that great big American Eagle dealer installed optional hood ornament of the 1951 Ford

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how many blind luddites have to tell you that they guess your car is a Mercury, before you get so fed up that you write in the back window that it's a Torino?

 on the dash it has the Cobra Torino badge, but not on the outside.

It's so annoying that people say to a car owner, Hey, is that a XXXX ? when you have a YYYY. Worse that they are too stupid to read. Yes, READ. Behind the rear tires, on most Mopars with stripes, and this Torino, and most other cars, are a badge or sticker decal saying what the car is. Sometimes between the brake lights or on the edge of the trunk deck... but so few cars are built with no wording on them to tell you the model... and stupid people frequently guess at the model, instead of reading the decal, and this Torino owner got fed up so much he wrote that in the back window. Priceless.!

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one of the largest car collections is getting sold off in part, here are a couple of the unique vehicles to hit the block

the oldest surviving Ford sold, a 1903 rear entry tonneau

a 1900 Milwaukee steam runabout

1919 Renault torpedo

1933 Packard 12 convertible sedan, body by Dietrich

found on http://www.bornrich.com/john-oquinns-car-collection-sale-hershey-auction.html

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Car changes vs model longevity

Model Longevity... once, there was a time when the car was built year after year, decade after decade with minor changes but no new model... it is commonly known as the model T

The Ford Model T was made for 19 years, 1908 to 1927

The Model T was so popular, it wasn't even advertised between 1917 to 1923

In 1914 more Model Ts were made than all other car makes, combined.

Anyway, changes to the model meant not creating, designing, and engineering all new parts and methods to produce parts for a new design

The Corvette in 1976 had a lot of surveys to see what was going on with it's buyers, and some interesting things learned was that the average age of a Corvette buyer was 10 years younger than the average age of new car buyers in general

The Corvette buyers were 90% men, 57% were married vs general car buyers that are 80% married.

Most important to car makers is the repeat purchase rate... will a buyer sell the old Corvette, and buy a new one, but less than 20% did.. and that ties into the long model longevity. When the new year bring a new car that looks and performs the same, why sell your old one and buy a new one, with bigger car payments and higher insurance costs? Repeat purchase rate was low,  and GM decided to reduce the cycle years to give a reason to buy a new car.

So instead of the cycle between the 53, 62, 67 and 83 C1, C2, C3, and C4 generations, the C5 and C6 have been brought to a 6 or 7 year cycle

After all, it was GM that is lilkely to get the credit for encouraging new car purchases by changing design features with every model year, and incorporating planned obsolescence through shorter warranties " definition, planned obsolescence was "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.""

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Nice Fairlane 500 at the Viva Las Vegas

 the matching soda cooler is a nice touch

 great choice in rims

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F100 getting closer to the elements

found on http://undergroundvelo.tumblr.com/

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the Seattlite, and other cool stuff from Karamelocycles.blogspot.com

the above is a cool shot if the interior of the Alexander Brothers "Deora" custom dodge van

the above is the prototype Mustang if I remember correctly

 Above is a copy of the Davis car brochure

tow a motorcycle with a Fiat... cool!

 these shots are from the 1951 Buick LeSabre prototype that was in the GM styling cross country tours and car shows of the Futureliner and Autoramas. Above is a very cool design around the steering wheel, below are real cool looking gauges

all from http://karamelocycles.blogspot.com/

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