Does this Thing ever speak to me. In German, undoubtedly; which may well have something to do with the affinity I feel with it. I’m going to try to not be too chauvinistic, but there is something intrinsically Germanic, brilliant and adaptable in the basic Volkswagen design, which facilitated more permutations than any other car ever. The same basic underpinnings that created the Porsche 356 are here at work in the Type 181, the descendant of the WWII Kübelwagen. Even though you haven’t seen the last two yellow convertibles this week, if I had to choose one from all five, this Thing might well have be the one. Figure it. But where else can you get a four door rag top that will last forever, can go off-roading, and you don’t have to worry about putting up the top when it rains. Read More >

For decades, British roadsters had a spell on Americans. And the rivalry between the MG and Triumph, the two leading exponents of the genre, was legendary. They each had loyal adherents to the respective marques, and the stiff competition kept the improvements coming, even if not exactly at a breakneck pace. But by about the time this TR-6 first appeared in 1969, the race was essentially over: the new MGC was DOA, and the MGB was quickly slipping into its ossification period, while the Triumph reveled in its final incarnation of the classic formula: old school, but with a healthy kick of life in it yet. Read More >

Welcome to yellow convertible week at CC. Intimations of summer are in the air, and what better way to immerse oneself into its mood-enhancing, Vitamin-D generating goodness than in a convertible, especially in a yellow one? We’re going to sample a highly diverse lot, starting with the smallest and ending with the biggest. And for true top-down motoring, its hard to be in something with four much smaller than this Metro. Read More >

Here’s a mighty fine example of one of my all-time favorite trucks, hard at work on the job site. It probably won’t come as a great surprise to you that there a dozens of these vintage Chevy trucks still earning their keep hereabouts, but this is a particularly nice one. And for some reason, the first year ’67s aren’t that common. Although I’m quite fond of my ’66 F-100, I’m not very partisan when it comes to American trucks of this vintage: they’re all just about equally attractive, hard working and easy to keep running. I’d take this turquoise beauty in a heartbeat (of America). Read More >

The original 1960 Corvair Monza coupe (1966 shown) introduced and pioneered a European category to the US: the sporty compact coupe. The formula: a new roof line, maybe some other body changes like the Monza’s enlarged rear wheel openings, bucket seats and tasty interior trimmings, upgraded engine performance. Most of all, it had to have style, at least more than the donor sedan it sprang from, otherwise it defeated the whole purpose. The formula has been applied endlessly, to greater and lesser effect. But sometimes it’s just abused; probably never more horribly so than with Fords EXP and its stablemate, the Mercury LN7. Read More >

You wake despite the hope that you would never awake, in fear that the wildest night of your life with Corvair was all just a dream…ooops; never mind. But if a car ever inspired one to emote and wax poetically, it was the Corvair, especially the 1965. So I’ll try hard to restrain myself: the 1965 Corvair was the best European car ever ever made in America. And if that alone doesn’t explain the Corvair’s inevitable failure, lets just say that in 1965 Americans were eating a lot more Wonder Bread than baguettes.

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Ooo, what a cute little car. Yes it is, if the pygmy look is your thing, but this A40 carries the weight of some serious world financial history on its skinny little tires. Like as in our trillion dollar deficits. Seriously. This Austin was the first import car bought in significant numbers right after WWII, which at the time was a godsend to Great Britain, helping to bail them out of their horrible debt load, the price of winning the war. But in the process, the Austin was the forerunner of an overwhelming import boom that hasn’t ended yet, and which has significantly affected our own economy and its crushing debt load. Was the cute little Austin A40 an economic Trojan Horse? Read More >

You wake despite the hope that you would never awake, that it was all just a bad dream. But you know she’s there in the bed next to you. In the early gray light of morning, your bleary eyes reluctantly open and fall on her mottled and pallid white skin. She seemed so hot and glamorous last night, in the sparkly beams of light on the dance floor at the Rockin’ Rodeo. Everyone always raved about Camaro, what a hot number she was, and how you just had to have one some day. And last night there she was, and you finally screwed up your courage to ask her for a dance. At the time, all you could see were those hips, those glorious bulging hips. You just knew they promised action, despite the fact they weren’t hardly moving at all. Oh yeah; she was saving her energy for the big run, the final blast, you kept telling yourself. But it never came. Read More >

It’s a good thing I came across this car. There’s a point in life where one starts to prune away the excess, getting rid of the stuff in the closets and basement that hasn’t been used in thirty years or more. And I admit that’s what I had done with the Dodge Royal Monaco: it just kind of got swept away with the detritus of the seventies. If one is going to have room for  new car facts and impressions, it’s cars like this that get hauled off to the memory dump first. Read More >

Welcome to Havana, Oregon. Back in the eighties, living in tony Los Gatos, I used to gaze longingly at photos of old American cars and trucks still hard at work in Cuba. But within days of moving to Eugene in 1993, I came across this very truck, hauling its daily cargo of recycled cardboard. And it planted a seed in me, to document the old vehicles still earning their keep, which finally came to fruition with Curbside Classics. Although we’ve strayed from the strict interpretation of that mission a few times along the way, no other vehicle more perfectly embodies the original ethos than this 1956 F-350. Read More >

So just how exactly does one become the best selling car in America? The only reliable way one becomes number one in just about anything: doing your homework and practicing every day. And it really does helps if the competition has forgotten that formula. Read More >

[Three related Checker posts: An Illustrated History of Checker Motors; Vintage Checker Ads; and Tomorrow’s Checker?]

If you hadn’t seen the title, and I told you I had found a rare 1966 Beijing Sedan (aka: “The East Glows”) or a GAZ-13 “Chaika” would you believe me? Maybe, if you were under a certain age and hadn’t lived in a big city with lots of taxi cabs, or were just gullible. OK, the Checker is iconic. But there’s something so distinctively un-Detroit about this Checker; well, lets just say that it’s all too obvious that Harley Earl, Virgil Exner or their kind had nothing to do with it. It looks a crappy commie imitation of a real American car, drafted by a civil engineer while gazing at some car ads in old US magazines and assembled by political prisoners in a little brick factory to fulfill the specialized fleet needs of the party bosses. Paint it black, put a couple of red flags on the front fenders, and no one under thirty-five will be the wiser. Welcome to Checker-land, the car that snubbed its nose at Detroit, and perpetually made money doing so. Read More >

Since we overdosed on Eugene-mobiles yesterday, we’re going to have to hold off on that other definitive official local car, the Volvo 240 series until we’ve recuperated and the flashbacks die down a bit. But we’ve given Volvo short shrift here, so let’s do a car that takes me straight back to Maryland circa 1968, but in the most positive way possible: a 142S, decked out just like a young enthusiast of the times (me!) would have done (minus the non-vintage lip spoiler). This is a car that I seriously lusted after then, and it still works on my limbic system today. Read More >

Welcome to Eugene. Feel free to stay on the bus, either literally or metaphorically. If it’s the former, no hard feelings; Eugene is not for everyone, and we’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so. But if you’re “On The Bus”, then let’s step out here in the center of downtown, also known as Kesey Square. There is the statue of Ken Kesey, Eugene’s hometown cultural and literary hero, reading from his most famous book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”.  And what’s that across the street? How serendipitous indeed: a vintage VW bus, the official transporter of Eugene. Read More >

Yes, when it comes to GM, there were definitely more than seven deadly sins. Actually, there were tens of millions of them. And while this is perhaps one of the less conspicuous and pernicious ones (I didn’t label it as such until I put up the first picture and had to rewrite the title), it is one nevertheless. And what is the sin this innocuous sedan embodies? Thou shalt not take thy godly names in vain. Read More >