Colorized Photos Retinted and Refined

I recently went through my file of colorized photos and found this series. They're all photographs I shot in 1980 with my trusty Nikon film camera. They were taken at car shows, used car lots, and wherever I found cool cars. Originally colorized a few years ago, some of these images I had limited myself to just two colors. This time I refined all the images with countless shades and colors. I think they're going to be great to print out and then cut up and used in my future wooden pieces. Cut into squares they'll be great parts of some checkerboard paintings I'm working on. Reposting from my other blog: We can all use a dose of color right now!

Instrument panel of the 1959 Edsel. And this was toned-down from 1958!

Postwar Studebaker Starlight coupe.

Postwar Cadillac 75 Formal Sedan trunk logo.

The front fender of the postwar Caddy 75 Formal Sedan.

The front doorstep on the Cadillac 75.

Mid 1950s Mercedes Benz 300 SL trunk lid trim.

 Early Thirties Auburn hood ornament. This was a boattail speedster.

Step plate for a mid 1920s Buick.

 

Hood trim on a 1956 Ford.

1950 Ford coupe. 

 Very rare Hudson Italia coupe—red, white, green, and blue.

 1955-56 Packard senior interior. Note the pushbutton transmission quadrant on the dash.

 Early 1930s Packard windshield decal.

 1953-54 Studebaker hood with V8 trim piece Beautiful design!

Playing around I placed my Cadillac's loose chrome script on the grille of my Celica. Photo taken in '83.

Digital Musing: '68 Mustang CS Rear Fender

Click to enlarge. Digital manipulations of an image of the passenger side rear fender of a limited edition 1968 Mustang California Special, photograph taken 1980 at a local car show. Superimposed, is a painting of mine, Checkerberry Memories, 2007. Just playing around for an hour in Photoshop on a very chilly and rainy day.

Spring Fords, 1920s-30s Style

My grandmother, right, and friend, sitting on her mid teens Model T runabout, ca 1920. Great dresses! This is the car I own bits and pieces of to this day.

Gloria Isabel would grow up at the wheels of hot Fords for the most part, and become known as Hoohoo. Here's the 4-5 year old Baby Gloria barely able to see over the steering wheel of the family's new 1929-30 Model A tudor sedan.

Photos from 1980—Car Show and Used Car Lot

One of the more distinctive front ends from the latter part of the 1930s, this 1939 Chrysler Royal, sports abundant chrome and streamline design cues. The headlights were also highly styled, with flush covers and shield-shaped housings. In reality, the red circle behind the word "Chrysler" was blue, but I used my artistic license and made it red to contrast bette with the blue car. All photos are clickable to enlarge.

Magnificent 1938 Lincoln K V12 sedan at a local car show. The greyhound hood ornament was a longtime Lincoln feature.

The "toned down" 1959 Edsel front end at a used car lot in 1980. The handwriting was already on the wall for this upper-medium priced marque. Dropping the larger Mercury-based models, the Edsel was reduced to marketing only the smaller Ford-based versions, and would be dropped completely shortly after the 1960 models were announced.

The interior of the '59 Edsel may look "glitzy" in this photo, but had lost many of its most unique features from its first year, 1958. The unique compass-like speedometer and Tele-touch transmission buttons in the middle of the steering wheel hub were gone by '59.

The car show also included this mid sixties Ferrari Lusso. The tailpipes say it all!

I'm not sure what car these highly-styled hood louvers belong to, but I'm guessing it's early 1930s. Any guesses?

The 1950 Ford, here in club coupe guise. The '49 Ford is credited with "saving" the corporation, being completely redesigned and completely up-to-date mechanically and style-wise. The '50 Ford may have only had a minor facelift, but was advertised as being "50 Ways Finer for '50."

The trunk logo from a late fifties Mercedes Benz 300SL roadster, a six-figure car today.

A step plate and running board from a mid 1920s Buick.

The distinctive rear fender trim from a Duesenberg SJ phaeton.

"Ask the man who owns one," was Packard's famous advertising line for decades.

Gorgeous Packard, a 1931 Deluxe Eight 840 Roadster I believe, above and below.

Ford Fairlane from 1956. The "jet" hood ornament is scooped into the hood itself, the Ford crest is highly stylized and the name "Fairlane" beautifully scripted underlining it all. Fair Lane, two words, was the name of Henry and Clara Ford's estate, and was used on Ford's top-line models for a few years, before being slightly decontented when the Galaxie was introduced halfway through 1959.

1933 Continental—3 Owners, 50,000 miles!

A gorgeous example of Art Moderne sculpture, the hood mascot for the 1933 Continental Flyer. The Continental's motto printed underneath this ornament states, "Powerful as the Nation." All photos in this post are clickable thumbnails and enlarge nicely.

Last October my friend Barry Wolk from Michigan, asked me if I would take a look at a car for him. It was located in nearby Deep River, Connecticut, and was a one family-owned 1933 automobile, a Continental Flyer sedan. What I found was not to be believed, outstanding in almost every way for a 77-year old manufactured item.

Now right off the bat, it's not a Lincoln Continental, it has no affiliation with Lincoln whatsoever. It was built by the Continental Motors Company, and was produced in Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan, in 1933 and 1934, The Continental was an offshoot of the DeVaux automobile, and was available in a 4-cylinder Beacon, a 6-cylinder Flyer and a slightly larger 6-cylinder Ace. Less than 4,500 were produced in those two years. The Flyer sedan I looked at in Deep River, which Barry bought shortly afterwards, has to be the best one in existence today. It was owned by one family from new, had been garaged and cared for by a very meticulous man, an engineer of sorts that kept the car in immaculate condition and spent years improving some of the mechanical parts, and was passed down to his equally fastidious and caring son in the 1960s. When Barry asked me to go take a look at it, he told me it was in good condition, but I had no idea it was going to look the way it did. It was truly a time warp. 

And since he has owned it, Barry has been bringing every single piece of it back to like-new, or better, condition. Barry is a collector of art and cars, and his "Continental Collection" includes Lincoln Continentals, a Continental Mark II convertible, a Mark III convertible, a mid-fifties Chris-Craft Continental motorboat, a '55 Porsche Continental cabriolet and now, this 1933 Continental Flyer sedan. For much more about Barry's collection, click here. For a piece of art I've created for Barry, click here.

Kit Foster, a renowned freelance writer in the automotive history world, has blogged about the '33-'34 Continental automobile before. For his piece on this car, click here. 

Hemmings Motor News' Daniel Strohl, has written about Continental Motors and the Continental cars, here. And for a bit more about the DeVaux automobile, the predecessor to this Continental, click here. 

Now, let's get to the good part, lol, the photos!  These were taken in Connecticut the day I saw the car. I sent these to Barry, and he made his decision. He writes that the car is REALLY shiny now, and the mechanicals have been given a thorough going over as well. Keep in mind this 77-year old car is almost all original, although the upholstery was redone at some time in the past.

The odometer shows just slightly more than 50,000 original miles! I've helped Barry with the typography to restore the center gauge, which is for gas level and engine temperature.

The famed Continental "Red Seal" engine, versions of which powered some of the most revered cars of the 1920s and '30s.

The original brochure.

For more photos of this outstanding automobile, click "Read More" and jump to the next page.

"Independents" Day: More Photos from the '80s

Continuing my series of vintage cars I photographed in the early 1980s, today I present three manufacturers among the last of the domestic "Independents," Packard, Studebaker and Hudson. Pictured in canary yellow and black is a 1956 Clipper sedan by Packard, the last year that Packard sold cars using its own bodyshells. Clipper was now its own division, although it was clearly a junior Packard. I'm sure most people didn't understand, or appreciate, this difference, as the Clipper nameplate had been used by Packard since the early 1940s. There is a long, sad story of Packard's last days, first being bought by Studebaker and eventually dropped after building badge-engineered Studes for '57 and '58, but I won't go into it now. The last "true" Packards, the '55s and '56s were magnificent cars, whether they were the juniors, the Clippers,  or the seniors, the 400s, Patricians and Caribbeans.

The '56 Packards featured push-button automatic transmissions, visible through the steering wheel, just under the radio. Notice the divided leather front seats; even a bottom-of-the-range Packard was a quality automobile.

The "Clipper" script on the front of the hood is one of the most distinctive uses of typography on a mid-century automobile. Stretching seven connected letters across almost the width of the car was gutsy, artistic and dramatic. The Clipper's "ship's wheel" logo is centered in the grille below it, and the bow-shaped grille itself, a modern interpretation of Packard's classic "yoke" radiator shape.

Many, many times in its long and storied history, Studebaker fielded dramatic and elegantly styled cars. This is the rear window of a 1937 Dictator business coupe. Art Deco meets Streamline styling and equals distinction and presence in spades.

Another Studebaker coupe that blew the competition into the weeds in 1947: "The first by far with a post war car!" proclaimed the company's advertisements. This wraparound rear window of the Starlight coupe was the exclamation point for the entire lineup of futuristic automobiles designed primarily by Virgil Exner, though credited to Raymond Loewy at the time as it was his name on the design firm's letterhead and in the newspapers. There was nothing like it then, or now.

The Hudson Italia, a halo car built for Hudson by an Italian firm named Touring. This was a compact "personal luxury coupe" a good ten years ahead of its time. Only 25 examples of this car were built, all in the same cream exterior with red and white leather interior as this car was. Click on the links in this caption to read more about this fascinating automaker.

The red-and-white leather bucket seats included lumbar supports, and the interior boasted flow-through ventilation, creature comforts ahead of their time. Also visible in this view are the aircraft-inspired door openings cut high into the low roof for ease of entrance. I don't seem to have gotten a shot of the car's most interesting design detail—the taillights were housed in three individual chrome "tubes"  on the rear sides of the car, looking for all the world like jet exhausts. Many manufacturers seized upon the postwar jets' styling cues, notably DeSoto and Mercury, but none as stunningly as Hudson on their Italia.

As with all of the images in this old car show series, these photographs were taken with black-and-white film and have been colorized in a whimsical manner using Photoshop; all are clickable to enlarge.

Photos from a 1980 Car Show, Part 8

Early 1930s Auburn Speedster—flowing grace sculpture from the hood mascot to the boat tail. Click on images to enlarge.

1934 Chevrolet eagle hood ornament, left; 1952 Dodge, right—what else but a ram?

1954 Studebaker 's European-inspired sleek front hood and grilles. The V8 logo is highly stylized, like the best of Raymond Loewy's work. Yes, that's me reflected in the chrome bumper.

Talk about inspired typography! The V-12 badge from Lincoln's 1937 K series.

What else could this Art Deco style hood ornament be on but a Duesenberg? 

An early Thirties Pierce-Arrow hood ornament, left; Packard's late Twenties, right.