Admittedly, I don’t go to car shows much; hardly ever, actually. Partly that’s because right around Eugene they tend to be very stereotypical hot-roddy things. I’d rather go hiking. But Canadiancatgreen posted a bunch of shots that he took somewhere in…that reviled country to the north of us, and it looks like my kind of car show. Gobs of ordinary older cars, like this ’64 Dodge. Looks like it’s sitting at a fairgrounds parking lot in Iowa in 1968.
And…there’s more to come, as the AMC and Studebakers are each getting a post of their own.
1956 Dodge
1954 Dodge
1959 Edsel
1959 Ford
1978 Subaru
Alfa Coupe
Ford EXP
Chevy convertible truck
Dodge or Plodge or something like that
Buick Turbo Regal
’64-’65 Valiant Barracuda (note “Valiant” badging on back)
1962 Buick Skylark
194? Lincoln Coupe
1951? Chevy
1958 Edsel
Ranchero
1960 Narrow Track Pontiac
1968 Dodge Polara with 440
1951? Chevy fastback
1956 Meteor
You know what
Vintage A&W trailer
1935 Chevrolet
’55 Pontiac
Austin healey
1956 Lincoln
Big ol’ Lincoln
Yukk
Kaiser or Frazer
1949? Olds 98
’56 Caddy
1950? Chevy
1956 Ford
911
NSU Prinz
Dodge Aries K
Dodge 600ES
Grand Am
Plodge Valiant
Nice, like the way you put year, make and model under each photo. One error though, it’s NSU not NSY Prinz
Another fat-finger typo from rushing this at bed time.
In the (newfound) Axis of Canuck, I reckon shows might be a bit like in the People’s republic of Australia, in that the number of cars sold were necessarily a lot less than America (and we were both in Brit Empire tariff schemes) and therefore shows need an eclectic mixture to be viable. Personally, I’d pretty much never go to a specialist show anyway. Too serious, too many types rolling impatient eyes if asked questions by non-believers.
The ’55 Pontiac for me. It looks as if owner No. 1 still drives it, almost impossible ofcourse, but all nostalgia is a form of dreaming and wishing.
If it was not free, the NSU please. And for once, JP Cavanaugh can properly say “…it is well-known that there’s some Studebaker Starlight in that design.” (wink!)
“And for once, JP Cavanaugh can properly say “…it is well-known that there’s some Studebaker Starlight in that design.” (wink!)”
Right down to the taillights! 🙂
How can you see the taillights from this perspective?
Then again, this is a hot rod. Red beams and no wipers….:)
Some nice cars there and not the usual Mustamaro 55-57 Chev collection I keep seeing, Quite like the old Chev fastback and the Valiant so nearly the AP6 we had but not quite.
The 49 Olds caught my attention as did the 56 Lincoln.
This is more like the cars shows in the UK, we used to have a wonderful annual car show in my home town of Newport, in the grounds of Tredegar park, think it ran for 34 years but since it was taken over by the national trust, it is no more, some pictures taken over the last few years
jag
Rover
MORRIS
LAMBO
VAUXHALL
GILBURN, love the Welsh dragon grill badge from our flag, Dragons trump Bulls and prancing horses
Bond bug, yes it has only 3 wheels as standard
Hudson
Avanti
Riley with oversize mascot , Packard doughnut?
Lea Francis
Big red bus
LT: if you’d like to be a contributor and post these (or others) directly in CC, let me know.
Would like to sometime , was not sure how to
The Kaiser/Frazer is a ’49-’50 Frazer. The vertical taillights are the clue. A very nice variety of vehicles, but I’d like to see more peculiarly Canadian cars alongside the Meteor.
Here’s a later model Meteor for you. Spotted in a US hotel parking lot south of the border.
The ’55 and ’60 Pontiacs are both Canadian only Strato Streaks. Basically Chevy 110’s (Biscaynes) with Pontiac bodies. These bare bones strippers were quite popular with frugal Canadian buyers. The melding of the Pontiac body with Chevy underpinnings didn’t always go so smoothly, as evidenced by the awkward look of the ’60 “wide-track” Pontiac body sitting on the narrow Chevy chassis.
Looks like that’s the ‘49 Frazer featured on the coldwarmotors YouTube channel! 🙂
I think it is the same car. If so it is a 49. I love that car.
First photo is a 1964 Dodge
That was a fat-finger typo from trying to bang this out at bed time. Came home from our daily evening hike at 9:30 to find the CC cupboard was bare. 🙁
Seems like we have one thing we agree on: More ordinary cars, fewer muscle cars and hot rods at car shows. What you’ve shown here, backdated twenty or so years, is what I grew up in as the antique car hobby back in the late 60’s/70’s. Of course the complaint then was that the field would be overrun with Model T’s and A’s (usually about half the cars total).
Antique muscle cars didn’t exist yet (they were new or late model used), anything modified wouldn’t be allowed on the field (the hot rod hobby was a completely separate venue, and there wasn’t much love lost between the two groups), and the 50’s cruise-in attitude hadn’t developed yet (American Graffiti was still a couple of years away).
Today you have to find an AACA show to go back to that old level of purity.
I’m on board with this kind of Show!
We have two cruise nights here and both have a “nothing after 1972” rule.
They like their same cars week after week, year after year. Me? I got bored three years ago after the second week.
Not that I’d ever want to correct PN – but the first shot is a 64 Dodge – sorry Paul
Fat finger typo.
I may not be able to nail all of the more obscure cars that were built for multiple years quite similarly without a bit of help, but I really truly know a ’64 Dodge from a’62 or ’63 or ’65. These hit a bit too close to home for that. 🙂
Ditto on the hotrods. When I lived in the Midwest I used to enjoy an occasional car show in a mall parking lot or whatever. Here in Spokane they’re all ’70s musclecars, so I stopped looking.
Having never been to a car show in the States I can’t compare directly, but a lot of the cars you see in the small town Ontario shows are usually one of two types.
Family hand me downs, and grandma and grandpa usually went for something like the 64 polara in the first picture or
Someone who has the funds to pay for a trip to the southern States and bring back their childhood dream car.
Maybe this counts for the eclectic mix of cars.
I see from the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame building that this show is in Wetaskiwin (near Edmonton, yes I had to look it up) but what a great bunch of cars and shots.
1960 Pontiac for me, first car I ever rode in as a newborn. 1964 Plodge Valiant is a close second, my Grandfather had on and these Valiants look completely normal to me.
Looks like a great day to spend walking around, eating a butter tart and drinking a glass of supply managed but not subsidized milk.
Some great cars here. Can’t remember the last time I saw an EXP on the road!
Jimmy Kimmel said it well – the U.S. (or T-Rump more specifically) has picked a fight with Canada. He said that’s kind of like picking a fight with a box of Nilla Wafers. We like being Nilla, most of the time anyway.
I love these kind of car shows, not many hot rods, just mostly stock survivors in original or restored to stock condition. I went to a show a few weeks ago in Georgetown (ours not the one in the US LOL) and saw a 1970 Plymouth Fury. The owner said he has not done a thing to it since it was new, and he loves it over the two Corvettes that he also owns. As it was a hot day I asked him if it had A/C, and he said yes, but it doesn’t work any more, and he doesn’t care, even though the black vinyl (?) interior was like an oven.
DougD you are not far from another Aviation Museum. Now if I can just find me a nice Avro Arrow to power up….
Oh yeah I love my local airplane museum! Nothing like the sound of four Merlin engines which I probably hear a dozen times a year.
Unfortunately it’s prohibitively expensive to ride in the Lancaster, but I did score a flight in the CWH Stearman a few years ago 🙂
“Big ol’ Lincoln?”
When I moved to Arkansas, I was amazed to find nothing big could ever be new. I was introduced to this unique Southern concept when a co-worker got a new Buick. Friends were saying “You should see Ms. Jill’s brand new car. It’s a big ol’ Buick”. Ms. Jill’s new Buick looked right at home in the as yet unpaved driveway of the big ol’ new house she was building. Her young boyfriend was a big ol’ boy too.
Took me a long time to become accustomed to Southern English – assuming you consider it English at all. After 25 years down here, I now catch myself saying it too.
Must be more contagious than realized if it has spread all the way to Canada.
Random thoughts. The Dodge at the top – the first 1962-64 Dodge I have seen in maybe a decade that has not been modified in at least the wheels. Whitewalls and wheelcovers!
The copper 60 Pontiac looks just like one owned by an aunt and uncle, though theirs was a wide-track American version with a white painted roof.
The final early 50s Chevrolet (the blue-gray one) is a 52 Styleline DeLuxe. I don’t think I have ever seen one of those with backup lights.
Finally that Customized Chevy convertible pickup has a two tone treatment that looks amazingly like that offered on the Studebaker pickups of the late 50s. (You’re welcome, Justy Baum. 🙂 )
The first two Chevrolets are ’51’s, the last one is a ’52. ’51 and ’52 Chevy’s had the tail lights on that ridge in back, instead of inside of it; the ’51 had a fussier chrome strip on the front fender than did the ’52. I think that the four door fastback was discontinued for the ’52 year as that style had run its course and everyone who was buying a new and stylish car had moved on to a Bel-Air hardtop. Their number and condition here speak to Paul’s assertion as to how well Chevy’s of that era were constructed.
Now I need to head out the the fairgrounds parking lot and see if I can find my car. Should be more cleared out by now. I remember how that was once a consideration in deciding when to leave the show.
Hehehe! Paid, Mr Cavanaugh!
I believe the pink & white Cadillac is a ’56, not a ’55. Confirmation requested.
Definitely a ’56. The spear on the rear fenders going back to the bumper was a feature for ’56 and ’57, and the Sedan de Ville four-door hardtop was new for ’56.
What a great bunch of cars! That’s a really cool gathering. Large and diverse, chock full of obscure survivors. I don’t think I have ever seen a Kaiser or Frazer in person.
The car that really shocked me was the Ford EXP. Both because one survived (an early example and in the north, no less) and because I forgot what a godawful design it was. The stripes help accentuate the ugly, but the ungainliness is baked in. Truly, it looks no better to my eyes than the Moskvitch (two articles down)
Hi Paul Niedermeyer, I live in southeastern Pennsylvania and there are car shows here every weekend during the summer. Most of the cars are beautifully prepared – many have been restored to better than showroom condition. But most of them are 1960s pony cars and muscle cars, and I’ve seen their type so many times before. There isn’t much variety. I’d really like to go to a car show with the kind of cars you displayed in your article – cars that were common back in the old days but seldom see any more. Thanks for publishing your article. (P.S. That NSU Prinz is a gas!)
When the CC crew was in Motown last year, you missed the Motor Muster at Greenfield Village by a week as it is always on Father’s Day weekend.
Last year’s show was a bust due to new “management”. The new “management” was promptly fired and the show recovered nicely this year. No rods. All the cars are either stock or with period correct accessories.
This shot is from the late 60s block, which was parked around the power plant we went through.
This guy has brought a VW beer van or a VW Feldjager communications van in past years. Decided to do something different this year. I have seen plenty of Things, but never one with the Acapulco package before.
Some entries are too sweet for words.
Great collection of vehicles. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a first generation Barracuda in the metal; I suspect that rust has gotten most of them by now. A neighbor had one of those when they were new; as a car obsessed teen I thought it was beyond ugly. Of course I had no idea at the time that the perpetually underfunded Chrysler Corp. had to do things on the cheap, especially compared to GM. Even if it didn’t say “Valiant” on the car there was no disguising the origin of the Barracuda; of course, as I got a little older, I realized that there was a lot of Falcon and Chevy II underneath Mustangs and Camaros as well. Ah, youth.
WOW! I’d love to see this kind of car show in my area instead of the ones with fake 1969 Camaro Z/28s, fake Malibu SS396s, fake Mustang Mach 1s, fake Pontiac GTOs, various modified tri-five Chevies, and megabuck restored trailer queens. Just ordinary cars as we remember them, driven to the show.
And amazingly…also apparently welcome…Chrysler K-Cars!
Back 1961 -62 ?? My Dad brought home a shiny black 1960 Strato Chief . That was the beginning of my love affair with early 60’s Cheviacs
If the first five or six cars seen at a show are all four-doors, and the first one that isn’t is a Ford EXP – you’ve found a good show!
It is very refreshing to see the once ordinary but now scarce without the usual suspects we all have tired of.
Morbid curiosity here, what is the one labeled “yukk”? Couldn’t tell if it was some fiberglass bodied creation or what.
Maybe I read the write-up and/or the comments too quickly but isn’t the white car labeled “Yuk” a mildly customized Packard?
I think these “run what you brung” looking shows are great. You can keep the trailer queens at home.
I have been to several car shows/swap meets, including 2 in northern California. The most annoying car show was an exclusively Italian makes show. 90% of the cars appeared to be painted in the same shade of red paint.
Interesting that this seems to be a regional thing. Michigan car shows certainly have their share of hot rods and overdone muscle cars, but there is plenty else showing up.
These were all together in a park at the Woodward Cruise last year.
1960 Edsel
1970 Country Squire
A Vega wagon
A Chrysler K car wagon
.
.
I’d pick the Grand Am over anything else, without a moment’s hesitation.
Runner-up? That ’77-79 Lincoln. I’ve never seen one in such glorious two-tone!
The first picture, the ’64 Dodge, reminds me on the various Mopar vehicles on display in the Doris Day/Rock Hudson/Tony Randall movies of the early 1960’s.
#IIRC Bop Hope also featured Mopars in his movies of this time period?
My father had a ’76 Subaru DL, 2 door automatic, with similar wheelcovers to the ’78, but with not nearly as nice paint color (IMO)…his was that bright yellow…some people would probably like it but I’m a fan of more muted colors.
I like the ’62 Buick Skylark (though my favorite would probably be the Olds). My Uncle bought a hand-me down Olds from one of my 2 spinster (great) Aunts.not a convertible, but I think a 4 door hardtop..it was sold to her by a local dealer who (probably taking advantage of her having some money and being female) choose one with one of the largest engines available. My Uncle said he could hardly keep it on the road, it was a handful for him to drive, and I don’t remember him keeping it very long.
(think it was replaced by a flashy red early 60’s (61?) Chevrolet Impala).
Also like the Dodge, but would prefer a ’62 Plymouth. For ’64 I’d like the larger Dodge 880.
My friend inherited an NSU Prinz from his father,(similar vintage to this one, probably a ’60) who bought it with the questionable idea of taking the motor out of it and using it in one of his tractors. That never happened, and my friend eventually got the Prinz…he hasn’t had time to work on it (he’s not even finished with his Mustang, which is his first interest) but one of his friend’s wives has taken it over, she’s into restoring cars as well, not sure what it needs but it will be a rare one once it is done. Though he no longer lives in snow country, he used to talk about driving the Prinz up north with one of his brothers, when it got stuck they would both get out and pick it up and move it to a place with better traction, guess it is pretty diminutive vehicle (I’ve not seen it in person myself yet).
My father, on the other hand drove more mainstream vehicles…like his ’68 Renault R10…which he bought new 50 years ago (June, 1968)….but by then the Prinz was no longer sold (and I’d guess NSU was gone itself, or soon to be).