Recaps - letters from May 2006

May '06

Recaps - letters from May 2006

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

May, 2006

The article and photos of the 1938 Buick Century in HCC #16 rekindled my unhappy memory of an identical car I was offered for free in 1949 and turned down.

My father-in-law had his dad's car stored at his mother's garage since 1939 when his dad passed away. He just forgot that it was there. At that time, I was trying to buy a new car and asked if I could purchase the Buick. He said "Oh my gosh I forgot about that 'old' car sitting out there, you can't buy it, I'll give it to you if you want it."

I took a mechanic, a new battery and a can of gasoline. We put some gas in the carburetor, hooked up the battery and she started after only a few turns of the starter. I drove it back to the mechanic's garage where he suggested letting it idle for a few hours. I returned a few hours later, it shut down as I approached it and we could not restart it. The next day he freed the engine by turning the flywheel with a crowbar.

I believe the car had about 5,000 miles on the odometer and everything including the interior and the exterior looked like new. The mechanic convinced me not to fuss with it though, he said the wiring wouldn't be any good and it would just give me trouble. My father-in-law sold it to a guy for a couple of hundred dollars who did not take care of it and I saw it around town for several years looking just like it was those days, an old car. My remorse for this decision is tempered by the fact I would not have been able to afford to make a collectible out of it. Not many people did that in 1949.

Tom Tabor
Delray Beach, Florida

After reading your article in HCC #18, I wanted to point out an error in the article "Got $3,500," about the 1947 Dodge in which you stated: "in 1946 Dodge added a new grille and parking lamps to the 1942 design and incorporated Fluid-Drive for the first time."

In November, 1941, my father bought one of the last cars, a 1942 Dodge club coupe, that the dealer sold in Dowagiac, Michigan, before the war started on December 7th. This Dodge had Fluid-Drive as standard. It was the car I learned to drive in 1947 and remember how I could show off by coming up to the stop light and not have to shift gears like most of the cars did at the time. I will admit that it was slow taking off but in the snow it was great as you could slowly move out and not spin the tires like the standard shifts would by applying too much throttle causing the tires to spin and usually getting you stuck.

Chrysler products at that time had a separate mounted stop lamp in the center of their trunks. Funny how this item never caught on then, but is installed on all cars now.

I think your Hemmings Classic Car is the best and I enjoy every article that I read.

Tex D. Marshall
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

I was very pleased to see "my" 1931 Hudson Phaeton in HCC #18, now magnificently restored by Eldon Hostetler. In 1955 I was a U.S. Army chaplain's assistant in the Panama Canal Zone. There were three of us, one had a 1929 Buick Phaeton, and one had a 1931 Packard Phaeton. In an alley in Panama City I found this wonderful car, which was being used for weddings and which the owner wanted to sell for $150. He told me Franklin D. Roosevelt had ridden in it! I greatly enjoyed this car. As it never got colder than 59 degrees in Panama, the car was ideal. I found out that the long one-man top could be put down while I was driving, by unfastening it and letting it fly back! Soon the back supports broke and I had to carefully arrange them each time I put the top up. The car was worn and would jump time. I learned to stop on a hill and turn the distributor to get it back in time and retighten it. The U.S. Army paid for it to be shipped to New York and I drove the entire New Jersey Turnpike without stopping at 60 mph! When I slowed to pay the toll, a piston top broke. I limped home to Maryland, but was never able to afford to fix it as I was going to seminary. I sold it to Mr. Bell in 1956, who did a restoration that was correct for the time. He took off the two-tone blue paint that it had been repainted in and made it eggshell and beige. Later I kept hearing from Hudson owners that my car was at Harrah's. When I saw it there in 1973, it was the same as Mr. Bell had shown it to me in 1957.

Bruce W.H. Urich
Orlando, Florida

As a recent subscriber, I was most pleased to see your write-up on the Revere automobile HCC #17. The car came from, specifically, Port Townsend, Washington. As a young man I used to admire the poor, tired old car parked outside the local Dodge dealer (who by the way, was salesman, mechanic, etc... a one-man operation) between the late 1940s and early '50s. He would drive the car in the local Rhododendron Festival parade every year, and whenever he felt like it. One day it was suddenly gone. I hoped whoever bought it would take good care of it. I see that it's been marvelously restored, thank you to the new owner.

Also, as a long-time mechanic I recently viewed another 1932 Pontiac restoration, like the one in HCC #17. I photographed the stripped down block and was impressed by the two-angle surface of the cylinder heads. The valves lie horizontally across the "V" of the block, actuated by a roller cam and the manifolds coming out on the top of the block, as shown in your photograph. Before that time, I'd have sworn that Pontiacs didn't have a V-8 until 1955. I love your magazine and its precision recording of facts. Keep up the good work!

George Harris
Nampa, Idaho

I really enjoyed reading John Katz's column "Ramblers I Remember" HCC #18. The article brought back many childhood memories of my family's history with Kenosha-built products. In the last paragraph of his column, John muses of owning a 1949-'51 Airflyte Nash. My father owned a 1951 navy blue Statesman Super sedan.

The Airflyte was a uniquely styled, solidly built automobile. However, there is one major problem with this design and that is visibility. Vision out of the front and rear of the car was very poor. Peering through the sunroof-like back window made backing up a real challenge. Looking over that big bulbous hood was no treat either.

If memory serves me correctly, the problem was exacerbated by front seats that were low to the floor and on a slight recline. My father actually sat on extra cushions to drive the car. Keep in mind he's more than 6 feet tall.

One day, while driving the bathtub, my dad spotted a 1952 Statesman Super for sale. He purchased the car and found the car to be everything the '51 wasn't. The squared-off Pinin Farina design addressed all the shortcomings of the bathtub. The car was better handling, was roomier and could cruise all day at 65-70 mph. Most importantly though, vision all-around was much improved. This was due largely to Nash's hardtop-like treatment of the glass area.

After many years and many thousands of miles, the old '52 was retired. I have always felt it to be one of the best road cars I have ever ridden in. If I were looking for a Nash with unique styling to admire in my garage, I would buy a bathtub. If I were looking for a Nash with unique styling that's also enjoyable to drive, then it would be a 1952-'54 Nash Airflyte.

Hank Davis
Baltimore, Maryland

The tanks on page 46 of HCC #18 are not M-4 Shermans, but M-3 tanks, a less than inspired vehicle. You had to move the entire tank in order to traverse the main armament, and the rivets became projectiles when the tank was hit! Compare to the real Sherman on page 49.

Lt. Col. (Ret) Franz D. Cone
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

I always enjoy Ray Bohacz's Mechanical Marvels, but I can't resist nitpicking a bit. In HCC #18, "It's Electric!", the diagram of the voltage regulator has some erroneous information concerning positive/negative ground. Chrysler, Ford, and others used positive ground prior to 1956; when they changed to 12-volt systems in 1956 they changed to negative ground systems. General Motors, who switched to 12 volts in 1955, always used negative ground.

Ray says that generators need regulation to prevent overcharging. True enough, but prior to the late 1930s, most cars had no form of regulation except that the third brush, which supplied field current, could be manually moved so as to change the charging rate. One was supposed to increase charging in the wintertime to allow for more nighttime driving, and batteries routinely suffered from over- or undercharging, and many drivers drove with headlamps on when making long trips in daylight to reduce overcharging, while extended stop and go driving at night would sometimes cause batteries to run down and require a recharge at a service station which would install a loaner battery to keep the car on the road.

First forms of automatic regulation were primitive. My 1929 Studebaker had a bimetal thermostatic switch in the generator, which reduced charging somewhat when the generator got hot. In 1935, Chevrolet Master Deluxe models had a set of contacts in the light switch, which increased the charging rate when the headlamps were switched on. Chevrolet first got a fully automatic regulator in 1938. The firewall-mounted unit contained a reverse current relay (commonly called a cutout relay) and a vibrating voltage regulator; no current regulator was needed, since third-brush generators are self-limiting so far as maximum current is concerned.

With the advent of Sealed Beam headlamps in 1940, most cars switched to two-brush generators due to their superior performance, especially at low speeds, but generators still produced little or no output at idle speeds. Since two-brush generators are not self-limiting as to maximum current output, they need a current regulator (actually, a current limiter) to prevent overheating of the generator during periods of high electrical demand, hence the three-unit regulator as shown in the diagram became almost standard in 1940, a notable exception being Hudson who continued using three-brush generators.

Vernon C. Hales
Merriam, Kansas

I enjoyed your Buyer's Guide on the 1960-'64 Ford Galaxie in HCC #18. As a former owner of a 1962 four-door, Corinthian white with dark blue interior 390-cu.in. four-barrel carb with automatic transmission, the car was a tank. Case in point: While I was over in Vietnam in 1966, one of my younger brothers got the car keys and took the car for a drive. While coming back to the house, he made the turn too wide, unfortunately a 1965 Barracuda going the other way also made the turn too wide, and the two cars collided. My car hit the Plymouth just behind the driver's door, and inflicted $500 worth of damage. My car had only $50 worth of damage, which needed replacement of the left headlamps, the headlamp chrome, bumper, and left front fender.

Dennis H. Kuykendall
Kuna, Idaho

This article originally appeared in the May, 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

Order Backissues of Hemmings Classic Car       |       Subscribe to Hemmings Classic Car

Reader Comments

Hemmings Classic Car

Order Backissues of Hemmings Classic Car