With a room full of cars all begging for your interest, It’s hard not to fall in love once or twice as you stroll across the show floor. This week’s trip to Las Vegas, for the annual Mecum Auctions extravaganza in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall, found me in a nostalgic mood: Most of the cars I found that moved me most this time out largely have a connection to my own past, however indirect. That’s ok. I’m not the nostalgic sort, but cars do that to us: They remind of us other times and places, better or otherwise.

T262, 1989 Nissan Pao

It was a brilliant concept: take an existing chassis and build a car that’s more individualistic—and whimsically retro—than what it’s based on. (Car companies do it all the time: witness the new Bronco, on a Ranger chassis, and the Bronco Sport, whose bones are shared with the Escape.) In Japan, in the ‘80s, the dull Micra subcompact (smaller than our Sentra, but still too big to be kei-class) was re-styled to become the Pao–one of four specially retro-styled models to come out of the Pike factory in Japan. (The other three, trivia fans? The 1987 Be-1, the 1989 S-Cargo, and the 1991 Figaro.) We’ve already gone over whether these were the spark that set off the whole retro-styled craze of the last 30-odd years, encompassing everything from the New Beetle to the Chrysler PT Cruiser to the ’02 Thunderbird to the Chevy SSR. The Pao’s corrugated lines, the flip-up rear quarter windows, the sliding sunroof, the piepans-on-black-steelies look, even the color—all speak to an earlier time, while the interior offered modern levels of convenience and comfort. Better still, this particular 1989 Nissan Pao wasn’t so minty that you’d be afraid to take it out for an amusing, slow cruise. Six grand bid (at press time) is probably what it cost to procure it and ship it to the States on its clean Minnesota title.

Lot F62, 1982 Ford Mustang GT

Once upon a time, when I was younger and more beautiful, one of my first editorial tasks was to help fill a 300-page monthly magazine with words about, and pictures of 5.0-liter Ford Mustangs. Oh, most of them were of the ’87-and-up fuel-injected variety, but with decades of wisdom (?) behind me, I better understand the seismic shift that happened when Ford brought back the five-liter Windsor V-8 to its Mustang, slapped a GT badge on its rump and a pair of 5.0 badges on its front fenders, and sent it out hunting Camaros. Today a four-cylinder Mustang has double-plus the amount of power that a stock ’82 GT does, but in its day, a new GT was a big step toward reclaiming Mustang’s performance heritage. This 1982 Ford Mustang GT, showing barely 20,000 miles on its odometer and sporting aftermarket Michelin TRX-style wheels that no longer require weirdo metric-sized rubber, feels like an important milestone. Today’s V-8 Mustangs don’t say 302 on the front fenders—they say 5.0. Cars like this are the reason why.

Lot T79, 1977 Datsun 620 pickup

The rows at Mecum were filled with aggressive, angry, testosterone-filled (and -fueled) trucks and SUVs—painted an array of jarring combinations, jacked to the sky, and showing you their axles and increasingly outrageous footwear with no modesty whatsoever. And somehow, among them, from across a crowded conga line of cars waiting their turn over the transom, this little honey of a Datsun pickup batted its eyelashes at me. It’s all been redone—paint, interior, exhaust, tires, and just about every mechanical system short of the engine block appears to have been gone through and refurbished. It sold as I watched for $15,400 including the house’s piece; given the list of items done to it (long enough to nearly fill that reporter’s-notebook-sized dance card that gets plastered to the windshield), surely that much was invested in its refurbishment?

Lot S90, 1963 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible

Every auction-related trip to Vegas I take, I seem to want to find a car in which to dodge the absurd quantities of traffic, lights, and construction and just go for a lazy, style-filled cruise—a car that would prove a salve from the stupidity happening outside of my steel-and-glass cocoon. This time out, the ride to fit that particular bill is this three-hectare plot of Cadillac ragtop: power everything (steering/brakes/windows/locks/seat/top), smooth silver paint that offends me less here than it does on just about any modern SUV, and the sheer acreage of the thing lets everyone else in traffic that you’ve arrived, even if you’re still driving.

Lot F122, 1971 Ford Torino convertible

Occasionally, I miss the thuggish brutality of my old Mercury Montego, the one I got to build up in the ‘90s and early ‘00s—with its Cleveland power and steamroller tires. Occasionally, I miss the opportunity to put the roof down like I could in my ’64 Dart GT, the car that would replace it in my fleet; winters here in the Southwest are prime convertible time. This 1971 Ford Torino convertible is essentially both cars rolled into one: unrestored, with two-barrel Cleveland power under the hood and a top that folds down, the windshield banner proclaims that it’s one of 34 built—though how those numbers break down is unclear. It’s not even a GT, but that wouldn’t bother me. Neither does the mild road rash on the leading edge of the hood.

Now and again, your car’s tires lose air. Just a pound or two here and there. If you have an air compressor in your garage, it’s probably heavy and needs plugging in; if you don’t, you’ll need a pocket full of quarters and a nearby gas station, assuming your tires aren’t so flat that they’ll get damaged if you run on them.

Not long ago, when I had some tires to inflate, a friend pressed this little gizmo into my hand: Fix Manufacturing’s Eflator. Literally, it was a gift: It came with neither box nor directions, but was intuitively simple to operate despite this. Not much larger than a cellphone, resembling a walkie-talkie, weighing in at around one pound, and operating on a rechargeable 2000mAh battery, it happily inflated the pneumatic tires on my deflated hand truck in about 38 seconds. A successful test. Not long after, I tasked it with inflating the four flat tires on my long-suffering Model A Ford, just enough to be able to roll it down the driveway for its tow.

Photo by Jeff Koch

Just screw the cap onto the Schrader valve until the join stops hissing, switch it on, and stand back. I pressed the M button (for Manual) on the front of the pump, and let it do its work; you can also set it for a given pressure. The eflator was designed for bicycles and motorcycles, but it worked great on my A. All four of my Model A’s 19-inch Allstate tires were pumped up to 15 pounds, according to the large, clear digital readout on its face, with it taking less than five minutes per tire to get there. Once that ancient, cracked rubber was sufficiently inflated, I rolled the A down my mother-in-law’s driveway to await its tow, and the pump itself slipped back into the glove box in my van. There is a rubber sheath covering the connection between the pump and the hose; do not remove this, as the join between pump and hose gets really hot. The pump itself remains cool enough to touch during operation.

Photo by Jeff Koch

Where the eflator failed was when I tasked it with something it was not designed to do: entirely inflate a car tire. When the Vice Grip Garage charity-auction Silverado had a flat, oversized off-road tire after months of sitting in a Phoenix storage unit, I thought I’d give it a shot. Without recharging after my hand truck or the four flat A rubber bands, we made it to about seven and a half pounds of pressure—enough to get it out of the storage unit and onto the waiting transporter—before the batteries simply gave out. So, even in its failure, the unit still succeeded. Had I been so equipped, I could have recharged the unit via its USB-C port. The money spent on it could pay itself back quickly in an emergency, and it will live in most glove boxes or consoles unobtrusively. It comes with a one-year warranty and a nylon carry bag.

Fix Manufacturing sells the Deflator directly from its site for $99.95. We found similar battery-powered tire inflators selling on Amazon in the $40 to $50 range.

[I Love This Tool reviews are not sponsored and are the result of Hemmings Motor News’s staffer’s hands-on experience with tools they purchased themselves. Hemmings Motor News may earn commissions from referrals to products listed on Amazon.com.]

Inaugural car auction concludes

The debut of Kodner Galleries’s first-ever Exotic Cars Auction, featuring the collection of the late Barry Amstell, took place last week with more than $4 million in total sales. On November 6, two dozen cars, three motorcycles, and some petroliana, automobilia, memorabilia, and a mini-Corvette were all a part of the sale.

The star of the day was a 2005 Ford GT with only 148 miles on the odometer, which found a new owner for $401,500. The GT was powered by a 5.4-liter supercharged DOHC V-8 mated to a six-speed transmission. It was the opening lot and top American car to sell that day as it was purchased new by Amsdell from Maroone Ford in Delray Beach, where the GT was displayed in his commercial garage with minimal miles put on it. It also came with extras including an owner’s manual and a car cover.

Other highlights included a highly coveted 1963 Corvette Sting Ray with the split rear window in red raking in $181,500, a 1965 Ford Shelby G.T. 350 selling for $330,000, a 1981 Back to the Future replica DeLorean reaching $90,200 and the top sale, which was a 1965 Shelby AC Cobra (pictured), generating $814,000.

Full results from Kodner’s Exotic Cars Auction are now available here.

Magnus Walker exhibit

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Magnus Walker documentary “Urban Outlaw,” the Petersen Automotive Museum held a special gathering to unveil its limited-time Urban Outlaw exhibit from its Legends of the Vault Gallery. Walker has become a well-known Porsche builder and collector while finding fame in building the Serious clothing brand as well as a career in real estate and filmmaking.

The exhibit features 10 cars and a series of objects personally picked by Walker including his red, white, and blue Porsche “277.” He acquired the car – a 1971 911 T – at the Pomona Swap Meet in 1999 and he transformed it to a 1973 RS replica lookalike by adding flares, a ducktail spoiler, and some striping. After becoming race licensed, he became known as 277 (his birthday 7/7/67 with 277 the only number available) and he would unleash the Porsche at Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and the Las Vegas Speedway among others. The low-budget build rolls on 15 x 7 and 8-inch Outlaw wheels with Hoosier 225/50/15 tires.

Other cars and memorabilia that will be available for viewing are his 914 art car, his 1976 Porsche 930, and his co-designed Nike SB dunks. The exhibit will run until January 31, log onto petersen.org/outlaw for more information.

Hemmings is proud to announce the promotion of Matthew Litwin to the position of Editor of Hemmings Classic Car magazine. Litwin began his career at Hemmings as an Associate Editor in April 2006 contributing to multiple monthly and daily Hemmings titles and properties. While providing the editorial department with feature stories and event coverage, Matt became a key member of the Hemmings Motor News Great Race from 2013 to 2017. Simultaneously, Matt managed the Hemmings Motor News Concours d’Elegance class structures, car selections, event field layout, event program content, and judging teams from 2013 to 2019, during which time he was promoted to Senior Editor.

In October 2020, Matt began assisting his peers with the planning and day-to-day management of Hemmings Classic Car. Now as Editor, Matt brings to Hemmings Classic Car a clear vision of the title’s future, having recently spearheaded a redesign of the respected title scheduled to debut with the April 2023 issue.

“I’m excited to have the opportunity to manage such a revered title, one that I’ve been subscribing to since issue one debuted in October 2004,” Matt says. “Over the years, Hemmings Classic Car evolved with the interests of the hobby, without sacrificing the core content that made the magazine what it is today.

“It’s something we’ve kept in mind moving forward. I’m thrilled to be guiding the title though its next evolution that will bring more dynamic photography and writing to our readership, while adding a wider array of feature content from a variety of hobby segments. We’re going to dig deeper into the ownership aspect—from driving experiences to DIY maintenance and repairs. We’ll discuss where and how to buy collectible vehicles, the OE-style and aftermarket support network that keep our vehicles on the road, and more technical features that will educate novice and veteran vehicle owners alike. All of this and more in a new, visually dramatic package.”

Today, in most of America, pickup trucks used as cars are an accepted norm —they’re America’s best-selling vehicles for a reason. Whether it’s their unabashedly broad-shouldered macho style, the can-do capability in any weather and over any terrain, or the full-framed toughness baked into every build, a pickup truck makes a statement.

Pickups even make sense in places like California, despite gas nudging up against $7 a gallon there at press time — rugged construction and tall tires soak up ruts and bumps on the notoriously poorly paved freeway system. Pickups offer comfort that a modern car, with its low-profile rubber and Nürburgring-tuned suspension, simply cannot provide.

The use of trucks as cars on the American road has been a full-blown trend since at least the ’70s, but even before this it took years of people realizing that trucks were increasingly comfortable to drive —and that the advertising hyperbole was in many cases true. The increased levels of civility came from product planners seeing beyond truck-as-tool, and the builders engineering increased levels of comfort and style, even across a single generation of truck.

Take our feature vehicle, for example. The truck on these pages is a 1966 Chevrolet C-10 half-ton pickup, brought back to the condition seen here by owner Gary Genoron of Lake Lucerne, New York. It is the ultimate iteration of this generation of C-10, and if you place it next to a 1960 C-10, you’d be hard pressed to see the through-line between them: hoods, cabs, drivelines, and front suspension all changed over the course of seven seasons. Only the 115-inch wheelbase, bed selection, and Chevy’s desire to blend the on-the-road comfort of its best-selling full-size models with legendary truck toughness remained.

What arrived in 1960 was a big step forward from the 1955-’59 “Task Force” models. The ’50s rigs had solid axles and leaf springs at both ends; Chevy’s ’60 C-10 two-wheel-drive half-tons arrived with torsion-bar independent front suspension and coils holding up the 12-bolt solid rear axle. (A heavier-duty leaf-sprung rear was available for the pickup traditionalist.) A drop-center ladder frame with X-shaped crossmember allowed bodies that were simultaneously lower and roomier. They were also wider, offering useful increases in shoulder, head, and leg room, along with six inches of additional hip room. Noise-deadening insulation lived between the roof skin and a ribbed inner panel. The windshield was 26 percent larger and wrapped around, as windshields did in those days. Engines included the 235-cu. in. inline six and a 175-hp 283-cu.in. V-8.

There were subtler changes at work, too. The lower ride height—up to seven inches at the roof compared to a ’59 — meant that it felt more car-like to drive, not to mention a lower center of gravity to get rid of that wobbly, up-high feeling. The lower cab also made the ’60 C-10 easier to get in and out of, and the wider cab meant that it was more comfortable too. Moving the front axle back nearly two inches and adding more than five and a half inches to the back of the cab not only made it roomier, it also granted better weight distribution.

But evolution soon took hold —and we don’t mean the usual grille changes and fender-badge placement that were part-and-parcel of most American cars and trucks in the ’50s and ’60s. The hood was changed first: a pair of jet-age-looking nacelles over each headlamp cluster were smoothed out in 1962. At the same time, a single-headlamp-per-side grille replaced the previous four-eyed look. Small potatoes, perhaps, but an indicator of what Chevrolet had up its sleeve. A year later, Chevy ditched the front torsion-bar set-up in favor of more traditional coil-sprung double-A-arm suspension, and added a new base inline-six engine. A whole new cab greeted buyers of 1964 trucks: The wraparound windshield and its vertical A-pillar were retired, replaced by a traditional A-pillar that matched the windshield rake. Chevy claimed “increased cab torsional strength” at the time, but it’s just as fair to say that wrap-around glass was old hat by then and needed freshening. For 1965, both air conditioning and Chevy’s 220-hp 327-cu.in. small-block V-8 were on the option sheets. Automatic-equipped V-8 C-10s were given the new Turbo-Hydramatic transmission in 1966, and reverse lamps appeared beneath the taillamps on Fleetside models like the one in our photos.

Gary’s truck, filling that ever-present nostalgia hole that often presents itself when a parent (in this case, Gary’s dad) owned a similar vehicle, turned out to be nicely equipped —not loaded with air conditioning or automatic transmission, but built with Deluxe heater (from a time when heaters were optional!), chrome side moldings and bumpers that gleam nicely against the clean Tuxedo Black flanks, and the optional 327-cu.in. engine (painted seafoam green for truck applications) under that broad hood. The standard transmission, a three-on-the-tree, is on board. Gary found it in 2014, though not in the shape you see it here.

“After an online search, I found this one,” he says. “It had a good-condition body and frame and had the 327, which is rare. I’d say that the paint and body work were 90 percent done when I bought it, but the mechanicals were only 30 percent done.” That meant finding all manner of period-correct pieces to make it not just run right, but to look and feel absolutely period-perfect correct.

Gary notes that “some of the engine parts, wiring, tires, and interior” were missing. A few parts were reproduced, like the 7.00×15 bias-ply Firestone tires and a complete correct black-and-white interior from LMC Truck. Some parts, particularly in the engine bay, took a lot of searching—to the point that his C-10 wasn’t completed to Gary’s satisfaction until 2020. When a truck as simple as a ’60s Chevy pickup, with the enormous parts support that this generation of truck gets from the aftermarket, gets stuck in a seven-year turnaround, you know that the owner is refusing to cut corners and is making everything right.

And when we say right, we mean correct for this particular era of truck. The block code was shared between trucks and cars, but the casting 3782461 “camel-back” cylinder heads (with their 1.94/1.50-inch valves, correct for 1964- ’66) had no accessory holes for mounting options like, for example, power steering. Nothing less than factory-, vehicle-, and era-correct would do.

At this point, Gary has achieved his goal, winning trophies and awards all over upstate New York—not to mention a photo shoot here in HCC (and, we’re willing to wager, a slot in next year’s Pickups and SUVs Hemmings calendar too…). The only thing left to do, Gary figures, is a correct contrasting squirt of white paint on the roof–tough to see from most angles but a good hedge against the sun heat-soaking the top surfaces of the truck at car shows. Well, that and drive it about a hundred miles a month.

Look, no one is going to believe that a bigger small-block V-8, automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a roomier cab are going to single-handedly call up the truck-as-car revolution we’ve experienced over the past few decades. No one is going to mistake it for a Cadillac. At the same time, it’s easy to see how Chevy’s engineers scrambled, within a single seven-year generation of truck, to go from a plain ol’ bare-bones pick ’em up to something that had a good deal more usability and comfort (and therefore consumer appeal) baked in. Trucks like this one played their part in the mainstreaming of these commercial haulers into America’s driveways: a total of 57,386 C-10 half-tons on a 115-inch wheelbase were built for the 1966 model year. It’s a crucial stepping stone between the hearty agricultural models of the not-so-distant past and the uber-plush cruisers and/or unrelenting rock crushers (or both simultaneously) of the not-so-distant future. Gary’s V-8-powered 1966 C-10 is a terrific example of a big, important marker in the evolution of the Great American Pickup Truck.

Date: 1982

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Source: Jet Lowe, via Historic American Engineering Record / Library of Congress

What do you see here?

Photo by Jet Lowe