Peter Behrens's Blog, page 145

1957 Morris Minor 1000 Traveler

Christmas present?  Saw the car last month at Motorland in Arundel, Maine.




 

Not a Kandy Colored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby

I was teaching a semester in Wichita a while back. Did some exploring in the Flint Hills, and lucked upon the Schroer Speed Shop in Strong City, KS. That's a 1941 Plymouth that spent several years upside down in a ditch before it was recovered and vividly retuned. Below, the Ford 352 Special.

And may be time to read that Tom Wolfe book again.

1959 Catalina convertible & our '59 Pontiac Thing.

 

If you've followed Autoliterate, you know about our thing for 1959 Pontiacs, especially Catalinas. This unit in. on the block today at Hemmings. I'd lose the whitewalls and wheel covers, but if you want a summer cruiser, this is about as definitive as you'll find.Here's another we caught in Windo Rock, Arizona a while back..the original Wide Track.  Here's the Canadian version, a Strato Chief, doing duty as a police car a Montréal. A '59 Laurentian wagon. And our Ur-car, the '59 Catalina coupe.

1960 Buick Electra

 

Eva H.D., the writer, caught the Buick in Brooklyn.

For GM, 1960 was a step back from the wild cars of 1959, like this '59 Electra. 1961 Buicks were even more buttoned-up. And the 1961 Buick Skylark was doing its Compact thing.

The Street-Legal Ford GT

 

"...On the 50th anniversary of Ford’s 1966 Le Mans victory, the company came out with an all-new Ford GT racing car, went back to Le Mans, and won again in this car’s class. The company also announced they would be making a street-legal version, in very small numbers. The new GT was technologically leaps and bounds over the 1960s version, and the shape far more aerodynamic. In 2016, Ford announced the first Heritage Edition GT, with a paint scheme exactly like the car that won Le Mans in 1966. Only 27 were built. Other Heritage Editions followed, commemorating legendary Ford GTs from the ’60s..."    from A.J. Baime's piece in the WSJ on the Heritage edition Ford GT. 

And have you seen the movie, Ford vs Ferrari?

The e-crate Blazer, and recreating the Sierra Grande

 

If they can pack an e-crate electric motor into a '76 K-5 Chevrolet Blazer, why not into a '75 GMC Sierra Grande? More at Motor1.com or at silveradosierra.  Seems do-able. But would need to change braking and other systems as well, right? Need to find out more. I want to do it.

Ford E-350 conversion

Looks like someone with ambition is converting this unit to a home on wheels.  My (limited) experience with these van-bus conversions is that the original, with tis raised fiberglas roof and side panels, not to mention door, is noisy, unaerodynamic--lots of whistles and creaks. Looks like some soundproofing is goin on in this unit. The van itself looked to be in good shape, but I wonder how many miles these bus-conversions have on them before they get retired and sold? I'll try to keep an eye on this one, see if the project is still a Project.



 

The Rivian R1T: first draft

 Dan Neil's piece on the Rivian pickup was in Saturday's WSJ:
LAST SATURDAY, at the local Cars & Coffee, a gentleman stepped out of the crowd surrounding my borrowed Rivian R1T electric pickup to convey his skepticism. He didn’t like that electric cars were being “jammed down people’s throats,” he said.

Whoa, Nelly. Ford has nearly 200,000 reservations for Ford F-150 Lightning, excluding fleet; Tesla is reported to have more than a million reservations for Cybertruck; and Rivian—a Silicon Valley startup with manufacturing in Normal, Ill., that went public in November—has enough orders to keep them busy for the next two years. The consumer demand is real...
AL: Rivian just won Motor Trend's Truck of the Year award. 

One Saturday in Switzerland...

 

from Marc, the Lowtech guy..."I like old cars. And I like friendly people. Even more so, I like the places where these two things congregate. The Tattoo Convention during the Trashtown Festival in Baden, Switzerland was one of those places. And while I'm not necessarily into the whole rockabilly-kustom-lifestyle-inkniron-kulture-thing I appreciate having a good time. Here are some shots from this past Saturday."

Between the superhighway and the Algonquin stone axe...

Autumn, looking west from the Stoney Nakoda Reserve

The Buffalo Coat 

I see him moving, in his legendary fleece, 
Between the superhighway and an Algonquin stone axe; 
Between the wild tribes, in their lost heat, 
And the dark blizzard of my Grandfather's coat; 
Cold with the outdoor cold caught in the curls, 
Smelling of the world before the poll tax. 

And between the new macadam and the Scalp Act 
They got him by the short hair; had him clipped 
Who once was wild—and all five senses wild— 
Printing the wild with his hoof's inflated script 
Before the times was money in the bank, 
Before it was a crime to be so mild. 

But history is a fact, and moves on feet 
Sharper than his, toward wallows deeper than. 
And the myth that covered all his moving parts, 
Grandfather's time had turned into a coat; 
And what kept warm then, in the true world's cold 
Is old and cold in a world his death began. 

                  

                                                                      -Thomas McGrath