1960 Skoda Octavia

The pride of the Czech Republic since 1925, more than one million Skoda vehicles are sold worldwide every year. They've never been sold in the US, and this is the first one I've ever seen here. The Vermont license plate makes me suspect it was originally sold in Canada, although a lot of interesting European cars were brought back by G.I.s during the Cold War. The engine in this car is just over 1-liter in displacement and it has about 50 horsepower. Not much, but more than a Volkswagen from the same era.

 

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1960 Mercedes 190 SL, and an easily-defeated razor wire fence

Made from 1955 to 1962, the 190 SL is a beautiful car with superb mechanics. With only about 3,000 copies made per year, a nice one will set you back about $130,000 today.

Now someone went to a lot of trouble to put barb wire and razor wire on top of this fence. Were they perhaps too busy trying not to cut themselves to ask why?

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1960 Ferrari 250 GT Coupé Pinin Farina (Chevy Powered)

You can pick up one of these in restored condition for around $700,000. So what is this Ferrari even doing on the street at the Greenwood Car Show? Someone might breathe on it! Well I don't know how much this car is worth, because it's been repowered with a Chevy V-8. I'm informed that "dozens" of old Ferraris received this treatment back in the day. Certainly its value is still way up in the six figures.

From drive-my.com: "The concept of ditching Ferrari’s glorious V12 for V8 iron may be hard to digest in today’s world, when ‘matching numbers’ authenticity is all-important. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, hot-rod culture was second nature to kids in America, when virtual wrecks could be ‘chopped’ and tuned to become the fastest things on the road. The most straightforward way of achieving that was by transplanting a bigger-capacity engine from an American car. When your Ferrari engine went terminal, or couldn’t easily be fixed, the pragmatic move was to whip out the V12 and install a Chevrolet or Ford unit. Hey presto, your gorgeous Italian stallion was up and running again – at a stroke, going from 3.0 litres to 5.7 litres, with 100 extra horsepower to boot. The Chevy’s advantage was its compact – ‘small block’ – size and short stroke, which reduced piston speed at high revs. It was reliable, too."

Ferrari built 353 copies of this car between 1958 and 1960. That's a lot of cars by old-time Ferrari standards. The previous 250 GT coupe sold 138 copies between 1955 and 1958.

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1960 Volvo PV544 and 1965 Volvo PV544 Sport

Seattle loves old Volvos. In 1944, Volvo introduced the PV444, a remarkably modern car with unibody construction and coil spring suspension. Deciding not to mess with a good thing, this car remained in production virtually unchanged for more than twenty years.

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1960 Plymouth Valiant

It may be a contender for the title of America's Ugliest Car, but the 1960 Plymouth Valiant introduced one of the most successful engines of all time and it was also the foundation of many of Chrysler Corporation's best-loved products of the 20th century.

The '60 Valiant was the first car built with Chrysler's all-new Slant-6 engine. Chrysler would eventually build more than 13 million copies of the Slant-6. It was available in the Dodge Dakota pickup as late as 1987, and the final Slant-6 was built in Mexico in 2000.

From the New York Times,

"Initially available in either a base 170-cubic-inch (100-horsepower) or slightly taller 225-cubic-inch (110-horsepower) version, the cast-iron Slant Six’s main mission was clearing the unusually-low hoodline and relatively short engine compartments of the ’60 Valiant and ’61 Lancer drawn by Plymouth designers. Angling the cylinder bank reduced the new engine’s vertical height, while laterally offsetting its water pump shortened overall length. Additionally, the space created on the driver side enabled longer intake and exhaust manifolds whose nearly-equal length produced excellent airflow through the engine.The engine’s tilt lowered its center of gravity, which contributed to its handling characteristics. The combination of power and handling was so successful, a pack of Valiants won the top seven places in Nascar's compact car race in 1960."

The Plymouth Barracuda and Duster were both derived from the Valiant. A 1970 Valiant was used for the Stephen Spielberg movie Duel.

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