Thread: Help me identify some hot rods...

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How about the 73 Buick Riviera:

41willys, yes that is the one I was thinking about. I would put it in my personal top ten all time most beautiful cars among the 1940 Mercury Convertible, the 1932 Ford Roadster, 1941 Ford coupe, 1955 Thunderbird, early Corvettes, the 1954 Studebaker, the early coffin-nose Cord, the later Jaguar XKE and a few others which you can fill in but that Riviera is a BIG car and wide but if you can buy the gas for it you can take the whole family in style!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Let's not forget our cultural heritage in rodding. I have to admit the front-point-rear-slope of the '39-'40 Fords and Mercury coupes and convertibles is stuck in my mind as "classic" and represent the taste of poor boys like me; for me that is "swoopy", particularly the '40 Merc painted red or orange! There may even be some sort of aerodynamic reasoning behind the pointed nose and flattened rear of '40s Fords? Also let's not forget the neat look of a chopped '29, the rear of the Ford A and B Model coupes and roadsters have that appealing slope in the back, but maybe I read too many issues of HRM back before my brain was frozen in time?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Oops, forgot the pictures. As I vaguely recall through the mist of early memories, 1939-1940 was the age of Art-Decco!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

My father used to show us pictures of his 41 Merc, "gunmetal grey with red wheels" was his oft quoted maxim. My brother and I got our hot rods genes from him but our love for speed from our mother. The tales of terror that could be told from a childhood of racing the angels to mass. I957 Plymouth Savoy 2dr, three bar spinners, flathead six, dual carbs and and split manifold. She was clocked at 92 on US 51 on a sunday morning on the way to church. I remember her saying " .... %$$%^ what are the cops doing out on a Sunday morning anyway.." I don't remember what the cop said.