1985-6 Peugeot 505S and 505GL station wagons and sedan

Once upon a time, the French car makers found a market in the US for cars that, unlike American models, combined luxury and sophistication with fuel efficiency. That market has mostly been absorbed by German and Japanese luxury makes, and neither Peugeot-Citroën nor Renault has sold cars in the US since the 1990s. Renault has however been very successful here with the Versa, a co-production with Nissan.

 

 

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Magnolia Car Show: 1962 Chevrolet Corvette fuel-injected

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1953 Studebaker 2R pickup truck

Studebaker sold a nice looking truck in the 50s. The 2R design has the odd distinction of being retired in 1953 and then brought back in 1958 as a low-cost model.

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1948 Crosley CC Wagon

In 1946 the smallest car made by General Motors was 16 and 1/2 feet long and weighed nearly two tons. The fact that the big automakers didn't make any "small" cars that were actually small created a niche market for the independent automakers. After World War II, Studebaker and Nash both went with new designs that were shorter than the shortest Chevrolet. But even those cars were big compared to this Crosley CC Wagon. The Crosley company was owned by Powell Crosley who also owned the Cincinnati Reds. The year that the wagon pictured was made, Crosley sold nearly 25,000 cars.

Crosley was responsible for numerous innovations that would eventually be adopted by other automakers. From Wikipedia, "Crosley introduced several "firsts" in the American automobile industry, including the first use of the term 'Sport Utility' in 1948 (albeit on an open model based on the wagon, not a wagon on a truck chassis); first mass-market single overhead camshaft (SOHC) engine in 1946; first slab-sided postwar car, also in 1946; first all steel-bodied wagon in 1947; first American car to be fitted with 4-wheel caliper type disc brakes in the 1949 model year (Chrysler Imperial introduced four-wheel disc brakes as standard equipment on Crown Imperials at the beginning of the 1949 model year, but they were not of the caliper type); and the first American sports car, the Hotshot, in the 1949 model year. 1950 brought the Farm-O-Road model, a 63-inch (1,600 mm) wheelbase utility vehicle predictive of the John Deere Gator and other UTVs."

 

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