The BCRA 2018 Season finale Doubleheader Weekend

2018 BCRA Champion Jesse Love

photo by the author

Jesse Love makes it three wins in a row at Stockton 99 on Saturday

The Bay Cities Racing Association (BCRA) mighty midgets raced on Saturday night October 27 as the first part of a special 2018 season-ending racing program at the lightning fast Stockton 99 Speedway.  and concluded a big two-day weekend show that also featured the Gunslingers winged Sprint Car series, the BCRA vintage division, USAC Western Speed2 midgets and the Legends of Kearny Bowl which featured an entry from six-time BCRA champion Gary Koster.   

Twelve BCRA midgets signed in at the pit gate and the entry list included Cody Jessop in Karl Hokanson’s beautiful #98 midget which suffered mechanical plumbing problems during practice and was withdrawn. Mark Maliepaard topped the charts in time trials with a quick 13.157 second lap to edge out Jesse Love who recorded a best lap of 13.221 seconds. David Goodwill and Cody Gerhardt were third and fourth fastest respectively, while Chad Nichols surprised many as he struggled and was the day’s fifth fastest qualifier. Rookie Dylan Nobile of Clovis in his BCRA debut in the #55 midget formerly owned by Gary Conterno was sixth fastest, trailed by Maria Cofer, Richard “Skeeter” Flake from Washington state, the affable JR Williams, nine-time BCRA champion Floyd Alvis and George Tuttle, who was doing double duty with the Speed2 midgets.

Chad Nichols in the Shanoian #17N Esslinger-powered midget started the first heat race from the pole position with Maria Cofer alongside, as five cars took the green flag after the engine in Tuttle’s beautiful black #98T car wouldn’t start. Nichols grabbed the lead into turn one ahead of Cofer, who was passed by Maliepaard who used a nifty inside move through turn three on the first lap to grab the position. A lap later, Goodwill dropped Maria to fourth place, and the running order remained static from then until the end of the eight-lap race with the finishing order Nichols, Maliepaard, Goodwill, Cofer and Williams.

Floyd Alvis led the five-car second heat race to the green flag, but outside front row starter “Skeeter” Flake beat the rest of the field into turn one with Cody Gerhardt in second place and Jesse Love in third place. Gerhardt looked high and low at both ends of the track but could not find his way around the Washington midget racing veteran, all while Cody repelled the efforts of the young charger Jesse Love to grab second place. The finish at the end of eight laps was Flake, Gerhardt, Love, Nobile and Alvis.

Later the four fastest qualifiers lined up for the four-lap trophy dash in a fully inverted start. Cody Gerhardt made the most of his pole position start and he held off Goodwill, Love and Maliepaard to claim a popular win in the #29 Eskelsen Motorsports Mopar-powered Beast and $100 donated by Race Director Bob Roza.   

After the heat races and the trophy dash were completed, the re-draw for the start of the feature was held. The fastest qualifier Mark Maliepaard drew the magic “zero” pill for a straight-up lineup with the fast qualifier in the coveted pole position. At the drop of the green flag, Mark and fellow front row starter Jesse Love raced side-by-side for the first lap around the ¼-mile high-banked oval before Love thrust into the lead, trailed by Maliepaard, Goodwill, Nichols and Gerhardt. On lap four, Nichols slipped past Goodwill and Chad had a front row seat as Mark and Jesse battled for the top spot. On lap 12, Nichols passed Mark Maliepaard, then two laps later. Goodwill dropped Mark’s #51 Fit & Finish Hot Rod Interiors Special into fourth place.

The caution flag flew on lap 14 after the black #81 machine of “Skeeter” Flake rolled to a stop in turn two and he was pushed into the pit area to join early retiree JR Williams who had experienced an engine oiling issue. The ensuing restart got jammed up and unfortunately, young Dylan Nobile was the innocent victim as his #55 ended up nosed into the outside retaining wall at the end of the front straightaway. The car was undamaged but Dylan headed to the pits, his night over early.  

The next restart was clean and over the next nine laps, the crowd at Stockton 99 Speedway was treated to an epic battle for the race lead between the young phenom Jesse Love and the wily veteran Chad Nichols. Nichols’ orange #17N was brutally fast on the straightaways, but Chad’s machine could not hold the low line through the turns. Lap after lap Chad got underneath Jesse as the pair entered the corner, then edged ahead mid-corner, but Nichols just couldn’t make the pass stick, as Love would diamond off the corner and power underneath to retain the race lead at the start-finish stripe. 

After lap 23, the exciting battle ended and Love began to pull clear of Nichols. Jesse cruised to his third consecutive BCRA midget pavement win over Nichols, Gerhardt, Goodwill, Maliepaard, Alvis, Cofer, Flake and JR Williams.   

Gerhardt wins Sunday Afternoon at Stockton 99 Speedway - Jesse Love 2018 BCRA series champion

By Bob Roza

A special Sunday afternoon Bay Cities Racing Association (BCRA) season-ending racing program closed out 2018 and concluded a big two-day weekend show at Stockton 99 Speedway that also featured the BCRA vintage division, the Gunslingers Sprint Cars, USAC Western Speed2 midgets and the Legends of Kearny Bowl. The afternoon opened with BCRA Midgets time trials with Chad Nichols setting fast time at 13:105 over Mark Maliepaard from nearby Ripon at 13:229 seconds Jesse Love who was aiming for his fourth straight BCRA win was third fastest at 13:354 seconds.    

After hot laps, car owner Karl Hokanson withdrew his immaculate #98 car from competition due to internal engine problems. Karl has had a tough time getting the bugs worked out of his beautiful #98 machine, as problems have surfaced after hot laps at each of the car’s last three outings at Madera and Stockton.

The first heat race was won by midget rookie driver Dylan Nobile from Fresno in the recently purchased Mopar powered Beast formerly owned by Gary Conterno.  Finishing behind Nobile were Love, Nichols, and Richard “Skeeter” Flake who made the long 12-hour tow from Washington state to race with the BCRA midgets.  The second heat race was won by Malipaard from his fourth-place starting position over Gerhardt, Floyd Alvis and Maria Cofer who failed to finish after her black #88 machine suffered front axle damage from contact with a spinning car.

For the final racing event of the 2018 racing season quick qualifier Chad Nichols drew the zero pill, for a “straight up” starting field based on qualifying times, with Nichols on the pole position and Maliepaard on the outside.  When the initial green flag flew, Nichols bolted into the early lead over Love and Maliepaard, however Love’s blue #5 midget owned by Tres Van Dyne began to slow immediately.  Love’s engine popped and backfired as Jesse dove into the infield as caution flag was shown to the field. Once the car rolled to a stop, the crew quickly diagnosed the culprit as a bad magneto which meant that the young phenom was done for the night. 

When racing resumed, Nichols set a fast pace ahead of Maliepaard, Gerhardt and Nobile.  Several laps later Cofer pulled her ill-handling Arata Brothers Chevrolet-powered Spike chassis into the infield.  Her car owners, the Arata brothers, Jeff and Anthony, Maria’s father, John Cofer and Tim Grant, the father of the 2007 BCRA champion Justin Grant, all deserve praise for making the needed repairs after the heat race incident so Maria could start the main event.

With the race half over the racing continued with Maliepaard, Gerhardt, & Nobile in a spirited battle for second place behind Nichols until lap 18 when Maliepaard & Nobile spun together calling for a yellow flag. Both cars were restarted and rejoined the tail of the field.  When racing resumed Gerhardt closed in on Nichols rear bumper then made a clean pass on lap 20, and lengthened his lead as Chad’s handling issues worsened, eventually diagnosed as a bad steering box. Over the remaining laps, Cody was smooth and fast and he took the checkered flag in the Paul Eskelsen’s Mopar-powered Beast chassis over Nichols, Nobile and Malipaard with Skeeter Flake in the fifth position.

With the long season at a close, the BCRA racers gathered to celebrate the accomplishments of the 2018 champions – Maria Cofer emerged as the dirt driver champion, Chad Nichols repeated as the pavement driver champion, and Jesse Love is the 2018 BCRA overall series driver champion. Love will reign as the youngest-ever BCRA driver champion in the club’s long storied 79-year history.  Love’s car owner Tres Van Dyne is the series overall owner champion, while Team 17 captured the pavement owner’s title and John Cofer repeated as the BCRA dirt division owner champion.  

The Bay Cities Racing Association thanks all of the competitors who participated in our final weekend of racing for 2018, our valued sponsors and especially Business Manager Linda Manning. The club also extends our thanks to all the series’ fans, racers, promoters, and sponsors for their support throughout the 2018 season. 

 

       

The show-winning French car
named after a whale

 

 

 

 

The 1947 Delahaye 135 M Figoni & Falaschi Narval cabriolet shown at the Blackhawk Museum is one of only seven cars built with this style coachwork but none of the seven cars are the same. The series was named ‘Narval’ after the car’s noses which resemble a Narwhale, the so-called “unicorn of the sea” because of the single tusk that protrudes from their head.

Designed by young engineer Jean François, the Delahaye 135 was produced from 1935 until 1954, and its low-slung chassis of the 135 made it an excellent candidate for custom coachbuilders such as Figoni & Falaschi and Jaques Saoutchik, while it 3 ½-liter (195-cubic inch) six-cylinder engine produced from 90 to 105 or even 115 horsepower depending on whether it was fitted with one, two, or three carburetors.   

A successful pre-war racing car which won the LeMans 24-hour race in 1938 (as well as finishing second and fourth) the Delahaye 135M production car continued to be built until the company ceased operations in 1954.

 

 

 

The car shown at the Blackhawk Museum, designed by Joseph Figoni and built with his partner Ovidio Falaschi, was sold new to Mark Dietsch of Cleveland Ohio, President of the Prima Shoe Company. As a manufacturer of fine women’s show, in 1954 this car was used in the Prima Shoe Company’s ‘Cover Girl flats’ advertising campaign. Known as the ‘Cover Girl Narval,’ it was found in Switzerland in the late nineteen seventies and purchased by Bob Atwell of Texas who had the engine replaced before he sold the car to collector Russ Jackson of Barrett-Jackson Auctions.

 

 

 

Jackson’s son Craig Jackson (now familiar to television viewers) restored the car and painted it black with dark red snakeskin leather upholstery. The car was sold at auction to a Japanese collector in 1989 but in recent years the car returned to North America where it was returned to its original appearance. at the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance, this car won the Postwar Grant Touring class and was awarded the French Cup as the most significant car of French origin.  

 

 

 Photos by the author

1957 Lincoln Premiere Convertible

On a recent visit to the Automobile Driving Museum for an event hosted by The Racing History Project hosted by Doug Stokes, the author spied a beautiful 1957 Lincoln Premiere convertible on display.

The Lincoln Premiere nameplate was added to the Lincoln Motor Division of Ford Motor Company lineup in 1956 as a mid-level model, positioned below the hand-built Continental Mark II and above the Capri.  The Premiere was available in four body styles- the Landau four-door hardtop, the concealed pillar four-door sedan, the two-door coupe, and the convertible. All but the convertible body style was available with factory air conditioning, a ground-breaking system with a trunk mounted condenser and blower with a pair of clear overhead ducts in the passenger cabin.

Lincolns featured an elaborate paint system: a dip in a chrome-phosphoric acid followed by two coats of primer which was hand sanded before two coats on enamel paint, then baked in a temperature-controlled oven to create a gleaming finish “built to live and last outdoors.”   Although our feature car is finished in Presidential Black super enamel paint, the exterior color palate for the mid-century Lincolns was typical of the era with two shades of pink -Flamingo or Bermuda Coral, Taos Turquoise, a pastel Summit Green and in 1956 a purple color known as Wisteria.

The 1956 and the 1957 Lincoln Premiere offerings can be immediately distinguished as the 1957 model features stacked Quadra-lite grille with four headlights and integrated road lights. Out back the 1957 features exaggerated tail fins which Lincoln literature referred to as “canted rear blades with massive taillights” and large integrated “double width powerful backup lights” in the bumper and hidden exhausts. Lincoln claimed that this all added up to “long low beautiful body lines that meet and merge in a clean sweep of steel.” 

    

The 1957 Lincoln Premiere line featured a choice of four styles of interior – “buttons and biscuits,” rollover pleats, pleated headrests, and the tri-tone “pleated buckets” which added a sports car note.” Our featured car has the pleated buckets in flamingo, black and white. Safety features in the interior include padded sun visors, safety door locks, a double wide ball-bearing mounted rear view mirror, remote outside left side mirror, nylon safety belts and a foam-padded instrument panel.

The 1957 Lincoln Premiere is powered by a 368-cubic inch Y-block V-8 that reportedly developed 300 horsepower linked a tree-speed automatic transmission. However, mounted in a chassis with a 125-inch wheelbase and nearly 19 feet long with a curb weight of 4800 pounds, the Premiere was not a performance car, with 0-60 time estimated at nine seconds with a top speed of 117 miles per hour.

The Lincoln Motor Division sold over 41,000 vehicles in the 1957 model year, and Premiere was a big part with over 35,000 cars sold, and 3676 1957 Premieres were convertibles, which dwarfed the Continental Mark II which sold only 444 of the hand-built machines. 

A 1957 Lincoln Premiere convertible appears in the third Elvis Presley movie, as Elvis’ character "Vince Everett" bought a white convertible with his first royalty check. Elvis owned a 1956 Premiere convertible for a few weeks before he traded it in on a Continental Mark II.

The 1957 body style was replaced for 1958 with the third generation Premiere - a massive unibody design that featured canted quad headlights and was over 19 feet long. The Lincoln line continued to be offered in three price ranges - the Continental, Premiere and Capri – but the design was poorly received by the buying public and between 1958 and 1960, the Lincoln Division reportedly lost $60 million.


For 1961, the Capri and Premiere nameplates were dropped, and the redesigned fourth-generation 1961 Lincoln was sold only as the Continental as either a four-door sedan of four-door convertible. In our next car feature, we'll look back at an earlier 4-door convertible - a 1949 Frazer Manhattan, also in the ADM collection.

Photos by the author   

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1950 Hudson Commodore 6 

convertible brougham

While walking through the paddock at the CSRG Charity Classic vintage race at Sonoma Raceway, the author spied this gorgeous 1950 Hudson Commodore 6 Convertible Brougham.

The Hudson Motor Car Company based in Detroit, was named after Joseph Hudson, the Detroit department magnate and one of the company’s early investors. The first Hudson automobile, the model 20, was sold as a 1910 model. 

Through the ensuing years, Hudson built a public reputation as an innovative quality mid-range brand and it was third-bestselling car in America before the Great Depression. The company suffered during the Depression and never regained its place as one of the top-selling brands. 

The Commodore introduced in 1941 was the largest and most luxurious Hudson offered to the motoring public, and this 1950 model is the third final generation of the nameplate. Introduced in late 1947, the new 1948 Hudsons featured the ground breaking “step down” design penned by long-time Hudson stylist Frank Spring and his team.

The 1948 Hudson Commodore was almost the car that never was, as Mr. Spring had originally proposed the “step down” design in 1941 but at that time it was rejected by Hudson president Edward Barit, who thought the car was too low. After World War 2 ended, Mr. Spring modified the “step down” design and Mr. Barit gave the okay for “step down” production after he drove the prototype.

The new Hudson design used unit body on boxed frame construction which Hudson called “Monobilt,” with deep frame rail sections and a heavy cowl structure to create an extremely rigid chassis.  The frame rails passed outboard of the rear wheels, and this unique chassis configuration provided a lower center of gravity all while maintaining interior headroom. In addition to the feeling of a safer and smoother ride, the “Monobilt step down” concept created the widest rear seat in the industry but at the cost of a narrow forward section of the trunk compartment.

This excerpt from period Hudson sales literature shows the key feature of the “Monobilt step-down” design: the floor pan was not attached to the top of the frame rails as with a conventional design, but to the bottom of the structure. Passengers stepped down into the passenger compartment that featured a lower roof height but the same interior headroom.  At just over 60 inches tall, the 1948 Hudson roofline was four to seven inches lower than its Buick, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile competitors.

The 1948 Hudson line offered customers four body styles - four-door sedan, two-door brougham, two-door club coupe and the convertible with two available levels of trim, either Super or Custom. Two engines were available - an inline 262-cubic inch side-valve six-cylinder 123 horsepower engine or an inline eight-cylinder engine that displaced 254 cubic inches and developed 128 horsepower.  

The new dramatic low-slung Hudson design was a sales hit – with 143,697 units sold in the 1948 model year, 142,462 cars were sold in 1949 and 143,006 in 1950, the year that Hudson introduced a third lower-cost trim level, the Pacemaker series.  

Hudson’s “step down” convertible models were built in a novel cost-cutting manner. Club Coupe bodies were pulled from the production line and wheeled to separate area of the factory where workers cut off the roof and added nearly 250 pounds of additional steel body reinforcement, which pushed the convertible’s curb weight to over 3800 pounds.  To maintain cowl stiffness, Hudson convertibles featured a characteristic nine-inch section of sheet metal for the header area above the windshield.

The reason for Hudson’s novel method of convertible body construction was because convertible sales were never a large percentage of overall Commodore sales. At most, Hudson built only a few thousand convertibles each model year - in 1950, for example just over 1125 convertibles were built, with most (700) as eight-cylinder models which makes the Hudson seen at Sonoma a rare machine.

The Sonoma 1950 Hudson was a heavily optioned 1950 Commodore 6 built on a 124-inch wheelbase, powered by the high compression (6.7 to 1) 262 cubic inch flathead six-cylinder with dual carburetors that developed 123 horsepower and Hudson laid claim to the most powerful six-cylinder engine sold in America.  

New features for the 1950 Hudson Commodore series included non-rotating push-button streamlined door handles, larger high-visibility taillights, and rectangular parking lights integrated into the front lower grille bar.  The convertible Commodore series featured a hydraulic operated top and window lifts as standard equipment.   

Our feature car sports the optional Hudson “Supermatic” semi-automatic transmission (a $199 option - supplied by General Motors), twin spotlights, twin fog lights, a sun visor and an optional Weather Master heater.  The car is finished Hudson color N-37 known in Hudson sales literature as ‘Cornish Cream’ with a deep red leather interior; this color combination was featured in the 1950 Hudson sales brochure.   

The car’s current owner related to me that he bought the car from the widow of a collector that he had known so he was familiar with the car. While the car was being fitted with a new convertible top, the car was in a minor accident and the body was damaged which led to a complete restoration. Since the restoration was completed, it has been driven cross-country and has accumulated 10,000 trouble free miles.

Hudson dropped the Commodore badge after the 1952 model year, after which Hudson cars were sold with the Hornet nameplate, which traded off that model name’s tremendous racing successes in AAA and NASCAR stock car racing circuits. Between 1951 and 1954, “Fabulous Hudson Hornet” stock cars won 80 NASCAR races and the 1952 NASCAR and AAA stock car championship, the 1953 NASCAR championship and 1954 AAA stock car championship.

Despite the name change, in an era when automobile manufacturers restyled their models every two years, the Hudson semi-unit body construction bodies meant the styling changed very little. Another problem for Hudson sales was that the “step down” design could not support a station wagon body style, which created left off the list for the growing market of suburban buyers.

By 1954, the once-daring Hudson “step down” design was six years old and considered dated, and Commodore sales across all three series fell to 121,000 units during the model year despite price cuts. The Hudson “step down” platform needed a complete redesign, but the company could not afford new tooling due its rapidly collapsing financial state. Hudson had invested heavily in the compact ‘Jet’ model introduced in the middle of the 1953 season and was a sales flop. Hudson reported a loss of more than $10 million for the fiscal year of 1953 compared to an $8 million profit the prior year.

On May 1, 1954, the Hudson Motor Car Company officially merged with the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation to form the American Motors Corporation, at the time the largest corporate merger in American history. Hudson assembly ended in Detroit, and the Hornet and Jet series were discontinued at the end of the 1954 model year. Over two years in exchange for its investment in the ‘Jet’ series of over $15 million, only 35,367 ‘Jet” cars were built. 

The new cars in Hudson showrooms from 1955 through 1957 were mildly re-styled Nash Rambler or Statesman models fitted with Hudson ‘Jet’ engines; those new Hudsons were known derisively by motoring enthusiasts as "Hashes.” Dealers also sold the imported Metropolitan during the 1954 model year.

Hudson sales continued to decline with 20,321 units sold in 1955, then just 10,371 were built in 1956. The last car bearing the Hudson nameplate rolled off the Kenosha assembly line on June 25,1957, the last of 3,108 cars built that year. The planned 1958 Hudson Hornet was re-badged as the all-new Rambler Ambassador.     

Hudson collectors are a small but enthusiastic lot, with the national Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Owners Club. There have been few Hudson cars featured in motion pictures, by far the most famous was the animated Cars franchise which featured ‘Doc’ Hudson voiced by Paul Newman. Actor Steve McQueen owned a pair of Hudson, a 1953 Hornet and a 1950 Hudson Commodore 6 Convertible Brougham which was fitted with a later Hudson Hornet engine and painted in a non-original two-tone paint scheme.    

Color photos by the author

A pair of stately Pierce-Arrows

 

 

 

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Pierce-Arrow was one of America’s outstanding automobiles built in Buffalo New York. Beginning in 1901, the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company built an expensive line of autos that stressed style, grace, quality and durability which appealed to the upper classes of society.

 

Pierce-Arrow owners included President William Howard Taft, his successor Woodrow Wilson; actors Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, beer mogul Adolphus Busch, aviation pioneer Orville Wright, and baseball legend George Herman “Babe” Ruth as well as multiple members of the Rockefeller and Carnegie families.

 

 

Since 1914 the styling hallmark of Pierce-Arrow was the distinctive headlights molded in the front fenders which gave the car the appearance of a wider stance. Pierce patented this placement by designer Herbert M. Dawley with patent number 1096802, although the company also offered the customer the option of conventional headlamps. Another hallmark was Pierce-Arrow’s use of cast aluminum for the entire structure of their automobile bodies.

Pierce-Arrow’s factory at Elmwood and Great Arrow Avenues built in 1907 boasted nearly 1.5 million square feet of space on 34 acres, that employed almost 10,000 employees at its peak, began to slow during the nineteen twenties, as Pierce-Arrow stuck with their proven “dual valve” six-cylinder engine.

During its lifetime the company also built heavy trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, travel trailers, but finances became a crisis and in 1928 Pierce-Arrow merged with Studebaker through the Indiana company’s purchase of $5.7 million in Pierce-Arrow stock. This provided the needed funds to invest in research and new developments at the Buffalo factory, most notably a new straight-eight cylinder engine.

There is a popular misconception that Pierce-Arrow cars of this era were powered by modified Studebaker President engines probably because the new Pierce-Arrow engine blocks which used nine main bearings for the counterbalanced crankshaft were cast at Studebaker’s foundry in South Bend Indiana.  

 

The new Pierce-Arrow equipped with the largest 385-cubic inch engine fed with a single Stromberg UU-2 carburetor that developed 125 horsepower and fed through a three-speed transmission that could carry the car to 85 miles per hour attracted a lot of attention and Pierce-Arrow sales for 1929 doubled over the previous year.      

For 1930 Pierce introduced the A, B, and C models. The A was the largest and most expensive, while the C was the most economical of the three offering. Customers had multiple body styles and four wheelbases from which to select from that ranged from 132-, 134-, 139- and 144 inches. Three engine sizes were offered -the Model A used the 385 cubic-inch engine while the Model B was powered by a 365 cubic-inch while the Model C was equipped with a 340-cubic-inch 115-horsepower engine.  A pair of 1930 Pierce-Arrow automobiles displayed at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville California are beautiful examples of the automotive craftsmanship of Pierce-Arrow.

 

 

1930 Model A 7-passenger “torpedo” touring car on a 144-inch wheelbase chassis. Note the unusual orange color of the chassis.

1930 Model B 7- passenger sedan on a 139-inch wheelbase chassis.

While Pierce-Arrow’s financial prospects soared, despite the economic Depression, Studebaker’s did not and after the company filed for bankruptcy in 1933, the one-time Studebaker President and Pierce-Arrow chairman, Albert Russel Erskine, committed suicide. A group of Buffalo businessmen pooled their funding and purchased Pierce-Arrow’s assets from the bankruptcy court.

 

Unfortunately the new Pierce-Arrow Motor Corporation was on shaky financial footing from the start, and while over the next few years, the company produced some ground breaking vehicles (including a V-12 engine, vacuum boosted braking and the art deco Silver Arrow) the company became insolvent and closed in 1938 with most of the company’s remaining assets scrapped in 1942.

Surprisingly, remaining Pierce-Arrow automobiles are considerably more affordable for collectors than Duesenberg, Packard or Stutz cars of the same era.

 

Photos by the author