Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i Classic American

T he other day I was visiting a garden centre with some family members. On the drive back along one of the many arrow-straight rural roads that populate this part of the Great Lakes, I caught a glimpse of a car hiding in the undergrowth not far from the asphalt. Closer inspection revealed it to be a 1973 Mercury Cougar convertible, one fit for the pages of our Discoveries section. It also got me thinking, that amid all the noise surrounding the Chevrolet Camaro’s 50th anniversary this year, it’s also interesting to remember that the Cougar, Lincoln-Mercury’s ‘senior’ pony car, also debuted for the ’67 model year. To that end, I thought I’d use this column to pay tribute to Mercury’s original ‘Cat,’ a car that has traditionally been overshadowed by…

can you smell burning? If you’re anywhere near a Tri-Power GTO and the answer is ‘yes’, that usually means the back tyres have taken a pasting. But for the unfortunate second owner of this car, it meant something else. A fire in a garage that just happened to contain his prized Goat had already brought part of the ceiling down on the car, and the flames were taking hold. Showing the kind of dedication most classic car owners can probably understand, he pulled the car out of the fire before it was completely destroyed. But the damage was significant, nonetheless. That valuable triplet of two-barrel carburettors had warped beyond repair, the windscreen and dash were likewise cooked and the paint was almost totally stripped by the heat. Whatever it was…

Part 2 GENERATION THREE Highly anticipated, the third-generation Camaro was a radical departure from its predecessor. It featured sharp, chiselled and very aerodynamic lines, yet still remained distinctly American. A three-door hatchback design, it featured a huge, compound curve back window – the most complex piece of auto glass for its time. T-tops returned to the options list and a revised chassis and suspension saw unitised construction and a revised suspension with modified MacPherson struts up front and a coil sprung live axle – plus the availability of a rear Panhard rod and torque arm. Despite being more than 10 inches shorter and over 450lb lighter than its predecessor, the new Camaro was still among the larger sporty coupes on the market for ’82 and retained its front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout.…

W hen I was at school I was taught about the Boer War, amoebas, Chaucer, a spot of Latin, litmus paper and how to multiply binary matrices. Absolutely nothing about the real world and not much of it has been of any use since. I was then advised by a careers master who pointed me in the direction of banking, insurance, the Armed Forces, teaching or surveying. In those pre-internet days I was unaware that a massively interesting and lucrative world existed beyond those mainstream careers. No one ever said to me: “Fancy becoming a ‘loads of money’ stock trader, a race car driver or constructor, a classic car restorer or auctioneer, run a hot rod shop, or even a writer and photographer for a classic American car mag?” They didn’t…

1977 AMC Pacer AMC was always slightly off the wall with its designs, almo st as if it deliberately wanted to thumb its corporate no se at its main rivals, Chrysler, GM and Ford, knowing it could never compete with sheer num bers. Its 1975 Pacer is an ideal exa mple. It was a novel and practical desig n, a compact, wide-bodied commuter c ar for the fuel-starved and smog-constrained Seventies. Things did not all go to plan, however. The lawyers demanded a stronger structure ahead of impending Federal vehicle safety standards, adding weight. It was designed for a lightweight Wankel engine that GM had plans to develop, but cancelled the project at the last moment, leaving AMC to shoehorn its heavier existing six-cylinder engine and gearbox into an engine…

ATOMIC festival is already well established on the show calendar and with its new permanent summer date, is all set to grow into one of the biggest retro lifestyle events in the UK. A spectacular two-day celebration of all things Fifties, Atomic features a top-quality international band line-up, five large music venues and a huge vintage and retro market. For fans of classic machinery, there’s also a spectacular pre-1963 car show, traditional flag-start drag racing and the ‘Atomic Cavalcade of Chrome’, so if you arrive with your pre-’63 classic, rod or custom you can have a go on the drag strip, join the cavalcade and even give others a chance to experience the joy of American motoring by taking them for rides along the runway. If all this isn’t enough,…

T his month I would like to discuss the term ‘barn finds’ which for my money has to be the most misused phrase in the old car hobby, along with ‘frame-off restoration’, ‘totally original’, ‘easy resto’ and the daddy of them all ‘a rare find’! So what really is a ‘barn find’ car? In reality it is probably the worst kind of car you can buy for a variety of reasons. While in the last decade or so there have been many worthwhile interesting barn finds restored to very high levels, these have tended to be extremely collectable in their own right and therefore demanded full restorations, so thankfully the cars have been saved for all of us to enjoy. The big problem with barn cars isn’t so much their lack…

W e went to visit Lennard Funk to check out his fabulous ’65 Pontiac GTO, as featured on pages 24 to 29. Once we’d seen inside the garage and clocked the car Len uses most often, we knew you’d be interested in that one too… and Jonny Fleetwood had already started taking pictures. Brits have almost got used to seeing new Ford Mustangs on their roads since the latest model finally launched here with factory right-hand drive. It seems amazing that Ford took 50 years to get round to it, but at least there have been smaller firms willing to take up the slack. The first of these, we think, was Ruddspeed. K N Rudd (Engineering) Ltd was founded in Worthing, West Sussex, by Ken Rudd way back in 1945. He…

T he Can-Am Club, as it’s most commonly called, currently has about 200 members mainly in the south, but with some dotted around the UK and with a smattering from overseas and three in America. Chairman Keith Bloomfield says: “We are an all-embracing American car club. It doesn’t matter if you have the latest Jeep Renegade or an early Ford Thunderbird. It makes no difference. All ages, all makes, all models are welcome. We have people from all different walks of life, from the wellheeled to people who struggle to make ends meet. It’s not about money. It’s that bond of the love of the American way of life and of American cars.” Keith’s wife Denise, who has done so much to revitalise the club in the last five years in…

It’s around 4pm on Friday afternoon, and after a day working I find myself sitting on the nightmare that is the M25! Very quickly, it becomes apparent that I’m going to be here some time and the estimated time my sat nav gives to get to Santa Pod Raceway is a work of pure fiction, but I crank up the radio and remind myself of the destination. I’m heading north from Brighton to document the first VHRA Vintage Nationals, a weekend of the finest vintage hot rods in the country going head to head on the Santa Pod Raceway to see who can get bragging rights as the fastest down the strip! Five hours later, I finally arrive at my destination. It’s my first visit to the Pod and it’s…

KEITH HARMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, DORSET 1934 Ford five-window coupe 1950 Ford F1 2006 Jeep Cherokee Overland 1966 Ford F100 1958 Buick Special There have been a couple of additions to my garage over the last few months, another truck and a big Fifties saloon which came my way quite unexpectedly. We heard word through the grapevine that a guy in Oxford was having to get his late parents’ house ready to sell, but that in the garage was an old Buick that he had acquired back in the early Nineties, but that had been left neglected for many years. All we had was a contact number for his sister, so we made contact only to find that all the sister could tell us was “it’s big and it’s green!” We eventually…

I t’s a car that continues to polarise opinion. The Rondine – Ron-din-ay – was a design concept produced by Pininfarina for the 1963 Paris Motor Show which couldn’t have looked further removed from the car that bore it – a C2-series Chevrolet Corvette. While not conceived with the mass manufacturer in mind, it eventually spawned a mainstream production car. It’s just that it wasn’t American. Who, precisely, conceived the car is lost in the mists of time, but the man responsible for shaping this bold coupé was Michiganborn émigré, Tom Tjaarda. He produced a dramatic outline with a long rear overhang, the dramatically raked roofline initially comprising an inward-slanting rear window with the roof ‘chopped’ behind the B-pillar. It appeared with this controversial styling treatment when unveiled in Paris, but…

T he humble leaf spring has been a popular choice for vehicle manufacturers for many years as it’s able to provide both simple axle location and various spring rate requirements. Also inherent in the design is a degree of damping due to the friction between the leaf springs. Mainly found on live rear axle equipped cars, leaf springs have endured on many classic American cars right up to the Seventies in some cases. The reason for replacing the leaf springs is often due to sagging after years of use, or one of them actually breaking (close to the axle U bolts is a favourite place!). A main leaf breaking is more serious as it’s the main location for the axle. With this in mind it’s a good idea to regularly check…

289cu in GT Fastback Vendor: St Andrews Autos, Phillips Farm, Highwood Road, Edney Common, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 3PX Telephone: 01245 248888 Mobile: 07836 226228 Website: www.standrewsautos.co.uk Price: £50,000 This month’s Drive-Buy Ford Mustang graced the pages of Classic American magazine back in October 2011 as a Readers’ Ride, when owned by John Robinson. It looked mighty fine back then and has been much improved since, last year alone saw an expenditure of £15,000! It was previously owned by a renowned tattoo artist and tattoo machine builder Seth Ciferri, from Portland, Oregon. SPECIFICATION Engine: 289cu in V8 Power: 200bhp@4400rpm Torque: 282ft-lb@2400rpm Transmission: Five-speed Tremec manual MoT: 12 months Mileage: 00990 on new odometer The Mustang has undergone a tremendous amount of restoration work, much of which was completed by marque specialist…

Owner: David Higgs, Sussex When your father owns a garage and regularly brings home Thunderbirds and muscle cars from the mid-Sixties to early Seventies it’s bound to leave an impression on any youngster. It did with David Higgs and American cars became a passion, fuelled – forgive the pun – by his father’s business. An enthusiastic owner now for more than 20 years, his preference is for models built between the late Forties and mid-Fifties; his most recent buy is a South African import, a stock right-hand-drive 1948 Chevrolet Fleetline Aero two-door sedan, which he believes is the only example with this specification in the country. As the name suggests, the bodywork was influenced by the streamlined and aerodynamic design which became popular during the Depression in the Thirties and…