On Feb 18, 2008 10:38 PM, Paul Stenquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A 1954 Kaiser Darrin sports car. I photographed it at the Dream > Cruise in 2004 against a cluttered background. No choice. That's > where it was parked, and the owner was nowhere to be found. I finally > got around to cleaning the pics up a bit today. Only 435 of these > cars were built. I believe only two or three still exist. It was the > first fiberglass car ever made. The doors are pocket doors -- they > slide into the front fenders. The design was created by a fellow > named Darrin (last name), who lived in Santa Monica. Unfortunately, > it's flathead 2.4 liter engine generated a mere 90 horsepower. It was > no match for the 55 Corvettes, which premiered with around 200 > horsepower. But it was a very pretty car. This one,which is > completely original and beautifully restored, was parked on Woodward. > > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6966971&size=lg > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6966978 > http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6966938 >
It's amazing how many smaller manufactureres there were back in those days. I was raised in the world of the Big Three, but only a few years before I was born there were Hudsons, Kaisers, Nashes, Lasalles and others plying the roads of North America. By the time I was a youngster, I guess maybe Rambler and Studebaker were about the only two of these smaller manufacturers left (there was Jeep, but they were pretty much a specialty manufacturer). Anyway, that was a lovely car, well captured, Paul! Thanks for sharing it... cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
