This a beautiful car, especially if you like station wagons.
These were huge cars. Weighing well over 4K pounds. There were two stations wagons produced that year for Buick the 49 and the 49D. Total production for both was 13,020 units.
The engines in the Buick Special Estate Wagons were a V8 Overhead valve, cast iron block. The power plant displaced 364 cubic inches. The bore was 4.125″ and the stroke was 3.4″ giving the car 9.5:1 compression ratio. Top that will a 2 barrel Stromberg (model 7-106) or a Carter (2529 or 2536 model) carb and it could produce get about 250 hps.
Sorry let this slip a couple of days. Here are your Auto Factoids for this week.
2/16/1951 – Nash Healey debuts in US
This was a totally by change partnership. Healey was on his way back to England for the US after GM refused to sell him Cadillac engines for his cars, when he met George Mason of Nash-Kelvinator on the ship. For 1951 Nash-Kelvinator supplied the engines and drivetrain, specifically an inline six-cylinder OHV 234.8 cu in (3.85 L) engine and three-speed manual transmission with Borg-Warneroverdrive, plus torque tube and differential. Healey made a few mods to the engine like higher-compression aluminum cylinder head (replacing the cast-iron stock item) with twin 1.75-inch (44 mm) SU carburetors that were popular on British sports cars. This increased power from the stock 112 hp (84 kW; 114 PS) version to 125 hp (93 kW; 127 PS). The car was longer and heavier than most European cars and although the 125 hp helped, it fell short of the original expectations that included Cadillac’s 331 cu in (5.4 L).
This what we here in the US were able to purchase for the first time in 1951.
1951 Nash Healey
2/18/1952 – Studebaker 100 years
Studebaker turned 100-year-old this date in 1952 and it offered up a few beauties for their customers.
Like the Star Light, Land Cruiser and 1/2 ton Pickup.
52 Star Light – Love the ‘split 4 piece’ rear window.
This huge ’52 Land Cruiser would get across country with room for luggage!!
Workhorse 1/2 ton pickup. Hard to find one now that hasn’t been customized.
2/18/1898 – Enso Ferrari born in Modena, Italy
Would you by a car from this face?
What if they looked like this?
Hell Yeah!!!!
2/20/1954 – Detroit – Chicago Auto show saw Dodge’s Fire Arrow
Ghia Dodge Firearrow II Sports Coupe 1954
That is a nice looking car!!! If you visually mess around it a bit, you might see some resemblance to the Crossfire. Yes? No?
Maybe?? A little?
Or something from a different manufacture.
’64_Pininfarina Corvette
2/21/1948 – NASCAR’s first race – held in Daytona, FL
Historic First – a bit dusty…but awesome (no I wasn’t actually there!!).
And let’s go waaaaay back 2/22/1732 – George Washington was born in Virgina.
Well George didn’t actually own a car…but if he did, ask yourself “What would George Drive?” Post up what you think the father of our country would drive today.
The Countach lived on your wall as a kid, and you probably knew that the Miura was the original supercar, but did you know there’s a direct link between the Miura and modern IndyCars, that there was a Dodge sedan based on a Lamborghini concept, or that Ferruccio Lamborghini started out making tractors? To honor the man who died on February 20th, 1993, we hit the books and came up with 18 things you probably didn’t know about Lamborghini.
1. Ferruccio Lamborghini was the original Tony Stark.
During WWII, he was stationed on the isolated island of Rhodes as a vehicle maintenance supervisor for the Italian Royal Air Force. Needless to say being stuck on an island in the middle of a war makes it pretty tricky to secure spare parts, forcing Lamborghini to cobble together scraps to keep his machines running. He quickly earned the reputation of being a master mechanic, and an even more prolific tinkerer. Kind of like that time Tony Stark built a nuclear reactor in a cave. But real.
2. The first Lamborghinis were tractors, and they’re still made today.
Because of that WWII experience, when he got home he started piecing together tractors out of spare parts. People loved them, and his tractor business took off overnight. They’re no longer part of the same company, but Lamborghini Trattori are still designed by the same firm that created the Gallardo and the Maserati MC12. They range in price from $30,000 to over $300,000 – the only question is, will your neighbor still give you credit for owning a Lambo?
3. Lamborghini was founded because Ferrari used tractor clutches and had crummy customer service.
Ferruccio famously owned a Ferrari 250GT, which he took in to be serviced at the Maranello headquarters after realizing that the clutch was identical to the one being used on his production line. He politely asked Enzo Ferrari for a replacement part, who replied “You’re just a silly tractor manufacturer, how could you possibly know anything about sports cars?” Like any red blooded Italian, he spit on the floor, walked out and started designing his own sports car. Four months later he unveiled the Lamborghini 350GTV. Boss.
4. The first Lamborghini Miura didn’t even have an engine when they unveiled it.
The Miura may have been the world’s first mid-engined V12 supercar, and the car most often credited with kickstarting the genre, but when it was first unveiled at the Turin Auto Show it wasn’t even finished. So they put a bunch of bricks where the engine should be and kept the hood shut the entire time.
5. And it was designed by the guy who builds IndyCars now.
Gian Paolo Dallara did much of the Miura’s chassis and engineering work, then went on to work in F1, before starting his own race engineering firm, which happens to build every single IndyCar chassis you see today.
6. In the late 1960s, if you didn’t own a Miura, you were nobody.
Today, they’re owned by people like Nicholas Cage and Jay Leno, but in the sixties Miuras were driven by people like Saudi King Fahd and Prince Faisal, Rod Stewart, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra, who famously said about his orange Miura with orange shag and wild boar skin seats: “You buy a Ferrari when you want to be somebody. You buy a Lamborghini when you are somebody.”
This one was really interesting:
18. They built the very first Viper engine.
The Dodge Viper was developed in the late eighties, while Chrysler owned Lamborghini. Rather than simply dropping a truck motor into the car, Dodge had Lamborghini cast an aluminum version of it for the prototype. It wasn’t the one used in production, but somewhere, locked away in Detroit, is a Lamborghini powered Viper.
It seems as though the Lamborghini Huracan has been around for quite a while now, yet only Lamborghini customers have been able to take a close up look at it in the flesh. These pictures from outside the factory show the car going out, presumably on a …
This Lamborghini Jalpa P350 was originally purchased by a man named Nick who while impressed with its driving characteristics, was somewhat disappointed with the 25 5hp produced by its V8 engine. As a result, Nick decided to completely replace that …
Thought I toss out some details on the Dual Twin Bridgestone 175 that I am about to begin the restoration.
Bridgestone was a Japanese tire maker and desired to move in to manufacturing first bicycles and then motorcycles after World War II to compensate for the sagging tire market. So in 1946 Soichiro Ishibashi began production of bicycles and then looked to motorized them. So they partnered up with Fuji Seimitsu Kogyo (is now Fuji Precision Engineering Co., a subsidiary of Nissan) to produce clip on motors for bicycles. By the mid 1950’s they were developing and producing motorcycles and eventually separated from Fuji Seimitsu Kogyo and moving to their own plant. Bridgestone even had a racing department which, in part led to their development of the Dual Twin.
The 175 Dual Twin did well in racing and on the street, as did the other Bridgestone models. This lead to the exports to the U.K., other Asian countries and eventually to the U.S. by Rockford Motors in Rockford Illinois.
So what is the 175 Dual Twin?
It was the first motorcycle equipped with a dual rotary disc valves for fuel induction. It had (has) aluminum alloy cylinders, kick-start; dual transmission 4-speed rotary shift gear allowing the bike to be shifted to to a 5-speed gear while running or when stationary with the “sport shift lever’, large brakes hubs and totally enclosed carburetor for protection against water and dirt. It has a max speed of 80 miles per hours and can get to a ¼ mile from a standing start in 18 seconds (this is without the racing tune…oh yes…they were race-able!!).
So let me stop right here for a minute. I had no idea what a rotary valve was, ok let me be very honest I’ve never worked on a motorcycle before, lawn mowers – yes, motorcycles – nope. I have worked on bicycles and car engines, so how hard can it be? (Famous last words, usually spoken very early in the planning stages of such projects.)
So what is a rotary valve? It is where the intake opening is controlled by the spinning of a disc that has cutouts that allow air/fuel mixture in and then closes the opening. The discs attach to the crankshaft. The crankshaft disc is a close-clearance fit in the crankcase and there is a cutout which lines up with an inlet passage in the crankcase wall at the proper time. Here are a couple of images:
Intake Valve Disc
This a dual disc valve set up (a newer Suzuki Rg500 engine)
I have more coming up on the Bridgestone Project so stay tuned.
NOS Bridgestone Motorcycle 175 200 Ignition 12 Volt Coil Pack. Loading… d. h. m. s. day. hour. hours. FREE shipping. See item description. Calculate. Approximately: (Enter ##1## or more). (Enter more than ##1##). Your max bid: You’ve …
It’s been teased, it’s been partially leaked, but here it is in all its glory: the McLaren 650S. Here’s what you need to know. The 650S is not the long-rumoured ‘baby McLaren’, the car codenamed ‘P13’ set to do battle with the Porsche 911, but rather …
Keeping the proper prospective, (no humans were harmed) but it’s a shame to lose those beautiful one of a kind, historic cars.
So what’s next?
Apparently they believe the rest of the National Corvette Museum building it’s self is sound as is the rest of the grounds under the 184-acre Motorsports Park, which is opening in August.
But what should happened to the cars?
Should they be restored?
Should they stay as they are and preserved?
Let me know what you think.
Give me some feedback and I’ll send it on the Museum folks.
Having been there multiple times I’ve see each of these beautiful machines. Hope they are salvageable.
BOWLING GREEN, KY (WAVE) – Eight cars were swallowed by a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Wednesday morning, according to the museum’s executive director.
A statement released by the museum said their security company alerted them at 5:45 a.m. that motion detectors were going off in the Skydome area. When officials arrived, they discovered the sinkhole.
Crap!!!
Wendell Strode, the executive director, said the hole is approximately 25 to 30 feet deep and about 40 feet wide. The Bowling Green Fire Department secured the area for the time being.
Strode said the one millionth Corvette, which was donated to the museum by Chevrolet, was among the cars that fell into the sinkhole.
The statement went on to say “it is with heavy hearts that we report that eight Corvettes were affected by this incident.”
Those cars include:
1993 ZR-1 Spyder on loan from General Motors
2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil” on loan from General Motors
Blue Devil
The other six vehicles were owned by the National Corvette Museum including:
1962 Black Corvette
1984 PPG Pace Car
1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette
1 Millionth Corvette
1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette
2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette
The Hammer
2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette
1 and Half Millionth Corvette
No one was injured as no one was in or around the museum at the time of the collapse.
None of the cars affected were on loan from individuals. The museum remains open, but the Skydome section will be closed until further notice.
Strode said structural engineers would assess the stability of the surrounding areas later today.
2014 is the museum’s 20th Anniversary and officials said they “look forward to re-opening the Skydome exhibit area very soon.”
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Sinkhole swallow eight cars in National Corvette Museum: Sinkhole collapses part of domed section of museum; d… http://t.co/bsPByrsnfy
(CNN) — Eight Corvettes fell into a sinkhole that opened up beneath a section of the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky on Wednesday. The sinkhole, about 40 feet wide and about 25 to 30 feet deep, appeared before dawn under the skydome section of …
UPDATED 7:40 AM — It has been confirmed that 8 vehicles were swallowed by a sinkhole at the Sky Dome at the National Corvette Museum. The sinkhole is estimated to be around 40 feet wide and 20-30 feet deep. The Museum is open for the day, although …
UPDATED 7:40 AM — It has been confirmed that 8 vehicles were swallowed by a sinkhole at the Sky Dome at the National Corvette Museum. The sinkhole is estimated to be around 40 feet wide and 20-30 feet deep. The Museum is open for the day, although …
A couple posts back I wrote on my chance meeting with the Maserati – Chrysler TC Club….no it’s fine go back and look…we’ll wait. (Insert whistling sound.) One response mentioned that the Maserati/ Chrysler TC was …”two years late to market.” (Bill February 10, 2014 at 12:00 PM).
That didn’t occur to me about the TC but I had just finished reading an article in Hemmings Motor News the Muscle Car Profile section – 1969 Plymouth Baracuda 383. It was written by Terry McGean.
The article chats about the 383 and the Formula S package. But the article starts out by saying That Chrysler peeps are pretty sure they started the “pony” car craze by revamping the Valiant line of cars to come up with the Baracuda just before Ford released the Mustang. And that is the case but unfortunately the A-body wasn’t up to par with the Mustang and the Camaro in the performance department and both cars left the Valiant platform in the dust or as Terry wrote “…Ford mastered the art of re-skinning an economy model as a sporting coup, or else these cars would have been called ‘Fish cars’…(I’m inserting a chuckle here.)…From there Plymouth seemed to be chasing the Mustang and not long after the Camaro and Firebird twins.”
This ties in to what I thought about when Mother Mopar came out with the Charger. It was a horrible attempt at recapturing the ‘pony’ car era. Ford had already re-invented the Mustang buy then and Chevy gave the C6 Corvette a retro ’60’s style shape and then came the Camaro and still Chrysler didn’t have the answer, until the Challenger. That was nicely done and I love it, but it was still late to the party again.
I thought they might make a hit with the ‘Dodge Dart’, I considered that a pony car of sorts, but instead we got a Dodge Neon.
’65 Cuda
’65 Mustang
’65 Camaro
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Rare 65 Plymouth Baracuda (East Bend ) $4000 http://t.co/yi6ZSjs7Fb http://t.co/qW3XHkYLLY
Make: Plymouth Model: Baracuda Year: 1965 Body Style: Sedan Exterior Color: Red Interior Color: Red Doors: Four Doors Vehicle Condition:… Collectible – Classic Cars Plano.
