Are there any cars that have gone extinct?

I think I've seen that Tucker from Wisconsin that was mentioned earlier... there was one at the World of Wheels in Milwaukee two years ago.... incredible restoration too...

 

Zettle Bros - I thought I knew every bit of drag race trivia, but I didn't know about Beswicks Mystery Tornado with the aluminum nose getting bashed up, then tortured to death on the circle tracks! What a sad story.....................

 

I heard a stroy about some guy customizing a Tucker and quite heavaly too. I dont know if its true, but I would love to think someone has the balls or is stupid enough (take you pick) to do it.

What is todays value on a tucker.

 

man,,, thats just wrong. i mean, some cars are just to speshul to do the nasty things we do to em... crime in italy,,, WTF am i thinkin,,, chop on

 

MooseJaw Standard Car built in MooseJaw, Saskatchewan in the late teens or 20's. Less than a dozen made, one incomplete survivor left that anyone knows of. Fordnutz.

 

Cushman trucks were made with the box in the back and in the front, were three wheeled. They still exist as I know where one is. I think the postal service used some. 37Kid would remember the name of the guy from Chicago that had a warehouse full of cars stored on end. He died in the '80's. I think there was like 3000 cars, mostly before 1930, they were covered in grease and stacked leaning against each other on their bumpers. Many thought to be extinct cars were found. About 100 motorcycles were on a pile. One guy bought all the bikes and had several at Carlisle for sale. Like 37 said, there were 5000 differant makes, there's bound to be some extinct. But, who knows what is sitting somewhere waiting to be found?

 

Interested to know what they are worth too.

Wasnt there a deep blue , mildly customised one featured in car polish ads in Street Rodder a few years ago?

Cheers

MKK

 

there was once a ca r called Yugo... wait that wasnt a car it was a pile of shit

 

Spaulding

Originally made in Grinnell, Iowa by a wagon manufacturer. They made cars for a few years in the teens to early twenties. The only known survivor was recently purchased by the Iowa Transportation Museum which is located in the old Spaulding building. About half of the car is there, and the rest will need to be hand-made during restoration.

 

Cosmo's right. There are dozens of companies listed in that book that not only don't exist, but the cars that they once made don't exist either.

The automotive journalist Ken Purdy once wrote a piece on a restoration shop that had a fellow who, before the war, broke up hundreds of cars with a sledgehammer for their scrap value. Cars with names like Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Isotta Fraschini, Mercer, etc. In today's money, he probably destroyed over a million dollars an hour.

All that being said, I can't think off the top of my head of a car that was popular enough so that you'd recognize it, but is now completely extinct.

--Matt

 

i believe that was a repop of one. i remeber reading in a mag that someone was going to make fiberglass tuckers w/mordern drive trains. i know i have the mag but it's somewhere in a pile w/about 20yrs of other magazines..

also here's a pic of a Flint Truck that was taken at a show in Quincy,IL. it's the only one i have seen & the guy who owns this one put a flathead ford V8 in it w/a auto trans behind it....joe

 

Not extinct - but close.

Holley - -the carburetor company - - made a couple hundred cars around 1902-1903. Last I knew (I worked there for several years) only three were known to still exist. They had one restored and on display in the lobby.

 

The glass Tuckers are expensive too! I think around $100k. The blue one that was in the mags was pretty bitchin.

 

here's the Blue Tucker

Photos by Richard A. Wright
This Tucker looks like new because it is new, a 2001 Tucker 48 built by Ida Automotive of Morganville, NJ. Ida is producing brand new cars patterned after the legendary 1948 Tucker Torpedo. The custom car company, owned by Rob and Bob Ida, equips the new Tuckers with Cadillac NorthStar V-8 engines. A production run of 51 vehicles is planned. The cars are priced at $150,000.


One of the most intriguing displays was a replica of the Tucker, called the New Tucker 48, a bright blue fiberglass-bodied, rear-engine four-door reincarnation of Preston Tucker's 1948 masterpiece. The car was built by Rob and Bob Ida in Morganville, NJ, where they have a custom car shop.

The New Jersey company plans to produce 51 of the replicas, priced at $150,000 each, in honor of the original 51 that were produced before Preston Tucker's business failed. The 2001 Tucker's shiny blue exterior, rotating central headlight and old-fashioned skirting around the rear wheels attracted a lot of attention at the show.

Standard engine is a four-cam, 32-valve, 300-hp rear-mounted Cadillac North Star engine, mated with an automatic transmission. Other features include power disc brakes, four-wheel independent suspension, power steering, a center headlight that turns with the steering, composite four-door sedan body with suicide rear doors, air conditioning, hidden stereo system and power windows.

http://info.detnews.com/joyrides/story/index.cfm?id=144

 

does this same guy own a real tucker, cause my bros met this guy in nj that has one, but he keeps it in canada, and he made a fiberglass repro and put it on a pontiac chassis

 

"In today's money".
How true. And how many of us have looked back at ads and wondered "what if?", what if my dad, uncle, third cousin on my mother's side, whoever, might have bought one of those cars and kept it.
Couple things to think about:
What would you buy and store right now, of today's production??
What IS the '57 Chebby of 2005??
And, when you look back, you do not see the whole picture. In the fifties, nostalgia had not a pulse. No one cared about the past, as the future was so promising and exciting. And as to old cars, there were a few swap meets, and a few collectors doing their thing, but, and it's a big but, there was also government involvement in the form of the OPA, Office of Price Administration.
This office told you what you could ask (and get) for your car, old or new.
True, Bob Hirohata probably spent an easy $10,000 on his Mercury, but the OPA would tell HIM what he could sell it for in those days. Same was true of any and all cars.
And you thought the government of today was bad (it IS, but in different ways).

Cosmo, only a little OT, heh?

 

I was lucky enough to visit The Bill Harrah Collection in Reno back in the 1970's, the best collection of automobiles to ever exist. This is the list of "Only one known to exist" that were in the collection before most of the cars were sold off. 1906 Adams-Farwell, 1910 Atlas, 1921 Colonial, 1906 Compound, 1925 Delta, 1923 Delta, 1923 Fox, 1908 Frayer-Miller, 1918 Frontmobile, 1947 Gordon-Diamond, 1915 Harding, 1912 Henry Gray, 1915 Hollier, 1925 Julian,1925 Kleiber, 1922 Leach, 1923 Leon Rubay, 1928 Mauser, 1900 Packard (Only survivor of 5 built) 1892 Philon, 1910 Pickard, 1907 Westinghouse, 1928 Worldmobile (only one of the seven built to survive).

 

There was a car company in St. Cathrines, Ontario that built a car called a Grey Mort. I've seen 2, both in pieces. Don't know much beyond that.

 

For that kind of big money, why didn't they make it out of steel and replicate the original engine?

Ooopps, silly me!
That would mean spending real money and time to make a big profit!
Oh well,
Doug

 

You sure that wasn't Grey Dort??? There's a running driving one of them, about 1918, in a small town a half hour south of here. They actually were fairly common from everything the oldtimers around here told me.

 

Let's see I work at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and we have the only Duryea Motor Wagon know to be left in existince, we also have one of the six Bugatti Royales that were ever built (however they still all exist). I know that in the Auto Museum out in Reno (don't recall its proper name) there is the only surviving Dymaxion Car built by R. Buckminster Fuller. A car I think is extinct, but I am not sure, is one I hope to find one day, but have never been able to, the Moore Automobile. The company existed from 1916-20 if I recall correctly and built the body, set it on an Oakland chassis, and had a small engine in it. So, if anyone knows of one let me know!

My last name is Moore by the way, no relation, just think it would be cool in my collection.

 

My dad has a '29 Erskine 4 door sedan...BIIIIGGG long car. They were actually a spinoff of Studebaker built only 28-30 I think. I've never seen one in person other than his. I wish it was a 2 door...I'd hotrod it in a minute!

 

someone makes a glass tucker body..maybe thats what you guys are thinking of? i cant find the website for it right off hand..but i will keep looking


also found a site about a tucker auctioned off for 300,000$

 

here is the replica tucker http://perfectpowerusa.com/red/

 

checkers are still plentiful..there are a bunch rotting out in kalamazoo mi,on their old test track and a bunch more in their old show room..

they still make autoparts and such in the factory for other manufacturers..ive had many family memebers work there..

 

Durant, Star... Oakland...

Sam.

 

This isn't the converted Studebaker they used in the rollover scene in the Tucker movie, is it? That one was pretty beat up afterward and was quite a convincing conversion to the Tucker look.

To add to this thread, I don't believe any electric powered Oldsmobiles survived the fire at the Lansing plant before production started, that's why R.E. Olds decided to go strictly with the gas-powered Curved Dash.

 

yeahhh me and my uncle met this guy he had a real tucker that jay leno writes a letter to him to buy it every year...the guy refuses my uncle said he refused like $350,00 or 400,000 i dont remember...also me and my uncle went to some place of his and i saw a mold he made for the tucker...it looked cool my uncle saw the finished product yea i tihnk it was on like a 80s pontiac chassis or something he even home made the hubcabs out of stainless i think..cus thats wut they were stock...im pretty sure stainless im not sure...

 

Yeah, I believe I saw that once at a little show in Estevan..... a blue 2 seater roadster of some sort, if I'm thinking of the same car you are.

 

In our fair town of Plymouth, Michigan, they used to build a car called the "Alter". The factory still stands, but I have never seen a picture of the car.
FWIW, they also used to make Daisy Air Rifles here, and one of the board members tried to get them to put money up to start FoMoCo. They said, in essence, "FUCK NO!" so he put up his own money, then was bought out by Henry. What's sad about the whole thing is that they tore down the air rifle plant, except the facade, and built CONDOS in it's stead. Progress, huh?

Cool thread. The early years of the car are fascinating to me.

Jay