(Updated 10/24/2026) Sometimes the algorithms on YouTube work in one’s favor. Among the site’s various suggestions recently was a clip from the delightful 1965 Walt Disney movie That Darn Cat. Curiosity prevailed, so diving down this fascinating rat hole yielded a couple of novel discoveries that tie into some recent CCs. Thank you, algorithms.
Enough yammering. As Disney said, “The way to get started is stop talking and begin doing.” So let’s go.
Poking around the little back streets and alleys of Springfield, Eugene’s sister city, I stumbled into a rather surprising find, which you see here as I first saw it: a 1958 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Limousine sporting a rather unexpected paint job. But then it was 1958, a time when folks were snapping up pink, green, blue and yellow kitchens and bathrooms. So while it may look a bit odd to our gray and stainless steel trained sensibilities, this was probably very chic in 1958. In some circles, anyway.
My week of Jeeping in the high Eastern Sierra with other Old Willys Forum members was absolutely splendid; I will treasure the memories of superb scenery, challenging rocks, steep climbs and new friendships made. But there were a couple of lows, both of which were failures of plastic engine parts, one on my van and one on the Jeep, an aftermarket accessory part as there’s no original plastic engine parts on a Willys Hurricane four.
That van issue almost kept me from getting to the event and the Jeep issue kept me from driving it on one of the days. But with a little help from my friends, both were fixed in camp and the Jeep took me to new heights, including to the summit of Mt. Patterson. And my Jeep wasn’t the only one that had mechanical issues.
2026 marks roughly 100 years of a feature most of us have long taken for granted: the car radio. This 1972 article from the long-defunct Special Interest Autos magazine explores the early days of automobile radios — beginning when just installing a radio might mean “literally tearing a car apart.” We offer the article here with some corrections, and an answer to the question, “Who was the first automaker to offer a radio option?”
(Updated 10/23/2026) Yawn. Another restored squarebird convertible in resale red. Aren’t there a couple of these at every car show? But I didn’t find this one at a car show. Instead, it was on a quiet neighborhood street, looking just a little rough around the edges. Sort of like an elegantly dressed lady who has somehow found herself in a low class bar. This car had an air of mystery about it, which is fitting because for its entire history, the Thunderbird has always had some mystery as part of its aura.
posted by Monsieur Burns
(Updated 10/23/2026) The Triumph 1300/1500 is one of the very rare historical oddities: designed and built as a FWD car for some years, then converted to RWD. Really. Let’s take a little look at how it started out in life, and just how and why it ended up as RWD, including as one of the more legendary hot cars on the other side of the pond, the Dolomite Sprint.
After the hat on a hat, putting a cherry on top and the cat on a hot tin roof, the new idiotic idiom for 2026 will be: strapping a canoe on your Rolls. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean either, be it figuratively or literally, but it does have a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about it, only I don’t know what it is.
Today’s time-traveling wheels take us back to the mid-century era, when Googie and Modernist influences had transformed roadside restaurants and diners into architectural attractions. It’s a destination we revisit every now and then, but how to avoid it? This was a time of futuristic flourishes and optimism, when clean-lined architecture met colorful, asymmetrical geometric shapes and bold neon signage built to catch the eyes of passing motorists from a distance.
Clearly, these are quintessential mid-century designs, from an era when cars played a central role in everyday life. Take your pick of these architectural time capsules, and park your time machine without a worry: parking was plentiful, and traffic was a whole lot lighter.
Classic Era locomotives notwithstanding, Cadillac’s peak probably landed somewhere in the 1955-1970 range, when their cars were so good that enthusiast publications almost had to apologize for the fact that they were mass produced rather than built in a shed somewhere by old-world craftsmen with nothing more sophisticated than a chisel and an awl. As with most things, Cadillac didn’t fall from grace immediately after this period, but rather started a slow decline probably around the time this gorgeous 1970 Calais was built. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at this one, which is for sale on Bring a Trailer in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania.
When the RAV4 kicked off the modern crossover era in the U.S. with the 1996 RAV4, it’s likely nobody predicted that crossovers would make up the majority of vehicles sold in the U.S. 30 years later, or that the Detroit Three plus a few foreign automakers would nearly or fully abandon the traditional sedan body style in favor of them. For 2026, the ur-crossover enters its sixth generation as America’s most popular not-an-F-Series (though, under statistics heavily disputed by Ford, the RAV4 outsold just the F-150 in 2024 by over 15k units). Does the new RAV4 have what it takes to keep up the momentum?
(Updated 10/22/2026) Fellow readers, what you see above this text, while admittedly not beautiful, is a piece of history. More unique than a Ferrari 250 GTO, though not nearly as desirable, what you’re looking at is the only car to ever be manufactured in Central America. If you’re surprised you didn’t know about this, don’t be. The Compadre (I’m not joking, that actually is its name) seems to have a perception filter built on it. Very few people know it exists and extremely few examples survive to this day. Finding information about it, let alone pictures, is extremely difficult and no one seems to know for sure what is actually the story behind it, why it came to be and how did it disappear from our shores. Dig a little deeper though and you’ll find quite a story.
(Updated 10/22/2026) There’s no shortage of debate among BMW enthusiasts over which generation of the 3 Series deserves the title of the last great one. The E46, while later generations are sometimes criticized for growing too big and too soft. Let’s revisit a contemporary review of the 328i, written when its combination of a silky inline-six, a five-speed manual, and everyday practicality made a compelling case for the four-door sports car.
Twin-steer, a dual drive tandem with planetary drive axles, leaf springs all around, a powerful turbodiesel, and all that completed with a fully up-to-date day cab. This DAF in factory-demo-red is a customary European vocational truck for sure. All main truck makers can offer such a straightforward 8×4 chassis-cab, directly from the factory. Vocational trucks are mostly equipped with a dump body, concrete mixer, or roll-off system.
Text by Patrick Bell.
We can do some people watching today, along with our usual car spotting. It is always fun to connect the cars to the people that own or operate them (and vice versa). And there is a nice variety of each, so here we go!
