Friday, March 13, 2009

Long Cars From The longrooffan

If you have been Counting Along With Me, you know I love station wagons, affectionately known as "longroofs" and I love oleragtops.

On a recent excursion, to be blogged about later this day, I spotted a series of long cars, not longroofs, but long cars.

These are usually custom built by Coachbuilders and are based on production automobiles. Back in the 1920's and 30's there were many coachbuilding companies but they almost all went out of business during the Depression and WWII. Now most of the coachbuilders build limosines.

The one in the image below was built by Federal Coach based in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Despite the Tennessee plates, it has been parked in the Mobil station just two blocks from the Taj Mahal for a few months.

It was the sighting of this one, in the parking lot of a bar down in Titusville, that sparked my memory of the newer six door shown above. It was also built by Federal Coach.

I drove past this 70 Lincoln Continental and had to whip a Ueee to head back to see it. Surprised?

Turns out this is one of three factory built in 1970. The dude is asking $5K for it.

And while it started right up and the interior was in excellent condition, the amount of rust on the body and frame significantly affected its desirability to this oleman. It is a rare one though.

But I will say this about that, the long car in the following image is just absolutely sweet.

I believe it to be a 55 or 56 Cadillac Fleetwood Factory Limosine. Just gorgeous even though the exhaust pipes are no longer routed through the rear bumper. And I would take this one over the pedestrian late model Lincoln limo in the background of this image.

And it is seeing cool and rare cars such as these that allow me to

Celebrate Life

1 comment:

Horse-farmer said...

a few of those longroofs are made right here in the queen city of the ozarks....

retired bus drivers deliver them...

we saw a couple with the Queen City manufacturer sign in Hawaii and had to laugh.....

Wouldn't mind that 56 caddy, but the Barngoddess says NO....