History Lost in Connecticut... Again...

Reminiscent of Popular Mechanix times...

 

I don't think Jim was Amish. He was a Swamp Yankee.



Looks kinda like @Roothawg

 

From February 29, 1952 issue of The Hartford Courant (Hartford CT)


From March 1, 1952 issue of The Hartford Courant (Hartford CT)


From March 9, 1952 issue of The Hartford Courant (Hartford CT)


From March 29, 1952 issue of Bartlesville Record (Bartlesville OK)

 

A buddy of mine rented 27 John street after Jim miller moved out.

 

Every time I read an article about an old hot rod, custom car or bike that somebody invested a ton of time and money into I always wonder what happened to the vehicle once it became "yesterdays news".
I mean how many of us have dreamed of owning a vehicle out of Hot Rod magazine from the 1950s or Rod & Custom's little pages? Some of these cars The owners in 1950s money put in $7 or $8,000 if not more or so the article would claim (This car is claimed to have been worth $12,000 in 1952 according to the inflation calculator on my phone That's over $136,000 today), I can't imagine a vehicle like that would get thrown away so where did they go, how many would have actually gotten s****ped?
I know some of these magazine cover girls over the years have ended up fully dis***embled and in crates and a few have gotten cannibalized for other hot rods and more than a handful lived long lives as street rods mostly unrecognizable to their earlier days as a magazine cover girl but This only accounts for a small percentage of them considering every magazine has four or five car features in it every month... Where did they all go?

 

I am from just down the road from where this car came from.

I rains a whole lot in Connecticut, it can snow a whole lot too. Cars rot out, even when stored indoors, unless the structure is weather-tight, and well maintained. I routinely found vehicles while hiking in the woods that were so rotted that there was no hope of a positive identification.

Even if it never got s****ped, there is a good chance that nature reclaimed it.

When I still lived there, I watched a whole bunch of vehicles that the owners claimed would "be fixed up one day" fall to rubble before that ever happened. When the old guy died, there was not a car to get rid of, just s**** metal.

65 or so years in Connecticut is about the equivalent of 130-years in California, in terms of weather.

You can see outer body rust through on a new car in just 5-years, if you drive it in winter, and do not diligently clean everything on a regular basis.

 

I read somewhere that the cars that Ford developed to win LeMans were just old race cars.
Left go for just a couple grand.
Untouchable today

 

Hey @Ryan
Ever since I saw that black, 1948 Alfa-Romeo-6C-2500- Freccia- D'Oro, that was blown up in the original film "The Godfather", I have been obsessed with those lovely vintage machines.

I would love to read a good write up by you, on one of these, when you have time at some point in the future.

Thanks from Dennis.

 

Scethrog.

So that's where Donald Healey got the idea for the Frogeye Sprite!

 

Very possible that you know this, but I'll mention that during the 30s, buying an Alfa meant buying a race car. They were fit to go from the dealer right on to the track.

 

Wonder if you could find a photo of it in magazine coverage of Bonneville for that year?
Could be easy to miss in the back ground if you weren’t looking for it

or the Petersen archive may have out takes now that that stuff is viewable online?

 

wonder if they had made the body of aluminum. how much lighter it would have been?
for sure cool for the time period.

 

Well first, I really like Ryan’s take on the conversation.
But only knowing a few guys that ran oval track at the 99 speedway in Stockton long ago, parts and pieces were scavenged from a car as they built a new one.
My dad was good friends with an oval track racer, he was all self supportive (I think one of his sons got sponsors though) and my dad would help him cut things up and use on the next car. I bet the “s****s” were just tossed or piled up.

Now this was in the ‘70’s, so I’d think guys who had that urge in them (hope so anyways) put parts to work and didn’t just let there time and effort rot away. Ya, I know we’ve seen it before. I’d just like to think it became a donor for something else.

 

Carrol Shelby offered one of the Lemans cobra coups to an employee for 800 dollars after mickey thompson wore it out at bonneville setting numerous records i think in may have been the one with all the lawsuits the employee did not buy it as it had a lot of damage to ssuspension ( broken shock mounts etc )from the ruts in the salt