By the time this gets posted on Friday, I’ll be heading to Tonopah, Nevada, where EXBRO5 begins on Sunday morning. And since my usual backup, Jim Klein, is joining us in his Jeep Wrangler, I’m handing the keys over to Daniel Stern, who will be taking the Curbside Classic out for his first spin.
In case you have good eyes and noticed something on the front end of the ExBrox, yes, I decided I needed an appropriate mascot of sorts, to add to the comic air of this whole undertaking. Which of course it is. Taking the xB into the wilds of Nevada is my version of a middle finger to that endless horde of shiny new and newish 4WD SUVs, trucks and Subarus that will never see anything but pavement under their immaculate giant tires.
Here he is, the biggest and most bad-ass predator, ready to take on anything! Nothing can stop us now.
Not even the xBox itself. He’s coming through. I’ve got a tiger in my tank as well as under the hood.
Highly astute observers will note that there’s a slice of his middle apparently missing: no worries; it’s safe inside the xB.
I picked up a couple of cheap two gallon cans, for the one really long leg, from Austin to Elko, which is 219 miles of back roads. The xB could probably make it on its 12 gallon tank, as there’s only so much fuel a 1.5L engine can drink. But Jim’s Wrangler is a bit thirstier, so just to play it safe…
Assuming the xB makes it back out under its own power, I should arrive home next Saturday night, so I’ll be back at the wheel here on Monday, June 28th. Enjoy ten Niedermeyer-free days!
The drive to Tonopah alone will be a very worthy trip. I picked a longer but more scenic route that has a lot of remote back highways. I’ll take a hike a long the way and stop overnight in one of the mountainous areas, probably near Vya, NV. Stephanie and I took a similar route to Tonopah in 2018 in the TSX, and these back highways were a delight at triple-digits speeds, that is until I got busted at 130 mph. No worries about me speeding this time, as the roof rack is really making itself felt above about 45-50.
See you then!
Awesome! Have a great time and safe travels!
Be safe, have fun.
The tiger reminds me of this old restaurant outside Chicago that is sadly no longer with us. It was built to resemble an old Alaskan hunting lodge, complete with a big stone fireplace separating 2 rooms. On one side, the front of a huge moose was mounted above the fireplace. The other room got to see the backend.
Love the tiger! An off-road GTO if you will. Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your adventures.
Outstanding! Good luck Daniel and we’ll look forward to the adventure report
Have an excellent time, very interested in the performance report.
Serious Backroad routes on the hottest week in decades, good luck and take care.
Not so bad in the northern half of Nevada, where we will be. And it’s going to moderate some by early in the week. But yes, it will be warm in the valleys.
Is the chloroform, rag and duct tape locked up now?
I have a few things to say. LoL
I don’t know what your problem is. I have not trashed any of your comments for quite some time.
So speak up. But be aware; DS is not going to let you cross the lines of our commenting policy. He’s probably less tolerant of commenting abuse than I am. You are familiar with that policy, right? If not, you might want to re-read it:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/welcome-to-curbside-classics/
Dang mobile internet access. Arrrggghh! lol
No big deal.
Relax, enjoy the break.
We can dig through the trash can for ’em some day.
How much you want for this whole place anyway?
Take the dog and pickup, leave the rest.
Before you go, don’t forget the Esso……
Ah, Tonopah….in 1985 or so, I was there in the Mizpah Hotel for a summer building a Moly mine outside of town. When we finished the processing plant and mine, molybdenum was priced so low, the mine never made a dime in profit, so we shut it down (sold it years later). Oh well, there went $250 Million of my company’s money.
Lovely place and some pretty neat countryside.
Have fun Paul!
Wishing you good luck and great adventures! Nevada’s desolation is so hauntingly beautiful!
Wonder if these 2 CCs are still there in Tonopah (photo taken in 2005)?
1956 Packard 400 hardtop! I’d love to see one of those IRL, 56 Packards amongst my favorite cars. Talk about going out in a blaze of glory…
’55 model was the first American car with front and rear side marker lights, right? (our guest host will probably know!). And even a center marker light, although I don’t think that one goes on except when the door is open.
I see some chatter amongst Packardisti on their forums about side marker lights on the ’55-’56 cars, but I don’t agree. For one thing, the lamps they’re talking about, mounted near the front of each fender, appear to have been called “courtesy lights” by Packard. Also, there was technically nothing such as a side marker light until 1960, when SAE standard J592 was first published. I don’t have the 1960 version of that standard, but the 1964 version requires amber for front and intermediate side marker lights; red for rear ones—this is not likely to have been a new requirement since 1960, and the ’55-’56 Packard items emitted white light. I don’t see any evidence of special rear side lights on these cars (side-on visibility of the tail light doesn’t count).
I mean, obviously the Packard lights couldn’t conform to standards that didn’t exist until years later, but side-on visibility of front and tail lights of any sort was rare in the mid-50s. There were certainly some taillights that could be slightly seen from the side – little bullet or rocket-blast round lenses and such, but not the large area of the Packard cathedral taillights or front side lights that wrap around a considerable ways.
Actually…see attached in re side-on visibility of lights, from a technical paper written by one of North America’s longtime rockstar vehicle lighting engineers. This comparison focuses on front lights, but I can think of a fair number of ’50s rear lights that were also quite visible to the side. ’58 DeSoto, ’54 Cadillac, ’57 Cadillac, etc. Of course, there were plenty that were invisible to the side, too (’57 Chev and many others).
It might be accurate to say ’55-’56 Packards had unusually good side-on visibility of lights, but it’s not accurate to say they had side marker lights.
The light I think people are billing as a “side marker”, is the one that’s fairly hidden right below the faux vent behind the door on the pictured car. On four door cars, the same light was placed about a third of the way back on the rear doors. They had a clear lens in 1955 and a more opaque white one in 1956, and contained two bulbs: a 15cp courtesy light that illuminated when you opened the door, and a 3cp bulb that illuminated whenever the tail lights were on. It was billed as a “safety light” in Packard literature. I’m not sure about the parking lamps… it appears that the section that wraps around the side does illuminate, though I presume the parking lamps extinguish when you turn the headlights on, as most American cars did pre-1968?
I definitely remember the steadily illuminated white light amidships on a 1956 Patrician, and these were a feature on all 1955-56 senior series Packards.
Interesting—and a pretty serious violation of the colour standard (white front, red rear, amber side), which was generally adhered to in North America at that time to a degree now seen only in the rest of the world, outside the North American regulatory island.
Yeah. I’m betting that oddly placed lamp raised a few eyebrows, and wouldn’t be surprised if that function had to be disabled in some jurisdictions (didn’t each state establish their own regs in those years?). By the shape and placement of the lamp housing, I know there wouldn’t be white light visible to the rear, but you would see it from the front- and if standing perpendicular to the car, probably until it just passed you.
I’m not sure how minor transgressions were dealt with, but there are other examples. Chief Pontiac got a factory pass while beaming amber front and side.
If Packard’s front “markers” did illuminate when the headlamps were on (PerT.A. Cowan most fronts didn’t. Rear obviously did.) then they could qualify as “combination” under the later guideline.
One of the competing premium marques lighting irregularity I could specifically comment on, not Packard’s.
The usual “parking light” that went off when headlamps lit was dumb anyway, because, when an oncoming vehicle had a burned out headlamp a driver likely had little idea of what was headed his way.
Today there exists as dangerous (maybe more so, because it’s not as expected now?) of a lighting deficiency as in pre-marker days. Obviously a design and regulation oversight.
I’ve noticed it for a few years now, but prior to the recent meltdown in the lighting discussion 🙂 I didn’t give it much thought. It was just subliminally added it to the list of things that I have to take personal responsibility for being aware of.
Now I’m being more observant to specifically ID the model of offending vehicles. I may initiate an investigation, possibly issue recalls, level penalties. LoL
Anyway, from a regulatory standpoint, how were the 3cp amidships Packard “safety lights” any different from the opera lights that adorned countless B or C pillars in the Brougham era?
I never knew there were two levels of illumination in those lights (bright when doors open, dim when closed but exterior lights on). In any case, the vertical chrome “vents” with courtesy light were a brilliant way to disguise the 1951 pontoon fender shape they were stuck with in 55-56, instead recalling the similarly placed trim on the more recently designed mid-decade Cadillacs, with horizontal trim and paint further de-emphasizing the bulge.
Some states probably considered them “courtesy” lights. California’s definition, still on the books, was typical:
Any motor vehicle may be equipped with running board or door-mounted courtesy lamps. The bulbs in the lamps shall not exceed six standard candlepower and shall emit either a green or white light without glare. The beams of the lamps shall not be visible to the front or rear of the vehicle.
As T.A. Cowan mentioned, prior to the 1968 inception of national vehicle safety standards in the U.S., every state set its own vehicle equipment and safety standards. Many states required each and every item of lighting equipment to be approved by an office, department, or individual, and there was no reciprocal recognition of individual-state approvals. So it would have been entirely possible for one state to consider the Packard lights “courtesy lights”, a bordering state to have nothing on the books about such lights, and a different bordering state to have language in their vehicle code prohibiting such lights. Whether and how these differing regs were enforced on out-of-state motorists would’ve been largely a matter of police discretion, much like today’s situation with widely varying window-tint regulations: you’d like to hope the traffic police in a state with stringent tint laws would differentiate between a car with too much/too dark tint registered in that state versus one from away, but sometimes you might not get your wish.
I’ve owned dozens, and worked on hundreds, of V8 “Senior” Packards, equipped with the side courtesy lights. I have a full set of ALL the postwar Packard service paperwork [1946-62], and nowhere do they discuss a problem with a state not allowing the side courtesy lights. I’ve been involved with Packards since 1968, and have never hear of a single Packard with disconnected side courtesy lights. I don’t believe this was ever a problem.
Both the 55 & 56 senior parking lights do curve around to the side, but the bulb is in the front, and at best there is some feeble light visible on the side areas of the lenses. However, as mentioned elsewhere here, the side views of the Teague cathedral taillights offer a large swath of red light at night, as do the ’55 and ’56 Clipper taillights. The side lights stays on with the taillights & headlights.
Many years ago while driving my 1955 Packard Patrician [4-door], I had a right front tire go flat while I was on a trip. And of course it was in the middle of the night, in a remote area without streetlights. I opened the right rear door, and the light from the 2 bulbs was a big help, illuminating the entire wheel area.
I also had a 1956 Packard Patrician, and it was equipped with the optional trunk light. This was a bright white lens & lamp on the inside of the trunk lid. The lamp unit was in a snap-in bracket. When it was removed, inside was about 30 feet of electrical wire that could be unwound by holding the lamp housing and turning the center part of the lamp. The wire was long enough to reach ALL parts of the car!
As this was the last year for the Detroit Packards, this light was then offered by the manufacturer to GM, and it appeared on Pontiacs starting in 1957, but as an under hood light, with a glass lens that was half white & half red.
Have a good drive and I’ll see you there late tomorrow. Hopefully. 🙂 I didn’t realize this was fancy dress, it seems you washed the xBox and everything.
Daniel, enjoy the keys to the CCandy store! Do I sense A-Body Week coming up? Wall to wall Darts, Lancers, Valiants and more Darts, Lancers, and Valiants…
Does your tiger squeak when you squeeze him? I wired a squeaky rubber mouse holding a wedge of cheese onto the grill of the truck that I drove for a construction company. It made for a lot of smiles when folks would squeeze his belly but people kept trying to steal him too. And how could you be mad at the guy in the big truck who cut you off in city traffic when he has a mouse mascot right there in front for luck?
I like the attitude ! Good luck with the Xbox and stay Hydrated!
Wow, sounds like a great drive. Safe travels and enjoy. I too am a big fan of the lonely beauty of Nevada. Here’s a photo I took along U.S. 93 while on a big Canada/U.S. road trip I did in the summer of 2019 (Toronto – Winnipeg – Los Angeles). You truly do have to be careful about fuel in NV, even on the more major routes like 93.
I made the trip in my un-air conditioned ’89 Ford F150, by the way—so I guess I was in some way middle-fingering all those shiny hordes on the road around me, as well.
Enjoy the trip and comradeship I suspect you’ll encounter, and looking forward to reading about the adventures when you’re back.
A trek worthy of a pre-trip oil change.
Nice brown wheels. Have fun and be safe! I’m eagerly awaiting your trip report.
Have fun!! I would have invited myself along but we’re heading out on our own big excursion in our new (but much bigger) rolling box, next weekend. Depending on routes maybe I’ll see you on Highway 50 next Saturday.
Be mindful of tarantulas. Quite intriguing/scary to see the hand-like critters moving about the roadside at dusk in your headlights. And scorpions!
Started off for Nevada on a scorching hot day. It was approximately 105+ at my house today in the Bay Area.
I can imagine, because I once made roughly the same Wilds of Nevada trip during the first week of August
Safe travels, Paul – the mascot (cut in half) is great!
Daniel, we have total faith in you.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I am reminded of a time long ago when I was working remotely for a company in Maryland. The first time I came to visit HQ, the company president said “Y’hungry? There’s a terrific barbecue joint three exits down the highway. Here!”, and tossed me the keys to his Lexus SC. The whole way there and back, my mantra was “Don’t hit anybody or anything”.
I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I’m drunk and dirty, don’t ya know,
And I’m still willin’
Out on the road late last night,
Seen my pretty Alice in every head light
Alice, Dallas Alice
I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made
I’ve driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed
If you give me: weed, whites, and wine
And you show me a sign
I’ll be willin’ to be movin’
Just send the weed, you can keep the whites and wine…fair enough?
Have a great time Paul!
I hope the trip went well Paul .
I too love the remote desert back roads and canyons .
-Nate