Along with flying cars and hydrogen fuel cells, the mid-engined Corvette occupies the most spurious level of automotive rumor-mongery. GM has a deep, rich history of flirtation with the idea of a mid-engine ‘vette (too deep and rich for us not to commission a forthcoming brief history from Paul Niedermeyer), but even in the last three years the engine configuration of the C8 Corvette has attracted intense speculation. In October of 2007, Motor Trend kicked off the modern era of mid-engine ‘vette rumors with a lengthy piece which “revealed” that

GM vice chairman Bob Lutz reportedly has been pushing for a mid-engine C7… We hear Lutz is backing down from his support of a mid-engine C7, though other powerful GM execs reportedly still favor it. Those at GM who prefer an evolutionary, front-engine C7 are facing a tough battle.

Almost exactly a year later, MT took it all back. With GM facing bankruptcy and bailouts, plans for a new Corvette were put on hold and the RenCen pendulum was swinging back towards an evolution of the front-engined C7. And yet now, with bankruptcy still less than a year in GM’s past, the mid-engine Corvette rumors are bubbling back up again.

There’s lots of places to find old cop car photos, but I was perusing a 1953 Popular Science at bed time the other night, and remembered a story about the just-opened NJ turnpike and its new fleet of cop cars. Here are one of each of the fleet of 23 Fords and stealthy Chryslers. The Fords came with Mercury engines installed; their 255 cubic inch flathead V8s had a whopping 125 hp instead of the stock Ford 110 hp. The also had dual exhausts, “souped up rear ends”, and heavy duty cooling systems. The ten unmarked Chryslers “are capable of 120 mph”, which I wouldn’t question given their 180 hp hemi engines. Three “portable” radar timers (roadside, not hand-held) were also in the arsenal. And every trooper was trained in auto mechanics as part of the training; they would have known how to stop their runaway car.

Old Popular Sciences are a treasure trove of the bizarre and curious, reflecting American’s folksy inventiveness. I couldn’t resist scanning just two of these and sharing:

No, its not a recall. But not surprisingly, he’s trying to sell you service for your Ford. Service has always been the big profit center for dealers, and nothing has changed in almost one hundred years.

This Saturday is turning into a visual sort of day (NHTSA data dive fatigue?) with an emphasis on vintage ads and photo-chops. How about a combination of the two? Hemmings blog found these at Lowtech, and they brought a smile to my working-on-Saturday face. Nice 1953 Chebby! And the kids and ladies are duly enthralled.

The Geneva Auto Show always reminds me of one of my prize items of late sixties memorabilia: the 1969 Automobil Revue catalog that was always issued in conjunction with the Geneva show. Here are a few scans from some of the ads, which show another glaring reason for the collapse of the USSR: their car ads. If these two sexy guys posturing in front of the “new” Moskvich don’t quite turn your crank, I assure you, the Russians knew how to make straight sexy ads too:

When GM’s new 1973 cars, especially the all-new “mid-sized” cars were introduced, my friend Paul Brown, an artist and fellow Bill Mitchell aficionado and I trotted down to Iowa City’s various dealers to experience them in the flesh. We found them to be somewhat over the top, and struggled to understand what Bill and his associates were thinking, or what someone had put in the Advanced Styling studio water coolers. Inspired by the the GM psychedelia, we loaded up on brochures, and went home and got out scissors and paste, and decided that we could “improve” on their imaginings. I wrote about it here before, but after writing yesterday’s CC on the Collonade Malibu, I realized that I still had some of our work (I tend to keep things). I’ve been a little shy about sharing them, but what the hell; it was a long time ago.

It’s one of my (many) fantasies: fly one-way to Brazil, buy a brand new VW Kombi and drive it back. But alcohol is a little hard to come by here, especially since Oregon has state liquor stores. Actually, the Kombi’s 1.4 liter motor drinks gas too, but I would have preferred a diesel. Anyway, Brazil is celebrating fifty years of domestic production of the VW bus, and today seems to be Brazil day at TTAC. So if you share my fantasy, head to VW do Brasil’s site and their special Kombi 50 Anos site and check out the current Kombi and a disappointingly small gallery of vintage shots.

If there’s one certainty in the car business, it’s that you know a company is in trouble when their ads forgo showing off their latest models in favor of gauzy images of beloved products past. It’s a trick that the Detroit firms have played to death over their 30 years of decline, and now Toyota is dipping a toe in the soothing waters of nostalgia. For contrast, check out Hyundai’s “more-Toyota-than-Toyota” Super Bowl spot after the jump.

Reading the book “Winning: The Racing Life Of Paul Newman” last night, I realized that there were several connections between Paul and today’s featured Curbside Classic. Newman raced Zs successfully for the Bob Sharp team in the seventies, having started his career in a Datsun 510. And they’re both celebrating birthdays: The Z arrived in the US forty years ago, and Newman would have been 85 today, had he not passed away last year. I’ve praised the coming and eulogized the passing of the 240Z in the CC, but I’d like to give a moment’s tribute to my life hero:

I know racing is not a TTAC thing per se. But safety, old photos, lady luck and the human face at work are, at least on Sunday. Going through some an old Car & Driver from 1963, I ran across some remarkable photographs of Julius Weitmann. Two are about those rare cases when drivers lived to remember their rude ejections from race cars, as Hans Hermann here looking warily at the BRM that bucked him at Avus in 1958 after a few flips.

About a year ago, Nissan’s response to nose-diving truck sales betrayed some serious ambivalence about chasing the profitable-yet-dangerous segment. Its first plan was to rebadge the new Ram, but that deal has fallen apart in the wake of Chrysler’s shotgun wedding to Fiat. At a loss for options, Nissan canceled the Quest, QX56 and Armada and started tooling up its Canton plant to produce commercial vehicles. It looked like Nissan’s days in the truck market were over. Now, USA Today reports that Nissan is developing a new full-sized pickup (and SUV) after all. By itself. Who’d have thunk it?

The very first post-bankruptcy, Chrysler-brand advertisement was a true re-badge, literally replacing Lancias with Chryslers in the exact same advertisement. The second spot, which we ran yesterday, was a vague, year-end spot emphasizing history and heritage while showing only one modern car. Though it’s not a strict re-badge like the Lancia ad, the new Chrysler ad is, at the very least, based on some serious platform-sharing. Specifically the ad above, an Italian-language spot for the Fiat Group, is thematically identical to the Chrysler ad.

“They don’t write songs about Volvos,” proclaimed an infamous Chevy billboard once seen in the Detroit area. Of course it wasn’t strictly true, but then Chevy’s two most recent forays into musical marketing, Volt Jingles versions 1 and 2, weren’t exactly “Little Red Corvette” either. And the trend seems to be holding: quality car-inspired music is slipping away. Even this song, the first Saab-inspired tune I’m aware of, is a wholly forgettable drone about fighting Saab’s inevitable closure. It’s not as bombastically awful as, say, the infamous Mercedes “One Goal” tune, but you know automotive culture is in trouble when the only music it inspires is about the closure of a niche Swedish nameplate. Unless the lyrics “we’re gonna make it, not gonna break it” has some kind of mysterious resonance for the daily Saab driver that I’m not getting. Either way, the world of car-inspired music needs some work.

The great thing about cars from seventies is that they make the cars from the fifties look…better. Here’s a nifty concept car from Chrysler, the 1956 (not so) Plainsman. It was Virgil Exner’s take on the wagon, and gave a glimpse of the direction Chrysler’s radical 1957 models would take. And it can be yours! It’s coming to auction on Jan 22. More shots:

We’ve wallowed in Bobcat inspired seventies nostalgia (or nausea), but that was just a little turd. If you really want to know what the seventies were all about you have to experience a taste of the huge wave of fine original artistic coach-crafted cars that enticed us. Perhaps the grandest (and most originally named) of them all was the Bugazzi, which contrary to a subversive and vicious rumor, had no connection whatsoever with a mere 1972 Lincoln Mark IV. And it can now be yours! The seller promises: “you will not be disappointed in this truly magnificent Barris creation!” All the gory details and pictures of its fine interior appointments follow:

Pictures tell a thousand words, so these are going to spare me some. What more could I say anyway? More seventies-era glamor, pick-up mobiles, and drag-racers’ favorite funny cars follow:

Having worked at a Japanese language tv station in LA in the seventies, I developed an early appreciation of their commercials. Here are a couple of Datsun ads highlighting the Blubird/510. The first one parallels the flying theme of my CC, and the second one, after the jump, shows off the coupe version, which sadly was never exported to the US. Shades of the Volt dance. Enjoy!

My wild guess that today’s Kurbside Klassic Konvertibl e had a degree of rarity has been confirmed. According to Jamie who has his ’86 ragtop posted at cardomain, only 4,759 of these un-Grosser 600’s were made. And he also found a period ad for our car. Now we know that the little buzz-bomb 2.2 turbo was a real sleeper, and could whip the 600ES to sixty in…wait a minute! I just looked at it a again. It says zero to 50 in 5.8 seconds. And I thought (wrongly) that the pathetic 0-50 bragging rights era had ended by 1986. Full ad after the jump (too big):

Chopped and Diced has a nice set of turbine pictures, including the big trucks from Ford, GMC, and Chevrolet. The trucks probably made the most sense for a practical turbine application, given their steady power output requirements and low maintenance. But diesels just haven’t been beat when it comes to high thermal efficiency, which tops 50% in the case of the giant ship engines we showed you last week. More turbine trucks and an insane looking home made turbine bike after the jump:

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Fat Chance! Beauty is sitting in a barclounger leather recliner and watching the world go past at 85 miles an hour. Of course in this 1985 Lincoln Town Car with 45k, the speedometer also happens to give out it’s all too shaky geriatric needle at 85 mph. So anything beyond that I consider ‘warp speed’ as I drive through North Georgia listening to some old time crooners from the Garden State. Speaking of that, did I mention this thing was bought new in two Jerseys? That would be Jersey City, New Jersey. As in Frank Sinatra’s hometown… the king of swing and the purveyor of all things cool. Well, that would actually be Hoboken. But close enough. Driving a Mafia and Spock sized coffin like this Lincoln is definitely a leap to my childhood in North Jersey. A friend of mine’s Dad actually became the head of the Gambino family for a short time. He’s thankfully only been in Federal prison twice so far. Then there was the house that burned down on a lot and remained a charred remnant for twenty years. A healthy reminder of who was in charge of our local government’s services.

The Freep is reporting that GM’s Renaissance Center headquarters could be at risk if so-called “retention tax credits” aren’t amended. GM is consolidating more of its workforce at its Warren Technology Center, and 1,500 of the RenCen’s 4,000 GM workers are reportedly making the move out of downtown. The remaining 2,500 workers would stay only if a Michigan Economic Growth Authority “retention” tax credit makes it worthwhile. The necessary amendments to this tax credit have been made, but MEGA still has to approve the package. A memo to the Growth Authority reveals the stakes:

2,500 is the maximum that they can also take for this portion of the credit. General Motors has submitted an application stating that the headquarters is at risk without this credit.

Our friends at JamesList present a 1937 Bugatti Type 57/59 Roadster Supersport. GM’s ex-Director of Design penned the restomod’s basic shape and details in 1982, imagining a sports car that Jean Bugatti might have offered to the American market. You know; if he had. Clicking over to Deansgarage.com reveals that the realization of Dave Holls’ alternative universe owes its existence to deep-pocketed California collector Ron Kellogg. Aside from a slightly widened replica T59 frame, Palmer Coachworks built l’homage de Bug‘s major bits using genuine GM— I mean Bugatti parts, including a T57 powerplant (with an added blower and dry sump) and a 73C gearbox (no.6) with synchromesh. Even so, one wonders if Bugatti purists would be amused. That’s not an original thought. “The Kellogg project required climbing special challenges,” Deansgarage reports, using the adjective favored by people for whom “handicapped” is too pointed. “Not the least of which was getting the approval of the Bugatti Trust for permission to go ahead with the program. So the Kellogg Bugatti has a legitimate historical production chassis number. This is no small accomplishment. [It was] assigned the number #128, year 1937.” Needless to say, the new seller agrees: provenance is no biggie. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they . . .

The Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance is the most prestigious collectors and special interest automobile show east of the Mississippi. Started in 1979 by Don Sommer, a Detroit area collector and restorer, the concours is held on the grounds of Meadow Brook Hall, the 110 room, 88,000 sq ft Tudor mansion built in the 1920s by Matilda Dodge Wilson, in Rochester, Michigan, about 15 miles north of the city. Yeah, that Dodge. John’s widow, Horace’s sister in law. The mansion and the rest of Matilda’s estate are now the campus of Oakland University.