1980 Mercedes Benz 240D

 

The 240D was the Euro-taxi of choice for a generation. This one is on the block at Hemmings. We have posted lots of these hardy cars---one in Lowell, Mass. a couple months back, and that post has links to a bunch of others. Autoliterate, by the way, is getting upwards of 6000 viewers a day, and anything you can do to help spread the word more widely is appreciated. I tell people the blog is about exploring the aesthetics of the ordinary, & paying attention to vernacular everything--i.e., I try to sound hi-falutin', but as you know, we are 75% about old trucks

c.1960 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud

From Reid Cunningham: "We were attending a concert in New London NH, which is right by Sunapee Lake, and this was parked on the street across from the venue.  Likely another attendee thought it fine transportation for an evening out.  Very well-kept, and lovely even up close–but meant to be a driver, with its regular NH registration.  No antique plates for this beauty.  It's not the usual work truck I send, but if you like old cars it would be near impossible to not appreciate the fine lines and preservation. "
  

Rivers of Morning in America

 

Rivers of Morning in America

There was beauty in America and I found it.

Everything was free: the deer, the libraries, lunch.

It was a hitched ride with the fire chief, this free

and fine America, there sailor who gave me a ticket

for a Cessna flight up the coast at dawn

the rocks brimming out of the salt blue

like knuckles ruddy with victory-

and the Cessna bounced with every invisible

pothole, every clump of air we hit and the man

next to me read a book and below us

there were islands and mist spidering

like lifelines along the water, best suit blue.

This America a tiller in hand,

bearing away.

There were orchards, bears, rivers

of morning and dusk and rain

and pickups stopping to offer 

a lift as far as the fork in the road-

and there the tamarind-breasted 

warbler would peck at the night's harvest

of skittles junebugs, then the bright rain

and the dark black beauty of the woods.

I found beauty in America

where the daily boxscores told the tale 

of someone winning, and no one got shot

under the large American moon

that sang itself white in the April nights

as though it were made of light,

as though all lies were always

this pretty.

                                                           -Eva H.D., from her collection The Natural Hustle

                                                           More at tribes.org

1989 Volvo 780 Bertone

 

From Jonathan Welsh: This one was around during the heyday of those classic 240s that AL keeps spotting in Cambridge. Nice shape, but seems  a little too  fancy for a Volvo.

The Volvo 780 Bertone made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in 1985 and went on sale in Europe a year before arriving in the U.S. as a 1987 model. Production ran through the 1991 model  year. Volvo jointly produced the 780 with Italian design studio Bertone, which also collaborated in the development of the car's predecessor, the 262C..Both cars were meant to be luxury flagships for the Swedish company known more for safety than style at the time. This example turned up in San Pedro, California.

1975 Ford F-250. Brooklin, Maine.

 

Truck was a Vermont original. We caught it in Brooklin, Maine. Very low miles. Doesn't see any winter, despite the period snowplow.Originally a pickup, but nice job on the flatbed. We caught a c.1970 F-250 in Texas that mis mislabeled a '75. There was this '75 F-250 on the block at Hemmings a while back. And the photographer Jarrod McCabe stormed the Midwest in his 1971 F-250.

1940 Chevrolet pickup. Deer Isle, Maine

We caught Lee Levant's truck at the Deer Isle Country Club. Another Chevrolet truck, same era, in Arundel Maine a few years back. And how about the Swiss 1940 Chevrolet? And another 1940 Chevrolet, in midcoast Maine. They made. a lot of these trucks, and they hung around. Like this one in Saskatchewan. Going a little off-topic here but how about the 1940 Chevrolet woodie we caught in Santa Barbara...

Flamin' 52 Ford

 

From Stephen Hendrickson, in PA: "Flamin’ Ford at the hardware store.  I think from looking at different years on Goog that it  would be ‘52.  He spent all the $$ on the flames, the rest is peeling."

AL: we caught a '53 Ford Victoria in Portland ME, and a 1954 Ford Crestline asleep in a backyard in Roy, New Mexico.