General Classic Car News

The long cold winter is officially over, Detroit is in bloom and that jalopy isn’t going to drive itself, you know. So break out the stadium coat, limber up your cranking arm and get that thing on the road. Spring days are, apparently, motoring days.

So when Chrysler saw all sorts of sales success with the 300/300C several years ago, I wonder if anybody recalled that the company had toyed with the idea of reintroducing the 300 nameplate a decade prior, even before the 300M came along? Probably not – the Thunderbolt was the big Chrysler show car that year, [...]

The May 2010 issue of Hemmings Classic Car should be hitting newsstands as I type, and it will signify the last ‘Mk II’ old-style issues before the fresh, fully re-styled Classic Car ‘Mk III’ June issue appears. Among the changes inside the new design will be a combined “Art & Automobilia” spread that introduces readers not only to talented [...]

By 1909, crossing the country was a largely symbolic gesture, especially to deliver a message. Transcontinental runs were already becoming the stuff of legend, and trains and telegraphs had already connected the country.
However, the U.S. military had yet to fully grasp just how important the automobile would become. Considering how technologically advanced the military has [...]

Glenn Curtiss, C. 1911
Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss’ story is long and complex, and the part about airplanes is more than we can go into here  (see the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum if you want a primer on his contributions). He was also a manufacturer of motorcycles early in his career (and the Aerocar later on), [...]

Inspired by our Mystery of the Cuban skycar post from earlier this week (handily solved by reader Marilyn Stine – thanks, Marilyn!), we’re going to see what we can do with Aerocar as the subject for this week’s Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenge.
Unlike the last few weeks, I will be in the office [...]

While the ad for this 1986 Hummer on Hemmings.com has it listed as an H1, the obvious military configuration (the seller, in his brief description, states it’s a former USMC Hummer) leads me to think it should rather be described as an AM General M998 HMMWV. Indeed, the Hummer H1 wasn’t even introduced until 1992. [...]

While we have a special class for Corvairs at this year’s New England Concours d’Elegance, I don’t think this one will get an invite.
Barry Wolk, he of the shorty Corvair experiment, recently sent along this photo of an El Corvairo that he thought was kinda neat. Looks well-done, too. Except for the Garfield.

Last month’s Hemmings Cruise to the Mexican Riviera yielded some spectacular pleasures for the eyes. This wasn’t one of them.  As to a mass-casualty incident, our eyes were drawn to this four-door Ford Maverick at curbside outside a seafood restaurant in Mazatlan. The bent-up Jalisco license plates on both ends are current, so presumably, it [...]

You’ll see my coverage of Amelia Island – both the concours and the two auctions – over the next few months in our various magazines, but what we never typically o in our show coverage is go out to the parking lots to see what interesting vehicles were driven to the show. So I spent [...]

Once I was done snapping photos at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance on Sunday, Geoff Hacker enlisted my help in presenting his Bill Burke bellytank dry lakes racer (Geoff curated the Forgotten Fiberglass class at the show and was thus otherwise occupied), something I gladly did, along with Ted Kempgens, one of the builders of [...]

Muscle car, plain old antique car, or both? We found this gem from 1959 – a Custom Royal Lancer two-door hardtop – which could easily stir the muscle car-or-not debate: The seller (and supporting photographs) states that the Dodge is equipped with the desirable D-500 engine package. That’s dual-quads on top of a 383-cu.in. V-8 [...]

Where FoMoCo provided engines during World War II for the unique dual-engined Traco-E&L bomber parts haulers, GM engines were conscripted into a similar service after the war.
According to Crismon, around 1947, the Eisenhauser Manufacturing Company of Van Wert, Ohio, built the above five-axle straight truck as a prototype to see whether it was possible to [...]

I was rather excited to finally have the opportunity to see Amelia Island this past weekend: With two auctions, a very prestigious concours, automotive personality sightings galore, and plenty of cars to ogle (plus sun and warm weather to soak up), the weekend almost approaches sensory overload. After a quick glance through my photos from [...]

No, not performance as in the kind you could buy right off the dealer lot in 1969. Nor the kind of performance that was found on quarter-mile strips of pavement if you knew somebody within the dealer network. None of that.
We’re talking about the kind of performance that you could buy off the shelf (in [...]

If you’re a fan of our Driveable Dream feature in Hemmings Classic Car and have a soft spot for station wagons, then this $3,200 1956 Country Squire should grab your attention for a brief minute or two. There’s only one catch: It doesn’t run (which doesn’t make it very driveable, does it?), which means it’s [...]

Dodge M-37s were one of the most utilized military vehicles during the Korean War era. With the same six-cylinder engine as the Plymouth cars and a heavy duty New Process transfer case, they proved they could take a beating. The 3/4-ton 4WD convertible was designed to replace the WWII WC series Dodge trucks and the [...]

An old buddy was going through a pile of Chevy 235 parts in a cleanup, and came upon this mystery intake in the pile. I know Edmunds made intakes for some offbeat applications, but this one says “NASH” on the underside, and Fred doesn’t think it fits a stovebolt. If that means it fits Nash, [...]

On a suggestion from one of our readers, I picked up Richard Schweid’s 2004 book on 1950s cars in Cuba, “Che’s Chevrolet, Fidel’s Oldsmobile: On the Road in Cuba.” While I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for in the book, I did come across a couple other tidbits worth mentioning.
One of them dealt [...]

Hey, isn’t that 1967 Jeep CJ6 too big to be used in Shriner’s parades? From the seller’s description:
Jeep 1967 CJ6, rare, runs, great condition, used in Shriners parades, no rust, original V6 Buick engine, low mileage, new top, recent restoration
For sale out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for $11,975. See more Jeeps for sale [...]