Classic American

Oh boy, did I kick a hornet’s nest when I raised the question of electric cars in Classic American. Don’t worry, I wasn’t seriously contemplating filling the pages of your favourite American car magazine with Teslas or, God forbid, Renault Zoes… No, rather sometimes I have a hunch about something (i.e. our readers would rather eat broken glass than read about electric cars!) and I just put it out there to gauge whether my instinct is correct… which in this case was bang on the money. I don’t think we’ve ever had so many letters and emails on a subject. As a reader of this magazine you’ll note that electric cars have very rarely made an appearance other than the odd resto-mod Fifties rat-look with an electric drivetrain and the…

CAR SHOW SEASON KICKS OFF! Ready, steady… Go! Well, arguably it has kicked off already, with the NSRA’s Southern Swap Meet having taken place the first Sunday in March at North Weald. You can read all about that on pages 76-79. Classic American contributor Zack Stiling headed across the Channel to what is arguably the first classic event of the year, Retromobile in Paris, which is mercifully held indoors and which you can also read about on pages 80-83. And this month sees the Classic American events listings ‘Blue Pages’ (pages 72-75) absolutely chock-a-block with shows and events all over the UK, so you can start planning your show season for the coming year. Car of the Year rolls into 2025! It’s back and bigger than ever. The 2025 Car…

Ascot Racecourse March 1, 2025 Historics’ opening auction of the year kicked off at the delightful venue of Ascot Racecourse and featured a diverse range of American vehicles, as you can see on these pages. Funnily enough, the vehicle which one would have imagined would have been snapped up, the Fifties Ford F1 pickup, didn’t find a buyer… 1965 Ford Thunderbird Offered without reserve Sold: £4290 Body text: What do we have here? Well, it’s certainly unlike any Thunderbird of this era we’ve seen before. The rear end treatment is certainly an acquired taste, although probably easily returned to stock. Likewise, painting the whole front black is an interesting move. If you could source a good, solid clean front and back for this car from a dry state junk yard,…

When is a replica not a replica? When it’s a Cord 8/10. Scroll back to the mid-1960s and the faux classics movement was tiny. There had been a few attempts, not least the Surrey ‘Curve Dash’ Oldsmobile clone, while Brooks Stevens had by now ushered in the Excalibur line of Mercedes lookalikes, but the concept of a new ‘old’ car was still a novel one. One of the less well-remembered trailblazers for the movement was Glenn Pray, a schoolteacher from Oklahoma and Cord obsessive who had owned and restored several cars prior to acquiring the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Company. He did so having leveraged himself to the hilt. Nevertheless, he then set about reviving the Cord nameplate and creating a variation on the ‘coffin-nose’ 810 model. He embarked on the project in…

For decades, America’s Golden State was seen as the benchmark of everything great about the country. Good weather, massive economic power, major cultural influence and living standards that were the envy of many places in the world were just some of California’s attributes. The state was also the epicentre for car culture and is recognised as the birthplace of the hot rod and custom car movement. Yet even back in the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s there were signs of trouble on the horizon. One was the growing smog haze, caused by the formation of oxides of nitrogen. Over time, in places like the Los Angeles basin, the issue of air quality became of such concern that it led to the formation of the California Air Resources Board…

CAR OF THE YEAR TRIUMPH Dear Classic American, I was delighted to see Colin Shepherd’s 1960 Buick Invicta win last year’s Kingstown Shipping Car of The Year competition. What a car! What a guy! I remember reading about his 1959 Buick hardtop in a previous issue (a much nicer-looking car in my opinion); however, the back story to this vehicle is just incredible. It was sold new in the UK through Lendrum & Hartman and then cossetted its whole life in the Greater London area but used for jaunts across the Continent to Italy in the Sixties and Seventies. I love it! Bravo that man for rescuing that car and preserving it in the fantastic condition that it is today. We see so many ‘over-restored’ cars, it’s nice to see…