How They Built Cars When Beauty Was All That Mattered

[Thom]

Wasn't this car featured in the movie "French connection", with Gene Hackman? For some reason the letters around the spare wheel boss on the trunk had a strong impact on me when I first saw it as a child.

Clearly I would not call this a thing of beauty but the mostly square-box design of 1970s american cars has somewhat come of age and has today a certain specific coolness. With some friends we sometimes daydream (after the n-th glass of whatever) about renting something similar to drive all the way through the US, coast to coast...

[blueline]

"The French Connection" Yes!

Simply stated, an outstanding movie in so many respects - great story, very well-written and directed, gritty in its entirety, engrossing, great characters, NYC in its early 70s malaise, incredible car chase scenes, shootouts, good cops, hard cops and bad guys, heroin smuggling, the incomparable Gene Hackman as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, Roy Scheider and more - the list goes on and on.

Great "connection" to the Lincoln used to smuggle heroin into the U.S. by Aldo Ray's villainous character. It was a A Mark III per a quick search.

https://www.imcdb.org/v002340.html (Some French in this link.)

History of the 1961 real story that was the inspiration for the non-fiction book and later, the screenplay and movie:
https://nakedcitystories.com/frenchconnection.php

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[blueline]

Time to revive this thread momentarily.

This car may not fit the title of the thread "... When Beauty Was All That Mattered", but then again, it did win 'Best of Show' at the first ever Pebble Beach Concours held in 1950!

From Hagerty Media -

'The Remarkable Long-Lost Winner of the First Pebble Beach Concours'

https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profi ... -concours/

It also appeared on the cover of Road & Track magazine in the December 1949 issue:

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Hearst Magazines



I enjoy trying to imagine what it must have been like to be a spectator at races so long ago. I know, not very smart, even at the slower speeds of the cars back then.

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Instagram/pebblebeachresorts


More good pics in the article like this one from Instagram -

"From 1950-1956 the world’s fastest sports cars traversed the Del Monte Forest in pursuit of the Del Monte Trophy. The daring event was staged in parallel with the Concours d’Elegance ..."

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Instagram