A few years back I found what was left of a 1957 Chevy in and old junkyard. There was a strip on the side near the end and it was without a doubt stainless steel.

I guess the automakers went to chrome when it got cheaper or made the car sell better.

I do remember a time when auto dealers referred to any trim such as that as 'brightwork'. I guess that way no matter it was made of they could advertise it.

A '55 Chevy with a 265 engine, 3 speed with electric overdrive was a pretty fast car off the line. Great for light to light.

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1985 300D 198K sold
1982 300D 202K
1989 300E 125K
1992 940T

"If you dont have time to do it safely, you dont have time to do it"

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

The thunderbird emblem denoted the 312 engine. The standard engine was the 292 if I remember. Actually the 312 powered the car very nicely on the highway. It moved right along.

As was the '57. I had one that my brother got from his Grandma in law. Kind of battered up in a few places, but very low miles & very solid. Big Brother had put a 4 spd Muncie in it prior to selling it to me for a couple hundred bucks.

That 265 purred so quietly folks could be leaning on the front fenders & not even know the engine was running. Then I had to go & hotrod the car with a 327, and it was silent no more.

The engine designations can be confusing, plus Ford stuck the "Thunderbird V8" on AMY engine which had been used to power the Tbird.
The base V8 in '56 was the 272 173-176HP 2 bbl
Next up was the "Thunderbird V8" 292 200-202 HP 4 bbl
Top regular engine in '56 was the "Thunderbird Special V8" 312 215-225 HP 4 bbl

All three were versions of the famous, and not well understood ( by hot rodders) Y-Block.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Sputnik was October '57, really the start of the "space race".

Not sure what you mean by "considered", space travel had been "considered" for centuries. The decision by Kennedy to go for a moon landing was made in 1961, after Alan Shepards suborbital rocket flight.

Astronauts were not selected in the US until 1959. They trained all over the place. The MSC (Manned Space Center, later JSC or Johnson Space Center) was not built until the 60s and I don't think much training went on in Texas until that was built, before that it was mostly in Florida, with training facilities all over the globe for various things.

By 1962 a good price was $6, the year "Motel 6" formed.

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Click here to see the items I have up for auction at EBay

Click here to see a photo album of my '62 Sprite Project Moneypit (Now Sold)

I do not know how they prospered but remember three dollars a night for the wife, myself and the first baby. A light breakfast was also included.

This was as late as 1962 as we took our new 1962 volkswagon out to the coast. That car was 1600 dollars brand new. When trading the car back in three years later the difference was 600 dollars for onother new one a little more upscale and we had really used the 62 a lot.

Today just the sales tax on a new car is greater. There were no sales taxes back then either if I remember well. I might be mistaken though as I really cannot remember the year they were implemented here.

A less than nice story was we did not use disposable diapers. Deposited the solied ones in a container on the rooftop carrier.

At our destination went to a laundramat. As it turned out it was lucky there where no other people in it. As soon as the container was opened to dump the diapers into the washer. Every fly in the area seemed to magically appear. Some of those diapers had been in the hot sun for three days. You live you learn.

There still is no sales tax on automobiles in Maryland!
There is, however, an excise tax, which happens to be pegged at the same rate as the income tax. They are thus able to impose it when someone applies for tags regardless of how the vehicle was obtained. They also use a KKB or some other guide, to verify the value of the vehicle. So if you say you bought the Gullwing for $100, they'd still tax you on their estimate of its value. So what is 6% of infinity?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Well here on private sales the government decides the cars value. Or you can take it to a car dealer for a forty dollar appraisal. If the dealers try to do a favour for you they jump on them as well.

A basic no win situation. Funny exclusion is when bringing an american car home. They have to accept the declared value presented at the border when importing for sales tax reasons.

What bothered me in maryland years ago was I could not get a transit permit from other than a dealer at the time. There also was an eight mile crossing of maryland in my large truck I was cautioned about to be careful of. Aparently your state raised a fair amount of change from that area like application of fines for things like a valve cap missing on a wheel.

You would probably appreciate our state motto:
The FREE State.
Ha ha ha ha

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Somehow I missed all that "old geezer" stuff from '55 while I was in Korea.

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62 220sb
67 250S
72 280SE 4.5
74 280C
77 300D
82 240D
85 190E 2.3
86 300E RIP 12/28/09
85 300SD
92 300D 2.5
00 E320 Current
Over 1,000,000 miles in Benzes, Since66

....and a whole passel of BMW 2002 and Tii