THE GLORY DAYS OF THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE
The American automotive industry has a clouded future, but a very bright past. That glorious history is evident in several magazines that have just arrived in the MagSampler.com newsstand.
We carry three titles from Auto Round-Up Publications in Jane Lew, West Virginia (be careful, this can get confusing): the biweekly Auto Round-Up Magazine and its companion monthlies, Truck Round-Up Magazine and Auto/Truck Round-Up Monthly. We'll get to the fourth magazine, Antique Automobile, a little later.
All three Round-Up magazines use newsprint stock. They are filled with ads for cars, trucks, motorcycles and a great miscellany of automotive paraphernalia. These are national magazines, so the ads are not for people looking for an old Honda Civic to use to drive to the train station every morning. The cars being offered (and being sought) are classics, antiques, muscle cars and street rods, or at least the shells that can be turned into something very special. Almost all the ads are illustrated, some in color.
Looking through the recent issue of Auto/Truck Round-Up that's come into the newsstand, I find a 1940 Chevy coupe in Mankato, Kansas, "barn fresh" (I love that!), needs restoration, $5,000 or best offer. A few pages later, an ad from Mountain Home, Arkansas offers my very first car, a 1976 AMC Pacer. As expected, it's described as "not running," but for just $995 you can get it―and another Pacer thrown in for free!
On page 23 there's an ultra-cool 1931 Ford Model A street rod, gussied up with automatic transmission, rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, tilt steering wheel and CD player, just $34,800. Maybe that's what Ford should be making today.
You'll find all sorts of great stuff for sale in these magazines: collections of state license plates covering many decades, old gas station signs, even old gas pumps. There are also listings for hundreds of automotive events throughout the country.
We've also received the January/February issue of Antique Automobile, the classy bimonthly published by the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA). These are serious people writing about their collections of serious autos. In this issue alone you'll find articles about a 1904 Oldsmobile, 1961 Ford Starliner, 1956 Divco Model 13 (that's your classic milk delivery truck from "Leave It to Beaver" days), 1972 Triumph TR-6 and 1940 Nash Ambassador Eight, among others. All the articles are nicely illustrated in color, and many discuss the finer points of restoration and maintenance.
What blew me away was the cover of the issue, which we've placed in our Web site's gallery of covers that have caught my eye for one reason or another. This automotive mastiff is one of a dozen General Motors Futurliners, streamlined trucks created in 1940 and refurbished in 1952 to tote around the latest technological marvels for exhibit at GM's "Parade of Progress" in various cities throughout the country. The company continued the exhibitions into the mid-1950s, but interest in them gradually died out—the victim, ironically, of one of those futuristic marvels the Futurliners had been carrying around for a decade: television!
In the cover article, AACA member and long-time GM employee Don Mayton writes of how he discovered one of the nine surviving Futurliners in 1998, at an automotive museum in Indiana. It was in a sad state of decay, but Mayton was able to borrow it with the promise of restoring it to glory.
The article is about how members of the organization—with significant help from General Motors—accomplished that restoration.
In the news notes column early in the issue, you'll find a reprint of a delightful 1907 ad for dog goggles. Remember, they didn't have windshields in those days!
You can get sample copies of any of these publications from us for $2.59. Add $2.00 per order for postage.
We carry three titles from Auto Round-Up Publications in Jane Lew, West Virginia (be careful, this can get confusing): the biweekly Auto Round-Up Magazine and its companion monthlies, Truck Round-Up Magazine and Auto/Truck Round-Up Monthly. We'll get to the fourth magazine, Antique Automobile, a little later.
All three Round-Up magazines use newsprint stock. They are filled with ads for cars, trucks, motorcycles and a great miscellany of automotive paraphernalia. These are national magazines, so the ads are not for people looking for an old Honda Civic to use to drive to the train station every morning. The cars being offered (and being sought) are classics, antiques, muscle cars and street rods, or at least the shells that can be turned into something very special. Almost all the ads are illustrated, some in color.
Looking through the recent issue of Auto/Truck Round-Up that's come into the newsstand, I find a 1940 Chevy coupe in Mankato, Kansas, "barn fresh" (I love that!), needs restoration, $5,000 or best offer. A few pages later, an ad from Mountain Home, Arkansas offers my very first car, a 1976 AMC Pacer. As expected, it's described as "not running," but for just $995 you can get it―and another Pacer thrown in for free!
On page 23 there's an ultra-cool 1931 Ford Model A street rod, gussied up with automatic transmission, rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, tilt steering wheel and CD player, just $34,800. Maybe that's what Ford should be making today.
You'll find all sorts of great stuff for sale in these magazines: collections of state license plates covering many decades, old gas station signs, even old gas pumps. There are also listings for hundreds of automotive events throughout the country.
We've also received the January/February issue of Antique Automobile, the classy bimonthly published by the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA). These are serious people writing about their collections of serious autos. In this issue alone you'll find articles about a 1904 Oldsmobile, 1961 Ford Starliner, 1956 Divco Model 13 (that's your classic milk delivery truck from "Leave It to Beaver" days), 1972 Triumph TR-6 and 1940 Nash Ambassador Eight, among others. All the articles are nicely illustrated in color, and many discuss the finer points of restoration and maintenance.
What blew me away was the cover of the issue, which we've placed in our Web site's gallery of covers that have caught my eye for one reason or another. This automotive mastiff is one of a dozen General Motors Futurliners, streamlined trucks created in 1940 and refurbished in 1952 to tote around the latest technological marvels for exhibit at GM's "Parade of Progress" in various cities throughout the country. The company continued the exhibitions into the mid-1950s, but interest in them gradually died out—the victim, ironically, of one of those futuristic marvels the Futurliners had been carrying around for a decade: television!
In the cover article, AACA member and long-time GM employee Don Mayton writes of how he discovered one of the nine surviving Futurliners in 1998, at an automotive museum in Indiana. It was in a sad state of decay, but Mayton was able to borrow it with the promise of restoring it to glory.
The article is about how members of the organization—with significant help from General Motors—accomplished that restoration.
In the news notes column early in the issue, you'll find a reprint of a delightful 1907 ad for dog goggles. Remember, they didn't have windshields in those days!
You can get sample copies of any of these publications from us for $2.59. Add $2.00 per order for postage.
Labels: Antique Automobile, auto magazines, Auto Round-Up
posted by Ed Rust | 12:43 AM
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