Mopar at Brooklands PICS!

[Lucky]

So, it was that time of year again; another year older, another year when Rich/Phil's Cougar wasn't finished. Undeterred, we set off to Brooklands in the least appropriate of vehicles ...a plastic Japanese Mazda... to see the good ol' Yank muscle on display at the home of motorsport. As it was last year, you have to get to the Brooklands car park through Mercedes-Benz World and there was a gathering of the SL owners club on there. Which I feel is always worth commemorating. So I'll start of this thread of Americana with some Germans if that's OK?







Funny old things, SL Gullwings. Such a compromised design but it's resulted in one of the most iconic cars in history. They have that lovely long bonnet only so that the huge inboard drum brakes could fit in fore of the engine; they have the wonderful doors only because the sills were too high due to the birdcage frame; they have a low bonnet line only because the engine leans over so much to fit the mechanical fuel injection in that they could not fit a steering box too and thus only ever came in LHD; they only have that short tail that gives the shape such balance because of the ill-behaved swing axle lurking underneath; they only have the sculpted and beautiful art deco dash to allow the steering wheel to hinge out of the way and actually make it possible to get in the damned thing. Flawed genius then, yes, but still gorgeous after all these years!

Anyway, we weren't here for Teutonic humour, we were here for blue-collar POWAHZ so hurried inside for a fix. So, in no especial order of surprise or delight, here you go...

First thing we saw was Ada-san with li'l Stanley who was braving his first car show at not many months old. That's the way, start 'em young! Second thing (and it's kinda impossible to miss at, like, over twenty feet long) was the insane humongousness of a '67 Bonneville. If ever there was a more ridiculous yet superb way of moving four seats and a big block around....











Almost as gargantoid was this '75 Brougham Caddy, dating from a time when French Curves were out and set-squares were in. Automotive Factoid of the Day #1; the corner markers at the end of the hood on these doubled as fuel economy lights. At a time when the fuel crisis was biting and environmentalists were mutilating power outputs, Cadillac struggled to make an 8-litre engine seem appropriate to the times. Their answer was to put fuel economy lights in the corner markers, lighting up green for acceptable, orange for terrible and red for utterly horrific. Guess no-one thought of a smaller engine...











It's not all giant boulevard cruisers though. Like many American shows, they seem to use the word "Mopar" as a catch-all to mean anything Yank. But there always seems to be a mix of stuff from fifties chrome to modern re-inventions. And most of it categorically is not Mopar. Such as this superb Camaro with the RS pack





...and this equally superd 2G Camaro SS with... well, with just about everything including tyres as wide as my mother-in-law





...and this superb '67 Camaro, again with that RS black-out grille that for me is the best look on this definitive ....errrrm, non-Mopar, lol



I guess you get the idea. Yeah, so I lured you here with the promise of Mopar and we've seen anything but so far, but stick with us, there's plenty more to come!

Look, Mopar at last! (For those of you not madly into the American car scene, and if so, what are you doing in this thread, lol, a quick explanation... yes, it's Automotive Factoid of the Day #2. Mopar is a portmanteau of MOtor PARts and derived from the aftermarket parts arm of the Chrysler marques. It has evolved to become synonymous with the performance side of the Chrysler-owned manufacturers, so Dodge, Plymouth and Chrysler itself. Now you now. Or knew already, in which case sorry to waste your time). Anyway, this is a Chrysler 300. From 1965, this particular one, but very much still alive today, the 300 is one of the longest-running models in the world. I like the scruffiness of this, down to the fractured front emblem









Of course, the 300 today is a different beast, but it was good to see a display of the 300 owners' club lurking round the back of one of the museum buildings. Often a fairly pimp kinda thing, the new model trades heavily on Chrysler heritage, even going back to the very original badge designed by Walter Chrysler to appeal to his target audience of farm hands and country boys... yep, it's Automotive Factoid of the Day #3; the badge was chosen to resemble the kind of rosette won by prize cattle at country fairs



Rather more to my taste... and it may be an effect of my advancing years, of course, my current unhealthy predilection for bodaciously inappropriate estates... was this Hemi wagon in satin black. Well tuff







Although one of the more conservative of American marques, Oldsmobile ocassionally threw out a complete mad curve-ball. This resulted in one of my all-time favourite muscle cars, the 442 derivation of the Cutlass. I was going to do the factoid about what the numbers stood for but I've done that one too many times so I'll skip it. Instead, let's mention that despite their unexciting and staid image, Oldsmobile in fact indulged in some really forward-thinking engineering for the time; their engines were superbly designed, almost unbreakable and pioneered stuff we still think is a bit modern and clever today such as nitrited coatings for low friction and suchlike. This '69 442 is arguably not the best colour but certainly one of the better years





And here's a Cutlass, handily enough, by way of comparison. A '71, by which time the styling had become rather more angular but still instantly recognisable. Sorta a Ford Capri on steroids...





The next best thing to a hard 'wagon is a hard pickup, and Chevy excel at this. Following on from the Stepside was the Task Force/Apache range such as this '59 Apache. Rather bemusingly rocking Buick ventiports



Ask an enthusiast of Americana who started the muscle car trend rolling and you'll get an argument to rival religion, politics and football. Of course, GM guys rather smugly hold up the Pontiac GTO as the first true musclecar. And they're probably right, too. However, a strong contender for the first pony car was the Plymouth Barracuda... rather confusingly since the phrase didn't even exist until the Mustang coined it... in the same year as the Barracuda appeared but a few weeks later. The new Plymouth was based on the Valiant, and intended to cover all tastes from performance to economy. One wonders if it would have become the legend it now is if top brass had called it the "Panda" as originally intended (Fiat lovers look away now!). Anyway, this '65 was a year into the marque that undeniably became a mainstay of musclecar performance iconography and spawned a whole range of variants. And you thought it was just about the world's biggest automotive glass piece...







By '68 the Barracuda had lost the prodigious rear windscreen on favour of a slightly more traditional coupe look and sprouted the "fast fish" emblemry that was to persist throughout its history





and by '72 the model range was well-established as a performance great, the econo-car tag well behind it and a package to suit every taste from the base Barracudas to the luxury Gran Coupe to the sports 'cuda package. Not that "base" is meant derrogatorially in this context; there were still some potent trim and performance packs available such as this 340 cu in V8. Admittedly, they no longer offered big blocks... change was on the way for the end of an era







and this is a 'cuda. The top-flight performance model in the range boasted genuinely scary engines such as the Hemi and 440 Magnum packages. The 426 Hemi might have been the poster boy with it's one-horsepower-per-cubic-inch tagline but combining the 440 with a six-pack carb package where the centre two-barrel ran normal running but when the gas was floored all six barrels blew through the engine meant this '70 'cuda was not far off its Hemi-engined brothers. In fact, a mere 5bhp behind at 420





another '70 'cuda in one of the Chrysler High Impact colours. Automotive Factoid of the Day #4; in the Plymouth stable this colour was "Lime Light". If it was sprayed on a Dodge, it was "Sublime". See what they done there?





And here's a '71 convertible with the popular "shaker hood" option. This was where the hood had a hole for the aircleaner to poke through, and as the potnet engine below rocked on its mounts, the aircleaner could be seen shaking through the hood

[Lucky]

In 1955 the performance option was very different to the later muscle car heyday. In fact, it meant things like the newly rationalised Bel Air range, now a model in its own right. You could tell the new V8 was the performance car from Chevy (titled the "Hot One" in their range advertisements that year) because it featured an egg-crate grille alleged to be in homage to Ferraris.



Of the same vintage, same stable but rather more sexy to those of us with perverted station wagon leanings... a '55 Bel Air Nomad. Mmmmm



If you couldn't afford the Bel Air trim package and all the bells and whistles that entailed (chrome bars supporting the headliner, wooooooot!) then you could go for the poverty-spec lower models such as this '54 Delray. Named for Delray Beach in Florida, of course to our identikit, one-box, jellymould-blunted 21st Century eyes, this looks like a massively overblown and insane piece of styling, but this genuinely was the entry-level marque!





It's time for Automotive factoid of the Day #5; they're lying to you. There were no red and white '57 Plymouth Furies like Christine produced, only around 5000 were made and all in Buckskin Beige. The cars in the film were made up from the lesser-model Belvedere and Savoy ranges. This isn't a '57 Fury, it's a '58 anyway. And it's not strictly red any more either, but looks damned fine in its patina and scruff. Dash appears to have actually dissolved!











This is a Savoy. See, easy mistake to make, innit.







...and this is a Belvedere. See? Much inferior. Actually, that's not right, is it?





Bizarrely, at times the Fury wasn't actually the range-topper of the Fury range. Makes sense, doesn't it? The occasional Sports Fury boasted this accolade, and at times the full-sized car range was simply divided by use of numbers. In '65, for example, the Fury I was the poverty model sold to taxi fleets and police forces, and the II and III improved on this base with increasing trim and performance packages. Such as modelled by this '68 Fury III here;







And finally, the top-of-the-shop Sports Fury, represented here by a '70. Yeah, it does look a bit like a Charger. Rarer by some margin, though and a hell of a nicer place to be!



So, we talked a bit about Barracudas earlier. Of course, Chrysler were as adept at all the other manufacturers at badge engineering a car to it all its market points, even if this apparently meant competing with itself. Strangely, despite Dodge being the most American of American marques with almost no market outside the USA for most of its long, long life, the Dodge version of the E-Body platform is much more famous and apparently sexy than the Plymouth. Maybe the screen star status of a certain white 1970 440-engined and allegedly supercharged Challenger R/T in the excellent 1971 film Vanishing Point. Leaving silver screen starring roles aside, the Challenger was always intended to be the ultimate expression of the muscle car, which is probably why Dodge left it so late to bring it to market, it antedating the Barracuda by six years. Despite allegedly sharing the Barracuda E-Body, it in fact had no common sheet metal at all and was almost a foot longer, so definitely a car in its own right. And Dodge's avowed intent to provide it with just about every engine in its range meant it was guaranteed to have a version that appealed to everyone. Like, for example, this bone stock '70





Or this rather dressier '70 alongside



Of late, all the big names have enjoyed a comeback; the Camaro is better known as Bumblebee, the Dodge SRT Charger whilst lambasted by purists for only being a four-door, is beloved of police forces across the States and apparently exactly what you need for towing a giant safe round the streets on a string between two cars; the evergreen Mustang goes from strength to strength. For me, perhaps the truest to the original vision and feel of its predecessor is the reborn Challenger that appeared to critical acclaim in 2008. This was actually one of Forbes Ten Best Looking Cars in 2010. Plenty of them here on the day, from stealthy gunmetal to lairy homage to the original High Impact hues. Back in the day you could specify Panther Pink on your Challenger, which was... well... pink. Nowadays you can spec Furious Fuchsia which is... well... pink. With a hint of radioactivity









The Challenger's elder, arguably sexier sister... though bigger for those who like their fast ladies broader in the beam... was of course based on the B-body platform and no less of a film star in her own right. Like the old slogan goes; your sister is hot but your momma does that thing with her tongue...

*ahem* The original Dodge Charger was hardly a sales uproar. Released at the end of 1965 and more or less unchanged for two years, it plodded along selling in unremarkable numbers alongside the car that had donated the platform to it, the Coronet. Maybe fair to say that the styling on these early models, whilst bearing the elements of what would become the iconography we all know, was not quite there as a whole; the baleen whale toothy grin, the heavy rear buttresses, the nose-down stance, all present but not quite gelling







And then a year later, in '68; Boom!



Ridiculous presence and obscene engine options pretty much gauranteed immortality. Ironically, the Charger was no great success on the NASCAR and race circuits, the very styling cues that made it so memorable made it aerodynamically very inefficient and the Charger 500 was developed with flush rear screen, exposed headlights and flat grille to address these and provide a successful platform for racing from which the Daytona finally sprang. But seeing a trio of '68s (by far my favourite year) like this makes any grown man just a little weak at the knees





'69 was the model year of "that" Charger with a silly horn tune and flag on the roof. Please, a moment's silence for the hundreds of Chargers murdered in the name of entertainment during the run of that show. This copper '69 seems to be at every show in England (or all the ones I go to) and its owner is a hero deserving mucho respec. IIRC it has a 440 engine





By '72 the Charger had started to draw the attention of the emissions nazis and suffer for it, like all musclecars at the time. Although the sheetmetal had changed to make it look bigger than ever, it was in fact mostly unchanged underneath. Despite the slight performance attack, it actually was selling more, perhaps due to the Coronet being dropped out of the same market sector. Rich/Phil has one of these on his "to restore" list, complete with the same metallic blue interior! Recently paying to re-chrome the massive front bumper hoops broke both his spirit and his bank balance, lol









I've got a B&M short shifter on my car, and used to have the little embossed logo on the centre console. Until my wife noticed it one day and asked "why do you have a plaque with 'BUM' written on it?" *sigh* As for the Charger brand, it limped on into horrid flabby obscurity like many of the musclecar greats before being resurrected in 2006, as aforementioned. One bright point was the hotted-up and turbocharged GLH and GLH-S Shelby-badged versions in the mid 80s. An otherwise horrible car designed by someone with a chronic style blockage, they do at least provide us with Automotive Factoid of the Day #....errrr, what are we up to? #6, I think. Shelby retained his legendary easy-going good humour in prodcing the Shelby Chargers. GLH stood for "Goes Like Hell" and GLH-S stood for "Goes Like Hell - Some more". Carroll Shelby, we salute you

[Lucky]

Shall we take a little interlude to stroll round the museum a bit, then? It's a bit of a bonus, really, since your admission ticket is technically for Brooklands rather than the car show, you kinda get one for free. We ran out of time a bit this time to go round the aeronautical side of the museum, but it's always worth pottering round. To be fair, I reckon you'd feel slightly disappointed if you'd paid for just the museum as it's not exactly massive, so a show day like this is the perfect solution. Here are some potted highlights;

AC racer shows off hand-beaten aluminium as an artform



early Minx claims aerodynamic prowess despite all evidence to the contrary



very old (20s I think) Aston has been polished so much even the VIN plate's worn smooth



errrrrmmm.... Ada



The bicycle exhibit holds no fewer than three of these icons of personal transport. So far ahead of their time



the original Chopper... well, actually a second generation one, apparently. You can tell because the rear frame doesn't dogleg around the wheel or something like that. Or so some total anorak told me at the time, lol



Not sure if these funky stickers are original either, but I stared at them for a long time trying to provoke an acid flashback anyway



Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was here, which is odd cos I thought she lived at Beaulieu. Maybe there are two. Anyway, I couldn't get it all in-shot so here are a couple of snippets. Epic horn is epic





Delage, once mighty on the tracks, long since swallowed up by the mists of time. Clockset is wonderful, I love old instruments





Apparently, these 6-inch long exhausts tend to get hot. Who knew? The insidious start of Health and Safety mania?



Excellent old H-van is part of the museum fleet, parked out under shelter. I love a nice H-van, any vehicle made out of old corrugated sheds is worthy of lurrve





The motorcycles of the museum always capture my attention, not just because bikes were my first motoring passion but also because they feature astonishing engineering and simply reek of bravery. If it took big cohones to hurtle round the banking in a giant aero-engined car, how much did it take to do it on a bicycle with an engine cable-tied to the frame and stirrup brakes? J.A.Prestwich were the original engine supplier to the stars, sorta an AMG of prehistory



"Manx" Norton won the TT so many times it gained its unofficial name. That "featherbed" McCandless frame that was the basis of so many garden shed specials



Matchless shows signs of battle in the chipped enamel



Probably braver still than either the two or four-wheeled pilots was to try it on three! Morgan racer looks scary just sitting still



Napier Lion W12 engine came originally from a plane, found its way into all sorts of gentleman's express racers such as the legendary (and still fastest ever round Brooklands) Napier Railton. Here's an example engine cutaway. Valve springs could comfortably crush careless fingers to pulp



and here's the actual Railton itself. I've taken so many photos of this over the years, but can't resist just the one more. OK, two then. Radiator cowl is another panel-beater's artwork. Front suspension linkages are heavy engineering as pornography. Front brakes conspicuous by their absence!





Excellently-named Rex Acme was not only a superb racing bike in its day but also put me in mind of all those Acme products so optimistically deployed by Wile E Coyote



Perhaps even-more-excellently-named Grindley Peerless. Such modesty!



Superbly-engineered springer front end keeps consistent geometry even under braking and separates suspension and brake forces... actions still chased by modern grand prix engineers. Such front ends are still in production on wretched old barges like Harleys and ultra-modern uber-engineered technomarvels like BMWs. Shame the Grindley designer never saw the need to fit a front brake, really. Go figure



Old Norton is very old. Such little delicate pushrods



Sturmey-Archer gearbox, just like on your old pushbike. So tiny and cute.



Did I mention I love old instruments? Especially these radiator-mounted temperature gauges. Such a wonderfully delicate thing, that quadrant gear looks like it could have come from a watchmaker



Another piece of bodywork that must have been the life's work of some poor artisan. Old Wolseley racer is apparently modelled on the Aardvark from the Pink Panther



Back in those days, if you won something you really knew you'd won something. Presumably most drivers were happy just to still be alive after the average race, but it must have been life-affirming to be presented with a trophy the size of a small fairground ride as well

[Lucky]

So, back to the cars then, yeah? Plenty of variety still on show, such as this nifty little Buick-engined 'T. Buick engine also little known as "that" Rover V8? Scary diff cover is scary!







I know I'm getting old, but I find myself increasingly drawn to the chrome and fins excess of 50s Americana nowadays. Once upon a time the thought of anything that wasn't purely performance-oriented filled me with horror, so maybe it's a by-product of the midlife crisis. To be honest, the thought of trying to manouvre twenty-plus feet of Cadillac through the stop-motion DVT heart attack of Brighton rush hour still fills me with dread, but I can definitely see myself wafting along the prom somewhere nice and hot. Anyhoo, this ere is a '58 Coupe de Ville.











and stepping even further back in time, this is a '49 Series 62. The green might be a respray, not sure if it's even the original colour, but it looked absolutely stunning in the sun. The only thing letting the car down was the rusty chrome which jarred on an otherwise pristine car. However, having just dipped my first ever toe in the water of chroming (as it were) and found how horrendously expensive it can be, I can happily forgive this. The guys who did my chroming were telling us they have often quoted for American cars only to never hear back from the owners, then to find out the car's been sold on or even scrapped due to the astronomical cost of the metalwork that can easily exceed the cost of a paintjob











while we're talking about shiny things, it wasn't purely confined to the cars. Several motorbikes (presumably "sickles" or maybe even "sleds"...see also Arlo Guthrie) turned up. Never get tired of a decent flame job. I bet when those shiny, shiny pipes turn blue from heat it's enough to make you weep







Immense Oldsmobile Delta 88 was immense! Trippy split headlights were like a hall of mirrors trick. What were they smoking back in '72? In many ways this car is emblematic of how horribly American cars lost their way in the 70s... and arguably never really found their way back... but i can't hate it. It's just so ridiculously ugly and over-the-top you can't help but love it







Nice to see this awesome '47 Dodge coupe back to its fighting weight after seeing (and worse, hearing) it destroy its diff at the Brighton Speed Trials a few years back. I love this car with an almost carnal passion. It looks like it would happily drink your beer, kick the cat, shag your sister and wipe its c*** on the curtains before leaving to pick a fight with some random in the street







The Plymouth Duster was a poverty-spec entry level car based on the Chrysler Valiant platform. Made to compete with the like of things like the Chevy Nova, many were blighted with slant-six engines. Some crept tentatively into the realms of v8 mini musclecar adulthood though



...and on the subject of Valiants, they have spawned so many variants (such as the Australian Charger) it's sometimes easy to forget they were a model in their own right. Here's a VJ model, pretty much indistinguishable from the aforementioned Aussie Charger



and a '71 model, pretty much indistinguishable from a giant Austin Allegro!



The Electra nameplate has been used on numerous Buicks since 1959. Maybe the most famous was the 50s "Deuce and a Quarter", a nickname derived from its "225" designation. The Electra 225 referred to the overall length of the car; 225 inches! Plenty of space to cram in some shock and awe, then, as this '60 model demonstrates











It's easy to forget just how much of a compact, perfectly proportioned musclecar the Pontiac Firebird was in its youth. The tendency is to be swayed by the excess of the Burt Reynolds-era TransAms with massive decals and yee-haw crassness. So here's a beautiful '71 model, just on the cusp of turning from the original pony car to the chest wig chariot of later years



Although to be fair to Pontiac, they were the only manufacturer who stuck with the musclecar concept through the 70s and if you wanted something big-block and stupidly fast in that wilderness decade then the FireBird and TransAm variants were really your only choice. This one's a '79 Tenth Anniversary model with a unique treatment on the Flaming Chicken decal. It might be cheesy, but at least it's a matured, strong cheese





You can never discuss American transportation for too long without coming back to the evergreen pickup. If the old cliche that trucks built America is true,t hen Ford is more guilty than most. The F-series in all its bewildering variations is still the most sellingest vehicle of all time. Yes, that is actually a word. Have a '57 F100 shop truck for illustrative purposes



although you'd have to argue that the Chevy Stepsides bring slightly more in the way of glamour





Nice to see a GMC as well, they never seem to have gained the popularity over here that the other makes have. I think I'm right in saying this is basically a Task Force re-badged





and as for the modern Dodge Ram, well sadly the best thing I can think of to say about them is that their chrome wheels are great for taking funky reflection shots in...



The more observant amongst you (otherwise known as anyone still reading) will have noticed there's been a glaring omission up till now. OK, so how about some Fords? here, have a nice '32 rod. Flames, y'see? Flames never go out of fashion. Louvres likewise





I don't imagine this '32 started life as a pickup, but it suits it so well. The osrt of pickup that looks hard enough to be used for carrying murder victims to their shallow graves...



This '32 has remained slightly more gentlemanly whilst still managing plenty of custom touches



I had to take this '33 either from a distance or the nearside to hide the fact that it's got a Chevy 350 in it. Weird engine swap is weird





and I meant to get this '33 from the front, too, but forgot. So you'll have to be content with the rear end



skip a few years to '39. Not sure if the paint on this one is finished, or if it's supposed to be primer grey. Can't decide if it works or not, to be honest. But it does show off the lovely swoopy fenders well, I guess. Bonus C5 Corvette in hubcap!





I still don't understand why '50 Fords are nicknamed "shoeboxes". If you know, write in answers on a postcard please. Awesome bullet nose is awesome. Chrome and glass sphinx hood ornament doubles as a method of disembowelling unwary pedestrians and encouraging fools to look where the hell they're walking







In 1952, Ford re-assigned its model range. The bottom-of-the range was now called the Mainline (guess Lou Reed and Sister Ray would approve, maybe even hit it sideways), the mid-range the Customline and the top-of-the-range the Crestline. Within the Crestline designation you could specify a "Sunliner" (Convertible) a "Victoria" (Hardtop) and "Country Squire" (Station Wagon). OK, got all that, lol? That makes this Victoria a top car in its day anyway, and the owner has made it better than new, literally the most immaculate car on the day by some margin. Incredible





Had a mad moment here where I tried to take a photo of this entire rod reflected in its own headlight. I can only apologise, but this is pretty much what the world looks like to me most of the time. I'm medicated, y'know...





These hot rods are all very well but I suppose there's only one fast Ford that people think of as turning up to a musclecar show.



Yep, the one that started it all (GTO and Barracuda owners moaning from the wings, be silent for the one that everyone else thinks of as the one true originator). Mustangs may not have been the very first or the most powerful or the most exotic, or even really the most anything... except in sales terms. But that's their strength in a nutshell; everyone wanted and more importantly, could afford one. They were never intended to be a collectible million-dollar museum piece, this was a blue-collar car made for the workers to aspire to. The very guys who were sweating their eyes out building them on the line all week could put the first payment down on one come Saturday, and be very much The Man on his block. That's the enduring strength of the Mustang that many people seduced by stupidly-priced Eleanor clones fail to appreciate; this was a cheap car for the working class. And there is quite literally a Mustang for every taste and wallet

early complaints of the cramped passenger compartment and tight conditions under the hood were addressed with the '71, '72 and '73 cars, the final version of the original design. Although they look much bigger than the '64-on cars, they were the same under the skin. The Mach 1 was the only variant that only came with v8 power, often prodigious power, too







I love a nice anodised wheel rim, but this '71 Mach 1 does demonstrate the unalterable Cosmic Law of Modifying; if you're going to put big wheels onto a car, first put big lows into it. Drop this car onto its gusset and it would give me instant arousal, as it is, it's "just" a 9/10. Boss 351 engine is still sufficient to rearrange time and space at a time when the crunch was starting to bite







And there was me feeling a bit pleased with myself for scoring a Weber 48IDA twin-choke downdraft carb to go on my new engine build. Yeah, just the one. So imagine how pee-shy I suddenly became when standing next to this '65 featuring four of the bloody things. Sometimes life just isn't fair. Interior is like actually having an aneurism burst







The first redesign of the Mustang came in '67, in an attempt to relive those complaints of being cramped. This resulted in the iconci shape that anyone asked to draw a Mustang on a beermat would probably come up with; that fastback shape made so sexy and famous by Steve McQueen in Bullitt. This '67 demonstrates what I mean pretty well, albeit not in Highland Green







and once more, the massive form of the '71 re-style. Lee Iacocca, the Father of the Mustang, once said of the increasing bloat of the car that "the Mustang market never left us; we left it". How horrified he must have been by the economy-focussed behemoth of the Mustang II that followed in '74, then



So, for those who think that anything built since side marker lights became compulsory ('68, if you were wondering...) how about a beautiful Cobra-jet early 'stang? This car has been owned by the same dude for around forty years now, and shows in the way that everything on it is just about perfect. The 428 Cobra Jet engine was built for a single reason; to win in the NHRA drag racing series. This is an extremely fast car, make no mistake. Don't be fooled by the lace spray work around the hood pins and the etching in the side glass. It's a racing car with hair ribbons, that's all

[Lucky]

Of course, there was one other fast Ford back when that probably deserves a mention before we move on. So here's one; a '68 Galaxie. Probably one of the most enduring sights in racing is one of these in the same saloon class as Mini Coopers. Like a Matchbox car being overtaken by a block of flats



Here's something a bit unusual. And not just because it's not every day you see a '65 Impala... and who doesn't love an Impala. Spot what it is?



Yeah, it's a rare right-hand drive model. This is an Impala you can use every day, just for popping down the shops for a pint of milk. And you need never worry about the price of a loaf of bread, Tory top brass style, since you'll have burned through Premium at 8mpg on the way to get the groceries





'66 Chrysler Imperial looks rather like the grille and everything else were designed for a car about a foot less wide than it actually ended up. Slightly awkward





I'm not honestly sure what this three-wheeled Morgan was doing here today. Maybe they got their calendar wrong. Funny to see a car almost exactly the same as the one in the museum turn up under its own steam, though







The New Yorker had perennially been Chrysler's top-of-the-line car for 17 years by the time this '57 model rolled of the line as the first of the fifth generation and the first to embody Virgil Exner's "Forward Look" styling direction. These cars came with FirePower Hemis in top trim, and were an extremely capable boulevard bruiser





By '61 the styling was... well, a bit more challenging... and the Hemi was gone in favour of the wedge-chambered v8s such as the 413 Golden Lion engine (commemorated by a little rampaging brass lion badge). To be fair, the marque was in sales doldrums, having suffered in the late 50s recession and from poor quality finishing leading to corrosion issues. Even in its time the styling was seen as awkward. I'm not convinced that everything the owner of this example has done is to its benefit, either; the chain steering wheel is a bit painful,though I love the Swaroski crystal hub spinners and the metalflake paint











This '64 was the last model year for the sixth generation unibody car. I guess it may just scrape by on being so ugly it's attractive? The Allegro gets a mention again as it loses its exclusive "only car to have a square steering wheel" tagline







By '68 the New Yorker platform had managed a small renaissance, however, and this Town And Country station wagon was deservedly given an award on the day of the show. Or is that just my 'wagon perversion clouding my judgement, lol? It's the genuine imitation fake pretend authentic wood that does it...







here's another pretty unusual American car... mainly because it's not strictly speaking American as such. In fact, this was GMs top level car in the Canadian and European markets. Built on the B-platform, the Parisienne (a name, I suspect, that was fooling no-one) was built in GMs Oshawa, Ontario Pontiac plant and was actually more of a Chevy than anything under the skin. By the end of its run it was essentially a rebadged Impala





Buick's Riviera range has always had some shock and awe about it, especially as it was conceived as a Personal Luxury Car... whatever that means. Intended to compete with models like Ford's Thunderbird, the Riviera featured the best of everything. A mainstay of the custom scene almost forever, ones like this '68 are pretty representative; low and mean







Even more zany than the 60 fencing-mask light covers and all that was the 70s "boat-tail" Riviera. To be fair, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and combined with those muscular rear haunches gives rise to one of the most recognisable profiles on any car ever.









We touched on the method of sharing platforms to build very different identities earlier on, and the Plymouth Roadrunner is a great example of this. Designed from the off as a low-cost musclecar, Plymouth tried to get back to basics. By '68 the original crop of pony cars were seen as losing their way and moving away from their original vision as cheap speed as the options lists and one-off special editions proliferated. The Roadrunner was meant to cut through all that, and despite that it used the same B-body as Plymouth's existing musclecar, the GTX, they stuck it out there as a car that would run 14 seconds in the quarter mile out of the box. More importantly it gives us a chance for Automotive Factoid of the Day #7; Plymouth paid $50 000 to Warner Brothers for the "meep meep" noise of the horn; which was celebrated by painting it lilac and decorating it with a "Voice of the Roadrunner" decal. This original '68 Roadrunner (that I embarrassingly failed to get an overall picture of) was easily capable of the avowed 14-second run since it packed the Hemi engine







Already existing on the B-platform when the Roadrunner rudely muscled in was the Satellite. For a while, it was the top trim level on what was called the Belvedere model range (remember them?) and when the GTX was brought it, it moved down a notch. Finally giving way to the Fury, it was eventually dropped mid-70s. How the hell anyone's supposed to follow all this I've no idea. It's even more confusing when full-size cars get relegated to mid-size designations at random! Anyway, think of these Satellites as slightly less potent Roadrunners...









Ford V8 Pilot... now there's a strange old thing. An extraordinarily American British car, it was actually the first car to be produced by Ford in the UK after the War. Very much a pre-war design, it brings us Automotive Factoid of the Day #8; the original 2.2 litre side-valve engines actually came from a load of war-surplus Canadian motors intended to power Bren Gun Carriers! The later 3.6 V8s were a far more civilised proposition. Headlight internals curiously engrossing







Of course, it's almost impossible to leave an American car show without blundering into at least one example of the longest-running sportscar marque in the world. This one here is a C2 second-gen version and gives us the opportunity for Automotive Factoid of the Day #9 (just as well, or we'd never make double figures). The C2 models were designated as Sting Rays. The C3 models were designated Stingrays. No-one seems to know why, you'll just have to deal with it. The new C7 model resurrects the Stingray monicker, and very nice it is too. I saw one at Goodwood and it looks a very tidy little car, even if it does have a ray badge stolen directly from the Opel Manta A!



Another long-running nameplate was the Buick Special... although its not really a name, is it? Anyway, you could tell the Special from the Super by the number of Ventiports it boasted. This '56 model takes the rocket-age styling cues to their logical conclusion by having an actual Buck Rogers style spaceship on the nose







well, we've just about reached the end together, and my old granny always used to say you should end on a song. But since the one currently running through my mind is Joy Division's Dead Souls, I'd probably best skip the song and just end on the high note.



We've talked about all kinds of things in this thread; badge engineering, shared platforms, sports homologation, and more specifically, Plymouth Roadrunners and Dodge Charger 500s. All these things came together in the form of possibly the most outrageous homologation specials ever seen... OK, yeah, maybe the Metro 6R4 as well. Yeah, and the McLaren F1 GTR. Yeah, write in with your favourite if you like... anyway, as I was saying the most outrageous homologation specials ever seen. The Dodge Daytona was the first to arrive at the marketplace, based on the '69 Charger 500 which was itself already a race special, it brought the preposterous all-steel nosecone, pop-up headlights and sky-high wing to the party and headed for the NASCAR tracks. The Plymouth Roadrunner-based Superbird looked very similar when it arrived a year later but was actually more effective with slightly better thought-out aero that included flush-mounted rear windscreens and better angles on the wing, nosecone and front airdam.

These Hemi-engined behemoths battered around the ovals at a round 200mph for just two glorious years before the NASCAR rules closed on the era of the aero cars and they were consigned to the pages of history. Unsold examples, forced into production by the numbers needed for homologation, laguished in dealers for months. Conservative buyers wouldn't be seen on the street with such outre styling additions, and some dealers actually stripped off the aero aids to return the cars to their base model look, something we can only consider as sacrilegieous now. Fortunately, a few survive and fewer still have made it to these shores. The orange one is a genuine original Superbird, the yellow one is an original Daytona, the blue one is a built replica including a brand new crate Hemi imported specifically for the project























So, this is it, the end. We'll finish with Automotive Factoid of the Day #10, shall we? Plymouth were in such a rush to get the Superbirds in production and not miss another year that there wasn't time on the lines to differentiate in too much detail from the base Roadrunners around them. This meant that the flush-fitting rear screens were done so hastily there was no time to dress the welding on the sheetmetal or make it look pretty. Hence all original Superbirds left the factory with a vinyl roof to cover the nastiness beneath. if it's in metal then its either not an original car, or it's been repainted at some point.


So there you are; we've spent some quality time in here that I hope has made us grow together as people, and you have ten amazing Automotive Factoids to amaze your mates down the pub with. Hope you enjoyed it as much as me. I'm off to listen to Dead Souls

Now, go away

[re japi]

Awesome pics and awesome motors!!!

I just love Cuda´s and Camaro´s. And -55´to -57´Chevys Spotted few rare cars there too.

I bet you had awesome time there.

[spirit r]

My wife and my daughter always love old mustang car this mustang mach1 boss 351 give me lot of inspiration. A lot of lovely details let me fall in love for this car. Thanks for sharing this cool pics. I thought i can hear the sound of the engine in my fantasy.
Thomas

[User Banned]

Excellent documentarialationism. I didnt realise there was so much quality american pig iron and muscle in pommyland!
I had to chuck "dead souls" on too to take in all that Superbird splendour at the end

[myatt1972]

Cheers Nik, epic post as usual

[codge]

X 2 from me Nik.