Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Henry Ford had a Model T truck made from aluminum

Ford in 1925 initiated Ford Air Transport Service - the world's first regularly scheduled commercial cargo airline.

Ford Air Transport Service started with Stout 2-AT Pullman aircraft in 1925. Henry and Edsel Ford had a investment in Stout Engineering that became the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company later that year in August.

The first 2-AT was built at the Stout factory in Dearborn and called the "Maiden Detroit". The other aircraft in the fleet were also 2-AT's, named "Maiden Dearbon I, II, III and IV". Initially the aircraft were for Ford's company use. The first scheduled commercial flights in America were begun when The "Maiden Detroit" flew 1,000 lbs. of freight between factories in Detroit and Chicago on April 14, 1925. Ford Air Transport served routes between Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.

The aircraft operated out of Ford Airport off of two grass runways with night lighting.

The safety and predicability of the first cargo flights were used to advantage in securing the first airmail contracts under the Kelly Act. The "Maiden Detroit" entered Contract Air Mail service on February 15, 1926 with Henry and Edsel Ford loading the first bag of mail. The aircraft flew from Detroit to Cleveland under fighter escort to become the first commercial transport of air mail.

In 1928 Ford sold the airmail routes to Stout who also was operating his own airline with Stout-Ford built aircraft. The last official flight was in 1932.
Photo from http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=428585 information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Air_Transport_Service

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Sitting and Rusting thread on the HAMB

Sitting for 35 years.
the size of the tree trunk though this body indicates many decades of not being disturbed





The above is a DeSoto converted into a truck because the owner had a body shop, but not cash for a truck

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Ken Block's Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l'Autodrome, France (the coolest thrashing of a Ford Fiesta ever)



To get to the action the fastest, skip the first 50 seconds, though I recommend reading it.

Pirelli is a major sponsor for Ken, and they had this video on loop above the Pirelli area, that is how I found out about it.

It takes about 8 minutes for this video to load, so you may want to key it up and go grab something to eat or drink while it loads up. ENJOY!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Nik finds the coolest stuff! The 1958 Ford family of cars

If you haven't been looking at Nik's blog, you have been missing a lot of cool stuff! http://carrosantigos.wordpress.com/ to see all the cool stuff Nik finds, like old dealerships, Brazil's auto history, and lots of shoebox Fords

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Going all the way to impress potential buyers at the 1925 First Auto Expo of Rio de Janeiro

For 16 days, Ford assembled cars on a makeshift assembly line for the public to watch

The event was attended by Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Gray, Packard, Hudson, Itala, Lancia and Voisin.

these photos came to light when the grandson of an engineer associated with making the expo happen, loaned the bool to a Rio newspaper. It's likely that no one alive recalls the event, or that it was thrown to promote development of roads in Brazil, because there weren't any. In view of the push that more car owners and car makers would make with the demand for roads, if I read the articles right, this was a brilliant idea that would force roads to get made from the trails that barely were drivable .

For a full gallery and posts about this extraordinary display of new cars and extreme measures to impress the potential new buyers in Rio, be sure to have Google toolbar ready to translate or use
translate.googleusercontent.com, and click on
http://carrosantigos.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/exposicao-de-automoveis-rio-1925-parte-2/ http://carrosantigos.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/exposicao-de-automoveis-rio-1925/

Thanks to Nik and Rafael for spreading the word about this amazing historical moment, which I bet has never been duplicated or copied

Is it any wonder I recommend Nik's blog so highly? Couldn't give it higher praise and applause!

Just park it anywhere

Remember ever hearing that you shouldn't make a face, because what if the expression sticks on your face, you wouldn't want to go on looking that way. well what if your truck didn't return to normal after parking like this?

Thursday, July 29, 2010

1937 Ford house car




when discovered in a garage (under a heavy cover) in Northern Minnesota in August 2001, she had only 19,000 miles, and the owner’s manual was actually still in the glove box in like-new condition!
She had always been garaged and treated with ‘Much TLC’ as a collector vehicle.
The interior, all wood lined, was still the way it appeared in the ’30′s and ’40′s, complete with framed photos of the original owner on his travels (mainly to Florida) and his cabin in the North Woods, plus and other memorabilia from the era.
Built on the ’37 Ford Pickup frame and cowling (powered by a 60-hp flathead V8 with aluminum heads), the rear framing is all wood, with the metal skin wrapped around it. The roof structure, too, is all wood, over which the heavy, waterproofed canvas top is still very securely fitted. The structure of the Body is solid, appearing from underneath to be all oak, and still in a remarkably unaltered, undamaged condition. The door frames are thick, solid oak, and oak is visible around the window openings (as on the four side windows in back) — though it is painted over.
She was a big hit at this campground once we got that Great old flattie V8 hummin’! Note her expanding roof and the original dark green color, which had been repainted. I figure the canvas roof was originally painted in reflective silver to keep it from getting too hot inside. All four side windows open, while the back one tilts out to three positions. The windshield also tilts open at the bottom for natural AC while driving.
Here are a few shots of her in August 2001, out on the road in the Chippewa National Forest north of Grand Rapids via: http://saddlebrookesmiles.wordpress.com/page/4