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If your car didn't have it, you didn't need it!


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In speaking of the older cars, if it didnot have it you did not need it.

Like:

pressurized cooling systems

emissons

fender skirts

four wheel brakes

Any ideas?

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Guest Skyking

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">never had aa American Motors car, Bob! tongue.gif

Wayne </div></div>

Wayne, you sure missed out at the drive-ins..........! grin.gifgrin.gif

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Guest De Soto Frank

Self-Starter

Cel Phone (How DID we ever drive without them ??? Wait a minute - I still DO! )

Super-duper excessively bright headlights /fog lights/driving lights, all "on" at the same time !

Panel-rattling sound systems...

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Guest BruceW

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> What will they think of next, brakes on all 4 wheels? grin.gifsmirk.gif </div></div>

Heck John.. are you dreaming? The next thing you you know you are going to think they will try and replace the good ole mechanical brakes with some kind of hydraulic operated thingy. grin.gif

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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Wayne, you sure missed out at the drive-ins..........! </div></div>

Sky, maybe that's why my first wife was so upset with me the first year of our marriage. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I've always been a slow learner. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Wayne

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Guest Silverghost

Hey!!! I Hear the NEXT NEW THING will be a car that you can drive into a pond just like a boat!!! This is the ULTIMATE THING we all really need!!!

Might be fun though!!! I like to fish & waterski!!!

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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Radio volume controls in the steering wheel, but yet for some reason the salesman said I needed them?

John </div></div>

I take it you've never had a "discussion" with your significant other about how loud the radio should be. smirk.gif

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Guest Silverghost

John: I love that photo!!! I have my waterskis,and my wetsuit...When Can I come out+up there to have a few ski passes!!!

Do you think you can get it to go fast enough for me to Wakeboard and get some "Big Air"!!!

Better yet...how about Barefootng ???

I will go and call the ESPN Sports guys!!!

We could call it "EXTREME LOW TEMP WATERSKING!"

Maybe I should sell my American Skier 454 Cu in Skiboat and get one of those instead?????

I knew there had to be a " Good Practical Use For those FUN little cars!!!

I LOVE IT!!!

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I'll only comment on brakes. It will depend on where you live, of course, but having better than stock brakes becomes pretty important. If you live in a place like L.A. or other huge metro area it is relatively dangerous to venture long distances or take freeways far. It is just SO, SO obvious our brakes just suck to the borderline of dangerous. I drive very much less than I could because of traffic demands in this sense. Small town and rural slow-paced areas are different.

Everyone I have met in the Southern California area either has updated to dual master cylinders and made brake modifications or drives only a little. The repeated lament is "I got tired of driving around the block at 35MPH."

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Guest De Soto Frank

Twitch,

I presume your comment refers to Calif. driving habits more so than mid-century braking technology ?

( Drivers are becoming pretty bad here in the East too...)

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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In speaking of the older cars, if it didnot have it you did not need it.

Like:

pressurized cooling systems

emissons

fender skirts

four wheel brakes

Any ideas? </div></div>

Of course, what you mention here are things that, in the early days of the automobile, had yet to be developed. Some, like fender skirts, were aftermarket accessories (a few were factory accessories dealer installed), but the various mechanical improvements were certainly wanted at the time, but not yet available.

Of course, a correct restoraton of a pre-mid-30's car would not have a pressurized cooling system, no pre-20's car would be properly restored having 4 wheel brakes (or hydraulics on a car originally built with mechanicals, either!). Emmission conrrols? John Studebaker's original objection to his company's producing automobiles revolved around his emphatic statement that gasoline-powered cars were not only noisy, they smelled bad. People in big cities were complaining about the polluted air on city streets from the earliest days of motor vehicle traffic, BTW.

To carry this to an extreme here, what pre-1948 car needs, or even should have synthetic cord tires? After all, none of them came from the factory with anything more than cotton-cord tires--if that was good enough then, why not today? I've never seen a single contemporary photograph (taken in the day when the cars were new) of a Model A Ford on whitewall tires, or for that matter, any prewar car having whitewalls that were one-sided only (virtually all prewar whitewalls, if not all of them, wree double-whitewall, the white being on both sidewalls--any perusal of contemporary photographs will point that out as well.

Perhaps a few original owners of cars built, say prior to 1958 dressed out their cars with dozens of factory-authorized accessories from the dealership parts counter, but a Model A, or '55 Chevy, restored, but looking for all the world like a rolling advertisement from a 1960-vintage JC Whitney catalog???

Windshield visors? Back in my boyhood days of the 50's, yes, we did see them, but not on every car, and when we did, the drivers of cars thus equipped seemed mostly to be middle-aged or elderly--visors just weren't on every one coming down the street, not even a majority.

In short, there are an awful lot of otherwise very nicely restored and maintained antique cars out theee that are loaded with far, far more accessories than virtually anyone in the day when those cars were new would have had. But then, it's all about making a statement, I suppose, and in that, there is plenty of room for individual likes, tastes and dislikes.

Art

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Guest Silverghost

John Studebaker should NOT have complained about "emissions"; after all he + his family were in the horse carriage building business for many many years... What emits more kinds of smelly waste than a Horse!!!

You are right on the money with your add-on accessory point! I remember cars from my boyhood in the 50s and few had visors, (Old people seemed to like them!!!) These folks also liked tissue boxes!!! I remember my Mother buying one for my dad's 53 DeSoto !!! I hated the look of it!!! Don't forget the hang-on "Litter Bag" Rear spare tire "continental Kits" were a very very rare factory item indeed. There are far more around today; with the exception of the 1956 T-Bird !!! Many cars did not have radios or heaters...I do remember quite a few cars equipped with fog lighs...Curb feelers were another popular accessory!!!

I will always remember when my Dad got a Mark IV aftermarket Air Conditioner Kit installed in his 1958 Chevy... We lived in the city (Philadelphia) in a row-house neighborhood...

No Lincolns, Chrys.300s,or Cadillacs in this neighborhood so this was a BIG DEAL with all our neighbors!!! They would come up to my dad and ask if they could sit in his air conditioned car!!! I remember one day he had it in the back driveway waxing it and a large group of people asked to sit in it!!! He had to keep the engine running while he was waxing...they were sitting inside!!! Very Funny now....BUT this was the Talk Of the Neighborhood back then!!! He also had stickers on the rear side windows that said Mark IV Air Conditioned in blue Icicle letters!

When we would ride with our windows closed on a very hot day people in other cars would look at us like we were NUTS!!! Often people would see the stickers and ask to see the system!!! You have to remember...Few...If any had window AC units!!! I only Remember AC at the movies!!!

It was a different time back then!!!

By the way...Dad + I removed this entire Mark IV Air Cond. kit when he traded-in this car...

I still have it in a box today!!! We never re-used it in another car as was his intent!!!

Anyone need it!!!

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Guest Skyking

How about see-through plastic seat covers.....a big thing in the 50's & 60's. As soon as you bought the car it went to a shop to have them installed. Save the nice seats for the next owner! confused.gif

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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How about see-through plastic seat covers.....a big thing in the 50's & 60's. As soon as you bought the car it went to a shop to have them installed. Save the nice seats for the next owner! confused.gif </div></div>

Dad never had the clear plastic seat covers--those were, it seems to me, more of a 60's thing--in the late 40's-early 50's, seat covers tended to be those scotch plaid things, woven in fine fibers of PVC, which snagged and broke open in small holes, which snagged Mom's nylons and: One hot summer day, I was out with Dad, probably barely 10, wearing a pair of khaki camp shorts, you know the kind that rode up on your legs when you sat down. The Hudson had been equipped with those woven seat covers from new, and they were pretty well worn. Scooting across the seat, I chanced to slide a bare leg over one of the holes in the front seat cover, and a loose vinyl thread poked me, painfully, in a spot I really don't want to think about even today! I grew to hate seat covers from that day forward! (besides, they were ugly!)

Art

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Guest Skyking

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

Dad never had the clear plastic seat covers--those were, it seems to me, more of a 60's thing--

Art </div></div>

I was nine years old in 1955 when my parents bought a brand new '55 Century 4-door H/T, Buick's first. It had that beautiful tri-color interior, red,and white vinly with black material with silver specks going through it. My father had the plastic seat covers installed. They were ice cold in the winter and I remember getting shocks when exiting the car. We kept that car in the family until 1993 when my brother gave it away before heading south.........the interior still looked good.

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In 1960 I was about 7 years old when dad bought home a '57 Studebaker Silver Hawk {white with grey sides and roof } which had this thick plastic that seemed to be form fitted over the seats. Summer in N.Y. could get pretty hot and wearing shorts would cause you to sweat a ton , and that's how much in gallons?

........ frown.giffrown.giffrown.giffrown.gif........

.........................................Steve

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Yes I am talking about the greater Southern Cali area from experience but fully realize that attempting to do extensive driving in any dense urban area is a heart in throat experience. Small towns don't count at all cause the traffic is so light and generally less frenzied.

If you can't stop well in crazy traffic situations why take the car out? That's what lot's of people here have concluded and rectified things by modifying the braking system for safety.

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