understated bodies, retained a sculpted look Cad, the big Lincolns, Pierce, Marmon and the others could not match, and so retained up to 42% of the minuscule fine car (above $2,000 FOB) market through 1936, when Cadillac downsized all their product, increasingly sharing components with lesser GMobiles, and the rest of the industry went "junior." But remember: Even when Packard dominated what remained of the fine car market in the '30s, their styling was also thanks to a pair of outsiders, Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and Ray Dietrich, just as their sole hit of the '40s thanks to a theme presented by Dutch Darrin, who the Company stiffed.
So, interesting, of course. But amazing? The party was over, and engineering improvements meant a new breed of "pocket luxury cars" as they were called, could outperform the earlier juggernauts, which in any event were seen as "high hat," old school pomposity by younger, hipper buyers.
You could argue that all engineering is cost engineering else we'd be serfs to this day. Rolls-Royce was disassembling a new Buick Limited annually in the years just before War II to glean the latest Detroit production tips. Some here gathered get so swept into buff book, coffee table book paeans to expensive cars they lose industry perspective, let alone an understanding of the times.
Anyone can build a cost-little-object super car, but it takes real skill to engineer affordable quality and performance. Equally, it's easier to make any long wheelbase barouche look elegant, it taking advanced artistry to do so on a wheelbase of 120 or so inches.
There were still a few who could afford, and thought they needed, sheer size and a certain craftsmanship then and now. The paucity of prewar sport and grand touring cars among the CCCA's accepted list suggests size is as much virtue as anything.
Not complicated, TPH. No money, no sale.
Autoholicism. Should be in the kitchen helping my girl bolt together Christmas eve repast. Happy New Year to you and all on these forums, and have you ever tried to explain the visceral pull certain old cars have on us to enquiring "civilians" at the dinner table? Oh, they might grasp the shiny, imposing, impressive part, but not what it is to drive, to feel the quality; to enjoy wiping down an engine with a 100% cotton rag dipped in a bit of kerosene a day or two after a run.
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Good point, JV. The above is abetted by young folks who can no longer afford a new or even decent late model used car, often still living with their parents while in their 30s, so it's all the easier for them to make i.c. automobiles a convenient whipping boy. They're going to hate what they can't have. There's that, and our K-12 trails at least 16 other modern industrial democracies, our STEM classes woefully lag as we produce only a quarter per capita the engineers, scientists, doctors as Pakistan, China, India, and spend more on high school concussion ball player than math or science student, witness the sole day of the year many of us can drive a vintage car in a relaxed manner during the entire day being Stupor Bowl Sunday. We're grooming young people to glom onto EZ answers to complex problems.
Also, it's easier to attack i.c. automobiles than examine our own actions. Again....despite 8.1 billion people globally, 350 million babies onboard domestically, all burning some sort of carbon on a planet so small the towers of suspension bridges out of parallel to reflect the earth's curvature, something's gotta give. Such younger folk are even taking fertility drugs, witness the prolificacy of tandem strollers. Twins used to be a rarity, now common. They do not get it. Nor that according to the UN and other studies, animals raised for meat and dairy produce more greenhouse gas than all the world's cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes ships combined.
These, JV, are the elephants in the room, the 800-lb. gorillas the consumer-driven media avoid for fear of upsetting advertisers who see more people as more buyers and cheap labor. Their business model is that weak, and they ignore that every nation with declining birthrate enjoys higher per capita GDP.
Of course such folk are unable to grasp that EVs are no panacea; that gasoline is a terrific fuel, higher BTUs than alcohol, the latter a net energy consumer, unless produced entirely from agwaste as in Brazil, not corn as in the US. Agwaste ethanol is what Henry Ford wanted his Model T and Fordson tractor to run on, which comprised fully half the vehicles on the world's roads and fields by 1920, but with J.D. Rockefeller controlling over 85% of all bulk oil shipping, gasoline as low as a dime a gallon, Ford went along with the program. Otherwise, Maxwell, Hudson, Reo, the Dodge brothers, Auburn, Marmon, Studebaker, Willys, Nash, GM, Packard, Pierce, and others would've likely followed suit. There are not enough raw materials for the world to swap all ICE cars for EVs. EVs run on petroleum tires (producing most the dust in urban areas), and use six (6) times as many minerals as i.c. cars, including cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, manganese, graphite, thallium, titanium, zinc, rare earths like neodymium and dysprosium, the latters' extraction requiring huge amounts of carcinogens like ammonia, hydrochloric acid, sulphates. Much of these minerals are imported from politically unstable regions.
Do you expect these narrowly educated strangers to technology to fathom that thallium has been a common ingredient in rat poison? That it's tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless? While those who tested positive hadn't consumed poisonous levels of the metal, it was enough to cause fatigue, heart arrhythmia, nausea, digestive trouble, neurological problems, and hair loss. The scariest part is that even after patients completed detoxification regiments, thallium continued to show up in their systems."We now know that heavy metals are additive and synergistic," says David Quid, the lead scientist at Doctors Data, PhD in nutritional biochemistry. "If you get a little thallium, and a little lead, and a little cadmium in your system, you've got one plus one plus one equals five or six, not just three." In other words, these metals do more damage when they're combined."This stuff bioaccumulates," he added. "Down the road, it's going to kick you in the ass one way or another."As will our not knuckling down, urging Congress to revise our antiquated, agrarian tax codes from when more babies meant more hands to work the family farm, half of all children not surviving past age four, to instead have only "one or none," or adopt, and getting more people to adopt a plant-based, vegan diet, without which health insurance public or private will never be affordable, since every study not overtly or covertly funded by meat, diary, egg industry comes to the same conclusion: The single best way to prevent heart disease, cardiovascular ills, hypertension, inflammation, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, macular degeneration, dementia (now termed class 3 diabetes), and Alzheimer's is a plant-based, vegan diet. Realizing there's some unrequited testosterone among those owning automatic transmissioned, power braked, power steeringed "muscle" cars, "retro rods," reskinned Falcons, etc., if not generally....in better educated vintage car owners having broader knowledge of culture and history, it's worth reminding many here gathered that unlimited cage fighters, NFL players, and the world's leading Formula One driver, Lewis Hamilton, are vegan.Already, we have drilling, mining, lumbering "access" roads in "our" national parks Teddy Roosevelt wisely set aside as untrammeled America the Beautiful.JV, I've brought up this pair of overarching juggernauts on these forums before, reasoning that unless narrowly educated, insular silver spooners, that many with the wherewithal to own fine old cars also were exposed to higher education, critical thinking, only to get hooted down by characters living in the hinterlands or gated communities unable to see past their own hood ornaments, dismissing anything they don't want to confront as "politics" or "I'll be dead by then" or otherwise beyond them when it's so much easier for them to play us/them, regurgitate Fox 'n' tawk radio, blame "the bureaucrats" appointed by "the government" that we elect.As said too many times, JV, our solution is simple, but not EZ, so the head in the sand of those who'd prefer to lament the good ole days that never existed, or when population a third, even a quarter of today's, continues.You could argue that 120 years ago, 40% of all automobiles were quiet, readily understandable steam, 38% noiseless electric, only 22% internal combustion, so we've only come full circle. But some of us are able to be unrepentant autoholics a n d environmentalists, as arborist late publisher, formerly with the New York Times Review of Books publisher of Hemmings Motor News Terry Ehrich, Paul Newman, James Garner, Steve Allen (co-owned an LA motorcycle shop), Dave Garroway and untold others. Certain old cars are to us a powerful visceral pull; we've decades of experience, effort, time, money in them, and would like to ensure a nation, a world, in which they might still be freely enjoyed without special permits and fees. It wasn't EZ restoring them, it won't be EZ working toward a world which will still welcome them. In short, this is a man's job. Adult focus, drive, ability, reason required. Not juvenile finger pointed and snarls, bar room rants.Add the above to the reasons every poll of scientists, including 2,000 UN in 2013, 11,000 in the 11/5/19 Bloomberg News, shows them agreeing overpopulation by far our biggest problem, their words, "bigger than climate."The Union Pacific Railroad manages to operate three massive steam locomotives of the late '30s, '40s while last year issuing $600 million in green bonds.So, do we continue parsing, equivocating, whining, slamming one state over another, yeah butting, settle for Band Aids on the patient hemorrhaging in the ER, or act? -
Aye, lad. A truer thing never surmised. My Miata-driving girl thinks crossovers look like wheeled hamsters in heat. "Crossover," like "sport... utility... vehicle," another bit of marketing whimsy for the having-it-all crowd. Pick up trucks with four doors. "Muscle" cars with automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, some even with power windows. Faith and begorrah.
Abundantly content with my 77-year-old dragon. But perhaps some here gathered might turn one of the below into a Lincoln KB, Pierce, or Stutz DV32 this Thanksgiving, but we trust not in the circus wagon colors prevalent these days, perhaps free of white walls, radiator gargoyle to boot. Understatement, less is more, weight is the enemy seem lost constructs with so many of the janitorial d' nonelegance bling set:
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"Second tier" was linquistic shading, denoting a relative dimunition among big Lincoln adherents, the KB long considered the pinnacle. You're taking it out of context, in which the K was praised. As for SUVs, they are ridiculous; high center of gravity, cupholders for every seat. As kids, we had station wagons, plenty comfortable. And....we walked, biked everywhere. You rarely saw a fat kid. Every other classroom, perhaps one kid was plump, but not today's rampant morbid obesity, medical researchers citing today's kids the first generation in human history that will live shorter lives than their parents, suffering diseases and ills in their 20s, 30s, once the province of those in their 60s, 70s. Big vans with windows on pick up chassis. Where's the "sport" part?
Out in my corporate 'burbs, we laugh at the urban cowboys in their pristine four-door pick up trucks. You need a truck, rent one. Auto designers, marketers would be daft n o t to take advantage of the peculiar domestic Walter Mittyism, unrequited testosterone. But then some of us here gathered are sport car guys who got sidetracked by some of the more rational "road cars," "pocket luxury cars" of the late '30s, '40s, who nonetheless have long experience with the heavy iron "Classic" fire trucks of the earlier '30s, able to appreciate them for what they are, while still seeing them as a mite comic opera, over the top offerings to snare what discretionary coin remained during the Depression by automakers unwilling or unable to engineer novel juniors.
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Only seeing expected head in the sand, troll snarkiness. What are your plans, gentlemen, to shift attention to the causes of our i.c. cars being convenient whipping boys, other than dredging a half century of old newspaper clippings, living in the past? The nation's and world's scientists concur. You know better? We're here now, 2023. New I.C. cars are already being phased out in Norway in two years, 2025, in Britain and halfway US 2030, the EU 2035. You imagine a relative handful of old car owners will long be immune from fees for limited use, requiring special permits? Are you really that insular, unable to grasp the big picture, see beyond your own hood ornaments?
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Again, every poll of s c i e n t i s t s has them agreeing overpopulation by far our biggest problem, their words, "bigger than climate," including a 2013 poll of 2,000 UN scientists in 2013, another of 11,000 scientists in the 11/5/19 Bloomberg News. UN and other vetted studies show animals raised for meat and dairy produce more greenhouse gas than all the world's cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, ships combined.
S c i e n t i s t s, d o c t o r s, m e d i c a l r e s e a r c h e r s not overtly or covertly funded by carbon companies, meat, dairy, egg industry.
We're not talking about "beliefs," "green energy companies" or "unending funding" or "private jets to meetings" or "average Joes." If you want to disregard the above pair of sentences and play "the dog ate my homework," have at it. The rest of us rationalists are focusing on the overarching problems, shifting attention to them, and away from making our old i.c. cars convenient whipping boys.
8.1 billion people all burning some form of carbon on a planet so small the towers of suspension bridges out of parallel to reflect the earth's curvature. 350 million babies onboard the US. These are staggering problems and the reason our cars are convenient whipping boys. Some of us have a lot of time, effort, money in our vintage cars and do not want to have to pay fees for limited use, require special permits, for their occasional enjoyment, which is where we're headed unless we turn focus on the causes: too many people eating the largest producer of greenhouse gas. Which is why this is simple, but not EZ.
We do not see salvation in tawk radio, what we want to hear, what we wish were so, whining, playing us/them just because this will be tremendously difficult. So was rebuilding our old cars.
American Rolls Royce (Ghost, PI & PII)
in CCCA - General
Posted · Edited by Su8overdrive (see edit history)
Truer words never penned, fellow Prewarnet. And nice to hear from those preferring finely loomed wool to animal skin for their barouche's upholstery, see below.
Meanwhile, thanks for the refreshing lucidity, Keith. Laurence Pomeroy, who knew what he was about, summed Rolls-Royce as "a triumph of craftsmanship over engineering," and "a bloody good confidence trick."
The R-R-based '33-on Bentleys were nice enough, if overly complex. Pomeroy or another respected Brit motoring journalist in the day suggested R-R's new junior companion model, the "Small HP" 20 debuting for 1922, was a crib of the '20 Buick Six, tho' "not so good." It remained the basis for most R-R engines other than the troublesome 727 1936-39 Phantom III 447-ci ohv V-12s until Crewe's first V-8, at which introduction its well-lubricated chief engineer blurted out, "It's bloody near as good as the Chrysler."
Some of us think the Bentley grille, both Cricklewood and Derby/Crewe, lovelier than the overbearing Parthenon edifice on Rolls-Royces, but that's a cosmetic aside.
W. O. Bentley had nothing but open respect for Packard, which Napier tried to arrange manufacturing rights to but when rebuffed by Detroit was sneakily outbid by R-R when trying to buy Bentley.
Just before War II, Rolls-Royce was annually disassembling a new Buick Limited to glean the latest US manufacturing tips, and of course, after the war, R-R/Bentley, and at the rear, Lagonda, used a nut-for-bolt copy of Packard's 1935-42 Saf-T-Flex i.f.s. After the "Classic" era, R-R used Delco electrics and HydraMatic. Packard wanted to use the latter but GM would not so allow until a full year after any improvements East Grand Avenue made, so Packard spent much of their Merlin and PT boat engine profit on, essentially, a Dynaflow with lock-up torque convertor.
From 1935-on, the same time Cadillac, Duesenberg (810 Cord originally termed the "baby Duesenberg by A-C-D insiders), Lincoln, Packard introducing more rationally sized juniors, "pocket luxury cars" in the day's parlance, Rolls-Royce's focus was mainly aero engines, the cars an increasingly rationalized boutique assembled product, after the war chiefly bodied by Pressed Steel, Cowley near Oxford, who produced bodies for much of the Sceptered Isle motor industry, even as Briggs did for Packard and others, as did Murray, Budd. (Pierce-Arrow lacked the cash to introduce their planned 25,000 Hayes-bodied base $1,200 F.O.B. juniors for 1938.)
We recall seeing ads for Rolls-Royces featuring "unborn calf hide." Cars fit for Caligula.
Auto leather isn't all it's cracked up to be