I have a bone to pick with the brochure writers for this 1975 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale. On page 30 they tell us “The steel roof: Such a good idea we put two of them on every ’75 Olds!”Well, maybe not every’75 Olds.(See photos above!)This was the first year of the catalytic converter, so Olds also introduced shoppers to this new emission control device: “It chemicall
This 1953 Dodge Mayfairis another one of those cars that, growing up in a border town we were used to seeing. People from the heartlands though, might have been a bit confused encountering one of these things—basically a Plymouth with a Dodge front clip which was sold in Canada. This Mayfair hardtop was based on Plymouth’s Belvedere; in the U.S. the larger Dodge hardtop was in the Coro
With fewer than 9,000 being produced, it’s rare these days to come across a 1950 Mercuryconvertiblelike this red one,spotted last summer just south of Vancouver, British Columbia by former WNYer, former RealRidesneighbor, and current Pennsylvania resident Rick Lapp. In Canada, Ford offered this Mercury drop-top at its Mercury-Lincoln stores, while at the same time there was a very similar co
Not every classic car owner is anxious to restore their ride back to showroom condition. Some are content to let their cars age naturally, like this 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire. By MY 1962, GM’s four-door flat-tops were by-and-large gone from the catalog (although they were still in the Corvair lineup). But in other roofline news, most big Chevy, Pontiac, Olds, and Buick two-door hardtops were
This 1939 Jaguar SS3-1/2 LitreSaloonwas one of the entries in the 2018 Hemmings Motor News Great Race, which started here in Buffalo and ended in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Ironically, in the 1939 brochure, Jaguar mentions the SS’s success “…in open competition events such as the Monte Carlo Rally, the Paris-Nice Trial, the R. A. C. Rally, the Welsh Rally, etc.”Unfortunately, t
You’ve gotta admit, a 1984 Chevy S-10isn’t something you often see at a cruise night. But, I like it. Those wide whites really made it stand out in the crowd last summer when we spotted it at a Cruising On the Qcruise night on Queen Street in Niagara Falls Ontario. This one came from the factory with a 2.8L V6 under the hood, and is one of what’s becoming a dying breed: the singl
There aren’t many days when you come across a 1949 Mercuryin stock condition. Including today! We saw this modestly customized example last summer at a Cruising-on-the-Qcruise night on Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Ontario. In case you failed chemistry in high school (hand raised!), that license plate reads “LEAD SLED,” Pbbeing the chemical symbol for element #82 (lead), and lea
We searched high and low for proof that a 1969 Buick GSXwas ever produced at the factory, but came up dry. Everything we found says theGSX was introduced in 1970 as a two-door hardtop model in the Skylark lineup. It was yellow, with black stripes, and a rear spoiler, all of which we see on today’s RealRide. Unless there was a Canada-only 1969 GSX which no one seems to know about on the inter
This 1978 Ford LTD IIcomes to us from a very confusing point in the North American automobile-naming era. In MY 1977 Ford’s mid-sized models morphed into this LTD II, replacing the both Torino and Elite nameplates with a name usually associated with Ford’s full-sized models; while its cousin, the Mercury Montego, moved all of its cars (including four-doors and station wagons!) under th
It’s not every day that you come across a 1967 AMC Marlin(only 2,545 were built). It was the car’s third and final year of production, but it was only the second year that it was branded as an AMC rather than a Rambler, and the first (and only) year it would share the platform of the Ambassador rather than the Classic. Got all that? The 1967 models —“The flair of a fastback