Car Puzzles

Recently a friend emailed me pictures of four old cars and invited me to identify them. Two were easy, one was probably being introduced in showrooms across the country the day I was born, and during our growing up years the Sheffield family, second door down, had one, a light blue Dodge sedan. Theirs was a 1937, but the one sent me for a puzzle was a 1936 like so: 

My memory of that car is the running boards, that when Mrs. Sheffield arrived home from wherever, she would always stop at the bottom of the driveway, and the five of us, Walt, Bill, Jimmy, Charles and I would run to the car, step on the running board, and hold on for dear life as she sped up the driveway. That’s likely too long ago for the others to remember, and Bill’s long dead. The last time we did it I hopped off a moment too early and the right rear tire rolled over my foot. Thereafter my mother forbade the activity. Mothers do the strangest things to boys.

Another of the four cars was as easy because it also was a Dodge, identifiable by the hood ornament, and there was one similar at an online web site, a 1934 Dodge business coupe. Notice the forward opening front doors that were all the fashion for several years in the early to middle thirties. This particular car, the above web picture, is really beautiful, at least in the eye of this beholder. Maybe because it's my favorite color.

The third one required a bit of chasing. Starting with the radiator with a distinctive line at the top of the chrome radiator shell, and the radiator emblem with a distinctive shape. Couldn’t get close and clear enough to read it, but the shape was a giveaway, though requiring a quick online search of old car radiator emblems. Then finding one like if for sale on eBay was the clincher, a 1930 Reo Flying Cloud:

The photos my friend sent are private, so what’s shared here are the online shots that helped me make the ID.

The fourth car is a brass era touring car with carbide headlamps. It has a front license plate dated 1910, so that’s a hint. And there are a couple of special features about the brass radiator shell. But it has me puzzled and still working.

Time to stop and do that last minute work on my sermon for this morning. See you at church and Sunday school.

Tom+