Old Cars Weekly April 15, 2022

I’ve often said that if everyone drove an early-1960s Cadillac, there would be world peace. For me, there really is nothing better than getting behind the chromed horn button and thin-rimmed steering wheel of a Cadillac from the Kennedy era and gliding down the road with sure-footed confidence, knowing there’s plenty of passing power on tap and tailfins trailing behind and visible with a quick glance in the rearview mirror. In my nearly 30 years of driving an early-1960s Cadillac, the farthest I have driven the car in one stretch is from Iola, Wis., to St. Paul for the MSRA’s Back to the 50’s car show. It’s always been a comfortable 250-mile drive, but this week, I am truly putting my mantra to the test — will riding in and driving…

Adding ‘delete’ isn’t a pet peeve I wanted to add my 2 cents to the pet peeves of a fellow reader. “Radio delete” and “air conditioning delete” are real things. When you ordered some cars in the 1950s and thereafter, the actual order would say “radio delete.” That meant your car didn’t get a radio and received a radio delete cover plate. As far as “air conditioning delete” goes, beginning in the 1970s, air conditioning started to become a standard item. It is normally very hard to get a dealership to order a car without air conditioning unless the buyer puts down a big deposit. Specifying “air conditioning delete” would tell the manufacturer to not do what they normally do, but just install a basic heater/defroster. One reader found the use of…

“My wife and I purchased a 1967 Ford Mustang on impulse in the spring of 2020,” says Mark Fields. “We’d both owned Mustangs as our ›rst cars (a ’71 hardtop and a ’68 convertible), and when I saw this one advertised on a website, I decided that was the classic car for us. It’s not a show car, but it runs real nice and we get a lot of ‘thumbs up’ when cruising around. The original color was Lime Gold, and it was repainted Moss Green at some point before we bought it. The interior is nice; I just did a little work to restore the upholstery. It’s got a 289 four-barrel.The car came from California originally, and we bought it from a car dealer in Michigan and had it…

Spring Carlisle to include SEMA display CARLISLE, Pa.__ Spring Carlisle comes to the Carlisle (Pa.) Fairgrounds April 20-24, and while the event is powered by thousands of flea market and car corral vendors, millions of items for sale and nearly 100,000 guests from around the world, there’s one special display that can only be seen in person at the event. Each Spring, the ARMO Hot Products Showcase from the SEMA Show occupies a large footprint between the stage and grandstand during Spring Carlisle, and brings a part of the popular SEMA Show from Las Vegas to Carlisle. The SEMA Show is the world’s largest automotive trade show, filling the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Specialty Equipment Market Association’s event hosts top builders and designers, celebrities, cool cars and trucks and thousands of…

Two Chevy clubs moving in the same direction? If two recent covers of national clubs are an indicator, yes! Evidence was given by covers blazoned on Generator & Distributor (Vintage Chevrolet Club of America, Vince Taliano, editor, membershipservices@vcca.org) and On Solid Ground, The Solid Axle Corvette Club Magazine (Ken Amrick, editor, vette5362@mail.com). Each cover shows a rear shot of the vehicles heading to the left. It probably was a mere happenstance, but the two cover Chevys also reflected two national U.S. colors, red and blue (albeit the Corvette is technically Cascade Green, which proves that press colors are not always true to reality — a factor that cannot be ignored when determining references for restoration work). The two magazines also promoted two key models in Chevrolet’s lineup: a 1941 AK half-ton…

Q. Those parking lamps in the Feb. 15 Q&A look the same as my 1946 Chevy pickup. I enclose a photo. — Donald Gilbertson, Collins, Wis. Q. Regarding Jim Lamb’s question about the fender lights, you were right on target suspecting (at first glance) 1940 Pontiac. As the owner of one such car for 43 years, I can see the resemblance. Do you know that the 1941 Chevy trucks used the ’40 Pontiac fender light assembly? In this case, however, it isn’t from a ’41 Studebaker. I learned a while back after parking next to a 1942 Chevy truck at a show that that vehicle used “almost” the same light assembly as the ’40 Pontiac and ’41 Chevy truck. It first glance it looked the same, but something looked different. It was actually…