If Nash Motors Company were a comedian, it would certainly be Rodney Dangerfield. If it were a baseball team, it would simply be the  Chicago Cubs. Classic car Nash Twin-Ignition EightsIf it were a food, it would be the  old fashioned  macaroni and cheese. You see, in Dangerfield’s vernacular, Nash never gets no respect,  huh?  Automotive historians sing the praises of Peerless, Packard,  and Pierce-Arrow. They wax eloquent over Bugatti, Isotta-Fraschini, and Hispano-Suisa.  But Nash, well, Nash is treated like yesterday’s mashed potatoes.

Vehicles for the middle class

Now, to be fair, Nash does not belong in the pantheon of the great marques that built luxurious conveyances for the  rich, who, as Fitzgerald wrote, are different from you and me. But Nash always did a superior job of creating vehicles for the vast American middle class–vehicles that were solid, honest, and hard-working just like the citizens who bought them. Further, when one takes a close look at the Nashes of the late Twenties and early Thirties,  Read more . . .

If the definition of a classic is something that has stood the test of time, then the Morgan 4/4 is the epitome of the expression. Classic carIn continuous production since 1936, except for those gloomy  years of World War II when Britain didn’t produce any civilian cars at all, the 4/4 has gone from contemporary to venerable to outdated to rejuvenated to out-moded to timeless over the course of its 7 decades. Now that a new millennium has dawned, with the British car  industry teetering on the brink of implosion and/or suicide, it  appears truly a miracle that the Morgan make has survived. Yet, survive, it has, and prospered. Read more . . .

In the Fifties and Sixties, American sports cars used the brute muscle of big displacement engines Mercer Classic carto combat the more  sophisticated and nimble sports machinery of the Europeans, but there was a time when the situation was just reversed. And in that period–1910 to 1915–the Mercer Raceabout was America’s pre-eminent sports car. Read more . . .

Henry Ford must have received some special satisfaction on February 4, 1922, because Classic caron that day he acquired the Lincoln Motor Company, which was being run by his long-time nemesis, Henry Leland. Some two decades before, Leland and Ford had their first run-in.

On the strength of his racing exploits, Ford was a principal participant in the founding of The Henry Ford Company, a successor to the Detroit Automobile Company that had been on of the first Michigan-based firms to enter the car manufacturing industry. Soon after,  he was named chief engineer of the company that carried his name, the board of directors hired Henry Leland as a consultant.

Beginnings in the car industry

In the early Twentieth Century Detroit,  Leland was a name to be reckoned with. Read more . . .

Pity the poor Jensen Interceptor owner of today who prepares her or his car meticulously for a vintage car meet only to be greeted with shouts of “Nice Barracuda.” Jensen Interceptor classic carFrankly, the 1966-76 Interceptor does bear more than a slight similarity to the ’65 Plymouth Barracuda, most notably in the mammoth curved rear windscreen, and the resemblance doesn’t simply stop there. However,  equating an Interceptor with a Barracuda is like equating a Chevrolet Camaro with a Ferrari Daytona. Sure, the two cars share a certain sweep of line, but they’re not precisely the same thing now, are they?

Small biz entrepreneurs normal in Britain

Today’s nearly faceless British car industry was once filled with quirky but industrious small  enterprises like that  created  by Read more . . .