Image Source: Hemmings Photo Gallery
A discussion has come up about how Brendan Saur saw his first Isuzu Impulse, and had no idea what it was (here). I will admit that my first reaction was something like “Sheesh, kids today.” But as I thought a little more, I realized that no matter how old any of us might be, there was surely something that stumped us when we saw it for the first time.
For me, it was a 1955 Clipper. I was born in 1959, younger than some here but older than others. I recall being very aware of cars commonly seen on the street, even from a young age. I specifically remember being able to identify an Edsel by its unique snout, even though I didn’t actually know what it was. The same with a Renault Dauphine, which my mother always pronounced Renawlt. (In fairness to Mom, the company’s advertising pitched that pronunciation to Americans in the late 1950s.)
But one sunny fall day around 1970 or so, I was riding my bike along my street when I came across an old car parked on the street. It was the first and only time I ever saw it, but I recall recognizing that I did not know what it was. I stopped and checked it out.
It was a well-worn black sedan, not a flashy two-toned model like in the ad above. All it said was “Clipper”, or possibly “Clipper Deluxe”. Even at around ten or so, I knew (or thought I did) that Clipper had to be a model, not a brand. I knew that there were old cars called Hudson, Nash, Desoto and the like, but there was no labeling on the car other than “Clipper”. Then there was that logo – a ship’s wheel? I had never seen it before, but it was several places on the car.
Finally, after what must have been about ten minutes of going over that car, I rode away. In that pre-internet age, I was completely stumped. Only years later did I learn that in 1955, Packard split off the lower-priced Clipper line and registered it as a separate make, just as Chrysler did that same year with Imperial. When I learned this fact, that ratty black Clipper sedan came back to mind. Ah-HA. Mystery solved.
How about you? What was the first car that completely stumped you when you first saw it?
Well I think everybody knows mine haha…
BTW it’s an “a” not “o” at the end of my name 🙂
Oops. In my defense, I wrote this during a rare episode of insomnia early this morning. Fixed.
Thanks JP!
In the Isuzu article’s comment page, I wrote about a Subaru that recently stumped me. But I can think of an earlier “stumper” for me: the 1986-1990 Nissan Sentra Sport Coupe. (I was born in 1991, by the way.)
(Picture from Wikipedia.)
Another one: the 1971 Pontiac Ventura II.
(Picture also from Wikipedia.)
did you know that all GM Divisions ‘shared’ the Nova after 1972?
the Chevy Nova
then Olds Omega
Pontiac Ventura
Buick Apollo
Cadillac Seville… though not the sheet metal or interior
Their names even spell NOVAS!
And also the Nissan Pulsar Sportback. (Yes, I know only one of these three cars was my “first”, but all come to mind.)
My parents were in Hawaii in 1983 and rented a bright red Pulsar. They took a picture and I thought it looked a little too futuristic, especially the brake lights.
That must have been right around the time they switched the name from Datsun.
I’ve totally forgotten about these Sportbacks, though recall the Pulsar, and their commercials at the time.
Knew someone who had a black one, I forget the year, but it had cat issues and was a slug to drive due to the back pressure, this being 1999-2000 or so. I never really saw it, but I doubt it was the Sportback, but the regular Pulsar 2 seater.
Buddy of mine had a Nissan Sentra Sport Coupe. Most useless back seat ever.
I had the non-sport back version. Absolute pain to remove and change the back configuration, but a good drive in the larger engined Au specification model. A lot of people had trouble I.Ding it for some reason,
Mine was a 1958 Lincoln (not Continental, or the Lincoln crosses would have identified it) off in a field, wheelless and rusting. Had never seen anything with slanted headlights before…
That was when I learned that there actually were Mercedes with diesel engines.
It said “Mercedes Benz”, and as a kid I always thought that “Benz” was an abbreviation for “Benzine”.
(Dutch for gasoline)
I can so relate to that….:) Not that I had the same experience, but it’s a perfect example of what childhood is like: trying to make sense of the world, and learning that one’s stabs at it are often not right.
Been there. I recall being about four years old, watching Dad rebuild the Quadrajet for our small block 400 powered Suburban. “But shouldn’t that have a truckburetor?” I asked. My mother couldn’t stop laughing.
A truckburetor….too bad your parents didn’t copyright that !
1959 El Camino. I didn’t know Chevy built them in the 50s so I thought it was a custom job.
I’m old enough to know better, but a few years ago I spotted a Bizzarrini on the freeway and
had no clue. I finally had to go online to find out what it was. Also, when I was a kid I saw what I knew was a Pontiac Catalina, but wearing “Laurentian” badging. At the time, I had no idea that car makers gave alternate names to some of their Canadian models.
In 1969 we were on holiday in Canada and I saw a well used Monarch (no idea what year but it looked mid 50s with pale blue and white 2 tone paint) ,I never knew they were a Canadian only Ford/Mercury till many years later
For me, it was the early ’80s Chevy Malibus. I know it seems odd to say that, but I was just starting elementary school at that time, so my internal car database was still being filled. I knew it was a Chevrolet, but it didn’t say “Malibu” anywhere on the back of it. Once I found out, they were easy to spot.
I suppose my father (a Ford man) didn’t help by saying that it was just a Chevrolet with no name…
it just happened to me in your post… I saw Chevy Malibus. Got to get more sleep!
A couple of years ago I came across an early-50s sedan with suicide rear doors in Vancouver. The owner told me it was a Monarch – Canada’s Mercury variant at the time. I’d never heard of it and (this being before I’d found CC) I also didn’t know then that Canadian models had different names. I thought a Laurentian was perfectly normal. 🙂
When I was five, my Dad and I were on a drive somewhere, and a beautiful small hatchback with distinct tail was beside us and I asked him what kind of car it was. “Porsche” he said. One day months later I saw it up close and stationary at Kmart and it was a Saab 99. That was the crushing moment I realized my Dad isn’t a car guy. And he still pronounces Porsche without the “ah” sound at the end. But it was my first ever Saab sighting and Ill always remember it.
Dodge Dakota Shelby. End of story.
When I was a teen in the mid 80’s there were still some old style junkyards in our area with oddball cars dating back to the 30’s. On one junkyard jaunt near Port Dover I enountered what I now think was a 48 Frazer.
Even with emblems on it we still had no idea what it was…
As a bike riding child, I thought for certain I had spotted a mid 50’s Chrysler product in the distance. As I approached, something about the proportions were quite a bit off. Boy, I sure was surprised when I found out it wasn’t even a domestic!
You know, I had never noticed it until now, but it does look a lot like a 1955 Chrysler.
If you see a nameplate or logo, you know what it is, even if you have never heard of it before. That’s a surprise.
To me, a stumper is something you see and just can’t identify. Brendan saw that Isuzu, and saw an old, low volume badgeless front that to me looked a bit like some Toyota coupes from the era. If money had been riding on it, I’d have probably guessed Toyota. Isuzu does not jump to the top of my mind.
Many Asian 4 door sedans from the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, seen from a slight distance where badges are obscured, can be terribly hard to tell apart, and generally answer to the description of “generic Asian sedan.”
I’m not saying this about all Asian cars, some Accords and Camry’s even have distinctive taillights we’ve all seen many times. But, some of the lower volume cars that people buy because they are practical or cheap are simply appliances that are no more recognizable from the rear, or rear 3/4 view, than the average refrigerator.
I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the 1958 and earlier Cadillac Eldorado. The problem was that I understood what a Cadillac looked like, I even knew what year they were, but every now and then I’d see an Eldorado with their own style fins and it just didn’t register with me. I was sure people were changing the fins because that was not what the fins of the standard Cadillac looked like. By 1959 Eldorado was just a higher trim level and no longer had their own fins, much to my relief
I had that same exact problem…I’d figured out the basic Caddy years, and along comes an Eldo to royally trip me up. WTH?
As mentioned in the Isuzu post, here was mine.
A 100E shit those were the go to dunger when I was a kid drop in a 1340 Consul motor and you were good for more speed than it was ever designed for.
When I got home from school one day, waay back when I was in third grade, our neighbor had the most unbelieveable car parked in his adjoining driveway.
I had never seen anything like it. Creamy white, with dark gray naugahyde covers for the front and rear bench seats, wiiide whitewalls, and the most voluptuous body on a car little me had ever seen. When asked what it was, he told me it was his fathers’ 1944 Freznard Deluxe Custom Club Sedan.
Needless to say, I haven’t seen one since, and that was many years ago.
What is it? google doesn’t even know
I’m honestly only good with cars from now going back to the eighties…anything before then gets me confused.
I think the Packard might be a common answer for “boomers” like me. I was born in 1953, and in the early ’60s there was an elderly woman down the street that had a car that kind of looked like a 1949 Mercury. I eventually learned in was a 1950-ish Packard sedan. To me at that time it just looked like a big turtle.
I was tough to stump, even as a little boy, when I was about 4 I received the “Illustrated Encyclopedia of The Words Automobiles”, published in 1979, it actually has an alphabetical listing of every automotive make ever made in the world, it still sits on a my bookshelf, the dust jacket is long gone, and it s a little worse for wear, but I give it credit where its due.
I would say the stuff that stumped me most was long dead brands that you would still occasionally see on the road, Studebakers, DeSotos,etc. Canadian Pontiacs stumped me the first time I saw one, which in Florida, was a real rarity.
When I was a kid, many of he car lines that were around were ones that had been around for years, i.e DeVille, Eldorado, Electra, Riviera, 88, 98, New Yorker etc etc, so when you saw an old one, the make and model usually translated.
I was given a similar book, but mine was published in 1963. It was pocket sized and I carried it with me everywhere, if a car wasn’t in my book then it didn’t exist
About ten years ago I would see a small car from the 50s in red bank nj always saw it at a distance it had a big ” w ” on the trunk found out it was an aero willis
I clearly remember a childhood day around 1960 when we went to a park, and found an older-looking lumpy sedan there called “Ambassador”. That’s all it said anywhere, nothing else, just Ambassador. I still have a mental image of that front end.
I knew this was no Rambler. As a car-obsessed kid I knew everything on the road, if not by direct contact then from the pages of Motor Trend and Popular Science. I never could figure out what this “Ambassador” was.
Decades later I read of the Hindustan Ambassador, the Indian Morris Oxford. What was it doing in a suburban Philadelphia park in 1960? That must be quite a story.
You’re sure it wasn’t an old bathtub Nash Ambassador?
That’s a very good theory but no, I was 100% certain. You see we actually had a bathtub Nash when I was very little. I faintly remember bringing my baby sister home in it, I was three and a half. I’ve had a thing for those Airflytes ever since.
I’m certain it was a Hindustan Ambassador. Maybe owned by an actual Indian diplomat, who knows?
No mistake, that’s an “Amby”. They still make them, and they look about the same.
I don’t remember ever being stumped for very long, as usually a car had some identifying marks. I do remember seeing, though, in Nashville of all places, a little Matra coupe, multiple times, and never being able to quite figure out what it was. I don’t think it was a Djet, and from my memory it doesn’t look like a Bagheera. I would see it parked outside an upscale clothing store from time to time, and I think it must have been the owner’s hobby car.
You guys crack me up thats a series2 Oxford now if it had an extra 10 inches in the wheelbase ahead of the windscreen it would be a very rare ISIS with C series 6 cylinder power like the one I owned.
Not to brag but in my 50 years I haven’t been stumped yet. Growing up in a family with weird cars helps :D.
What’s this? 🙂
I’m referring to cars I’ve seen in person…
You mean you’ve never seen a Gutbrod Superior on the street? My apologies; I was just giving you a hard time… 🙂
I was going to say some sort of DKW.
Pass.You got me.
It looks like a VW version of the Hillman Husky, or the Gremlin.
The question as stated is impossible to answer, as strictly speaking that would be the first car I consciously laid eyes on as a toddler. In Austria, I used to make my mother walk around parked cars to find some identification, as cars from the thirties and forties often had very minimal markings.
After moving to the US in 1960 at the age of seven, learning all those American cars on the roads was a huge challenge, and one i took much more seriously than school. I figured out that all 1957-1960 Chrysler Co. products had to be related because they all had the same windshield. That was on my second or third day in the US. But it took a while to master all of them, especially going back into the forties and earlier.
I used to hang out at dealers in the summer, and in the Service Dept. there would be big greasy old service manuals or such books that had drawings of the key identifying differences between years and various trim and models. Those helped quite a bit.
The first time I saw a Kaiser, with that odd bowed windshield, I was really thrown for a serious loop. What is this…an American car company I never knew existed. Were there others?
You knew them from the windshields, that’s amazing. I’ve always known cars from their ‘faces’ and all the other design features. Spotting the common windshields is really perceptive.
I started pegging model years by the SAE markings lenses and taillights.
Thats how to pick the car sharing going on in Japan lights and windows dont change.
When I was first told of the SAE marking to identify the year of a car it was like someone had told me the secret of life. I felt like I possessed the wisdom of the ages and was always able to stump my friends by my ability to know the year of every car
For me, it was the 1955 (and subsequent ’56 & ’57) Hudson and Nash models. I saw a picture of the ’55’s in a 1954 issue of either Popular Science or Popular Mechanics in which the new models for 1955 were being showcased. I was probably about 12 or 13 at the time so this puts my discovery of these cars around 1973-74. I knew what the 1954 Hudson models looked like but I didn’t realize the merger between Hudson and American Motors had taken place, hence the “new” look Hudson. Furthermore, it was many, many years later that I actually saw any of these models in the flesh.
Mr. Bill
1955 Hudson Wasp for me. I saw one from across a 4-lane highway, far away enough that I couldn’t make out the lettering on the front. Even after I walked across to take a closer look, it continued to baffle me. It looked like no Hudson I had ever seen before, and I didn’t notice the resemblance to the same year Nash. This would have been about 20 years ago. I was already a grown-up and very proud of my old car knowledge, but the page for the 1955 Hudson was missing from my mental encyclopedia.
As a 9-year old kid from California traveling to Europe for the first time in 1982, Spain was a cornucopia of stumpers. One car that stumped me in particular was the Chrysler 2 litre; it looked to me like a Japanese car from the 70’s with its compact body and ample chrome. It said “Chrysler” with a pentastar on the grille but I knew it wasn’t American and didn’t know what to make of this strange car that I had never seen in the US.
I had an Aussie version with 245 Hemi 6 called a Centura they were meant to be a new Rootes model but it never eventuated.
The 265 was the fastest accelerating car available in OZ.
We never had that one,ours all seemed to be 2 litre autos,I don’t ever recall seeing a manual.
I was born in ’71 and like Carmine, I had a Car ID Bible, Mine was something like “the Encyclopedia of American Cars” or something like that. I was maybe nine or ten when I saw this really beautiful sporty, edgy car from the window of the school bus I was riding.
It was like an older Chevelle but much more beautiful and I only caught the rear end & its long, low taillights. I would have probably squealed like a pig had I seen the front of it — years later I realized I had spotted a 1966 Riviera. Even in the seventies I had never seen one on the Illinois roads. They are as exotic to me as any Italian Supercar ever could be.
Our afternoon busdriver when I was in junior high and high school was a thirty-something year-old Tomboyish woman named Trish. She was a little gruff but I thought she was cool & talked to her a lot…probably pestering the crap ouf of her.
Anyway, I thought I was The Man due to my many hours of Encyclopedia of American Cars Studying. I had asked her what all cars she used to have and she said one of her favorite past cars was a Chevy Laguna.
I corrected her and told her it was actually “Laguana”. She looked at me like I had three heads & spelled it out for me. L A G U N A. I insisted there was a second “U” in the name… I guess in my head I couldn’t understand why Chevy would name a car that had “GOO” in it. LaGOOna. Finally, she said that I was an idiot & that I needed to read my book a little more carefully. 😀
I honestly thought the script on the front fenders read “Laguana”. I also thought I proofread my prior post adequately…or something like that. DOH.
I was stumped as to why Imperial was considered a compettitor to Cadillac when it seemed almost cobbled together .
I remember a Clipper and wondering what it was. I was 12, and it was 1971, when my sister moved into a house next to one.
I was surprised Corvair wasn’t foreign.
And Thought the Karman Ghia was exotic for VW. Pretty rare.
I can’t tell the cars or SUVs from each other like I use to. I’m still aware of every car I see, and if something stumps me, I have to know what it is.
When I saw a Cougar I thought it was made to order, The same with the Mark III, how could cars get any better?
This.
VW Type 34! Too bad it didn’t make it to the US.
This was Western Canada. It wound up being totaled on a nice summer evening in 1976 when a local high school girl lost control of her parent’s ’65 Chrysler and hit 3 parked vehicles, this being one.
I first saw an Avanti, which sat idle day after day at a service station, around 1967 when I was 7. What was this amazing looking thing? I don’t think there was a Studebaker nameplate on the Avanti, was there? My older brother filled me in, but I think I was still baffled that there was another brand of American cars besides Chevy, Ford, and Chrysler.
Around the same time, a neighbor got a Volvo PV444. I was convinced it was a really big Volkswagen… the rounded shape and probably the “Vol” at the beginning further encouraged me to think so.
A few years ago, a friend and I finished a round of golf just as fog started to roll in. As we pulled out of the parking lot, we spotted an amazing old car that absolutely stunned us… “Wha…?” Its rounded, dreamlike forms disappeared into the fog before we knew what we had seen. But the vision was so remarkable it hung in my brain long enough for me to realize what it was: a Cord. Wow, wow, wow.
As a 10 year old car crazy kid that was hard to stump , I was perplexed at first by 3 or 4 old Volvos of late 50’s – early 60’s vintage that a neighbor had resting in his back yard.
I don’t recall being stumped until I moved to Reno in the mid-90s. That place was a hotbed of weird iron. In the first month there, I saw my first VW Type 3 notchback, a Borgward Isabella, and a suspicious number of La Forzas. I think Reno was also the town where the last of the Sterlings went to die, like some sort of white elephant graveyard.
I guess I have it fairly easy living in Aotearoa which has the most crowded car market on the planet but the flood of JDM imports has me stumped sometimes they dream up the most ridiculous names for their cars and we get the used.
Same here in Oz, Bryce- lots of slightly obscure ex JDM sedans that you have to check the badge to identify…
Not a car I couldn’t identify, but another example of the Canadian confusion that others have mentioned:
When I was a kid, probably around 1980, I was on vacation with my parents in Hampton Beach, N.H. and saw a Chevy Bel Air sporting the downsized post-1977 GM B-body. I knew that Bel Airs were no longer being made. I had also saved a copy of the 1978 new cars issue of Mechanix Illustrated (which my dad read) and it made no mention of the Bel Air in the Chevy section. I put two and two together and deduced that Bel Airs must have been made through 1977. I believed this for years.
When I was a little older, I encountered reference books which indicated that Bel Airs were only built through 1975. This puzzled me to no end. Had my eyes been playing tricks on me?
I eventually discovered the answer, probably not until after the advent of the internet. As regulars on this site likely know, the Canadian market has always been slanted more heavily toward lower-priced cars than the U.S. market is, and the Bel Air continued to be sold in Canada until 1981. The beaches of New Hampshire and southern Maine are a major summer tourist destination for Canadians from Quebec, the Maritime Provinces and eastern Ontario. I am now certain that I really did see a post-1977 Bel Air, but that it was a Canadian car.
I remember when I first saw “Bel-Air” listed in a parts cross-reference for a 77 and B-body, I thought it had to be some sort of mistake.
I don’t remember my first case of ‘what’s that?’ It probably took place during my first trip to England, and was maybe a Rover. What I do remember for sure was my first case of car lust. It was a 1950 Studebaker, which our family at least, called a ‘corn picker Studie’,.
My Dad was taking the family around car shopping. I was 3, and my Dad ended up buying a Desoto instead. My grandson is 3 now, and I kind of wonder what he’s remembering sometimes.
I saw a Volvo 66 GL on the street in Seattle a few months ago. Approaching from the rear, I had no idea what it was.
Others, (I didn’t really pay attention to cars that weren’t muscle cars and 60s American until recently, so these are ones I specifically remember going “what is that?!”
Renault Medallion Wagon
Mitsubishi Cordia
Isuzu i-Mark Coupe
1966 California Special Mustangs with 65 Tbird taillights…
When in 1981 I first saw a Facel Vega… I think I thought it was a Darrin IIRC.
As a kid I must’ve seen just the midsection of a 3-door Fiat Strada, and just a glance of that; for YEARS I thought there MUST have been a 3-door version of the Omni-Horizon that came late to the market and lasted only briefly.
As I was into Fiats back then (my first car was a 128) I was very interested in the Strada in the late 70’s but they were pretty scarce…kind of like the Fiat 128 3P they had in the mid 70’s (I liked it better than the X1/9).
Usually for me it is foreign cars that never really sold in any volume in the US and older (1930s and 1940s) cars that I don’t recognise…still when I was a kid, I had a book of sketchings (Todd Burness’ Auto Album) which was a “kids” book in black and white, and he went around sketching cars (some unusual, I remember some air cooled car from Egypt was in it).
Sometimes I’d remember seeing a car feature from years before when I was a kid, I didn’t know what it was at the time, but realized years later what it was…the ’61 DeSoto was one of these…and the Citroen DS, they were scarce enough where I lived, and I knew they were different cars, just didn’t know what they were at the time).
Other than that I used to look through the old JC Whitney catalogs for imports back in the 60s…for odd cars, as they had quite a few parts (remember tail lights, particularly) for old cars even besides Beetles.
My Father had a ’59 Beetle, but later a ’68 Renault, which itself was a pretty rare car, so some of my interest came from that…but I’ve always been interested in cars, pretty much since I can remember (even as a toddler I’m sure). One time I remember as a kid going to a comic book store and instead trying to buy a car magazine and the proprietor tried to talk me out of it (thinking I didn’t know what I was buying and wouldn’t I prefer a comic book?)
I freaked out the first time I saw a Subaru XT… it had no badging on it, I was working Aftermarket Auto Installer at the time. XT was really different looking but mechanically similar to other Subies…
I don’t recall my very first stumper, but this was one of them. I grew up and lived in Anchorage, Alaska from the mid-fifties through the mid-seventies. Despite it’s isolation, Anchorage was(is) a very international community, with two military bases close to town. So we got many of the quirky foreign cars that were available mainly on both coasts of the lower 48 states. Like many others have stated, I was a young car nut that was hard to stump. But this one sure threw me off. Suicide front doors? It reminded me of a VW Bug, but was obviously not related. I think it was many years before I learned what a DKW really was.
Todays cars for the most part are not near as distinctive as they used to be. Even though I am still a car nut, I can get stumped easier now than I could when I was young. If I can’t see an emblem or nameplate, many times I am just plain stumped.
Well, you’re not alone: I was stumped by one of those DKWs in my small rural New Zealand hometown in the mid 80s. Part of the front end was visible in a run down garage near the footpath, I rode past it each day going to and from school. It was black with a silver roof. Eventually the wooden doors on the ramshackle garage deteriorated enough for the grille to become fully visible, along with the four inter-locked rings. I knew the rings from my Uncle’s Audi 200T, but it took quite a bit more research to find out why they were on the strange black car in the garage! As an aside, the DKW owner’s daily driver was a Thunderbird sedan – the one with the suicide rear doors. Thanks to the ads I pored over in my Grandad’s old National Geographic magazines, I instantly knew the T-Bird though. Both highly unusual vehicles in 1980s rural New Zealand!
Can’t say about the first but here is the most recent from a couple of days ago, some type of Toyota JDM import – and I can’t find out what it was very easily because searching “Toyota coupe” is fairly pointless!
John H: that would be the facelifted 1997+ version of the 1995-2000 AE110/111 Toyota Levin (aka Trueno or Sprinter). You can tell it’s the 1997+ version by the horizontal lines on the taillights. My sister’s second car was a 1997 Levin, so they’re familiar to me. I believe Toyota Australia uses the Levin badge on the top-spec Corolla? The JDM Levins were always 2 door or 2 door coupes or hatches. Not sold NZ-new, but a number arrived as JDM imports. A friend had one with enormous bolt-on wheelarch flares and wheels with 10″ lips on them. It looked awesome (which made the standard 1500cc engine impossible to bear…!). Here’s one on trademe: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/toyota/levin/auction-649767274.htm
The first that really stumped me was a Borgward Isabella, sitting in a field in Addison, TX in the 1980’s. I had to consult my car mentor(and ex-crosley owner) Morris to identify it.
You guys make me feel old. As a child, too many years ago, I could reliably identify 99%+ of the cars on the road. In fact, I could probably identify most cars just from looking at the instrument panel. This lasted until approximately the 9th grade when I started to develop other interests. Now it is all I can do to identify a vehicle as a “Toyondasan” or a generic something else. Part of that is me not caring enough to know and part of it is that most new vehicles look alike. I know that the “good old days” are not coming back but I do wish there was more vehicular variety than what we have now.
I had three different memorable experiences like that. The first was when I was about 8 or 9. On a brushy vacant lot down the road from us there resided a mid-1920’s coupe that had long been abandoned. It had only chicken wire left of the top, no radiator or grille, and the tires had long since rotted off the wooden artillery wheels. But it had a windshield, a seat, a steering wheel, and a gearshift lever, and it was the place of some of my earliest driving dreams. I remember inspecting it for emblems or names, but there weren’t any.
The second “what is it?” moment occurred when a college friend and I were in downtown Des Moines on a Saturday evening in September 1958. We came upon a parked convoy truck with a load of the strangest-looking finned cars we’d ever seen. We looked up at them and they had series names that we’d never seen – Electra, Invicta, Le Sabre – and it took several minutes to realize that there were Buick crests on the cars, so that they had to be Buicks. And the truck was a Chevrolet, an added indication that the cars were of GM origin.
The third “say WHAT?!” moment was when I was driving through the “new car center” in Bremerton in my three-year-old 75 Monza, and saw a car like the one shown here coming toward me. Well, I did a quick U-turn and followed it to – yes! – the Toyota dealership, where I made the acquaintance of this completely new 1979 Celica liftback which didn’t share anything of its exterior appearance with previous Celicas.
This still happens constantly to me at car shows, especially when it comes to US cars. I keep seeing cars that I’ve never heard of. I certainly don’t know the very first one that had me stumped. But the most recent one such encounter, where I never even heard of the manufacturer, was this Zele Zagato:
This Zele is for sale?
Thanks!
Furio
Mine: as we all know, in the late 70s/early 80s, some of the downsizing of the bigger American cars was done by basically (as someone here once put it) making a 5/8 scale version of the bigger predecessor.
Pre-internet age, this used to really mess with me. This is before we had CC, or even wikipedia. 2 examples: growing up my kindergarten teacher had a G-Body RWD Pontiac Bonneville, let’s guess an ’83. That was how I originally saw a Bonneville. I knew they updated it in ’87, but my original “image” of the Bonneville was that G body, and it was the one I saw most frequently.
But then,at some point I saw the “real” Bonnie, a ’77-’81 B-Body. For years, because the B versions aren’t frequently seen, it was like the Loch Ness monster. I *knew* there was a bigger version, but I couldn’t prove it to myself. It didn’t help the front end and taillights were so similar. I would rationalize with myself “maybe it just looked bigger because of the colors”. And then finally, I saw a big Navy blue ’77 Bonneville in a restaurant parking lot. It was one of those “I knew it!! I knew they existed!!” moments.
The same thing happened with the Lincoln Mark VI vs. Mark V. There was an aqua VI in the town where I grew up that I would see around often. At some point, like the Bonneville, I must have seen the older, bigger, Mark V tooling around. But again, I second guessed myself “maybe you just thought it was bigger”. And then, once again, I saw it in a parking lot and realized “there really is a bigger one that looks just like the aqua car!”.
And the final example was not size but evolving badging. The M-Body Chrysler. It was not until CC that I realized I wasn’t crazy and had really seen an M-Body LeBaron. It took me a few years to discern the change from New Yorker to Fifth Avenue, but I just knew I had seen the LeBaron label on the same car. Or HAD I? I never saw one again, so I never confirmed it until CC did that green LeBaron capsule.
It’s easier now with google image and wikipedia, of course.
Mine would’ve probably been a Crosley when I was 12or 13 in the early ’70s. A local high school kid had one.
It happened to me the other day. I found myself behind a “Hornet Turbo T”. It looked like an Elantra, but the badge was neither Kia nor Hyundai. And it had a US license plate, Massachusetts I think. It looked too new and stock to have badges swapped from something else. Anyone?
A Hyundai/Kia with Korean badges, perhaps?
I’m late to the Packard party again. I am confused by your story. The reason being is that it is my understanding that the Clipper Brand was listed as a separate make for only one year, that being 1956, the last year of the “real” Packards. I owned a 56 Clipper Super along time ago (1973). I can’t say for sure that the 55’s said “Packard” on them but I’m quite sure they were still Packard Clippers.
Well CC commentariat, I spotted several of these tiny cars in Rome recently, and posted this pic I took to the cohort recently. I have no idea what they are. I even walked all around one in an effort to find some sort of badging – but to no avail. Whatever they are, they’re rather smaller than the myriad Smart cars that also populate Rome. A grand prize* awaits anyone who can identify it!
*Grand prize will be the glory of expanding my knowledge. 😉
I can’t come up with the exact name, but micro cars are popular in a number of countries in Europe due to special tax/licensing requirements. Some have tiny gas engines, some are EVs. This one is obviously a Smart clone/wanna-be, and it may very well be from China. They’re much cheaper than a real Smart, and are the cheapest way to get around on four wheels.
Thanks Paul. I did wonder if they were a cheap Chinese something, as the one I walked all around had attrocious interior build quality. (No offense intended to any Chinese readers).
LOL, I was like the author…on a family vacation we stopped at a shop or restaurant. I wandered behind the building and there was an old decrepit ’57 or ’58 Packardbaker Clipper station wagon. I’d never seen one before and all it had was the ships wheel emblem all over it. No Packard or Clipper emblems. Was quite a head-scratcher at the tender age of 12 or so…