Cars Reveal a Lot About Their Owner.

When someone says to me, "Boy, these new cars are sure ugly. When are they going to make cars like they used to?" my first inclination is to say, "From an engineering standpoint, I hope never."

Take my 1939 Ford 4 door convertible that I had in 1949. It was just like the one that Franklin D. Rosevelt rode in to his inaugeration. It had horsehide seats. We didn't know what Corinthian leather was. We never had a saddle on a Cornthia. Ford just advertised it plain and simple, "It's horsehide."

In order to get that car up to the acceptable styling standards of the day, I had to make a few modifications.

First thing I bought was a "suicide knob". It was a steering knob that clamped to the steering wheel so that you could slide around sharp corners on those country gravel roads with that power steering-less car, with one hand. Or while cruising downtown, you let your bent left arm hang out the window to showcase your bicep. As you cruised along you could see your reflection, bicep and all, in the plate glass windows of the store fronts.

After the steering knob, you had to have fender skirts. It gave your car that sleek and speedy look. It was great styling.

As to styling, I have always been against the baby shoes, foam dice or garters hanging from the rear view mirror. That's plain white-trash tacky. Same goes for the fox-tail, or anybody's underwear flying half-mast from the radio antennae.

A functional spark plug mounted four inches from the end of the tail pipe is a must. You will never be without one once you see that blue flame leap from the tail pipe when cruising after dark.

I didn't want my AM radio to have big loud speakers. They might drown out the sweet, rich, mellow tones of the gutted mufflers that was to die for.

In the heyday of my 1939 Ford 4 door convertible, heaven was idling down main street at five mile per hour, at dusk, and listening to those gutted mufflers "blurpty blurpting" back at me from the very buildings whose plate glass reflected the total image of driver and car.

Of course, the final touch, of which no car of the late forties would be complete without, was the ever popular "Wolf Whistle". The guy that could operate that vacuum marvel to perfection had his pick of female companions. And why not? What girl wasn't just dying to hop in the car with a strange guy that had that delicate touch to extract a raucous "Whoooee Wheeeoo" from a vacuum driven mechanical horn?

What more need a girl know about a guy? This was the kind of stuff from which Hollywood love stories were made.

Oh my!

Harold