I mean, any cars that were once in regular production but of which there are no surviving, um, copies? I know about such cars that never went (AFAIK) into regular production, like the Edsel, the DeLorean, the Tucker. But even those, I know there are surviving–ok, what’s the word? not copy: model?
Anyway. Any such car models, that exist only in the memory?
The Edsel and DeLorean most certainly did go into regular production. In three years of production, 84,000 Edsels were sold.
There have been literally hundreds of auto manufacturers just in the U.S. I doubt if you’ll find many surviving models by Akron, Wolverine or Okey.
Has anyone seen a Hollier?
About 25 years ago there were only four (4) known Welsh autos in existance, but all four were in museums
One of those museums was the one in Reno that ( I heard) liquidated a few years ago.
edit: Make that Welch.
Wiki has a very large (545) list of defunct US auto makers:
Not all of those would have made “regular production” (or any) automobiles. For earlier companies, it may be difficult to define exactly what that means. A lot of car companies during the early part of the 20th century were custom shops that made you an automobile when you ordered one. The high end companies made you a chassis, and you were expected to go to your own coach builder to have a custom body put on it.
It’s pretty much certain that there’s some smaller earlier makers which are known from company documents, sales literature and so on, who actually reached production, but for whom there are no known surviving vehicles.
The Citroen GS Birotor would be a good candidate.
From the Wiki article above:
GM’s EV1, introduced in 1996 and killed by GM, which repossessed and destroyed all the extant units in 2003. (They were only leased, not sold outright.)
See the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car?
We had a Triumph station wagon in the late 50s. I think one would be hard to find today. I’m betting that it’s extinct. Surely an endangered species.
I’m pretty sure I saw one at the Petersen Museum in L.A. This interview confirms my sighting.
There’s at least one.
Here’s another. I would bet there are more than you might imagine.
There’s one at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, also. Pic from the Henry Ford and Pics from 2007
Would that have been a Triumph Mayflower? If so, there’s one for sale on eBay. Unfortunately, the guy doesn’t have a single picture.
Here’s a vintage print ad, and although they called it a “Sedan”, it looks like what one would call a station wagon.
http://www.adclassix.com/ads2/51_triumph_mayflower.htm
If there’s one left, it ain’t extinct (yet).
Also see aldiboronti’s and Fear Itself’s links.
Car collectors often have oddball vehicles in their collections. There’s a casino in Biloxi, MS that used to have the owner’s huge car collection on display (same guy owns one of the big ones in Las Vegas where I believe he has a big display also). There were lots of neat cars in his collection. The oddballs were a Yugo and a early 80s Ford Fairmont, which was nothing special, but it was the 10,000,000th car to roll off the Ford assembly line or something like that. As long as this guy keeps these cars, or sells them to other museum type collectors, they’ll never be extinct. Hell, if you search on Google, you’ll find that the Chevette has a huge following and you’d think those would’ve all fallen completely apart by the late 80s.
My closest nomination would be the Chrysler Turbine car. Only 55 were produced, and there was a big promotion where people could enter a drawing to get to drive this car for a couple thousand miles. They were distributed all over the country and people took turns driving them. At the end of the promotion, Chrysler decided that it wasn’t economically feasible to produce the car and ordered that they all be destroyed.
Nine of these cars survived and of the nine, six of them had the turbine engines removed. These cars all went to museums and one private collector. This leaves three that still start up and drive. The wikipedia article (Chrysler Turbine Car - Wikipedia) says that one of these is transported to shows around the country. So we have actual documentation of where each and every one of these surviving cars is located, and should a series of catastrophes happen, we’d know if this car became extinct.
I realize that this wasn’t a mass-produced car, but since it was such a big promotion back in the early 60s and everybody knew about it, I think it would qualify (if it ever actually became extinct).
Lloyds LT600
The first brand new vehicle my father bought in the late 50s.
I can still remember the brand new smell.
Every Sunday, going to church, we had to get out of the vehicle so my father could climb the Niagara Escarpment.
Vehicle was toast in two years and my father converted it into a trailor for camping.
Strange, that really doesn’t look like a Triumph (primarily known for sporty roadsters and saloons/sedans). What model is it?
1950s and 1960s Chrysler Turbine Concept Cars | HowStuffWorks Chrysler ran these around the streets of Detroit a few years ago. Who could fix one?
GM made the Chevy II in the 60s. I never see one on the streets any more.
Truly amazing. I thought that ours was probably the only one in existance even then! It was to your image of a Triumph as a lightning bug is to lightning.
It’s the station wagon version of the Triumph 10.
See, I consulted Wikipedia for “Triumph 10”, guessing that that was the model name. All they have is an article about what appears to be a much earlier model, the Triumph 10/20.
But it appears that this car was sold under the Standard brand in Britain, not Triumph. The Standard Motor Company bought Triumph out in 1944. That explains it.
Ah yes, I see. As the article says, it was badged for the United States export market as the Triumph Ten and in Scandinavia it was sold as the Standard Vanguard Junior.
The Lada Riva.
I’m ashamed to admit I had one of those buggers when I was a bit borassic.
Drove like a tank,a 3 point turn was a 15 pointer, the heater was shite,the wipers were non-wipish (more smearish) and the catalytic converter smelt like rotten eggs.
I sold it my cousin after a few months and he’s never spoken to me since