1929 Durant

First of three parts

William Crapo Durant is one of the larger-than-life characters from the early years of the automobile business.
A born salesman, he gained control of Buick in 1904 and marketed it so successfully that he was able to buy a number of other automobile and parts manufacturers, including Cadillac, and merge them in 1908 into a company he called General Motors.
He’d be remembered as one of motoring’s great pioneers if he’d stopped there. However, Durant got overextended and lost control of GM in 1910. He then teamed up with race car driver Louis Chevrolet, determined to create another company modelled on his GM model that would offer a car in every price range. He didn’t have to. After buying out Chevrolet’s interests he made enough money to again take control of GM in 1916, only to lose it for good in 1920.
But Billy Durant was an empire builder and just a few months later he was back in business – and this time with a company, and a car, bearing his name.
Durant Motors Inc. began manufacturing 4- and 6-cylinder automobiles in 1921 and, following the GM example, soon offered a wide number of brands in all price ranges –Star, Durant, Flint, Eagle, Princeton and Locomobile.

1927 Star

Durant had enjoyed a long friendship with R.S. McLaughlin of Oshawa, Ont. – a relationship which had led to the formation of General Motors of Canada in 1918. So it was only natural that his new enterprise also should acquire a Canadian component.
Thus, Durant Motors of Canada was incorporated on Sept. 3, 1921 and operations set up in a former munitions factory in Leaside, now part of Toronto.
A contract with Durant Motors Inc. was signed giving the Canadian plant the rights to build and sell Durant and Star automobiles for 20 years. Billy Durant retained half the shares in the new company – and also got half the profits.
According to the 1973 book, Cars of Canada, in its first two years the Leaside factory assembled more than 13,000 low-priced Stars and medium-priced Durants, sold through a country-wide network of 445 dealers. Leaside made its own bodies and some other parts, but brought in Continental engines from Muskegon, Mich.
By 1924 Durant had become Canada’s third largest domestic automaker and in 1924 the Canadian operation was given the rights to handle all of the company’s export business to British possessions.
By the end of 1926, some 5,000 cars had been exported by the Canadian branch plant and that year, after paying taxes and retiring previous debt, it earned a profit of $133,581.
Things were really humming at Leaside under the direction of newly appointed president Roy Kerby, a staunchly Canadian super-salesman from Petrolia, Ont.
But just as things had always gone sour for Durant at General Motors, in 1926 things also began to fall apart at the American enterprise that bore his name. This led to the formation of a new Canadian auto company, which we’ll explore in future installments.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

Tucker No. 1046 in 2009, before restoration work began.

One of the best things about going to the annual North American Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit is its proximity to Chatham, Ont. – home of RM Auctions. Again this year I made time to stop in at RM because there’s always a story to be found there.
RM is much more than one of the world’s top automobile auction houses, and it’s always fascinating to see what its craftsmen are working on in the restoration shops. When I popped in after last year’s NAIAS, I was shown a rare 1948 Tucker Torpedo – or what was left of it – that was awaiting restoration. So on this year’s visit I especially wanted to see how work was progressing on this rare automobile.
Tucker Corporation is very much in the news these days because of the controversy over the authenticity of a 1948 convertible that failed to sell at Russo and Steele’s Scottsdale auction last month when the owner refused a bid of $1.4 million. So RM still holds the record for highest price ever achieved by a Tucker – $1,000,017 (including buyer’s premium) for a green sedan sold at it Monterey event in 2008. This same car – chassis No. 1034 – had previously been sold at the same RM event in 2006 for $577,000. It now resides in a private collection.
The few Tuckers that were assembled at the company’s Chicago facility, a former Dodge aircraft engine plant, sold for about $2,500 when new.
The brainchild of auto designer and entrepreneur Preston Tucker, the car was a radical departure from pre-World War II American iron. It had a rear-mounted flat six helicopter engine and was driven by a modified Cord transmission. The Tucker Torpedo’s streamlined shape was quite modern for the day and its front end was unmistakable because of its “Cyclops’ eye” – a headlamp mounted in the nose that turned in relation to the front wheels for better nighttime vision.
While the provenance of the convertible is in dispute – the owner says it’s a factory prototype, the Tucker Automobile Club of America says it isn’t – there’s no disputing the authenticity of the Tucker sedan in the RM shops.
Of the 51 Tuckers produced, including the prototype “Tin Goose,” 47 are known to exist. The one at RM is chassis number 1046 and its big problem is that it’s far from original.
No. 0046 had been given an Oldsmobile drivetrain in the 1950s and was converted again in the 1960s when it was mounted on a 1964 Mercury Monterey chassis with a 390 CID V8 up front. Despite this, No. 1046 sold on eBay for $202,700 in 2007, according to the Tucker club website.

Tucker No. 1047 on the hoist at RM in Chatham.

The car is now in the part of RM’s shop where photography is not permitted, but I’d been allowed to take the photo accompanying this story in 2009.
The first thing you’ll notice is that louvres have been cut into the hood to direct air flow to the front-mounted V8. These will be removed during the restoration process and RM has obtained the correct drivetrain, including the water-cooled Franklin flat six.
However, one thing that’s impossible to obtain is a Tucker chassis, so that will have to be hand-fabricated. To help with that job, RM has Tucker No. 1047 on loan from the Gilmore Auto Museum in Hickory Corners, Mich. In exchange for doing some work on its car, the museum is allowing RM to use it as a template for four months.
On the day I was there, No. 1047 was up on a hoist and a technician was photographing every square inch of the floor and frame for future reference.
As for No. 1046, it’s now been disassembled, awaiting a complete rebuild.
For more on Tucker Corporation, and a complete roster of surviving cars, log on to the Tucker Automobile Club of America website at www.tuckerclub.org.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

1948 Tucker convertible, as completed by Benchmark Classics.

I guess that was Tucker … not sucker.
One of the most controversial collector cars of all time failed to sell at Russo and Steele’s classic car auction in Scottsdale, Ariz. on Jan. 24. Bidding got up to $1.4 million but failed to match the reserve price.
The owner had hoped to realize $3.5 million for the car, billed as the only 1948 Tucker convertible.
Adding to the drama, the sale occurred a day later than planned because of a vicious thunderstorm which ripped across Scottsdale on Jan 22, blowing down Russo and Steele’s 800-foot tents, damaging some 300 of the collector cars awaiting auction, and sending one tent flying across a major highway, where it snarled traffic for hours.
Slightly damaged, the Tucker was left in the sale, although hundreds of others were withdrawn. It now has a large dent in the left front fender, according to Russo and Steele owner Drew Alcazar, “as if someone leaned on it.”
The car was being auctioned by owner Justin Cole, whose restoration shop in Madison Wis. – Benchmark Classics – completed work on the convertible in the past year. It bears serial No. 57 and has less than two test miles on the odometer.
At question is the car’s provenance. Cole says it was a prototype convertible left unfinished when the Tucker Corporation’s assembly plant closed on March 3, 1949.
Cole says the car’s code name at the Tucker works was “Vera” – after Tucker’s wife, and was to be a special gift for her. But family friends are on record as saying Vera hated convertibles.
The Tucker Automobile Club of America, Inc. (TACA), which houses the company’s records in a museum in Michigan, has this to say in a statement on its website:
“While TACA is certainly not ready to completely dismiss the possibility that a Tucker convertible could have been built by the Tucker Corporation, we have never discovered nor been presented with sufficient evidence to prove such a car was planned for or started at the factory.
“TACA recognizes that this vehicle appears to have been built using many authentic Tucker parts, such as an engine, some body panels, etc. It may well represent, as a tribute car, what a Tucker convertible would have looked like had one been produced by the Tucker Corporation.
“This vehicle has never been presented to TACA for a comprehensive review per our certification / authentication process, nor has the seller responded to our request seeking the engine serial number and data plate information. TACA has insufficient evidence to otherwise authenticate this vehicle as being a genuine attempt by the Tucker Corporation to produce a convertible model or concept.”
“There never was a convertible,” Tucker’s daughter-in-law, Shirley Tucker, 82, of Scottsdale told the Arizona Republic. “All the cars were the same, just different colors.”
Her husband had worked with his father before trouble with the Securities Exchange Commission resulted in fraud charges against Preston Tucker (he was found not guilty) and the seizure of all assets. Thirty-six cars were completed in the Chicago factory before that happened and another 14 were finished afterwards using Tucker parts.
Counting the prototype Tucker – nicknamed “Tin Goose” – 51 sedans were completed and 47 of them survive – many in museums around the world.
Much interest in the car, with its flat six helicopter engine mounted in the rear and its trademark Cyclops eye, was stirred after Francis Ford Coppola’s 1988 film “Tucker: The Man and his Dream.” The movie romanticized the man and the car, suggesting the big American automakers conspired to kill it because it posed a threat to their business.
Many critics scoff at that, too.
But the movie revived interest in upstart independent marque and the last Tucker sedan sold at auction – at RM Auctions’ Monterey event in 2009 – brought $1,000,017, including buyer’s premium.
At almost $400,000 above that, perhaps Mr. Cole should have taken the money and run.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

1984 Renault Fuego turbo.

While working on the restoration of my Manic GT after the holidays, my mechanic and I discussed the need for a pair of front shock absorbers. None of Charlie Appleman’s usual parts suppliers had anything that would fit the Renault R10 suspension system used by Manic before the Quebec automaker closed the doors of its Granby factory in 1971 after building just 160 cars. (My Manic technically isn’t one of them, being a car that was unfinished at the time and purchased at the bankruptcy sale.)
However, Charlie remembered receiving a tip that several old Renaults might be found in a nearby wrecking yard.
Now any chance to visit a wrecking yard is a no-brainer for most old car nuts, so Charlie and I trooped off through the snow to see for ourselves.
We were directed to one of the yard’s far corners where, sure enough, there sat four Renaults – none of them, unfortunately, old enough for our needs. Three of them were Fuego coupes from the early 1980s, piled upon each other in a jumble of broken glass, crushed sheet metal and twisted trim.
It had been so long since I’d seen one of these hatchbacks that I’d forgotten all about them. And at one time, back in 1985, the Fuego was a car I considered buying. I liked its swoopy three-door styling and had enjoyed good luck with a Renault 12 I’d owned about a decade earlier. I didn’t, however, take the plunge but somewhere I still have a 1985 Fuego sales brochure.
The Fuego, which was based on the front-drive Renault 18, was introduced in Europe in 1980 and manufactured in France until 1985. After that, assembly carried on at Renault’s plant in South America, but the Fuego disappeared from North American showrooms after the 1985 model year.
Renault had formed a working relationship with American Motors Corporation in 1979, which included the loan of some badly needed cash. To protect that investment, the French automaker assumed control of the near-bankrupt AMC in early 1980. A product of that takeover was the Alliance, an Americanized version of the Renault 19, made in AMC’s Kenosha, Wisconsin factory. But the Fuego was pure Renault and was imported from France from 1982-85 and sold in AMC dealerships.
Although it was the top-selling European coupe from 1980-82, it never caught on here despite is fashionable interior and aerodynamic styling.
In 1982 and ’83 North American Fuego buyers got a fuel-injected 1.6-litre 4-cylinder engine, either turbocharged or normally aspirated. For 1984 and 1985 engine size was upped to 2.2-litres. Available transmissions were a 3-speed automatic or 5-speed manual.
In 1987 Renault sold American Motors to Chrysler, which created the Jeep-Eagle division out of AMC’s ashes. Renault 21 sedans and wagons, rebadged as Medallions, were sold from 1987-89 at Jeep-Eagle dealerships. But the buying public wasn’t interested and the Renault nameplate disappeared entirely from North America after 1989.
All Renaults are now scarce in Canada and the U.S., but if you’ve got a Fuego you’ve been hoping to restore one day, drop me a line. I know a wrecking yard that just may have some of the parts you need.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

Car unfinished by the factory can be flipped on this
steel cradle for easier access to undercarriage and interior.

Hard to believe, but it’s been two years since my friend Mike Johnston led me to a 1971 Manic GT sitting in a snowbank with a “for sale” sign on the roof. For the uninitiated, that’s a two-seat sports coupe with a body of fibreglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) attached to a Renault 10 platform and using a rear-drive Renault engine and transmission.
I’d owned one of these rare Canadian-made cars when new and always regretted letting it go. So for $200 I bought the car in the snowbank – No. 121 of only160 made. My mechanic pal, Charlie Appleman, trailered it to his shop in Port Hope, Ont. In turn, that led us to Chicoutimi, Que. and a Manic that was unfinished when the factory in Granby closed its doors forever.
That car’s FRP body shell was complete except for the rear deck and was attached to a rust-free platform with the steering rack, wheels and 4-speed manual transmission in place. As a bonus, it was packed with parts, including a brand new engine. Four plastic bins and several milk crates were stuffed with more pieces – both used and NOS.
So we got it home and began to finish it the way it would have been had the company not gone bust in May, 1971.
Readers keep asking how the project is going, so here’s an update.
No. 121 had no floor left, and its frame was badly rusted – the reason why so few Manics exist today. Although their FRP bodies are indestructible, the Renault platforms rusted out in five or six years. But as a parts car it has provided a wealth of items including the steering column, wiring harness, dashboard, seats and interior trim, front and rear glass.
It also will surrender its hood and trunk lids along with both doors, which seem to be of better quality than the ones that came with the unfinished vehicle.
Charlie sawed the deck off No. 121, which is now attached to the unfinished car. I’ve never done fibreglassing before, but Charlie has owned dozens of Corvettes over the years, so knows his way around fabric, resin and hardener.
I’m enjoying the process, maybe because it reminds me of building model cars when I was a kid. (Back then we liked the smell of plastic glue; we just didn’t know why.) Sometimes my efforts even meet with Charlie’s approval.
The unfinished car lacked the injection-moulded interior plastic panels that the factory should have fibreglassed into place to give the body more strength. Some loose interior panels came with the car, others I removed from No. 121, and some I cut to fit from a stash of plastic pieces.

Parts car already has given up its rear deck and soon
will surrender its hood, and trunk lid and both doors.

To make work easier, Charlie came up with an ingenious steel cradle that can support the Manic in a vertical position. He took the two worst wheels, welded them to the cradle and all we have to do to flip it from side to side is lower the body using an engine hoist, change the side the wheels are on and raise it back into a vertical position.
Sure makes things like treating the undercarriage to a coat of Por15 rust preventative paint a lot easier.
Next, the gauges and instrument panel will be installed, and we’ll fit the glass and doors from No. 121. We’d been wondering what to do about Manic’s unique and irreplaceable rubber mouldings, but one of those plastic bins was stuffed with new rubber for all openings, including hood and trunk.
Soon it’s going to start looking like a car again. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com

Starliner as rendered in 1960 Ford sales catalogue.

“Could you do an article on the 1960 Ford Starliner?” writes reader Wayne Sloat. “I have been photographing car shows in the Edmonton area for the last eight years and have yet to come across a 1960 Ford car or a 1960 Valiant. Where are they?”
Well, to answer Wayne’s last question first, there are few 1960 Valiants around because their unit body construction was prone to rust and, as Dick Langford said in his Complete Book of Collectible Cars, 1940-1980, their styling was “debatable.”
That’s putting it mildly. Chrysler’s Corvair- and Falcon-fighter was not designer Virgil Exner’s finest hour.
As for 1960 Fords, a lot of people back then found their styling to be debatable as well – especially those silly tailfins that were a weak response to the “bat wings” of the 1959 Chevrolet. And, when compared to the 1959 Fords, the 1960 models seemed big and bland as the flamboyance of the ’50s, with its fins, tri-colour paint jobs and acres of chrome gave way to the cleaner styling of Detroit iron in the ’60s.
Ford’s full-size 1960 lineup included sedans, coupes, wagons, a convertible and the hardtop Starliner. The Fairlane was the base full-size Ford, with the Galaxie at the upper end. The Sunliner convertible remained in production, but the Skyliner hardtop, with its retractable roof, was gone. Its replacement, the fixed-roof Starliner hardtop, lasted only for the 1960 and ’61 model years.
For the day, the Starliner was a bit underpowered, with the “Y block” 292 cubic-inch V8, which had been introduced in 1954, as the base engine. An “Interceptor 360” version of the newer 352 Cubic-inch V8 was optional. To correct this, the1961 model got the new 390 cubic-inch Thunderbird motor in several versions topping out at 401 hp.
Although 68,641 Starliners were built for 1960, Wayne is absolutely right when he asks, “Where are they?”
In fact, it’s been so long since I’ve seen one of these relatively rare beasts that until his email arrived I’d forgotten all about them.
Although I didn’t like the 1960s redesign at the time – being a big fan of 1959’s “Thunderbird styling” – it has started to grow on me, and the Starliner was arguably the most stylish car in Ford’s full-size lineup that year. (Others might claim it was the Sunliner convertible.)
I remember really disliking 1960’s half-moon taillamps, which lasted only for one year before Ford reverted to the big, round taillamps of the ’59 models. I also thought the scalloped front end was debatable and obviously so did Ford designers because it too was gone by 1961.
The two-door Starliner was a pillarless semi-fastback that looked ready to race – and indeed was the factory’s choice for 1960’s NASCAR series. But when a conventional hardtop coupe was reinstated for 1961, sales of the Starliner tanked. In 1962 the Galaxie 500XL replaced the Starliner as Ford’s top full-size car.
It seems the only early ’60s full-size Fords you ever see at car shows are the 1963 and ’64 models – and usually those are the very pretty Galaxie 500XL convertibles.
Over the years, 1960 and ’61 Starliners have become favourites of the custom crowd, which also could explain why Wayne has not seen a stock version at the shows he’s attended.
A heavily customized 1960 Starliner sold for $67,100 U.S. at Barrett-Jackson’s 2009 Las Vegas auction.

Write to Glen at glenwoodcock@canoemail.com