1962 Chevrolet C-10, Los Angeles

 

Becky Jean Smith caught this truck somewhere on the West Side.

1985 El Camino, Virginia

From Matthew Sheehey: "The El Camino from the 80s brightened my spirits during a visit to Anita's in Springfield, VA. Famous for breakfast tacos, but the nighttime food is also very good, especially the pork tamales."

AL: some El Caminos we have known, like this 1970 El Camino SS,  and the 1959 Cat's Eye El Camino. A plainjane 1969 El Camino in West Texas, and another '69 in Ventura. A 1960 El Camino at a paint shop in Reno. And out personal favorite, the 1960 El Camino bought at Greene Avenue Lunch & Soda for $3 (CDN)

Ford Maverick truck

 

Below is from Dan Neil's Rumble Seat review of the new Ford Maverick pickup, in WSJ Weekend. Sounds as if Ford is finally trying to restore a wheelbarrow truck to an honored place in the US truck line-up. Buyers are clamoring for the Maverick. Given that this is FoMoCo, a brutally mismanaged company lately, it's hardly a surprise that the big problem with the Maverick is that they don't have any to sell at the moment. Oops. 

AL only wishes that Ford was willing to produce the little-ish truck in a true wheelbarrow edition, losing the yippee-yi-yo nomenclature (Lariat, Maverick--hell, call it the Wheelbarrow) and the club cab, and maybe stitching on a longbed. 

Here's Dan: 

"The few days  I spent in the company of Ford's new Maverick Lariat Tremor compact pickup ($37,465, as tested) left me with questions. Are those “Tremor” graphics on the bedsides an optional delete, I wondered? If not, can they be gently removed? Because I’m not 12 years old.

"Second, with respect, why the hell aren’t more of your pickups like the Maverick—affordable, approachable, applicable, and that’s just the As? The Maverick with the Tremor package is a little knucklehead, a daily delight, as perky and over-performing as a Jack Russell Terrier that got into the freeze-dried coffee. Powered by a not-overly refined turbocharged 2.0-liter four (250 hp) and eight-speed automatic transmission, the Tremor Off-Road Package ($2,995) adds a sophisticated all-wheel drive system with a torque-vectoring rear differential, running modified code from the retired Focus RS.
"Pictures fail to convey the weeness. With four front-hinge doors and seating for five, the Maverick measures 31 inches shorter and 9.8 inches lower than the F-150 Tremor SuperCrew with 5.5-foot cargo box. It’s not even a midsize, to be cross-shopped against the Toyota Tacoma, Chevy Colorado, Honda Ridgeline or Ford’s own Ranger. The Maverick is a true compact, 10 inches shorter between the bumpers than a Ranger SuperCrew with 5-foot bed..."

Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor

 

From Reid Cunningham, in the student parking lot at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio.  "A while back there had been a discussion of Crown Victoria service cars.  I ran across this decommissioned Police Interceptor version, still retaining a fantastic front push guard.  It brought back memories of high school.  My friend Doug bought a former state police 1974 Ford LTD police cruiser at the state auction.  It had a police interceptor 460, which no one in their right mind should give to a teenager, but there we were."  

AL: See Martin Gotfrit's AL piece on the Crown Vic and his father. And in my Montreal, police rides could be a little different...how about a Renault 10?  And here's a Montreal Police Service Dodge Polara.  Plymouth Fury I was the standard issue NYPD car of that era. And another Montreal Police ride, c. 1940

Jeep Comanche 4x4 pickup

 

From Markus Anstadt: "Interesting find on the streets of Denver. The Jeep Comanche edition produced from 1986-1992. This particular model was AWD with a 4 liter, inline 6 cylinder engine. This was the top of the line variant. Pretty rare in any form today."

We posted a Comanche pickup in NH last summer, at the same time noting a book on the Comanche Empire.

California Dreaming Jaguar

Okay, it's February, I'm in a coffeeshop on Tremont Street beside Boston Common, it's been alternating freezing rain & snow since last night, the world is grey slush, and I used to live in Santa Barbara. Where Vincent Stanley sent this photo from (Montecito, actually--Shoreline Drive). I used to dislike February out there. Blue sky and 72 was so boring. 

Vincent does report snow at +1000' elevations in Southern Cal yesterday. Speaking of felines, we posted this 1962 Jaguar Mk2 a while back. And this 1949 XK 120.

Ram SWB

A contemporary truck without a crewcab and the other ungainly add-ons; a truck without braggadocio, faux-machismo, or a series/edition moniker out of the manly West (Laramie, Silverado, Telluride, Texas Adition, Santa Fe, etc ) is a rare sight. We were glad to catch Devta Doolin's on a winter day in Blue Hill, Maine.

X. J. Kennedy poem, "Cross Ties"

Cross Ties

Out walking ties left over from a track
Where nothing travels now but rust and grass,
I half-believe in something that would pass
Growing to hurtle from behind my back
And when the night wind slams by, give a start:
Out of its mass the disembodied wail
Of a far night-shift like a bag of mail
Is flung. Moon looms, her headbeam rips apart
A cloud and strews it. Wings thrash: down to strafe
The crouched grass drops a mousehawk. There’s a screech
As steel stretched taut till severed. Out of reach
Or else beneath desiring, I go safe,
Walk on, tensed for a leap, unreconciled
To a dark void all kindness.
                                                                         When I spill
The salt I throw the Devil some and, still,
I let them sprinkle water on my child.

                                                              -X. J. Kennedy

From Paris Review issue no. 31 (Winter–Spring 1964)
Thanks to Eva H.D. for the heads-up 

1974 Volkswagen Sun Bug

The Sun Bug was a Special Edition VW on the market for 1974 ..."special gold paint, a special badge on the rear, black body side graphics, unique shift knob, and even a rosewood dash. The brochure reads 'let a little sunshine into your life.' ” Henry Behrens caught this one (above) on the plaza at Harvard. The Sun Bug convertible below sold for $33k at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Las Vegas last summer.

Ineos Grenadier

 

Dan Neill of the WSJ, who writes about cars and trucks. is Basha's favorite writer, period. This from his review of the fancy-pants 2023 Ineos Grenadier after driving the thing around Scotland.

"...Then they said something that, had I not been sitting down, would have blown my kilt over my head like Marilyn Monroe’s dress. In the U.K., the base model starts at 49,000 GBP—about $60,000. The schoolboy-fantasy Fieldmaster I was using for the day retails for 73,000 GBP, or $87,700 in real money. The company stresses that U.S. prices have not been set, but anything close to those numbers is practically grand-theft auto.
How? I wondered impertinently—and still do. How could this beyond-niche start-up, with manufacturing in France, compete on price with mass-market off-roaders like Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, Ford Bronco and even the current Defender? Where the hell is the margin? I’m sorry. Did I just shout that out loud?"

Chevrolet 3100, Carrabassett Valley, Maine

 

Caught by Henry Behrens, on the road to Sugarloaf

Mystic Cobra

 

Thanks to DC Denison for the heads-up on this....

Open in app or online

The Mystic Cobra Edition

On Ford Mustangs, prismatic platelets, and government agents.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR FEB 15 ∙ GUEST POST

SAVE ▷  LISTEN

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a product designer at Ford and a longstanding friend of WITI. He has previously written about the end of spare parts, the simple elegance of SecuriCode, and how to start your own town. He has never owned a gray car. Well, one—but he was young.

(photo copyright Ford)

Ryan here. If you were running a body shop in the mid-1990s, there was one car that might have given you pause if it showed up on the back of a truck for a respray: The 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra, in a color called Mystic. First, the car would have looked purple, black, green, or even gold, depending on how the light hit it—meaning you had to be very precise in technique to get a perfect blending. Second, the paint itself was 40x more expensive than any other color you were spraying, meaning any waste or screw-ups would be deleterious to your business. Oh, and third: you would be watched the entire time by either a Ford employee, a BASF employee, an officer from the U.S. Treasury, or even the Secret Service. 

Why is this interesting?

Back in the early 1990s, BASF had patented a new pigment for inks and paints, which used a novel patented technology: Prism Platelets. Developed by a company called Flex Systems, these tiny lenses were suspended in a clear liquid pigment that could be sprayed or printed over existing colors. As the pigment dried, the tiny prisms would harden and line up to create a holographic foil that coated the base paint. 

The effect on light was like nothing else in the market at the time. While automakers and customizers had been playing with metallic flake and pearlescent paints for decades, nothing approaching a true holographic effect had been perfected, and certainly not at scale. BASF knew they were on to something special, so they decided to shop the pigment around. One of the doors they knocked on was Ford Motor Co. (disclaimer: my employer), which was interested in the new color technology for use on their storied Mustang brand. Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (SVT) had been cooking up a new Mustang Cobra, the highest-powered variant at the time, and this new pigment would ensure the car turned heads even when standing still.

But Ford needed some convincing, so they shipped BASF 2 black Mustang GTs to be painted in the new color, dubbed “Mystic”. After seeing the test cars, Ford ordered enough pigment to paint 2000 of the 7500 1996 SVT Cobras. The option cost $1,152.

When you see a Mystic Cobra for the first time, the color that your brain sees depends completely on both the lightning conditions and your angle to the car. There is actually no color in the pigment itself—it is simply millions of tiny prisms sitting atop a gloss black basecoat. But because your eye sees color by the wavelengths reflected back at it, the prisms break the reflected light into different wavelengths, hence different colors (this also makes it extremely difficult to photograph accurately).

(photo copyright Ford)

While the actual painting process is a simple tri-coat (Black base, Mystic pigment, clear coat on top), the sheer cost of the pigment meant that Ford had to pull the Cobras off the assembly line and paint all 1999 together, in order to minimize any waste in the process. Indeed, while an average pint of automotive single-stage paint costs about $20, Mystic was reported to cost 40 times that. Now you can see one of the reasons our hypothetical body shop employee might be sweating during a routine respray…

But what about the government oversight? See, Ford wasn’t the first door BASF knocked on with their revolutionary pigment. They first approached the U.S. Treasury Department about using the Prism Platelets in their printing process to create unique holographic inks on currency. The Treasury, always looking for a foothold against counterfeiters and in the midst of redesigning the $100 bill, began using the BASF pigment to create holographic “100”s that could not be duplicated by anybody else.

Unless, of course, they could get their hands on this elusive prismatic pigment—the same one Ford was now providing to body shops who needed to do paint repairs to the SVT Cobras. You couldn’t buy Mystic in a store—Ford maintained a repository of the paint specifically for body shops to use, and any resprays needed to be monitored by either Ford or BASF (and yes, even reportedly the Secret Service on some occasions) and all unused pigment needed to be bagged up and returned. The dried pigment wasn’t a risk, but any liquid leftover could have the platelets extracted and used in counterfeiting.

Sadly, Mystic vanished as quickly as it appeared. There were plans for a new, gold version for 2000, but a costly recall canceled the program. And while color-shifting paints and wraps would reappear on Mustangs and other cars, none would ever use that costly, secretive pigment again. (RMM)

1990 Dodge Ram Cummins Diesel

 

from Reid Cunningham: "I ran across this early 90's Dodge Pickup in Milford, NH.  By this point the Dodge pickups were really out of date, compared to the Fords and Chevrolet/GMC's, but the Cummins diesel kept them competitive.  The eventual replacement Dodge truck kicked off the competition for ever bigger and more garish pickups that we have today. The clearance lights are a real throwback to the 70's, but I really like them in this body style.  

AL: We have posted several Dodge trucks of the era, like this Power Ram in Maine. And the Ramcharger earlier this week. Here's a 1991 Power Ram.

c. 1969 Ford F-250 Camper Special

 

Markus Anstadt caught these on a snowy day in Denver. We posted another of these F-250 Camper Specials, on the block at Hemmings a while ago. Late Sixties was the era of the truck camper: here's a Dodge D-200 Camper Special we've posted.

Ford Ranger. Texas Chicken.

 

AL saw the truck just down the street from Harvard Business School. Texas plates. Long way from home. Long way from an inspection sticker. Feathers on the hood. There's some kind of road movie suggested here; misfortune and poultry perhaps are its themes. The chicken coop on the back lifts the Ranger out of, and perhaps beyond, our 'wheelbarrow truck' category. Did any chickens make the trip to Cambridge? (Allston, actually).

1987 Dodge Ramcharger

From Jonathan Welsh: " Ramcharger sightings are rare among the vintage SUVs. I see many more Ford Broncos and Chevy Blazers from the same era. This one has a few suspension mods but is not overdone. Plenty of patina. Looks like a 1987 or so. Columbia is one of several neat Pennsylvania towns on the old Lincoln Highway."

AL: Here's Joanne Kaufman's WSJ review of Amor Towles' novel, The Lincoln Highway. 

US 40 was/is another of the transcontinental routes predating the Eisenhower Interstate System. AL has posted several pieces on George R. Stewart's remarkable "US 40: Cross Section of the United States:

https://autoliterate.blogspot.com/2014/12/george-r-stewart-us-40-cross-section-of.html

https://autoliterate.blogspot.com/2015/04/us-40-cross-section-of-united-states-of.html

  

Joe's Body Shop

From Jonathan Welsh: "This nearly matched set of 30-series Chevrolets contributed to the back-in-time feel of Columbia, Pa., during a weekend trip. I estimate 1985 for the tow truck and around 1978 for the flatbed. I love the hand-painted doors."