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Legend has it that a Modesto, California couple purchased the car in 1950, only for the wife to be widowed shortly thereafter when her husband died trying to save a drowning woman. The distraught lady placed the sleek Chevy in storage for 12 years, but later traded it for a new 1962 Rambler ($1650) from a nearby dealer: he recently sold the same car for $60,000. And surely worth it, the car dealer decided from the start to preserve it, so he barely took it out of the garage for 45 years... thus the all-original mint condition and an...

KANKAKEE, Ill.- A 1958 Buick has been unearthed almost 40 years after three young men walled it up under an Illinois house as a practical joke , observers said. The Buick Special was abandoned in Kankakee, Ill., in 1971 when it broke down and its owner couldn't afford the repair costs, The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday. A local dealer had no use for it and gave it to the three jokesters, who bricked it behind a wall in the basement of a house one of them owned, the newspaper said. Daniel Newman, 65, one of the perpetrators of the gag,...

GEORGE SWEEPER, who has nurtured his 1968 Jaguar E-Type for nearly 40 years, has come up with a new defense of the British brand’s reputation for poor reliability. “There may have been many bad ones made,” he concedes. “I got one of the good ones.” Mr. Sweeper recalled a road trip that he and a friend made from New York to California in 1981. “We drove 58 hours to Oakland,” he said. “We drove and drove and drove. We saw the sun come up. We saw the sun go down. We went to the bathroom at the same stops. We...

Someone who bought a rare Bugatti, Jaguar or Ferrari in top condition would have done better during the downturn than an investor in almost any other asset, industry observers say, including stocks, fine art or even gold. “There has been a flight into real assets,” says Historic Automobile Group founder Dietrich Hatlapa, a former Baring Securities and ING banker and collector who designed the HAGI Top, a new index that tracks the prices of a cross-section of historic cars. “People want something they can look at and touch in the evening, rather than a piece of paper in the...

As the British lads would phrase it: 'those Chinese wankers!' Beijing refused to admit a colonnade of around 80 beautifully restored Dutch classic Volvo cars that partook in a well-led rallye. They simply sent those guys to the nearest port to ship them back to Holland. Why? Because of a fear of spies? Political upheaval? No. Officials said: 'those cars are just polluters. And our air already is quite polluted. So we won't allow it to be even more polluted by those eighty cars'. Nice people, those Chinese. So environmentalistic. So human. So Greenpeace. So alert. And so friendly. So...

The 'biggest American car show in the world' opened in Västerås in central Sweden on Thursday. More than 10,000 cars are expected for the Big Meet 2008 show. The annual event started 31 years ago and was founded by Kjell Gustafsson who has seen it grow from the humble beginnings of 40-80 cars in a parking lot in Anderstorp. "Just to keep the show going over three days costs 1.5 million kronor ($252,000). 160 officials work with this. That is around the same as the Hultsfred festival," Gustafsson said to Di.se. The Big Meet 2008 show will take place over...

Wayne Davis will be saying goodbye to 75 old friends on April 19.Over the past 20 years, the Southlake resident has bought and restored almost 80 classic and muscle cars -- from a 1953 Oldsmobile Fiesta convertible to a 1989 Ferrari Mondial t Cabriolet -- and now he has decided to sell most of his personal collection at auction.Davis, 57, said it is time to retire. He plans to travel the country's two-lane highways in a few of the cars he decided to keep."I want to get out and enjoy them a little bit, do the Route 66 deal from...

Vaesteraas, Sweden - Thousands of mint-condition Chevrolets, Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles from the 1950's boulevard-cruise with Brylcreemed greasers draped over the steering wheel and rock 'n roll hits blaring on their radios. You might think you've been transported back a half-century to small-town America but, no, this is a scene found in any number of towns across Sweden where the early days of the US car culture never went out of style.

This weekend over 10,000 classic cars will converge on Västerås at the Power Big Meet as car enthusiasts from Sweden, Europe and as far afield as Russia, Israel and Australia make their annual pilgrimage to the biggest Classic car event in the world. For Sweden’s Raggare, the Power Big Meet is more than just a car show - it’s a celebration of a way of life that is peculiarly Swedish, despite being entrenched in the fashions, music and motor cars of Americana. Since the 1950s, a version of the American Dream has been embraced with an enthusiasm that has endured...

This week was one of the most exciting that we've had. WARNING: There is a lot of excellent stuff in this thread, so be sure you have the time to enjoy it. A great group of FReepers made it so. Just last Tuesday the Olney FReep had only two Freepers who planned to attend Saturday. A call for 'boots on the corner' went out and was answered by dedicated FReepers. They came from all over the East Coast. They took time out from their vacation to attend. 10 FReepers gathered this week in Olney. There were three regulars, Lurker Bill...

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Jabari Bryant didn't go to a car dealership to buy his new car last fall. The 28-year-old went to a retirement community in Tybee Island, Ga., where for $2,000 he bought a navy blue 1988 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Brougham from a man who was "at least 83." The seller said "his eyesight was going and he had no use for the car," recalls Mr. Bryant, an automobile glass installer from Savannah. Young people today don't want their father's Oldsmobile -- they want their grandfather's. Some of the hippest wheels for under-30 drivers today are models commonly identified...

BEULAH, N.D. (AP) -- Leroy Walker can recite a story for each one of his Edsels, all 226 and counting. There's a lipstick red '58 that caused its driver to be arrested three times between Las Vegas and Bowman, because he was mistaken for a bank robber who used an identical car for a getaway. Another, a two-tone green '58 Ranger, was delivered that same year in front of a church for a wedding present. Walker purchased it three years ago from the widow at an auction. "She had lived an exciting life," Walker said. "She drove an Edsel." Today,...

Maurice Olley, Chevrolet's chief engineer, completed his chassis, code-named Opel, which would eventually become the chassis for the 1953 Corvette. The Opel project had been initiated after Harley Earls' General Motors (GM) Design Division created models and drawings for a new GM sports car. Later in 1952, a prototype GM fiberglass car accidentally rolled during testing. The car's fiberglass roof remained structurally intact, and GM engineers for the first time considered building an all-fiberglass body for one of their cars. As project Opel moved forward, the new sports car took shape as a rear-engine, all-fiberglass sports car, the first in...

It is with great regret that I report the death of the classic car. Under "cause of death," the autopsy report won't cite today's many inelegant designs nor will it point to dwindling interest among the populace in restoring and preserving machines that evoke the past. Instead, the cause of death will read: "Obsolescence by extreme infiltration of 1s and 0s." In other words, digital technologies will make tomorrow's old cars unsustainable. The vast classic car hobby gets much of its lifeblood from a thriving cottage industry of aftermarket parts makers. One may specialize in rubber seals and carpet sets...

Car buyers, tired of designs that roll off the assembly line, are shifting gears to decades past. Some are customizing new vehicles to look old, while others are souping up vintage models with 21st-century luxury and power. "Resto-mods," or cars that have been restored and modified, are now commanding the kind of money that only "pure" vintage cars with all-original parts did just a few years ago. "There aren't any more" vintage cars being manufactured, explained Tom Henderson, spokesman for General Motors Corp., "but there's a lot more money chasing them." GM, along with other Detroit automakers, has ramped up...

John McMullen really loves cars. The 76-year-old Michigan car dealer started buying collector automobiles in 1986, when an ad in Hemmings Motor News caught his eye: for a two-tone, blue-and-cream, 1932 Packard. He flew to Chicago to inspect the car and plunked down $220,000 for it. Since then, McMullen has amassed one of the largest and most impressive private collections in the U.S. He owns 130 cars worth $9 million in all. His 275-acre farm north of Detroit houses everything from an 1886 Benz (that's before it was Mercedes-Benz (DCX ) to '60s muscle cars. He also owns Bette Davis'...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...