I decided to join him so I wouldn’t have to wait for the bus), got a job, and, of course, bought a brand new car, my first. It was a lovely turquoise and green 1965 Ford Fairlane Sports Coupe. Wow!! One problem, though: I hadn’t been working long enough to accumulate a “down payment.” Heck, I didn’t even know what a “down payment” was. Yarmila, my girlfriend and later my wife, came to the rescue. Hope she doesn’t read this, don’t think I ever repaid her.
Now a working stiff, the new cars came fast and furious: 1967 Mustang fastback (should have kept that one), 1967 Dodge Monaco (should never have bothered with that boat), 1968 Mercury Montego (that one almost prevented a wedding — mine), where am I? … 1970 Ford Torino followed by a 1972 version. Now the cars start to blur, but I remember visions of a Plymouth Arrow (a what?), a 1980 Pontiac Grand Prix, a couple of Toyota Celicas, a Honda Prelude (did I have two of them?), and a couple of Saturns. Oh, I hear you ask, what was the best car I ever owned? The one my wife of many, many years bought for me when I turned fifty-five, my classic 1955 Pontiac Laurentian, just like the one I coveted all those years ago.
FOR OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS, Canadian motorists have travelled the streets and highways of this vast Dominion in many different makes and shapes of automobiles, many of which are no longer built. Remember the bullet-nose Studebaker? The step-down Hudson? The Nash Metropolitan? How about Hupmobile, LaSalle, Durant, Graham-Paige, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, and DeSoto?
And even with cars still being built, we have names that have passed into history, including Lincoln-Zephyr, McLaughlin-Buick, the “490” Chev, the Model T Ford, the Chrysler Airflow, the Mercury 114, and the Curved Dash Oldsmobile.
All these vehicles at one time were brand new and sparkling clean, fresh from the factory and showroom floor. And nearly all of them were mass-produced on an assembly line, with each one looking much like the one ahead and the one behind.
But every time a new car leaves the factory, it becomes unique and unlike any other car in the world. Each new owner takes it where he or she wants to go, often picking up scratches and dings along the way. The second owner does the same, and the third, and fourth, and so on until the car often reaches its final resting place in a scrapyard.
Each owner gives the car a unique experience, adding another chapter to its “auto-biography.” And during the life of that car, someone with a camera is often there to capture the moment. This book contains almost 150 such moments, giving us a glimpse into the past and the way we drove.
“Look, Ma! No Steering Wheel!”
THIS CAR IS SO OLD it doesn’t even have a steering wheel. Steering is by tiller. Its a Curved Dash Oldsmobile, a popular model in production from 1901 through 1906, and powered by a horizontally mounted one-cylinder engine. Over twenty thousand of these sporty little runabouts were sold. The first one into Canada was reportedly purchased by a minister in Oil Springs, Ontario. The one seen here is participating in a parade of jalopies along Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto in 1930.
In October 1901, Roy Chapin left the Detroit factory in a Curved Dash Olds, crossed the Detroit River into Windsor, Canada, on a car ferry, and drove across southern Ontario, heading for the second annual auto show in Madison Square Garden in New York. The trip took over seven days, but he made it. When he arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he was so dusty and dirty from driving hundreds of miles on primitive roads that the doorman refused to let him in. He entered through the back door. The publicity generated by this trip was the best advertisement a car company could have, and these little Oldsmobiles began selling as fast as the factory could crank them out. Chapin’s route to New York took him across southern Ontario because that was the shortest route. The Canadians who saw him whizzing by at his top speed of 25 miles per hour, or mired in the mud, were probably getting their very first look at this new invention.
Back then, and even today at antique car events, these little Oldsmobiles were easily recognized by their dashboard, which was curved for better visibility. And how did the word “dashboard” come to be applied to the part of a car in front of the driver? The answer can be found in 500 Years of New Words:
That part of an automobile we still call the dashboard can be traced back to the days of horses and buggies. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines dashboard as “a board or leather apron in the front of a vehicle, to prevent mud from being splashed by the heels of the horses upon the interior of the vehicle.” The first writer who used the word (according to the OED) was John Lang in “Wanderings in India,” published in 1859: “He fell asleep, his feet over the dashboard, and his head resting on my shoulder.”1
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary dates the word even farther back — to 1846.
Modern-day auto buffs who pride themselves on precision in language prefer to call the dashboard the instrument panel because its no longer there to protect you from chunks of mud flying from horses’ hooves.
Winton Runabout, Toronto, circa 1904
THIS AMERICAN-BUILT, RIGHT-HAND-drive Winton attracted a crowd of mostly men and boys in front of the King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto in the early days of motoring. The hotel was named in honour of Edward VII, the reigning monarch (1901–1910) and an early enthusiast of motor cars.
The “King Eddy” first opened its doors in 1903, and on July 27 of that year, it provided the venue for the first general meeting of the Toronto Automobile Club, which had already set up a permanent office in the hotel. Through amalgamation with similar clubs in Hamilton, Ottawa, and Kingston, the Ontario Motor League was born in 1907.
The Winton was named for Alexander Winton, who began building automobiles in Ohio in 1897. One of his first customers was John Moodie of Hamilton, who imported a Winton into Canada in 1898. The one shown here is typical of cars of that era — no windshield, no doors, and no top. Motorists often bathed or showered after every drive on the mostly unpaved, dusty roads. Note the heavily clothed female passenger and the goggles on the driver’s cap.
The headlights shown here are covered, perhaps to protect them from stones flying up from horses’ hooves. Even if you intended to drive your car only during daylight hours, you were well advised to equip your car with a pair of headlights. The roads were littered with horseshoe nails, and changing a flat tire could delay your return home until after dark.
Not everyone who owned a Winton was happy with it. One of Mr. Winton’s first customers didn’t like the car and told him so. To which Winton allegedly replied, “If you’re so smart, maybe you should build your own car, Mr. Packard.”
James Ward Packard did exactly that, and test-drove his first car in November 1899. Winton automobiles remained in production until 1924. The Packard nameplate survived until 1958.
