Davestuff

I recently spent some time talking to current Lincoln designer Peter Horbury, who described the design elements that make up the Lincoln look. This ’70 Mark IV in the car corral had them in spades: Slab sides; a kick-up over the rear wheel; sharp fender creases; a thick, cantilevered c-pillar; bow-wave grille; subtle accents; and a chamfered character line along the side. At $13,000 OBO, and 49,000 miles, it’s going nowhere but up.

Famous for having totally unlabeled switchgear, this mid-1970s 49cc Benelli Blazer showed zero miles, and a $500 price tag. It's a damn good thing I didnit have the $500 on me and as it was, I thought about hitting an ATM. Benelli? They made engines for Moto Guzzi and Vespa, and the Blazer engine is similar to those. While you could get one from sole US importers Cosmo Motors , they were also part of a minor war among the major department stores, each one of which had their own line of scooters or mopeds—Benelli was the Montgomery Ward offering. ---------------- Now playing: Michael Jackson - Unbreakable via FoxyTunes

I’ve never been sure why GM doesn’t create some sort of museum around the 700 or so cars in their private Heritage Collection, but at least they usually bring a few to Hershey. OK, the 1977-only Monza Mirage didn’t differ mechanically from a regular V-8 Monza 2+2, but the addition of a decals and flares package did a nice job of evoking the factory IMSA Camel GT Series car.

You could almost call Stearns-Knight a forgotten Classic, but all post-1925 models are indeed CCCA Full Classics. Patterson Barnes’ 100hp, 6,309cc (385-cu.in) eight-cylinder 1927 cabriolet is one of only 927 cars built by the Willys-owned company in 1927. Patterson is recognized as one of the foremost experts on Stearns-Knight and you can see several of his cars at the AACA museum, so it’s no surprise this is CCCA National First Prize winner as well as an AACA Senior.

Here’s another London-to Brighton veteran, Reed Martin’s 1900 Knox. He ran the English 57-mile race twice, once in five hours, 20 minutes; once in seven hours, 45 minutes, becoming the only three-wheel Knox ever to do so. This is a first-year Knox, with only 15 made; the big 95-cu.in. single thumps out 5hp, but the car is only 80 inches long and turns around in just over its own length, so there’s no reverse gear.

Speaking of Mercedes-Benz, this is George Wingard’s 1913 Tourer, which claimed its First Junior at Hershey. George brought his car from Oregon; it has a body from Carrosserie D&E Snutsel Pere & Fils in Brussels. There was a deep crowd around it all weekend, ogling the Pebble Beach-winning former Brooklands racer. A vast inline-four cylinder aero engine makes 200hp from 21.495 liters, or 1,311.7-cu.in. That’s 328-cu.in per cylinder!

Dennis Frick told me his 220-based 1952 Mercedes-Benz Delivery Sedan was part of an amazing post-war tradition in Germany, where there was a need for light commercial vehicles, but little infrastructure to build them. Karosserie Autenrieth Darmstadt—also associated with BMW’s 501 and 502—was one of the larger outfits among many small manufacturers making do with what they had; they made the long roof from 11 perfectly butt-welded sections.

When I think of Hupmobiles, I usually think of either brass-era cars or the fabulous Raymond Loewy-designed Eight, but Walter B. Colton’s six-cylinder ’31 roadster reminds me there were fine cars in between. Walter’s car won its AACA Senior in Ohio in 2004, and he showed it in the Preservation class at Hershey this year. The 228.1-cu.in. engine makes 75hp; 1932 brought 90hp.

The only surviving 1898-‘99 Hay-Hotchkiss is also the only one ever built. America’s first four-cylinder car has a horizontal eight-stroke, four-cylinder engine in which each cylinder entertains combustion every fourth stroke. William Hay and E.M. Hotchkiss could never get it running quite right, perhaps because of their claim that it would go (albeit a little slower) without either oil or water. Freshly restored by Sean at Red Star Auto in Rhode Island, it’s running right, now, and is a recent London-to-Brighton participant

'Thought I'd post some short observations from Hershey last month. Here's the first of several. The big truck hobby is, well, big. Robert J. Kalbach of Wernersville, Pennsylvania, brought his 1959 Brockway, entered in the Driver Participation category of the Saturday show. Mack Truck acquired Brockway in 1956 but the name lived on, with the heavy-duty, Deluxe (with corner windows) cab Model 257 Huskie. It was the first full year for the Huskie, and Bob’s not sure what it’s rated at, but I counted 17 leaves in the springs, and may have missed a few. A 572-cu.in straight-six Continental gas engine powers the 9,800-pound tractor.