Travel with Susan and Larry along the Missouri Ozarks back roads as they locate classic cars, project cars and old trucks.
When you get old doing fun things is not always a pleasure. We must clean up our old 1953 Ford so someone will buy it. It has to be done and we will have to do it.
Heed the call of the open road in the sportiest car on the highway. The durable fabric top on its lightweight aluminum frame can be raised or lowered quickly and easily with one hand... Chrome-trimmed safety glass side windows that roll up completely with one-and-one half turns give a completely weatherproof car... You'll enjoy the relaxing comfort of the extra wide, soft-cushioned knee-level seat with legroom to spare... the festive playtime look of bright interior fittings and colorful [artificial] textile leather upholstery. Out on the road, you'll thrill to the eager responsiveness of the big 103 horsepower Dodge 'Get-Away' Engine.
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| 1956 Dodge Coronet sedan complete $1000 |
This 1957 Crestliner with aa 1957 Johnson outboard motor is a real find. Such a small world too -- the man who owns this boat and motor (and has the title) lives only a few miles from us. I did some research on this boat and discovered: Larson Motorcraft produced Crestliners from 1955-1957.
All Johnson outboards prior to 1958 are collector engines.
This boat is aluminum and wood and original.
The original coloring was red and white.
Larson changed company to Crestliner in 1957.
This is a copyright free photograph of Mrs. F.S. Bliven and her daughter. Mrs. Bliven is driving a 1907 Franklin Model D roadster. Her husband, Frank, was a Franklin automobile dealer located in Washington, D.C. at the turn of the century.
The Franklin motorcars were air-cooled while all the other car manufacturers during that time period chose water-cooled engines. Many people preferred Franklin's car because air-cooled meant no worry when the winter cold came. Anti-freeze was not invented yet and the water-cooled radiators had to be drained.
Also, Franklin motorcars came with heat and ac; an advertisement for Franklin cars around the early 1900s sported that "You use it all the time -- 50 degrees below zero, 120 degrees in the shade." Franklin's cars were lightweight compared to the other cars manufactured back then. Franklin made most of car body with aluminum or wood.
In 1914, Franklin proved the effectiveness of his air-cooled cars when 116 Franklin stock cars in 116 parts of the country ran 100 miles in low gear without stopping the engine. Yet, with all these benefits, Franklin cars sold for half the price of a Ford Model-A of the same year.
By 1915 about one and half million automobiles were produced and gas stations started springing up near roadways like mushrooms. But gasoline was dirt cheap back then so lots of gas stations was a 
good thing, or so you might believe. However, I found this little ditty written by Bill Davis, 1916, which sounds more like something some person might write today:Go! Just keep going; never stopping for a rest.All the day I keep on dodging bill collectors with a zest.
Summer clothes we wore all winter, Now 'tis spring, they're nearly through;Once I paid my life insurance, now it's more than I can do.
Little ones are nearly barefoot, pantry shelves are empty now.I have chopped wood most all winter, before this year I knew not how.
Ne'er before in my existence, has the tank on my machineEver starved, and froze the family, keeping 'er filled with gasoline.
(Bill Davis, 1915)
Before you read further, can you name some of the automobiles that were named after our Presidents? Yeah, I couldn't name even one either. That's because all but one or two were only manufactured decades ago and didn't take hold the way Ford and GM cars did.
For instance, did you know there was a car named Washington? My brother Reed gave me a wonderful book about automobile history, "Treasury of Early American Automobiles" by Floyd Clymer. One page is my inspiration for writing this month -- the page is called "Your Auto I.Q." Anyway, what about the cars named after our presidents.
The ones you probably never ever heard of are: Washington, Monroe, Grant, Jackson, Johnson, Harding and Roosevelt. But the eighth car you do know: Lincoln.
As I tried to find photos of some of these vintage cars, I came across this one at the Toyota Auto Museum of Roosevelt's car, a Packard 12. This is not the car named after Roosevelt that I referred to above but it was so beautiful I wanted to share it with you.
was the first auto maker to challenge Selden's Patent
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in 1900. The advertiser, W.E. Roach Company (Philadelphia PA) wrote a ditty to run in the space and called it, "Automobiles That Give Satisfaction."
because when I visited his site, it was shutdown. I don't know who is giving us all the run-a-round about electric cars, gasoline cars, battery cars, but we could all drive around in steam powered cars
and all we'd need, after buying the steam car of course, is water. 
Don't tell me they haven't figured out how to make a steam-driven automobile; we'd had them since the late 1800s (photo right). Anyway, for what it's worth, I've just given you my two cents on the subject of 'oil independence'.
(White Company). You know, the more I look at the diagrams of these simple old cars the more I get to thinking someone with a mechanical aptitude could build one in the garage.
Thinking that way, I looked up the general diagram of a simple steam-powered car and found this:
Somewhere West of Laramie
Somewhere west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I'm talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that's a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome.
The truth is -- the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.
There's a savor of links about that car -- of laughter and lit and light -- a hint of old loves -- and saddle and quirt. It's a brawny thing -- yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue.
Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a
source: Treasury of Early American Automobiles by Floyd Clymer (1877-1925)
1946 Chevy Fleetline with arrow dynamic design. It has a later model engine (1952).
since our scanner is out of order, we had to take pics of the pics with our camera to put them online.
Although inventors had tinkered with the idea of the horseless carriage for a century and George Selden had plans to propel a vehicle by a gasoline engine in 1877, it was not until 1900 that mechanics such as Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and James Ward Packard began to visualize these contraptions as marketable items. -- source: Treasury of early American Automobiles, 1877-1925 by Floyd Clymer.
Today men such as Ford, Olds, Buick, Studebaker, the Dodge Brothers, Packard, and Tucker would not be able to recognize their vehicles.
James Ward Packard
In 1898, James Packard, dissatisfied with the car he owned, got into a discussion with Alexander Winton, bicycle and automobile manufacturer in Cleveland, Ohio. You see, Winton built the car Packard bought and that car kept breaking down on his frequent trips to Warren, Ohio. Packard had the car hauled in by a team of horses.
Packard gave the automobile he now owned some thought and came up with a number of improvements and was in the process of sharing those ideas with Winton. Winton did not appreciate Packard's unasked for advice and said, "Mr. Packard, if you are so smart, why don't you make a car yourself!" Within a year, Packard did just that.
I apologize for not including the source of the photo of the original Packard car. I'll correct that oversight as soon as I find out what the source is.
I had the pleasure of riding in an Octoauto in Chicago. The driver was a reckless fellow, and the wonder is that we were not pinched and given the limit by the judge; but fortunately our driver picked streets that no other auto with a sane chauffeur would attempt to navigate.
Chicago not only has some of the best pavement in the world, but I believe it can safely claim the booby-prize for the worst.
