Hudson Super Six pickup.

Caught the truck? at Motorland in Arundel, Maine.

1989 GMC 6500

from Reid Cunningham: This medium duty GMC (no later than 1990 but I couldn't do any better on year) looked to be a work companion to the Ford crew cab. 30+ year old trucks still earning their keep. Philadelphia PA. I am constantly amazed how many square body based medium duty Chevrolet and GMC trucks are still rolling.

Have Charger, No Phone

 

Plug an engine not an iPhone into a Charger.

Truck at Naskeag, NE 18 knots

 

Albert Vecerka: Photographing Harlem

See/read  more in Urban Omnibus. Or in John Leland's piece on Albert Vecerka in the NYT in 2015.

 

See ya later: Chevrolet's last V8

 

The Chevrolet Performance division has revealed the biggest and most-powerful naturally aspirated V8 engine it has ever built, even as General Motors accelerates its transition toward electric power.

from The Drive: "To start, the crankshaft and connecting rods are forged steel, and the pistons are forged aluminum. The tall-deck block itself is made from burly cast iron, and features four-bolt main caps similar to the 572 Big Block in the COPO Camaro. It's topped by aluminum heads with symmetrical ports, CNC-machined from the factory and designed to enable identical flow to every massive cylinder. For some context, a single cylinder in the ZZ632 is the same size as the entire engine in a top-trim Chevy Trailblazer. The fuel this engine uses is, as compared to everything else about it, very normal. It's regular 93 octane that you can get from most gas stations. It's injected electronically at the ports, as opposed to being spat into the cylinders via a direct injection system. Combine this fueling with 12.0:1 compression, a massive single plane intake manifold, and a 7000 rpm redline, and 1,004 horsepower seems very attainable indeed, as does the engine's 876 lb-ft torque figure. 

1949 GMC 3/4 ton

 

From Alex Emond in SW Saskatchewan "Here's "patina " for you . Depending on the decade, this truck was red , green , turquoise ... and rust . Narrow wheelbase compared to today's trucks. I saw this in Maple Creek

Popeye Doyle's New York: More Photos by Wayne Sorce

 

From Peggy Roalf's piece on Wayne Sorce in Design Arts Daily: To say that the photography of Wayne Sorce (1946-2015) flies under the radar is hyperbole. This master of color photography, who worked at a time when anything not black-and-white guaranteed exclusion from the discussion of “fine art photography,” embraced urban chaos as his métier—in extraordinarily measured views of Chicago and New York. Mainly taken during the late 1970s and early 1980s, these vibrant, large-scale prints came to view last fall when Joseph Bellows mounted a show in memoriam.
Engaging with the urban scene just when street photography began to enter the canon, Sorce eschewed the foundations of that trope: instead of sharp diagonals and close views being crammed tightly into the frame, his images are based on plain geometry and a highly measured—a studied—view. Although labeled “nostalgic" by others, to me these photographs are something else. Look closely and you’ll see exactly what it means to be observant; to wait until a shadow moves just a few more feet towards the front; what it takes to be patient enough to wait until figures crowding a street corner move along, leaving a few people who become metaphorical figures in the scene.

The Lincoln, rethought.

 

What a difference a couple of years can make! Was there ever a car more in need of transformation than the '59 Lincoln? And look what came out the other end. The '59 Lincoln Premiere is for sale at Hemmings. Early- and mid-Sixties Continentals seem to sell pretty quickly.

1961 Lincoln Continental convertible.

Frances Anne Hopkins

 At Autoliterate, we're interested in how people get around...

Hopkins, Frances Anne. Shooting the Rapids (at Lachine) 1879

from Painting With a Tent: 

Frances Anne Hopkins was the daughter of an artistic family,.Her father was a hydrographer in the Royal Navy. It’s not known whether she underwent any formal artistic training, but when she was twenty she married the secretary to the Governor-General of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which was much of the fur and other trade in central and northern Canada at the time. He was a widower, whose first wife had died of cholera. Following marriage, the family moved to Lachine, in what was then Lower Canada, now part of the city of Montreal, where her husband worked.

From her arrival there in 1858, Hopkins sketched and painted her unusual new life. In 1860, her husband was promoted to Superintendant of the company’s Montreal department. She was extremely busy, as a well-known hostess to business visitors and active in artistic circles in the city. She also had three children, and together with the three from her husband’s first marriage, domestic duties must have been demanding to say the least.

Hopkins wasn’t content as a housewife and hostess, though, and accompanied her husband on his business trips whenever possible. Between their arrival in 1858 and her husband’s retirement in 1870 she is known to have travelled with him on at least three major trips in 1864, 1866 and 1869 (for his farewell tour). These extended to Manitoulin Island, Lake Huron, and Kakabeka Falls, Lake Superior.

At that time, overland travel in those parts was still slow and unreliable. Hopkins became one of very few women to travel long distances by canoe, as a voyageur. She drew and sketched extensively during her trips, then developed those into more finished watercolours and oil paintings when she was in her studio at home. In 1869, during preparations for their departure from Canada, she exhibited many of her paintings in Montreal, becoming the first woman to do so.

Hopkins was even more successful when they had returned to Britain. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1869, and enjoyed greater commercial success in the British market over the following two decades. She continued to work in her studio in Hampstead, on the outskirts of London, turning her Canadian voyageur sketches into finished oil paintings, and reproductions in print. Her last work to be exhibited at the Royal Academy was in 1902, and she died in 1919, at the age of eighty-one.

Frances Anne Hopkins (1838–1919), Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall (Canada) (1869), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Frances Anne Hopkins (1838–1919), Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior (1869), oil on canvas, 121.9 x 68.6 cm, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Wikimedia Commons.

1953 Plymouth DeLuxe

 

From Alex Emond: "Early morning, Main Street, Shaunavon, Saskatchewan..Rounded, grounded and slightly pounded, this car brings a smile to my face. Maybe because it rolled off the assembly line the same year that I did. We both could use a new headliner. It's basically a baked potato on wheels. It has a push button radio which adds to the "DeLuxe" status. Hope somebody gives it a second chance ... the body, at least, is all there and solid."

AL: we posted sprightly '52 Plymouth Cranbrook a while back. And a 1954 Plymouth Savoy. A '53 Cranbrook. And check out Montreal's legendary million-mile 1964 Plymouth taxi.

Volvo 240 wagon on the block

 

This unit is on the block today at BaT. You know that, here at AL, we do tend to go on about the wonderfulness of Volvo wagons. There's our beloved 220k-mile 850, and then there are the workhorse 240 wagons still spotted every now and then on the streets of Cambridge MA. And then, in a class by itself, there's this P-210.

Birds of a Feather: 1966 and 1965 Ford Thunderbirds

AL found this '66 Bird in Blue Hill, Maine last week, and Alex Emond caught the '65 in Swift Current , Saskatchewan. And here's another T'bird (we called it a '66) posted from Arundel, Maine this summer. And a 1963 Thunderbird from the Bay Area.