Old Cars Weekly

A lot of time and space has been spent on the pages of Old Cars and in the rest of the hobby on how to get young people interested in the old car and truck hobby. For my part, I have always beat the “exposure” drum—get your old cars and trucks out to car shows and cruise-ins so young people see them, and let them sit behind the wheel or give them rides when they show interest. In everything I do, I only preach what I practice, and after last weekend, I have a new practice that I can preach. Jeremiah, or “Jer,” as we call him, is the best friend of Briley, my 17-year-old stepson. Jer spends a lot of time at our house (and we truly enjoy the…

T-Bird wheel explanation I love Old Cars magazine and am a longtime subscriber. I once had a 1965 Thunderbird and can answer why the wheel rims on Tom Thompson’s similar ’66 T-Bird in the Sept. 15 issue were labeled front and rear. When Ford put disc brakes on the front wheels, it found that the rear wheel rims would not clear the front brake calipers. So they created different rims for the front wheels. As a result, don’t try to rotate tires rear to front on a ’65 T-Bird—it won’t work. I loved my ’65 T-Bird with its slide-away steering wheel, sequential turn signals, smooth and quiet ride and classy styling. But under all that pretty sheet metal, it was still a “Fix Or Repair Daily” Ford car with vacuum…

Bob Egge is the owner of this lovely and rare 1914 Metz roadster. Metz was among the earliest car makers in the United States, lasting from 1909, when Charles Herman Metz established the business in Waltham, Mass., to 1921. The company was originally known as the Waltham Manufacturing Co. After the venture ran into financial difficulties, Charles Metz took control and wound up naming a car after himself. It had a 22.5-hp four-cylinder engine and sold new for $500. “I like to tell people what it doesn’t have,” Egge says. “No fuel pump, no water pump, no battery, no clutch, no gears, no speedometer.”…

1934 Bugatti breaks barriers to get nod at Pebble Beach Concours PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — For the first time ever at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the title of “Best of Show” was awarded to an unrestored “preservation class” car—a Bugatti Type 59. The 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports was presented by Fritz Burkard of The Pearl Collection in Zug, Switzerland. This year, 214 cars from 16 countries and 29 states pulled onto the competition field. The ’34 Bugatti, showing its patina and signs of wear and tear, impressed the judges the most. “This storied Bugatti, the first Type 59 built, is a rare factory race car that recorded multiple Grand Prix victories at the hands of several important racing greats—and it also has ties to royalty,” Concours Chairman Sandra…

Rich Fink shared these photos of his mother and father, Virginia and Bert, with the family’s 1942 Chevrolet four-door Special Deluxe. “These were taken in 1944, sometime before August 19th,” Fink says. “How do I know? They were married on Aug. 19, 1944, and in the picture my dad is not wearing a wedding ring (yet) ... In the picture with my mom, you can see the ‘A’ gasoline ration sticker on the windshield. My parents were married for almost 63 years when my dad passed away in 2007 at the age of 86. My mom passed away in 2022 at the age of 97.”…

Many old car hobbyists have tackled a hands-on restoration, but Norman Kopp’s project was out of the ordinary. He undertook to restore a 1928 Auto Red Bug – a vehicle with no enclosed body of any type, and four fenders that look as though they were swiped off a bicycle. His story recently appeared in an edition of Northern Lights, Minnesota Region AACA (Kim Gardner, editor (rmmusic@comcast.net). The two-page article relates how the concept of this microcar was rooted in 1914 and involved an original cyclecar design by A.O. Smith of Milwaukee. Briggs & Stratton joined in the effort, passing the idea along to Automotive Standards, Inc., of New Jersey. The concept was eventually converted from gas-operated to electric-powered. Kopp followed the original substructure plans for the wooden platform. Two…