Are there any cars that have gone extinct?

Those would be orphans, and they're not extinct. Some still exist.

 

there was a company in dallas that made after market a/c systems that built a car called the Vanguard Warrior. They made a few bodies and one complete car. I ended up with the prototype a few years ago. It was a neet little car- mid engine ford V-4. The car had 108 miles showing , got it running, but never got to drive it though. Traded it off a couple years ago, Ihave some picts some where if anyone whats to c em.

 

okay,years back I saw a rendering of a 53/4 corvette "nomad" wagon.
was this a concept car, or something that made it to low production?
does anyone have real pics of one?

 

Google "Waldorf Nomad" and you'll find what you're looking for.

-Dave

 

Thanks dave!
So it did exist as a one-off concept car that is now "long gone"....






....(or is it?)

 

Did anyone post a list of car makers in the US? If not,here's a list
http://www.american-automobiles.com/

 

out of curiousity.. what makes this so rare and only 3 left? was it a special option on that particular car? year? motor trans combo?

 

LostforaWhile, I think a TON of shit made before about 1925 got scrapped, and for three reasons:

(1) As someone said, COLLECTORS were few & far between. So, in 1930, Time Magazine reported that passenger cars were being junked at the rate of a MILLION a year;
(2) Second would be the Depression when companies were having trouble staying alive, and people were not maintaining their car very well (generally speaking here); and,
(3) the WWII scrap drives when it was serious patriotic DUTY to give as much scrap metal as possible.

My dad has often said that a LOT of Model-Ts got melted down to make Sherman tanks, battle ships, cannon barrels, etc., etc.

 

SlickWilly & BigCheese. THANKS for those posts! Maybe I am not insane, 'cause I remember seeing a color pic or two of the 'Vette wagon prototype in an early '70s mag!!! THANKS!!!

 

how old are you benny? there are more extinct car names then you can count.

 

Something I heard before about Studebaker- the following from wikipedia...

The remains of the auto maker still exist as Studebaker-Worthington Leasing, a subsidiary of Main Street Bank - Kingwood Texas, which provides leasing services for manufacturers and resellers of business and industrial products.

 

A fourth reason: Early car bodies were a sheet metal skin over a wood framework. They did not hold up well even in low-speed collisions, and when the wood rotted out, they fell apart and sheet metal parts got warped and twisted. They were nowhere near as strong as later cars that were all welded steel construction, and the ones left out in the weather didn't fare very well at all.

 

This is why some cars are extinct. You get a tow-elephant and a cheerleader girl to push them into your private scrapping yard

 

Also, pre-war cars turned into all kinds of useful stuff when they were taken apart, without leaving a big, characteristic unibody. The cars might be extinct, but there are still fair amounts of bits and pieces floating around.

That is even more true of European cars. European production volumes weren't as high as American, and WWI and WWII took a greater toll, percentage-wise. However, European cars were normally scrapped at a slower rate because cars were marketed differently. American cars were always marketed primarily to a non-enthusiast public, moreso than in Europe. Europe had established patterns of mobility over which cars were a sort of overlay. People just didn't buy cars unless they took an interest and, having gone to all the trouble of keeping a car, generally held onto it.

By contrast, American cars represented basic mobility in a vacuum, and were from the start marketed as a necessity to people who expected not to have to take an interest. Consequently people were readier to drive cars into the ground.

 

I can't wait for Rat Rods to become extinct.

 

38FordPickup: Hey, THAT is a darn good point! Heck, the Brush cars even used a wooden chassis. There was a bunch of wood well into the '20s.

 

I'm not sure we touched on ANOTHER thing: "Back in the day," most people like regarded automobiles just like any other TOOL. So, when one got worn out, they didn't think of RESTORING IT SOME DAY & STICK IT IN A BARN OR SHED the way we might nowadays.

Ned Ludd takes it a step FARTHER: When a car got to where it wasn't worth maintaining anymore, lots of people (especially out in the cuntry) would take 'em apart & USE stuff for other purposes. A "waste not, want not" sort of mentality.

 

x 10 bro

 

Rich Venza: Man, before getting into the H.A.M.B., I was out of the hotrod scene for at least 15 years raiisng a family. "While I was away," somebody came up with the term "Rat Rod." I SEE it everywhere, and it doesn't sound GOOD!

Rich, can you explain for me the simple definition of just WHAT is a "Rat Rod"? I think I wanna KNOW what one is, so I don't get tentanus off of it -- er somethin' !

 

Oh, YEAH! Elephants: The ecologically friendly junkyard skip-loader!

 

Sure were... In spring the snow would melt, you'd see them appear as the winter melted ...buried in the ice by the side of the road and by may they had dissolved away leaving a few nuts on the ground

 

ItexOldIron, I've seen a lot of lists of out-of-production cars. But, I'd love to see the list in your 1918 magazine, as I'll bet there are makes that don't even appear on lists of a few decades later!

Can you shoot a digital or Xerox the pages?

 

275 Climbers were built in North Little Rock, 1918-1923. The remaining two known to exist are at the Museum of Automobiles on Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, AR. So they're not completely extinct, but close.
Here's more on the Climber:
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2150

 

Here's a Ben-Hur emblem that came up on ebay!

 

Chadillac, THAT is a rare one!

 

The board has a search feature and google is also your friend, no need to junk up a thread asking o/t questions.


As for the Ford Torino, I sincerely doubt some kid working at a Burger King had one of the Super Cobra Jet cars. Ford built exactly three with a swoopy nose along the lines of the Superbird/Daytona, but Nascar changed the rules before they could actually put them into production to meet that requirement (I think they raised the minimum number required to be built) so they never made any others. From the firewall back and under the skin they were standard '71 Torino. I forget if they had a wing or anything crazy on the back.

 

There's been a few mentions of R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion, and now, courtesy of YouTube, you can see one in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlLZE23EJKs&feature=player_embedded

Saw the one in Harrah's collection years ago, seemingly complete but not restored by any means at that time. The windows were blocked off and you could see nothing of the interior. Remember reading something back in the '70s in Car Life Magazine, I think, about a group of engineering students discovering and rescuing a Dymaxion from an old swamp or river bed. I don't think this was the car that Harrah's had as the pictures showed it as being badly deteriorated, though still recognizable as a Dymaxion. Don't believe I've ever heard any more about this car's existance.

I think one of the Dymaxions crashed either seriously or fatally injuring it's test driver. I think Fuller, in disgust, had the car dismantled or destroyed.

Also while on YouTube I found this clip of a Folding Electric Car from the 1920's. Surely it's extinct, and probably rightfully so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dENBYI3j3eE&feature=player_embedded

Then there's the Stout Scarab. Nearly extinct, But I think Harrah's had one one of these as well years ago.



And if you want to go really rare and swoopy, try Heinz Rust's Phantom Corsair.

 

The very first prototype jeep from Bantam is extinct. There was only one and it was run over by a large truck on a Maryland proving ground. Some intact parts were put onto later prototypes, but the majority of it was buried.