Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i Classic American

Some tasty morsels went under the hammer at H & H’s Buxton auction at the end of July. Leading the American contingent was a 1962 Chevrolet Corvette, looking every bit the weekend racer, with its stripes, decals, fat tyres and aftermarket wheels. A four-on-the-floor manual transmission hooks up to a 327cu in V8 and the whole package just screams fun – this one looks like it’s for track days and the like, no concours here! It hammered for a very respectable £46,125. Another race-inspired vehicle was the 1924 Ford Model T Speedster, a real bare bones racer of a car, but looking like it had just rolled out of a museum rather than off a racetrack. This is one of the rare Manchester-built Model Ts, complete with its original registration…

It was a car that at least one major motoring title touted as being a dead cert for production. The Prima was to be a new entry-level product aimed at American consumers and built stateside despite its European origins. Autocar, for its part, proclaimed in May 1976: “Ford have announced plans to put a new type of ‘leisure vehicle’ into production in the USA in the near future, and have released pictures of a prototype car. The car is interesting in several respects: for its small size, for the use of a transverse engine and front-wheel drive, and for the concept of changing the car’s character by offering alternative upper back ends to change at will.” The prototype employed a 1098cc Kent four-cylinder unit mounted transversely in a 2286mm (90in)…

The Cadillac Automobile Company was founded in 1902, after an early incarnation of Henry Ford’s company broke up in disagreement. Some of the investors were persuaded to stick with car manufacture by businessman and engineer Henry M Leland, who had developed a reliable 10bhp single-cylinder engine and wanted to build a car to go with it. The name came from Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, a French adventurer credited with the founding of Detroit. Cadillac’s first cars were well made and therefore successful, thanks also to their modest price − $750 was a fortune to most, but less than many rivals. By 1907, though, Leland had decided on a deliberate move upmarket; yet, people need a reason to spend more. Part of the credit for Cadillac’s early…

If there’s a heaven for drag racers (and we expect there is), it probably looks like Santa Pod Raceway did over the weekend of July 8-10. Blue skies, a hot sticky track and a generous dose of California-style sunshine made for perfect conditions and great racing at this year’s Dragstalgia. As usual the campsites were packed with cool cars, tents and motorhomes, full of race fans trying to keep cool in the 80-degree heat (yes, Fahrenheit, it’s a nostalgia event, okay?). Friday at Dragstalgia is the busy, Run-What-Ya-Brung day for street cars these days, the success of the event with the ever-growing race classes meaning that track time on Saturday and Sunday is taken up by all the competition race series and competition classes. While the big boys in the…

It’s been a busy old time this summer, with heats of the Kingstown Shipping Car of the Year competition on four of the five weekends in July: Stars & Stripes, Rally of the Giants, Damn Yankees and the Mopar Nats coming up. Phew! Listed below are the winners of three of the latest heats, who will display their cars on the Classic American stand at the Classic Motor show at the NEC over the weekend of November 11-13. Stars & Stripes, Tatton Park, July 2 and 3 The winner of the second heat of the Kingstown Shipping Car of the Year competition should look familiar to most readers, as it has swept the board in terms of trophies and accolades up and down the country. Owner Steve Sullivan set himself…

Across the pond When I was a kid, cars always seemed to be more than just four-wheeled conveyances. Even the most mundane family four-door seemed to have style and substance. By the time I was eight I could identify almost every car on the road. Today, barring a few exceptions, I’m hard pressed to tell one from another and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a run-of-the mill crossover utility, or even a performance car. I might get flack for saying this, but to me, the new Corvette C8 seems to look like another generic mid-engine 21st century Supercar. Granted, it’s tremendously fast, highly capable and from a statistical point of view the best Corvette ever made. But it seems, like a lot of vehicles these days, it just doesn’t…

It is now some five years since Simon Chesterman last graced the pages of Classic American. Back then, we took a closer look at his striking custom 1961 Chevrolet Brookwood station wagon. With lairy two-tone livery, 22-inch Billet wheels, Gabe’s interior and huge sound system, this wasn’t one for the purists, but it certainly stood out in a crowd. At the time, Simon reminisced about the countless classics he’d owned, but spoke fondly of his ’57 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, a highly original car he cherishes to such an extent it’s now become an integral part of his family. We decided to find out why this particular car holds such a special place in his heart… Currently, Simon owns no fewer than six classic cars, several motorcycles and a pair…

Oxfordshire: a region famed for its pastoral tranquillity and scenic vales, where venerable old dons amble about their business in the city of dreaming spires and the shimmering water of the Isis trickles lazily through the outstretched arms of the willow. Was there ever a more perfect picture of the Arcadian paradise, with its sheep scattered on the hillsides and V8 muscle cars rumbling through the lanes, not to mention the fiery roar of flying Aardvarks… I beg your pardon? Muscle cars? Flying Aardvarks? Well, yes, once upon a time, anyway. Transport yourselves back to the 1950s, and the former RAF base at Upper Heyford, about seven miles north-west of Bicester, was being taken over by the US Air Force and that part of Oxfordshire was awash with Americans, plus…

It’s not every day that classic American cars get top billing at prestigious concours events like the London Concours, but on this occasion, there was a special Fins & Chrome Class, featuring six specially curated cars that represented the best Fifties American vehicles here in the UK. These included three cars from the Homan brothers’ collection: a 1956 Packard Caribbean, a 1958 Mercury Park Lane and a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, as well as Steve Sullivan’s 1958 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, a 1960 Chrysler 300F belonging to Mark Sumpter and Rick Skett’s 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. The class was sponsored by Adrian Flux insurance and Classic American magazine and judging was carried out by motoring journalist Sarah Bradley, Classic American editor Ben Klemenzson and Matt Allen from Adrian Flux. The…

News Once again Cadillac is reinventing itself, this time in an electric format. The hallowed nameplate has announced that by 2026 there will be only one ICE-powered (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicle in its line-up and that will be the Escalade. After teasing pundits for months, it has finally unveiled its first all-electric offering, the Lyriq, which promises to be the first of many all-electric Cadillac models coming down the line. It’s quite an eyeful and makes use of Cadillac styling cues of yore, including – of course – cathedral tail-lights and lots of high-quality materials. In terms of the nuts and bolts of this vehicle, GM is using its Ultium battery platform that can be formatted up or down according to a vehicle’s requirements. The Lyriq uses rear-wheel drive and…

Reluctant Restoration hiatus The Reluctant Restoration is taking a breather this month. You know how it is with these things, tremendous progress for months, then a lull… What we can tell you is that the engine is out, so look out for next month’s instalment! Classic American online If you want more than your monthly dose of Classic American in magazine form, don’t forget you can follow us online on Facebook and Instagram as well as Classic American’s very own dedicated website at www.classic-american.com There are all sorts of things on there, including features, galleries and all the show coverage images we couldn’t shoehorn into the magazine. Not only that, you can even submit free classified adverts on there for your car, truck or parts. All you’ll need is a…

This month we have not one, but two coincidences. The first is Auto World’s 1:18 scale SS/AMX Super Stock drag car lettered for Shirley Shahan’s Drag-On-Lady team as it appeared for the 1970 season. The second relates to my own S550 Ford Mustang. I reviewed the new Car Tech pictorial biography on Shirley Shahan in last month’s Reviews. There was mention of a large-scale model of her popular SS/AMX Super Stock dragster. Later I did some research and discovered that it’s still available and at the time of writing is listed by McLaren Models at £89. See the company’s advert for contact details. I was surprised as such models are produced in limited numbers, then either ‘rested’ or reissued in a new colour scheme. The Drag-On-Lady’s 1969 SS/AMX The American…

This year’s show season seems to be a tale of weather, or to be more specific, weather forecasts, their inaccuracy and subsequent impact on attendance. The forecast for the Stars & Stripes show for Saturday was, to put it simply, pretty diabolical, predicting, right up until the morning of the show, heavy downpours throughout the day. Indeed, some rain did make an appearance in the morning, but Ironically Saturday turned out to be the sunnier and warmer day of the two. The reason why this matters is because it’s based on these forecasts that participants, particularly those travelling any distance, make their choices on whether to attend or not. So, while Saturday actually ended up having the better weather, it had lower attendance, while Sunday, with poorer weather (but a…

1. During its two-decade production run, the Monterey acted as Mercury’s entry-level, mid-range and flagship model. In 1958, when this once beautiful pink four-door sedan rolled off the line, it sat somewhere in the middle. It’s a resident of Hidden Valley Auto Parts in Maricopa, Arizona, where it is gradually being stripped of its parts. 2. You could secure this 1960 Cadillac Coupe DeVille two-door hardtop for $8500. It’s certainly a bit rough around the edges, and needs new glazing, but the body is relatively straight and rust-free. It’s one of 400 restoration projects at Idaho’s L&L Classic Auto. For more information call: 001 208 536 6607. 3. This lowly 1971 Ford Custom 500 Ranch Wagon harks back to a day before families took road trips in minivans and SUVs.…