The Wilbur Shaw historic marker. Photo by Linda Mansfield.

Shelbyville is a small city in south-central Indiana, part way between Indianapolis and Cincinnati. It was founded in the great westward push, and like any town its size, has its share of favorite sons. But only one of them is getting a state historical marker this coming Saturday. The metal marker salutes Wilbur Shaw, one of the most important single figures in the history of the Indianapolis 500 and, thus, in American motorsport as a whole.

Wilbur Shaw. Pencil drawing by Sam Mudd.

The marker will be unveiled at 10 a.m. Saturday in front of the Shelby County Fairgrounds in Shelbyville, where Shaw “drove” a goat cart in his very first race, in 1909, at all of seven years old. The Indiana Racing Memorial Association lobbied for the marker, which has been displayed in the Hall of Fame Museum at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, to be relocated outside the fairgrounds.

The marker’s reverse side. Photo by Jim Haines.

Shaw’s shadow cast over racing cannot be diminished. He won Indy three times, in 1937, 1939 and 1940. Perhaps more importantly, Shaw is credited as the person who introduced speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker to Terre Haute sportsman and business mogul Tony Hulman in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The speedway had lain dormant during the war years and fallen into disrepair. The dialogue that Shaw jump-started led to Hulman buying the speedway from Rickenbacker, who intended to develop it into housing, and rejuvenated the historic track. Hulman named Shaw as speedway president, a post he held until his death in a 1952 plane crash.

Saturday’s ceremonies will include a luncheon and a talk on Shaw’s legacy, presented by Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian Donald Davidson.

In June of 1965, highway officials had their eye on the intersection of Shelburne Road and South Willard Street in southern Burlington – a Y-shaped intersection with another couple side streets feeding into it – as part of that year’s highway plan, as we can see from these two photos from the Vermont Landscape Change program. Almost 50 years later, and it doesn’t look like they made many substantial modifications to the intersection. What do you see here?

Like a fine English ale, Triumph’s TR6 never seems to go out of style. Entertaining to drive and blessed with a mechanical honesty not seen in modern sports cars, the TR6 is a good choice for those wanting an open-air British roadster with a bit more zest than the MG B. This 1971 Triumph TR6, for sale on Hemmings.com, comes complete with the factory hardtop and bumper guards, and sports redline tires on Panasport wheels. The 2.5-liter inline-six beneath the bonnet features roller rockers and a performance camshaft, which should up the fun factor without creating reliability issues. From the seller’s description:

1971 Triumph TR6 with Factory hard top, Frame off restoration of a rust-free local car; $51,500 in receipts, known history, original warranty book, everything rebuilt or replaced, overdrive, roller rockers, high performance street cam, Richard Good stainless CV joints, etc. 13,500 miles since restoration, rare factory hard top and bumper guards. Everything works as it should. Includes Panasport wheels with redline radials and original wheels with redline radials. 1st place show winner.

Find more Triumphs for sale on Hemmings.com.

Pontiac Bonneville Special number two. Photos courtesy Barrett-Jackson.

In the early 1950s, GM was desperate to portray its Pontiac brand as sporty and exciting, in order to attract a younger demographic to showrooms. Reportedly inspired by the cars he saw vying for speed records on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, Harley Earl tasked designers Homer LaGasse and Paul Gilland with building a car worthy of the Bonneville name, one that would give the rival Chevrolet Corvette a run for its money. The result was the Pontiac Bonneville Special concept, of which only two were ever built. Next January, Bonneville Special number two, which sold at auction in 2006 for $3.08 million, returns to the block in Scottsdale, Arizona, as part of Barrett-Jackson’s Ron Pratte Collection sale.

Like the production Chevrolet Corvette on which it was based, the Pontiac Bonneville Special concept was a low-slung sports car with a fiberglass body. Unlike the original Corvette, however, the Pontiac concept featured an enclosed bubble cockpit with flip-up side windows, along with eight cylinders beneath its long hood.

Though rumors of a V-8 from GM had been building since 1953, company executives feared that showing such an engine in the Bonneville Special, even in dummy form, would potentially delay already sagging Pontiac sales. Instead, the Pontiac concept carried a 268-cu.in. inline eight-cylinder engine fitted with four side-draft carburetors, good for a claimed 230 horsepower.

Inside, the first Bonneville Special borrowed heavily from aviation-inspired design cues. Floors weren’t carpeted, but instead used brushed aluminum with rubber ridges for traction; the shifter for the Hydra-Matic automatic transmission resembled a lever to raise and lower landing gear, and the full instrumentation included a clock, compass and manifold temperature gauge (all reportedly purchased from an aircraft salvage company to save time).

Outside, the concept wore a coat of metallic copper paint, and even its Utah license plate was meant to evoke images of speed. Among its most noticeable features, however, were faux oil coolers, machined from aluminum stock and mounted to each front fender, along with the functional Continental kit that intentionally resembled the exhaust outlet of a fighter jet.

Launched at the January 1954 New York City Motorama, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Bonneville Special proved to be a crowd favorite, and construction began on a second example. This debuted at the March 1954 Motorama, held at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Painted in metallic green, Bonneville Special number two carried a simpler interior with fewer gauges and minor design changes, but was a fully functional driver, equipped with the same inline-eight engine as its predecessor.

Following its time on the Motorama show circuit, number two was sent on a nationwide dealership tour before heading into retirement.

As David W. Temple points out in his book GM’s Motorama, the Bonneville Specials were supposed to be destroyed when their days on tour were over, but (luckily) that’s not what happened. It isn’t clear exactly who saved the cars from the crusher, but at one point, car number two was owned by Joe Bortz, who currently owns Bonneville Special number one. Joe sold Bonneville Special number two to Denver collector Roger Willbanks, who in turn funded a ground-up restoration completed in time for the 2000 Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance. In 2006, Bonneville Special number two was acquired by Ron Pratte at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale, Arizona, sale.

While the Pontiac Bonneville concept never saw production, it did accomplish its mission of helping to paint Pontiac in a slightly less stodgy light. A decade later, the Pontiac GTO would help to solidify the youthful image of the brand, one that would last nearly until the brand’s demise in 2010. Oddly enough, the Pontiac Solstice, a two-seat convertible (and later, coupe) produced from 2005-2010 carried styling traits from the Bonneville Special, including a long hood and pontoon-style front fenders, scaled back for contemporary tastes. It’s fitting that Pontiac’s last two-seat sports car would pay homage, even in a small way, to the two-seat concept that helped to usher in a new era for the GM division.

The Pontiac Bonneville Special will cross the stage in Scottsdale, Arizona, next January, as part of the Ron Pratte Collection. For additional details, visit Barrett-Jackson.com.

Photos by the author.

Long before Ford partnered with Eddie Bauer to sell upscale Explorers, and before Abercrombie & Fitch became the official clothing store of prep schools and frat houses across the country, the two companies got together to produce and market one of the most gadget-laden Thunderbirds ever conceived.

“I enjoy it, even though I’m a Chevy guy,” said Gene Martini of Denver, Pennsylvania, who brought his unrestored 74,000-mile one-of-five 1967 Ford Thunderbird Apollo to the Saturday car show at this year’s AACA meet at Hershey. “It’s unique.”

The Thunderbird Apollo’s story, some claim, started in 1966, when Chrysler displayed at that year’s New York Auto Show the Imperial Mobile Executive show car, an Imperial Crown Coupe two-door hardtop fitted with leather upholstery, walnut wood trim, a front passenger bucket seat that swiveled 180 degrees, a small desktop that flipped up, a typewriter, a couple of telephones, a dictating machine, reading lamps and even a television. A year later, the Mobile Executive would become a $600 Imperial option, one that included the swiveling front seat, flip-up table, and reading lamp, but not the phones, typewriter, or television.

Gene believes the idea for a Thunderbird version of the Mobile Executive came from officials at Abercrombie & Fitch, at the time a sporting goods outfitter with five flagship stores across the country—in Miami, West Palm Beach, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. Perhaps Abercrombie & Fitch, which had arranged with John Fitch to display the Fitch Phoenix at its New York store and take orders for it at other stores in 1966, had sought a substitute for the Phoenix when John Fitch canceled that project. Or perhaps officials there simply felt an uber-luxury automobile fit in with their demographics.

Whatever the case, Ford agreed and sent five Thunderbird hardtops with special blue metallic paint down the Wixom assembly line—four Q-code 428-powered cars and one Z-code 390-powered car—and loaded them with just about every available Thunderbird option. Ford then shipped all five over to Andy Hotten at Dearborn Steel Tubing—the same company responsible for the Ford Thunderbolts and many other special Ford projects—for conversion into Apollos. The process included cutting holes for electric sunroofs, transforming them into Landaus with blue vinyl roofs, and then loading them up with a whole smorgasbord of extras: blue leather upholstery, foldaway desks in the front seat backs, a footrest in the reclining (but not swiveling) front passenger seat, a Philco television set, a radio telephone that necessitated an aerial mounted to the trunk, and reading lamps.

Of the five, only four made it to their original destinations; the one slated for the San Francisco store was destroyed en route. The rest then went on display in their respective stores for the 1967 holiday shopping season and were sold off—at a cost of about $15,000—around the end of the year.

The Chicago car, the only one of the five with the 390 V-8, went to a Mr. Polsinelli. Then, in 1989, it showed up with a relatively recent repaint at the Kruse Auburn auction, where Gene’s brother-in-law bought it for $5,800. He ended up parking it, and for another 10 years it sat largely unused until Gene asked about it and was told he could have it if he got it running and out of the garage it inhabited. Despite his Bowtie loyalties, he took on the challenge just because it was such an unusual car.

Nowadays, he’ll point out a few flaws on the car—the special gold anodized badges and Thunderbird scripts have dulled over time, but he can’t remove them without removing the special sunroof-accommodating headliner, and so he’s leaving them as is for fear of making the car any worse—but notes that all of the add-ons still work, or at least they would if the television broadcasters still put out analog signals. For his first AACA show, he earned a Junior with the Thunderbird.

As for the other Apollos, Gene said that both Florida cars have been accounted for, and the New York car has reportedly surfaced, but has yet to be confirmed. That’s a pretty good survival rate for a bunch of cars loaded with potentially distracting gadgets and gizmos.

1931 Ford Model A Victoria. Photo by author.

(Editor’s note: This first appeared in the August 2011 edition of Hemmings Motor News. It’s still sound advice, which is why we’re reprinting it here.)

If ever there’s an activity or business filled with misconceptions, our beloved old car hobby is the crowned king. For years, certain descriptors have been wrongly used to either sell a car or to make a point of fact that is simply wrong. Like fables, new folks to the old car hobby quickly adopt these falsehoods because they just don’t know any better. So let’s set some things straight.

The bigger the engine, the greater the demand:

Not everyone who owns a muscle car wants a big-block V-8 under their hood. Small-block V-8s are lighter, so the car will handle better. And sometimes a larger engine can be overstressed, which can make it less durable and quicker to overheat. Also, keep in mind that in today’s world, an engine that is more fuel efficient is more desirable, especially for those owners who plan to drive their old cars regularly. Other much preferred “smaller is better” examples are Alfa Romeo’s 1,750-cc engine over the 2,000-cc version, and the Triumph Spitfire’s superior 1,300-cc engine over the larger 1,500-cc unit.

If it’s 25 years old, then it’s an antique:

This is perhaps the biggest falsehood of all time. Just because many car clubs, such as the AACA, state that a car has to be 25 years old to qualify for admission, that doesn’t mean that it’s an authentic antique, or classic for that matter. There are many different classifications, depending on the year, make and model car. The general consensus is that cars of the early postwar era can be referred to as classics, but usually anything built from the mid-1970s onward is simply called a collector car. Then again, all desirable old cars are collector cars; however, not all collector cars are Classics, or antiques. Yep, this is one point that people will never agree on, especially those who are new to the scene.

Convertibles are worth more:

In most cases, this may be true, because as the saying goes: “When the top goes down, the price goes up.”  However, not everyone in the market for a collector car wants a convertible. Many enthusiasts prefer the security and comfort of a fixed roof. For those who enjoy spirited driving on curvy roads, a fixed-roof car handles far better, because its chassis doesn’t flex as much as a convertible body does.

New paint makes a car more salable:

Sometimes cars are painted before they’re put up for sale to hide rust or recent accident damage, which causes more knowledgeable buyers to be suspicious of new paint. It’s better and easier to sell a car with its old paint, because the buyer will better be able to see just how honest the car really is, and if its body had any prior damage. In many cases, cars with their original paint—however faded and scratched that paint may appear—will command a far higher price because unrestored original cars are fast becoming the most desirable type of collector cars to own.

100 percent original, new paint and interior!:

Any major item that has been replaced or refinished renders a car a non-original. The car may be restored or rebuilt to original specifications, but it’s not original. Authentic original cars still wear the same paint the factory applied when they were first built, and upholstery, drivetrain and everything else, too. As soon as a car is repainted, or its interior or engine replaced, it’s no longer original.

Mint condition:

The only thing that can be labeled “mint” is an uncirculated coin that has never been touched by human hands. Even cars that had just rolled off the assembly line were not mint, as they had handprints all over them. So let’s toss this overused, mislabeled term aside and replace it with something more appropriate and more truthful; How’s “excellent showroom condition” sound?

One-owner:

Whether your name is on the title or not, if you’re the person selling the car and you did not buy the car when it was brand-new, then it’s not a one-owner car. Not that this really matters to many people, because it doesn’t, but we need to state the facts as they are; it’s not good to mislead a potential buyer into thinking otherwise.

Bobby Rahal at the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Photo by John Vincent.

The thinking man’s racing driver, Bobby Rahal, was one of the great talents of our generation when it came to combat on road courses and on superspeedways in Indy cars and sports cars alike. His terrific record has earned him the annual Spirit of Competition Award, being presented tomorrow night at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in South Philadelphia.

A native of Dublin, Ohio, Rahal burst upon the scene in the late 1970s and served notice immediately as a top runner in various SCCA classes. As a near-rookie, he placed second in the Formula Atlantic season championship to the late Gilles Villeneuve, who went on to race for Ferrari in Formula 1. Rahal had an abbreviated Formula 1 career with the Wolf team before switching to sports cars and Indy cars. He won the Indianapolis 500 as both a driver and a car owner. Rahal won three CART championships as a driver, plus the endurance classics at Daytona and Sebring, and also competed at Le Mans.

“Bobby Rahal was the type of driver who could drive—and win—in any kind of race car,” said museum Executive Director Dr. Fred Simeone. “He won the Indy 500 in an open-wheeled car, and won long-distance endurance sports car races. Plus, he competed in Formula One and NASCAR. Today, drivers rarely have the ability to do that.”

The award will be presented at a dinner, which begins at 5:30 p.m. at the museum, by Bill Warner, director of the annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. Past recipients of the award include Mario Andretti, Janet Guthrie, John Fitch, Craig Breedlove, Sam Posey and Hurley Haywood. We’d be remiss here if we didn’t also mention the exceptional quality of the automobiles that make up the Simeone collection, mostly historic racing cars including Le Mans winners, all of them in as-raced condition. If you want to buy a ticket to the Rahal fête, or simply learn more about this unique museum, visit www.simeonemuseum.org.

According to the Utah Division of State History online archives, this January 1950 photo shows the parking lot round back of the Burlington Trailways Depot in Salt Lake City, which was located on Second South Street. Indeed, we found an address for Burlington Trailways at 40 Second South, but Google Maps shows a different naming convention for downtown Salt Lake City streets, so we believe this is now E 200 S, not S 200 E, which is a couple of blocks away, we think. What do you see here?

Today, it’s likely to be the darling of your local Veterans Day parade, but this 1961 AMC M422 Mighty Mite, for sale on Hemmings.com, was built to be the Walther PPK of general-purpose, four-wheel-drive military rigs: elegantly simple, lightweight and easy to conceal.

The bullet in the Mite’s chamber was one of its most unusual features: an aluminum, air-cooled, 107.8-cu.in., 55-hp V-4 engine built by American Motors and used exclusively in the Mite. (Early prototypes are said to have been powered by Porsche engines, but off-shore components wouldn’t fly with Uncle Sam.) The body, too, was fabricated from aluminum, which helped the Mite tip the scales at less than 1,800 pounds. The quarter-ton-capacity rig was built from mid-1960 through 1963 for the United States Marine Corps. It’s diminutive size and feathery weight allowed it to be easily airlifted by helicopter into action and maneuvered through rough terrain by troops.

Mighty Mites are relatively rare today, since only 3,922 were reportedly built. The initial 1,250 were the 107-inch-long M422, like this example for sale in our classifieds, while the rest were M422A1s—a virtually identical variant that was 6 inches longer and was said to be much preferred by troops. It’s also said that the Marines appreciated the Mite’s ride, which came courtesy of four-wheel independent suspension sprung by quarter-elliptic leaves.

Mighty Mites were viewed as disposable surplus trucklets after the Vietnam War ended, but their charming looks and relative scarcity have grown on military collectors, driving prices gradually upward over the years.  From the seller’s description:

1961 AMC M422 Mighty Mite, Vietnam Era Military Vehicle, M422 Mighty Mite made by American Motors. 1961, V-4 air-cooled, water-proof ignition, independent suspension, aluminum body, 1,700 lbs. overall weight. Rebuilt motor, new batteries, runs and looks good. Garage stored for 18 yrs.

Find more AMCs for sale on Hemmings.com.

Model photos courtesy Wright Auctions.

GM’s Firebird III concept car envisioned plenty of far-flung futuristic technologies, from turbine drivetrains to automotive autonomy, but the process used to design and build the concept car relied on tried-and-true methods, as we can see from the two-foot-long resin model that GM’s design staff used in developing the concept car, which will come up for auction later this year.

Long before CAD, holograms, 3D printing, and other rapid prototyping technologies made their way into Detroit’s design studios, the staff at General Motors needed a way to envision all the canards, fins, bubbletops, and other surface elements of the 1958 Firebird III, a car never intended for production, rather for showing off GM’s technical capabilities in the jet-age and gewgaw-obsessed Fifties.

According to the auction description for the 24-inch-long, eight-inch-wide, and 6-1/4-inch-high model, GM design staff had it built in 1957 and lacquered in all black to study the highlights of the form “and to facilitate surface development”; it may also have been used during presentations to management. It accommodates canopies in four different shades: matte amber, transparent amber, opaque black and clear. A subsequent full-size model was later built, also in black, to finalize the car’s shape before construction of the actual concept car.

GM reportedly presented the model as a retirement gift to an unnamed employee, who sold it to the current owner. According to Wright, the auction house handling the sale of the model, it’s the only Firebird III developmental model to have ever come up for auction.

Photo courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.

The third (though not final) in a line of gas-turbine concept cars from GM, the two-seater Firebird III, also designated XP-73, Shop Order 90238, was intended as a sort of sports-car Firebird—a middle ground between the racy single-seat Firebird I and the family-minded four-place Firebird II. It showcased a myriad of wild design cues (no less than seven tailfins, for example) as well as GM’s latest iteration of its regenerative gas turbine engine, the 225-hp Whirlfire GT-305, mounted as a unit with the transmission and differential behind the passenger compartment. And in keeping with the times, it had plenty of gadgets to boast of, including joystick control, the Firebird II’s Autoguide autonomous technology, an early form of cruise control, and a keyless remote system.

After it debuted in August 1958, it remained on the show circuit until 1961 and then went on display at The Henry Ford, before eventually returning to GM’s Heritage Collection, where it remains today.

Wright, which two years ago sold a styling studio model of the Gyron for $40,000, has put a pre-auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 on the Firebird III model. It will cross the block at Wright’s Important Design auction in Chicago, scheduled for December 11. For more information, visit Wright20.com.