Cruising Around Town With the Top Down

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The Northern Girls may knock me out, but put me out West or down South so I can cruise around all year round with the top down! There is nothing better than a convertible! Classic, Muscle Car, Sports Car, or Luxury Car - it ALL works!!!

Driving around with the wind blowing in your face, in your hair, in the open air, what a great feeling! Takes me back to my younger days, cruising down to Santa Cruz, with the boards in the back, looking cool and ready for action ( in our own minds anyway! ). Partial to Pontiacs, I love the GTO and Firebird Converts the best. Although, put a rag top on a Chevy, be it a Vette, Camaro, Chevelle, Classic Impala, or Monte Carlo, and it works good too! And of course, we can't overlook the classic 55-57 T-Birds! I suppose we need to include the older classic roadsters, many which came with NO top, they were just open!

I've seen some slick new convertibles out lately, like the Eos by Volkswagen. Have you seen one? It's what they call a hardtop convertible, where the hard top goes down into the trunk. It is super quick at it, too, taking all of about 25 seconds. The Eos also comes with a sunroof for those days when you don't need the whole top open. Pretty sweet! Reminds me of the Ford Fairlane Skyliners, which were only available from 1957 thru 1959. A classic beast of a car, and a pretty slow crank down, but then - it was the 50's!!! The top, once down, took up the whole trunk, with all the mechanics for it. But it still looked cool, and you had the best of both worlds - hard top and no top!!

Shopping around the aftermarket auto web stores, it's nice to see you can now get a good quality replacement convertible top for just about any older convert. It doesn't seem that long ago that the best you might do was a shabby, one-size-fits-all jobber that likely only came in an ugly white or cream color, or black. Depending on your car color, it probably looked bad. And, it probably leaked, and never folded up worth a hoot. The windows in 'em were always fun too. Extra points if you could actually SEE out of it, they were a nightmare when folding up the top, and cracked easily.

So, whatever your car choice is, if you can get it with a rag top, by all means go for it! Even if you live in the Midwest and have to sit in it in the garage 6 months out of the year!! Long live the Summer!

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1956 Mercury Montclair

Classic Cars The leading source for self 1956 Mercury Montclair. Free self Automotive Classic Cars resources. Includes sites related to self Classic Cars you can access from here!

The Mercury Montclair, a full sized automobile, was available as a two door hardtop, convertible and phaeton four door hardtop sedans. It had a length of 206.3 inches, a wheelbase of 119 inches and it weighed anywhere from 3,490 pounds to 3,725 pounds. It could be purchased brand new for between $2,600 and $2,900 depending on what options the buyer was interested in.

A Premium Automobile

Introduced by the Mercury Division of the Ford Motor Company in 1955, the Mercury Montclair was advertised as part of Mercury's premium automobile line. Ford historians aren't fully sure where the moniker, Montclair, came from but the general consensus is it is taken from an upper class community of Montclair, New Jersey. The 1956 Montclair was manufactured with some of Mercury's best features which included dual chrome outside rear view mirrors, a dual exhaust, fender skirts and extra chrome trim. It also had various two tone paint combinations. This was probably the best noted feature of the Montclair because the use of contrasting color panels, which ran under the side windows, set the Mercury Montclair apart from their other vehicle lines.

Sleek and Powerful

The 1956 Mercury Montclair included all of Mercury's evolutionary engineering. The '56 Mercury Montclair included factory air, which was a new option in Mercury vehicles as of 1955. The '56 Montclair also offered an "on-demand" low-gear kickdown for an extra cost with Mercury's three speed "Merc-O-Matic" automatic transmission. The "Merc-O-Matic" was actually Ford's first automatic transmission, which was introduced in 1950. In general the transmissions were given the name Ford-O-Matic but when a Mercury vehicles was marketed, it was given the moniker Merc-O-Matic.

The 1956 Mercury Montclair was no slouch when it came to power. It had a large V-8 engine with plenty of horsepower: There were two options available for the 1956 Mercury Montclair:

225hp 312 c.i. V-8335hp 312 c.i. V-8 with a 4 barrel carburetor

In terms of what type of Mercury Montclair was produced in 1956, here is the actual production breakdown:

Convertible: 7,762 Hardtop Sport Coupe: 50,562, Phaeton Hardtop Sedan: 23,493

The hardtop sport coupes were produced the most while the convertibles were fairly limited in production in 1956.

Since the Montclair was a premium Mercury vehicle, the interior would have sported upholstery that was comprised of leather and vinyl.

A Real Collector Car

Overall, the 1956 Mercury Montclair was a car with burly good looks with a bit of flash. It had a V-8 engine that was modern for the time and powerful. It has been a somewhat under appreciated model, so it can be hard to find the '56 Mercury Montclair as they are fairly scarce. This has made it a real collector car with a rapidly rising collector value. You have to be careful though, if you are looking to find one of these and restore it, as the parts can be as difficult to find as the cars themselves.

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BMW Car

Classic Cars The leading source for self BMW Car. Free self Automotive Classic Cars resources. Includes sites related to self Classic Cars you can access from here!

Bavarian Motor Works, is a manufacturing company that makes motorcycles, OEM BMW Rims, & even engines for the BMW cars that you see on the street. It's main plant is in Germany & it was founded in 1916; which is not too long ago compared to other luxury brands. BMW even owns & manufactures the Mini brand, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Cars. BMW makes motorcycles under BMW Motorrad & Husqvarna brands - I know they're weird names, but you have to remember that they are in Germany. BMW's & Factory Original BMW Wheels are widely known for their luxury & the great way that they perform.

After the first World War, which was World War I.. if you didn't know, BMW was mandated to stop making engines for airplanes by the terms of the Versailles Armistice Treaty. Because of this unexpected halt that they had to go by, the company moved to producing motorcycles in 1923 once the restrictions of the treaty were slowly but surely starting to be lifted. After making motorcycles, they began to make cars & Original BMW Rims in 1928 & 1929.

The little blue, white, circular logo is supposed to illustrate or represent the movement of a propeller, to show that the white blades are cutting through the beautiful blue sky. I can honestly say that I had no idea; my Mom has a BMW with Factory BMW Rims & I had no idea what it meant. I just thought they liked those colors & it was the ones that looked best with the car - oh well.

After BMW made their first aircraft & it was successful because of its high-altitude performance, they started making engines for World War II aircrafts. When 1959 rolled in, the automotive division in the BMW company started having financial troubles. After it did enough damage, the shareholders had a meeting to decide whether they were going to work with it & through it or just give up on it. As you can obviously tell, they decided to just work through it & just try to cash in on the, at the time, economic car boom that was enjoyed by so many manufacturers & people. They eventually bought the right to make & sell the Italian Iso Isetta. After this was done, it helped the company get back on their feet & gave them what they needed to move forward & make their cars & Factory Original BMW Wheels.

In 1992, BMW came up on a large wager in California; it was based on industrial design studio DesignworksUSA - which they just so happen to fully acquire in the year of 1995. The year before that, 1994, BMW had bought the Rover Group & owned it for six years. The Rover Group included the Rover, Land Rover, & even the MG brands. By 2000, they weren't doing so well so BMW decided to sell the brands to Phoenix Consortium, they eventually formed MG Rover. At this time, BMW still had the rights to manufacture the new MINI model, which was launched in the year of 2001.

In February of last year (2009), the chief designer - Chris Bangle - stated that he was leaving BMW after being on the design team for seventeen years. He was replaced by a man named Adrian van Hooydonk, who was initially, Bangle's right hand man. Bangle was widely known for all of the radical designs he had produced with BMW including the 7-Series & even the 2002 BMW Z4 with Factory Original 2002 BMW Z4 Rims. Let's just hope that this new guy is doing a great job like Chris Bangle.

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