By Charles Frick I met Andy Dunning in high school in 1970. We hit it off immediately, and we were both car obsessed. I was driving my folks’ Beetle to school and he was sporting an AMC Sportabout. We desperately needed something cool to drive. One afternoon he said he was going to look at…
By Forrest Struss Most of my high school years in Montana were spent driving a customized 1948 Chrysler. In 1960, I graduated, enlisted in the Army, and was soon stationed in Germany. My first appreciation for British sports cars developed in Germany in 1963 when my good Army friend purchased a new Triumph TR4. I…
by Joel Justin If you’re like me, or should I say like my Triumphs, keeping their engines running cool in warm temps can be a challenge, especially when sitting at a stop light or in slow moving traffic in the summer. One thing I’ve done on some of my cars is to add an electric cooling fan…
A Drive Through the Desert It started out as many driving adventures have – subject to precious little deliberation but with an ambitious goal to use a British sports car as regular transportation to get from one point to another just like occurred on a regular basis ‘back in the day.’ In this case, the…
Despite the success of the Triumph TR4 and TR4A in sales and competition, as the end of the 60s approached it was clear that the company had to improve its performance with the introduction of a new engine that could offer not only greater horsepower, but also smoother operation than the relatively rough and noisy…
Most automotive enthusiasts appreciate the innate differences between sports cars from America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom even if they are unable to articulate what makes them unique. Even the casual car guy can tell you that American muscle cars have large displacement engines; Italian engines make their power with lots of…
They say cars are “just machines.” They say that automobiles don’t have personalities. We tend to agree, but with a disclaimer. Not that we think cars are a lifeform, have souls, or something like that. We do believe that some cars elicit feelings that are more than mechanical. It is hard to explain the passion…
One fall day in my early childhood my father was readying his cars for an event. Usually, he would tinker on one or two at a time, but never all four at once. It turned out that my uncle requested the use of all the families’ classic cars in a brilliant and bold procession from…
After installing the new clutch that I purchased from Moss Motors it was time to slide the gearbox back in. While trying to line up the nose of the gearbox to go into the clutch it became apparent that the rear of the gearbox would not drop down due to the front of the drive shaft. …
It never fails to surprise me how much real life is like high school. Back then we were typically identified with a group and that appellation likely stayed with us throughout our entire four years. Jock. Nerd. Slacker. Freak. Sometimes you were lucky enough to cut across such crass distinctions by creating a niche for…
