Dan's Papers - July 4, 2008 - Classic Cars with Bob Gelber

Recently, a long time reader of this column sent me two copies of Motor Trend Magazine - one dated April 1950 and the other November 1950. Many thanks, Toby. What this fellow doesn't know is that I love vintage car magazines. Whenever I come across any at a garage sale, I grab them. I find magazines of any early decade terrifically representative of the pulse of the era, and am fascinated by the comments made by the editorial writers.

These two Motor Trend magazines, which were a very skimpy thirty-five pages long, cost only twenty-five cents each. The current Motor Trend runs about 150 pages and has a newsstand price of almost five bucks. Both issues contained many interesting automotive facts. I doubt many of you out there remember the Mobil gas economy run competition that was held in the fifties, but the results were in one of the articles. In this competition there were 31 American automobiles, driven by non-professionals, competing to see which car could achieve the best gas mileage. Surprisingly, the average of all the cars was only 22.7 miles per gallon. The winning car was 1950 Mercury that achieved 26.52 miles per gallon. This proved to me that gas mileage hasn't gone up very much in 57 years of automotive development, especially here in America. Don't forget, in 1950 gasoline cost about twenty-five cents a gallon. That sleek new 1950 Mercury sold for around $2,300 dollars.

Virtually every ad in the magazine was for performance parts for the Ford flathead V-8. Amazingly, one could purchase an entire dual exhaust system, including new engine headers, tailpipes and mufflers for the flathead for $49. No wonder all those sporty Fords had duals. A flathead supercharger could be purchased for $387. A pair of "highly polished" aluminum heads were yours for $54. It's obvious that the Ford flathead engine was the king of the road in those days. Incidentally, all of the high performance accessories I just mentioned are worth a fortune in today's collector car market. Especially that supercharger.

There was also a great deal of buzz about the V-8 overhead valve engines just introduced by General Motors in the new Cadillac and Oldsmobile. Motor Trend predicted that the new V-8s were the power plants of the future. Wow, were they right! Conversely, Americans are now witnessing the end of the popularity of the V-8 engine, and the resurgence of the more fuel efficient six cylinder and four cylinder engines. Suddenly it's 1950 all over again.

One other observation about these magazines. There was very little mention of foreign cars, although there was a paragraph about a Ferrari race car and a new "souped up and streamlined Volkswagen," called by the very unknown and strange name of Porsche. There was also one small quarter page ad for the new 1950 MG-TD, which was advertised as being much improved over the 1949 MG-TC. It had "a new lower price, a softer ride, and left hand steering." All very true, I owned both a TD and a TC. For the record, the older TC is the much more handsome model.

There was a fascinating technical and extremely well written review of the newly introduced Jaguar XK-120 sports car, which most critics consider to be one of the most beautiful cars of all time. By modern standards, the XK-120 is truly a primitive machine, with its box type ladder frame, four speed transmission with synchromesh on only the first three gears with solid rear axle and drum brakes. The only thing truly advanced on the car was the engine. Let me quote the summary that Motor Trend wrote of the car, "As a technical achievement, the Jaguar is outstanding. It incorporates the most advanced technical knowledge available on naturally aspirated engines today. Jaguar has combined comfort and high performance, and it's evident that they have produced a car that will be honored and admired for many years to come."

Technically, today's cars are virtual space ships when compared to cars of 1950. Unfortunately, what really hasn't changed that much is the fuel mileage. The main change relating to engines compared to the fifties is that we are getting about the same mileage with engines that are virtually twice as powerful. That economy-run winning Mercury was powered by a Ford V-8 flathead that produced about 100 horsepower. Today, the average passenger car V-8 easily has twice the power and gets about the same mileage. The obvious question is why is it that we can't make cars with even smaller engines, with less horsepower, that get better mileage. We can and we will. But in past years, virtually every American car manufacturer, to their shame, has seemed to be avoiding the consequences of high gas prices. We will soon see fuel efficient six and four cylinder motorcars on the American highways. After almost sixty years, isn't it the right time for more fuel efficient vehicles?

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com.