While GM and Ford messed around with unconventional engine architectures and driveline layouts during the 1930s, Chrysler didn’t just sit on its thumbs. Indeed, under project manager Ken Lee, they built a pair of five-cylinder radial-engine front-wheel-drive cars that underwent about 200,000 miles of testing. One even received a well-constructed body designed just for the purpose. I won’t ask where they are now, though, for which reason you’ll discover in the article on the cars from SIA #10, April-May 1972.

Two articles appeared in SIA #50, April 1979, that dealt with the histories of unusual, essentially one-off body styles. First, W.E. Gosden chronicled Ben Ellerbeck’s “shiftable top,” or what we would today call the convertible hardtop, installed on a 1919 Hudson Super Six. Next, Keith Marvin delved into the story of the Cavalier, a car that was supposed to have been a sort of semi-kit, on which the customer could order four body styles. Of course, neither proved successful – one because it was ahead of its time, the other because, well, it sounded kind of dopey.

Thirty years ago, the old car hobby was different than it is today. Just how different? Take a gander at Michael M. Self’s article from SIA #50, April 1979, in which he argues for plucking less-desireable cars from junkyards in order to refurbish them and put them back on the road. Of course, these less-desireable cars are firmly considered collector cars nowadays. On the other hand, the more things change, the more things stay the same – his introductory paragraphs sound like a more innocent appeal against the travesty of cash for clunkers that we’re facing today.

Most men are content doing one thing and doing it well. Charles Kettering, however, did many things well and almost singlehandedly steered the American auto industry toward modernity: He refined the coil ignition system, he developed the electric self-starter, he pioneered fast-drying lacquer paint. Yet all his inventions and advancements came from the one thing he was content to do very well: research. Maurice Hendry told Boss Ket’s tale in SIA #51, June 1979.

When we last saw the Marmon V-12 HCM, it was headed to RM’s Meadow Brook auction in 2007, and RM had a decent writeup of the story of the prototype. Now we see that Frank Robinson Jr. wrote the HCM’s complete history in SIA #52, August 1979, and where RM focused more on the HCM’s tale of failed attempts to market it in Detroit, Robinson focused more on the car’s development and pioneering engineering.

Funny how history repeats itself. During the fuel crises of the 1970s, many automotive engineers latched on to turbochargers as a means of reducing weight and thus saving fuel while maintaining the power outputs we’re used to. During the fuel crisis of the last couple years, turbochargers suddenly became en vogue again. But as Jan P. Norbye wrote for SIA #53, October 1979, turbochargers have been around for much longer than that, mostly in planes, but also in diesel-powered trucks and automobiles of the 1960s.

Classic car enthusiasts know there was some sort of link between Packard and ZIS/ZIL – postwar ZIS-110s looked like near-perfect copies of pre-war Packards, as did later ZIL/Chaikas resemble later Packard Clippers. Or was there some sort of link? Griff Borgeson wrote on the topic in the pre-glasnost SIA #55, February 1980, and comes away with evidence, but no solid conclusions.

I have but one bone to pick with Keith Marvin’s article from SIA #56, April 1980: At the end, he argues that the day of the custom car was restricted only to the pre-Depression era. Not so at all, as the Internet has so solidly elucidated us over the last decade or so. One-off cars, both factory-built and eccentric-built, span automotive history, from the first horseless carriage to today. Still, Marvin highlights several unusual and noteworthy vehicles from a variety of sources.

By the way, anybody who’s been to Hershey the last few years has seen the 1936 White mentioned in the article. Are any of the others still around?

Frank Kurtis was – and still is – known for many things in the American high-performance world, thus our profile of him as a Hot Rod Hero in HMM #71. Less known accomplishments of his – but just as important as the others – were his sports cars, one of which we highlighted back in April. For SIA #83, October 1984, Richard Kelley wrote of another, built in 1939 for Bill Hughes. Its story didn’t end there, though – it ended up in Africa and would have probably been lost to time if it weren’t for a curious Frenchman. Kelley has the story.

While it was a stretch for Jan P. Norbye to suggest that, with the contemporary AMC Eagle exploring production four-wheel-drive passenger-car use on American roads, an avalanche of four-wheel-drive cars would soon be forthcoming, the purpose of his article in SIA #59, October 1980, was not to look forward. Instead, its brief history of four-wheel-drive cars – most of them built for racing – surveys everything from the Spyker of 1902 up through the Eagle, and includes some interesting tidbits that require a little more digging on our part (four-wheel-drive Mustangs? the 1972 GKN FFF Hemi-powered Ferguson four-wheel-drive car?).

In October 1980, the first wave of muscle car madness was still several years away, but the memory of those cars remained fresh in the minds of enthusiasts, who bemoaned what had come out of Detroit the prior several years. Jerry Heasley was one of those enthusiasts and spent some time behind the wheel of an all-original 1970 Mustang Boss 302 for his article on the car in SIA #59.

The Gaylord, when mentioned nowadays, draws a lot of criticism for its, um, quirky looks. (It’s a Brooks Stevens design – what’d you expect?) Most people trot out the big-headlamp prototype, yuk it up, and move on. But after reading Richard Langworth’s history and description of the Gaylord in SIA #61, February 1981, you realize that it was actually a well-engineered car, not simply some crackpot’s automotive fantasy, and it was actually at one point headed toward production.

After owning his 1967 Camaro for 31 years and writing a book about Camaros, Lamm felt there was nothing left for the car to teach him. So in 2000, he sold it along with his Hudson and two Panteras and began buying cars he could learn from. Text and photos copyright Michael Lamm 2012

I’d like to veer slightly off course in this chapter and talk about the car hobby in general. I’ve been involved with it for upwards of 60 years now, and it’s changed quite a bit during that time. I’m not sure you can even call it a hobby anymore.

In my case, I got into it in three distinct stages of automotive involvement. Stage One was my teen interest in hot rods. That gave way to Stage Two, an equal fascination with classic cars and older crocks. And finally, Stage Three got me hooked on the appeal of sports cars and exotics.

I once had a discussion with the late Bill Harrah, and he told me that his own interest in cars evolved through those same three stages. I’m not saying everyone who’s interested in cars shared or shares that evolution, but I do think it’s a fairly common path.

And I should add that we don’t necessarily abandon one stage as we enter another. I’m still very much taken with hot rods and custom cars. I regularly go to and enjoy Billetproof and Goodguys meets. I’m also still enthralled with classics and older automobiles, and I serve on the board of a local concours. Finally, from Stage Three, I currently own a couple of sports cars that I love dearly, and I’ve owned exotics in the past. So in the end, all three stages seem to get scrambled together. Which I consider a good thing.

But the question remains, Why this fascination with cars at all? Why do we feel so strongly that we absolutely must have certain cars and yet could care less about others? What motivates us in the deepest, most basic recesses of our automotive lust?

I can speak only for myself, but I noticed years ago that in my situation, I’ll choose a car for one or a combination of the following four reasons (please forgive all this numerology).

Reason One: The car is fun to drive. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be powerful or high-performance. Or expensive. I’ve had just as much fun tooling around in VW Beetles and Miatas as driving Panteras, Trans Ams and GTOs.

Reason Two: The car is beautiful. I’ve bought a number of cars so I could have the simple pleasure of staring at them. My 1953 Studebaker Loewy coupe comes to mind. It wasn’t actually much of a car even new in 1953, but I’d park it in our driveway, bring out a garden chair and just sit there. What a gorgeous car! Another example is the 1964 Jaguar E-Type that I own currently. The XKE is a wonderful car in many other ways – performance, handling, engineering, history – but what still takes my breath away is the sheer beauty of it. The car’s a work of art, and that’s the main reason I’ve always wanted one.

Reason Three: It needs me. There are cars I buy to save them from oblivion. If I don’t rescue them, no one else will. I’ve had that motivation from the very beginning, and I still do.

Reason Four: I can learn from it. That’s become more important as I’ve gotten older. I’ve bought a number of cars, especially recently, because I know they’ll teach me something I hadn’t known before. The cars might be interesting mechanically or have an interesting history. And I’ve gotten rid of cars because I’ve owned them so long that I know all about them. They can’t teach me anything new.

Lamm had worked on Hudsons for years, so he deemed this another non-teacher that had to go.

The Big Sell-Off
Back in the year 2000, I owned four cars: a 1967 Camaro RS convertible, a 1951 Hudson Hornet sedan and two Panteras. I bought the Camaro in January 1969 as a reward for stopping smoking. For the first 10 years it served as my everyday driver. After that it lived in semi-retirement in our back garages. The Hudson I’d owned for 10 years, one of the Panteras for 17 years and the other for 11. So there was virtually nothing I didn’t know about all four cars, mechanically and otherwise.

Every month, rain or shine, I’d start all four, take each one out for an extended run in the country, bring it back, fix whatever wasn’t quite right (and there was always something), then put it back in its respective garage. So one day it dawned on me: Who owns what? Did I own these cars or did they own me? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they owned me – not only that, but I wasn’t learning anything from them.

So in 2000, I decided to sell all four cars and then, after that, I’d buy one car at a time – something new to me – keep it for six months or so, learn what I could from it, and then sell it again. Whether I made or lost money wasn’t important – the important thing was for these cars to teach me something about themselves; something I couldn’t know otherwise.

Well, that actually worked pretty well for several years. I bought and sold a number of interesting cars, and I did learn from them. Among my teachers (not necessarily in order) were a 1963 Studebaker Avanti, 1946 Jaguar Mark IV, 1987 Renault Alliance, 1950 Jaguar Mark V, 1980 Porsche 928, 1972 Alfa Romeo Montreal, 1964 Corvair convertible, 1964 Honda S600 roadster and a 2001 Porsche Boxster S.

In 2004, though, I hit a snag. I bought my XKE that year, and I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to sell it again, ever. The XKE is a keeper. And apparently so is my Boxster. I was going to sell the Boxster after learning from it, but it’s been such a delightful car, with such a strong personality and so many good qualities, that so far I haven’t been able to let it go. I’ve bought other cars alongside those two, but I haven’t gone back to the static four I used to have.

Mike has owned four Panteras, one reason being that they’re fairly easy to work on. Again, he wasn’t learning anything new, so he sold his last two in 2000. More about his Panteras in a future chapter.

Now, I’d like to explain what I’m talking about when I expect a car to teach me something. The whole thing goes back to the Model A Fords I owned as a teenager. The Model A, early on, became a window for me into what Henry Ford was thinking when he signed off on the car back in 1927. In my tinkering with Model As, it became clear that Henry Ford’s goal was to manufacture the simplest, easiest-to-work-on, most rugged, longest-lasting car he possibly could, and he succeeded marvelously. (Other, similar windows into his working philosophy would be the Model T and Ford’s early V-8s.)

In other words, I got the message from the Model As I owned that the history of those cars had a lot more to do with the man who engineered and built them than it did the mechanical changes or body styles or the other details so many Model A histories talk about. The history of a car, I finally decided, wasn’t the history of the car so much as the history of the man or men who engineered, designed and sold it.

So yes, Model A history had everything to do with Henry. I’m not saying Henry engineered and built the Model A all by himself, but he must have been a lot like Steve Jobs, because everything had to filter through him personally. He applied very high, rigid standards, and everything had to be right in Ford’s mind before he’d release a part or the entire car for production.

So as I began to acquire more cars, I’d use them, like the Model As, as windows to try to fathom the men and institutions that brought them into being. Because mine had always been a Hudson family, my next curiosity had to do with the men and women who created the history of Hudson. As a teen, I would speculate and wonder what it must be like in Detroit and who the people were who decided on a new instrument panel for the 1951 Hudson, for example, or a new 7X Hornet engine for racing.

Then, as an adult writing about cars and their histories, I had the opportunity to actually talk to some of those people and ask them specifically about their decisions – personal decisions, company decisions, committee decisions in some cases, but decisions and nuances that had been hidden for all those years. The detective work began to fascinate me.

I made it a point to meet the late Frank Spring’s wife, Clara, in Los Angeles. Frank Spring had been Hudson’s vice president of styling from the early 1930s until 1954 – a fascinating man who’d studied engineering in France and who’d come to Hudson through coachbuilder Walter M. Murphy in Pasadena. Although Spring was not, in my opinion, a great designer or design manager, he did have a tremendous influence on the history of Hudson, as did his assistant, Art Kibiger, whom I also managed to track down and talk with.

I got a chance to interview Roy Chapin Jr., whose father had been one of the founders of the Hudson Motor Car Co. And once when I was flying back home from Detroit, my seatmate – by the most unlikely of coincidences – turned out to be Mildred Piggins, the wife of Vince Piggins, the man who’d been in charge of Hudson’s hugely successful 1950s factory racing program. Vince later held the same position at Chevrolet, starting in 1956, and I eventually wrote a profile about him for Road & Track.

As it became clear to me that specific cars could become windows into the creational history of a marque, I began to buy them partly for that reason. I figured I could enjoy not only the car itself but have fun learning about the men and women, the engineers and stylists who planned that specific car and put it together – and maybe not just that car but a whole series of cars from either side of that period. So the fun wasn’t just owning and driving that one example, it was knowing the circumstances and compromises and the flavor of the times when those cars came into being. For me, that aspect of the hobby opened up a whole new world.

This was in addition to working on my cars and seeing firsthand how they were put together. I’m not a great mechanic, but I’ve always been a good tinkerer, and I figure I can do about 80 percent of what needs to be done to repair or restore a car (excluding paint and bodywork). So there’s always been that learning aspect also.

One of the cars Mike bought since 2000 was a 1946 Jaguar saloon. This car had an aluminum, electrolyzed external water manifold, which he tried but failed to get repaired. Thanks to the internet, he finally found a new manifold in South Africa.

And then came another realization. Suddenly, in the late 1960s, when I was writing about collectible cars for magazines like Motor Trend and Car Life, I began to appreciate that as lovely and fascinating as the classics were, they really had very little to do with the greater history of the American auto industry. Duesenbergs, Pierce-Arrows, Stutzes, senior Packards and 16-cylinder Cadillacs influenced the industry almost not at all.

Instead, the cars that truly shaped mainstream automotive history were the bread-and-butter makes: Fords, Chevrolets, Plymouths, Dodges, Willys, Nashes, Hudsons, Studebakers, etc. That’s where most of the important innovations in the American industry really took place, many of them invisible to the public and unheralded in the press; advances in metallurgy, electronics, fabrics, adhesives, paints and assembly methods. Overhead cams and hemispherical combustion chambers were easy; those hidden improvements that make today’s cars so unbelievably durable, reliable and competent were tougher to pull off.

The Inspiration for SIA
That led me to the thought that there might be a market for an old-car magazine that wasn’t devoted to the high-end classics nor to vintage racing. Instead, it would delve into the role of ordinary older cars and their effects on the history of the American auto industry – the bread-and-butters, so to speak.

Which in turn led, in 1970, to the birth of Special Interest Autos magazine. I don’t want to go into that topic now except to say that I took the name from the phrase that Bob Gottlieb coined in his Motor Trend column. I might talk about SIA in a future chapter, but for now I’m still dissecting the “hobby.”

I questioned at the beginning of this little diatribe whether car collecting is even a hobby anymore. For some, I suppose it is, but it’s gotten all mixed up with big business. In my opinion, today’s automotive scene is much more commerce than pastime, more corporate than grassroots. I’m not sure that’s all bad, but it certainly is different from the innocent days of my youth, when the discards of the 1930s became the prides and joys of kids like Martin Swig and me. We just wanted to rescue mongrels from the back rows of used-car lots and make them more like they’d been in their glory days.

Lamm bought his E-Type in 2004 – one of the cars he’d lusted after for decades. He says he loves to sit and just look at it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve managed to turn my hobby into a livelihood. It’s not that I’ve made a lot of money buying and selling cars; in fact, I’d be surprised if I’ve broken even over the years. But the hobby’s been good to me in another way: I get paid for writing articles and publishing magazines and books about automobiles, so I’ve definitely commercialized my longstanding fascination with cars.

But here’s a short list of the major scene shifts (as I see them) between the hallowed “good-old days” of my innocent youth and now. I don’t mean this list as an accusation, and I don’t mean to tick anyone off, but I think it’s something that needs to be said. So here’s what I see as different between then and now:

-Today, auctions dominate the hobby.
-Today, we have auto magazines whose principal advertisers are auction companies and car dealers.
-Today, some restoration shops restore cars to prepare them for auction.
-Today, what would have been considered cosmetic over-restoration 20 years ago has become the norm. I say “cosmetic,” because the same often doesn’t apply to mechanical restoration.
-Today, auto museums and other non-profits buy, sell and broker deals on collector cars of all types, from hot rods to classics, race cars and exotics.

And as a sort of summing up, I can remember a day when most of the ads in Hemmings Motor News were put there by private individuals. Today, most of the ads are placed by dealers and auction companies. I’m not saying that’s the fault of Hemmings; it’s simply where the ads are coming from. It’s a reflection of how the hobby now works.

I’m sure I’ll hear from some people and institutions whose hackles I’ve raised. As I say, I truly haven’t meant to offend anyone, and yet I suspect I have, if only because I’m not diplomatic in expressing my views.

Obviously, we’ve come a long way in the 60-plus years that I’ve been watching the old-car hobby/business. I’d be interested in hearing other views; yours, for instance. And the question remains: Would anyone care to venture a guess about where we (that is, the hobby) might be headed in either the near or distant future?

Michael Lamm grew up in South Texas. He has always loved cars and, after graduating from Columbia University in New York in 1959, took a job as editor of Foreign Car Guide, a magazine about VWs. In the mid 1960s, Mike became managing editor of Motor Trend and, in 1970, he co-founded Special-Interest Autos magazine in partnership with Hemmings Motor News. In 1978, Mike began to publish his own line of automotive books. For more information, go to www.LammMorada.com.

If you’ve been paying attention to the SIA Flashbacks, you’ll have noticed by now that we’ve been creeping up on the last couple of issues in the magazine’s 30-plus year run, #200 and #201. Because we media types never like to let an opportunity for celebrating an anniversary (particularly one of ours) pass, issue #200 featured this five-page spread of covers past, showing how graphic design and what we consider collectible have evolved over time.

Not only does this post mark the last SIA Flashback for the year, it also marks the last of the series, with a look at Arch Brown and Bud Juneau’s article on the 1958 Pontiac Bonneville from SIA #201, June 2004, the last issue of the magazine before it became Hemmings Classic Car. Over the last several years, we’ve taken a little time out of our Sunday mornings (and yours too) to hit at least one or two stories from every issue of the 30-plus-year run of Special Interest Autos, and in that short time we’ve charted the progress of the magazine and shared many one-of-a-kind stories and histories of some of the oddest vehicles ever built. (All of the flashbacks can be seen here.) Check in with us next week for an entirely new weekly feature.