If a classic American trait is confidence, then Harry C. Stutz was as American as apple pie or baseball. A more confident car guy you are never likely to find, and, to his everlasting credit, Stutz always backed up his confidence in himself with superior quality work.

Born on a farm near Dayton, Ohio, on September 12, 1876, Stutz was only able to achieve  a grade-school education before he entered the work force, landing  a job at the Davis Sewing Machine Company and then moving on to the National Cash Register Company. Stutz wasn’t the type to sit still, despite the long hours. At night,  he took classes in mechanical engineering, and by 1897 he had designed and built his first car, a contraption nicknamed “Old Hickory” because it was built from  a discarded hardwood buggy and scrounged parts. Read more . . .

Often the best-laid  strategies  of men and women go awry, but sometimes plans that were conceived as no more than stop-gap measures doClassic car Rover's famous Land Rover work far better than their planners expect.  This was the case with the Land Rover.

In 1946, Britain  was still feeling the devastating effects of World War II. Its  businesses were in shambles; its supplies of raw materials drained; and its forward progress at a standstill. To survive and flourish, Britain’s car companies were forced to make do with what little they had available. In that spirit, Maurice Wilks, Rover Managing Director,  looked at the U.S. Army surplus Jeep he had just acquired and said to himself, “We need to build something similar to this, only better.” He envisioned a growing market for such a vehicle, both in Britain and in export markets around the globe. Read more . . .

By the time Rolls and Royce met in 1904, the latter had escaped the gloomy lower class life in Classic carLondon to turn himself into a success. It was a hard struggle, because Royce’s father died when the boy was nine, and he was immediately thrust into the role as a breadwinner for the family. Trying to do his bit, he delivered telegrams and sold newspapers, but luck finally smiled his way when an aunt lined him up an apprenticeship at the Great Northern Railway.

While on this apprenticeship, he learned the basics of the machinist’s trade, and he also started to study electricity, a relatively new field of endeavor in 1879. Read more . . .

It is difficult  to separate the Porsche 550 Spyder from the legend of actor James Dean, so why Classic cardon’t we get it all out of the way right now. On September 30, 1955, Dean, fresh off the film Giant, left George Barris’s shop in Los Angeles to go racing in Salinas, a farm town inland of Monterrey made popular  by John Steinbeck. (Dean, of course, had recently starred in the movie of Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, set in the same location.) The young movie actor was at the wheel of his Porsche 550 Spyder.

By that time, Dean had done more than a bit  racing. A Porsche enthusiast, he had just traded his 356 for the racier, LeMans-winning 550 Spyder, and he was desirous of testing its mettle (and his own) on the track in Salinas. But as he drove toward the sun on that late Friday afternoon along Highway 46,Donald Turnupseed,a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo,  was driving home in his 1950 Ford. Read more . . .

Oldsmobile is the senior American automotive make. Its imminent death after becoming so ingrained in the fabric Classic car Rocket 88of American life is more than a tragedy; it is a sacrilege. Maybe, there’s no automotive brand as quintessentially “American” as Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile has been innovative, popular, smart,  and fearless through the years since that day in 1895 when Ransom E. Olds and his partner Frank Clark got together to build a “horseless carriage.”

The American industry’s difference

In 1897, Olds and some Lansing, Michigan, businessmen formed  Olds Motor Vehicle Company and thus began the mass production of automobiles in the United States. The Olds Curved Dash Runabout, of course,  was the firm’s calling-card success. In an era when those who were building cars built costly Read more . . .