Backsliding

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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> http://tinyurl.com/cu4sb
>
> http://tinyurl.com/7nnvy

Isn't the 31 Ford slide back roof an English or French version, maybe one of the coach built bodies??
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No, not a Briggs or Murray or Brewster custom, nor a foreign Ford from afar, but a factory-built American Model, a 400-A Convertible Sedan.

http://tinyurl.com/cokgd  

It was a rare Bird 30 years before a rare [and frequently faked] Sports Roadster for a very good reason: it was the most expensive Model A Ford sold.  It went into production on May 22, 1931 (I seem to recall that my '79 Spirit was built on a May 22, too...) and it went on sale in June.  In the depths of the Depression, a $640 Ford was too dear for most, and most who were "In The Money" (feel free to sing along...) still weren't too swayed by such a model name ("The Four Hundred" meant much to the Social Register readership; a "Ford" meant something much different), so just over 5,000 examples were built.  Rare?  In 1930, Model A production topped out at just over 9,200 units per -day-!!

Whether anyone at Nash had once had --- or coveted --- such a rare Ford will never be known: a state of automotive "historianship" being what it was back then (that state being only marginally better years later), but it couldn't have been an -unknown- model of Model A to most Detroit car guys.

As for the Nash dash and that of the poured Babbitt-bearing* leather-and-walnut-grained Ford, your Uniscopes are as good --- or better --- than mine.  Throw the dice and decide.  (*Then discuss a modern replacement for a Babbitt...)

http://tinyurl.com/8wrpp

http://tinyurl.com/a3pey

(Yes, Met, not Rambler...)

Or throw in the towel.  No one cares about old cars.

http://tinyurl.com/ahtr2

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Now if you'd said how the 50 Ford and 50 Rambler were
almost the same car, I'd have had an answer for you!
<<

How was what George Romney called "the car of the future" when he first viewed one in the late 1940s --- a new Nash that weighed (despite sheet metal sheathing its wheels) as little as 2430 pounds (2006 Toyota Prius weighs 2890) --- related to Ford?  Well, it was a Rambler, not Diplomat, and the Dodge brothers, having taken stock in lieu of the $5,000 a cash- strapped Henry couldn't afford to pay them, once owned 10% of Ford (and their stock was not sold until after WWI...), so that's a "Six Degrees of Some Sort of Separation," unless Frank referred to the "America's First Compact Car" claim that Nash could make because Ford couldn't.

Both Ford and GM had abandoned their post-war small-car planning during the sellers' market (and even when Chrysler "shrank" a Dodge Way far, it, er, didn't find too many buyers...), leaving the door open for independents to drive in.
If Crosley was too small and many others, from Playboys to King Midgets were even smaller (send in the clowns...!), then Nash in 1950 (or again in 1958), and, using some sleight-of-hand the next model year, Studebaker also, 

http://www.adclassix.com/images59larkcoupe.jpg

then that not-a-Ford Rambler proved Romney right.  Corvair, Falcon, and Valiant, plus millions of compacts by hundreds of carmakers later, that "future" looks, in many areas of the world, more like that 1950 Rambler than like cars America built before.  Unless, of course, we read leaves on the AMC family tree.  Before there was an American Motors, there was an Americar. 

http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/wokr/gallery/wil_04.jpg

http://www.old-carburetors.com/Willys/fullimages/Willys-011_f.jpg

But that's probably -still- not what Frank was referring to.  We'll see.

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I still have to find the info for the "Spirit of America" runs. I know some of those runs APPROACHED the records at the time, but didn't exceed them.
<<

If "'Spirit of America' runs" means AMC-prepped-by-Traco-and-Breedlove- team, Craig's fastest speed in an AMX (in Class B) was a 75-mile flying start of 174.295.  (Using that term more precisely, one would mean -jet propulsion- and, ahem, considerably higher speeds...)  

Speaking of recalling, I surprised myself with wiper memory: I found the file and found electric ones cost $22.35 exactly.  I also found how much for TG.  $51.20 exactly.  I found paperwork for the Chevy and Ford I did not order: $50.60 and $54.00 respectively.  Most interesting, Ambassador wagon "delivery" was $63.00.

The lightest and cheapest "domestic" 5-door "wagon" weighs 2343.5 pounds today: to deliver one to the 20500 Zip code (for placement under a White House tree...) will cost $540.00.  Inflation?  Interesting.  Seeing the US President being driven in a brand new "apple-pie" Chevrolet?  Priceless.

Adios.  Or, at least, Aveo.