Curbside Classic

This car has some serious history…with me, on the web, and just for what it is. It sort of started my whole career (for what that’s worth). It was the second car I ever shot, inspired by Murilee Martin’s DOTS series. The first was this Saab 96, and the second, this pristine Plymouth Sapporo. Isent the pictures of them both to MM, and they ran on Jalopnik. A year or so later, I started doing CC at TTAC. And then I finally did a proper CC write-up of the Sapporo here.

But I never knew its history, or if it was still around almost five years later. About an hour ago, I ran into it again for the first time since then, and its owner too. He bought it about seven years ago from the classic old lady type: only drove it to church on Sundays; literally. It had 24k miles then. That explains the pristine interior. But it’s become a daily driver since then, probably the only Sapporo in the world in that capacity, or it least in this kind of shape. A true Curbside Classic; no wonder it inspired me to look for more, and more, and more….

With a little imagination (not in short supply here), this could be the 1949 Cadillac or Oldsmobile. In the mid-late thirties, radical innovations in aerodynamics, rear engines, front-wheel drive, unibody construction and other re-imaginings of the conventional car spurted forth like a geyser of creativity. The Europeans mostly led the charge, and put some of the most advanced ideas into production, like the seminal streamliner, the Tatra 77 of 1934. But there was no shortage of creative ideas on this side of the pond either. Every American car company was either exploring new ideas, or being hounded by independent engineer/designers with theirs. The post war era might well have looked different if any of these concepts had been actually put into production. And some of you may want to shoot me for even suggesting a world without the real 1949 Cadillac. The Czechs undoubtedly feel the same way about the 603.

Read the rest of this entry »