SWSK – It’s All About Cars!

In some ways we are all car buffs. We all remember our very first car (mine was a1949 Oldsmobile 88 convertible, black with a red leather interior). We remember cars from movies and TV shows, we marvel at the collector shows of old cars and we love to reminisce when cars and gas were cheaper. So here is some automobile trivia that we hope you will enjoy.When the Corvette was introduced in 1953 it was available in just one color, Polo White.

The very first drive in gas station was opened by the Gulf Oil Company in Pittsburgh in 1913.

The first car to be fitted with an alternator, rather than a direct current dynamo was the 1960 Plymouth Valiant.

Parking meters are everywhere today, but the very first city in the U.S. to use them was Oklahoma City in 1935..

Did you know that luxury automaker, the George M. Pierce Company of Buffalo, NY also made cages for birds and squirrels, and also iceboxes?

Cars were on the roads, or what passed for roads, since the turn of the century. The first drive-in restaurant to serve automobiles was Royce Hailey’s Pig Stand opened in Dallas in 1921.

The very first car to be called a convertible was the 1904 Thomas Flyer, which had a removable hard top.

With more and more cars on the road there were little or no traffic signals. In 1919 the first three-color traffic lights were installed in Detroit, Michigan.

On March 16, 1966 General Motors 100 millionth car came off the assembly line at its Lansing, Michigan plant. That car was and Oldsmobile Tornado.

Drive-in movies were a huge hit in the 1950’s and 60’s with as many as 4,000 across the country (today there are less than 100). The very first one opened in Camden, N.J. in 1933. Admission was 25 cents per car.

As for prices of cars, the lowest priced car of all time was the 1925 Ford Model T Runabout. It sold for $260, $5 less than in 1924.

About Ford Pick-Up trucks, here is the story…………….. Ford made the first pick-up trucks and then shipped them to dealers in crates. The new owners had to assemble using the crates as the beds of the trucks and following the instructions that came with it.  The new owners had to go to the dealers to get them, thus they had to “pick-up” the trucks and that is how the term came about. As the late Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down the highway of automobile trivia. there was a lot more we could have added, but we’ll save it for another time. have a great week everyone.