I have been watching RTV (Retro TV ) lately, and one of my favorite shows is “Route 66”. For those of you unfamiliar with it, its about two guys (Martin Milner and George Meharis), who drive around the USA in their Corvette, and get into interesting adventures.
Anyway, the show was filmed in 1961-62, and it seems that (looking at the background scenes), that a fair number of pre-1941 cars were still on the road at that time. Now, in 2011, a 1941 car is 70 years old-it is pretty hard to keep a car this old running (parts would be a major problem).
Are there any nationwide statistics on this? I see a fair number of these cars at shows-but these are mostly antique registrations, and are only driven rarely.
e-mail rolls royce. i remmeber a claim they made years ago that a good percentage (> 30%) of rolls’ EVER BUILT are still on the road. on the road, not just road-worthy.
Maybe try the AAA?
Quasi
Volvo has made this claim as well, citing much higher numbers. It’s not extremely difficult when you’ve ramped up from making less than 10 cars in 1904 to 2,711 in 2010. Especially when many aren’t daily drivers and one has the wherewithal to have them properly maintained. Even easier for Volvo who were probably selling over half a million at one point.
Guy across the street restores cars as a hobby, the current one is a 26 model t that he hauled in on a rollback in November. He restores to showroom appearance [hard to get original manufacture parts so he uses repro parts] and it will be on the road sometime this fall. Last one was a 1934 model B in a very snazzy dark green.
FWIW, we have a 1974 Opel 1500 [in Europe IIRC they were marketed as Rekord D or Rekord II] and a 1963 VW squareback hanging out though we don’t have them registered or drive them. Though back about 5 years when we did have the Opel on the road my insurance underwriter went nuts trying to figure out the package for it as it was one of something like 700 left in the country.
My guess is very few. I used to know a guy that drove his Essex regularly in good weather. I forget the year, but it was prewar. I barely remember my dad having a 32 Chevy. But nearly all that stuff disappeared from rust belt Pennsylvania by the 50’s. Route 66 was set in the mid west and south west.
Have you explored state motor vehicle websites? They might list them by year.
I have several older cars, the oldest being a 1935 MG PB.
It’s restored to original condition and runs and drives great, if not particularly quickly!
My others are 1948 to 1974 models.
Just for the hell of it, I looked at the classified ads in the May 28, 1961 Toledo Blade on the Google archives. There’s very few used cars available that were more than seven or eight years old at the time. A few cars are from the late 1940s ('48 Hudson Sedan, new tires, $95). Nothing pre-WWII, though. The results might be different in a region outside of the Rust Belt, though.
Remember, for a few years after WWII, cars had the same design as before the War.
There are antique car clubs all over the country. My dad’s brother restored & sold model A’s for years. My dad bought one of them. It spent most of it’s life in our garage. He’d sometimes drive it to a car club meeting. It did have current license tags. He finally sold it after a few years.
I’ve heard car collecting has shifted more to the 1950’s & 1960’s. There’s still plenty of them out there in old garages waiting for a restoration.
With a nice restored car you don’t want to use it daily and get it damaged. Shopping carts in malls are a bad thing.
I’d worry about car jacking in a big city.
Until the carjacker tries to figure out a “3 on the tree” or pushbutton automatic. Grandma’s '61 Rambler had the last one and it could prevent drunk driving if you didn’t get the procedure right.
Sweet! No bumpers at all on those cars?
It depends on what you mean by driven regularly I guess. There a number of old cars around here. I almost got broadsided by a Model A this week. This is almost a statistics and material science question. I think the chances are incredibly good that a car that has been driven regularly will get totaled in an accident at some point in 70+ years whether it is the fault of the driver or just someone hitting it while it is parked. The materials used in a very old cars don’t hold up that well either. A car that old that is truly driven regularly would have gone through many engines and transmissions through the years plus have an unbroken string of responsible owners and good maintenance. That may seem like an obvious point but it isn’t true for all old machines even those used for transportation. Airplanes that old aren’t exactly rare and planes from the 1930’s - 1960’s are still sold and used as workhorses rather than museum pieces. The airframe of old planes is mostly noncorrosive however which isn’t true for most old cars and the maintenance regular required of them is much greater. Some other old machines like tractors are also not uncommon to find in regular use.
A few years ago, there was an interesting thread onhow long Model T Fords remained as daily drivers after their production stopped. We have images of Model Ts being used as daily drivers in Appalachia into recent times, but that really wasn’t the case.
Thanks for the interesting replies. A few years ago, my uncle had a friend who had a 1936 Graham-Paige sedan. I once rode in it-it rattled and heaved, but it seemed to fairly peppy. The main thing was the very long throws on the gearshift-it was like driving s truck. The brakes were pretty piss-poor-you had to plan your stops.
I do some web work for the Classic Car Club of America, which only approves cars built between 1925 and 1948. Looking at their database they have over 10,000 cars registered. But that’s just one club.
Here’s a PDF with info about what they define as “classic cars” and why.
I’m sure they’d be happy to talk more about cars with you if you emailed them.
The car next to mine in the parking garage is a '57 Chevie 4-door hardtop. Cream puff, original owner. I met the owner when she couldn’t get the oil filter off for an oil change. During her working years she rode public transportation as much as possible. Now it goes out only in good weather. Its the owner’s only car. It just got the 25th (26th?) new mufflers from Midas - they had to special order them. Don’t know the mileage.
Sorry, I didn’t notice the preWWII part.
On a recent trip to Greenfield Village, I was taken for a ride in one of the small fleet of Model T’s they have there. These cars are tooling around all day long and must accumulate thousands of miles a year. I asked the driver where they get tires for them, and he claimed there were over 500,000 Model T’s still on the road, so the tires and many other parts are still in production.
Since the OP asked “How Many Pre-WWII Cars Are Registered and Driven Regularly?”
I’d have to say the answer is close to zero. Quite a few are still in running order, and a good number of them are driven in rallies, etc, but I don’t know of any that are driven as daily commuter vehicles, etc. Unless the Op counts being driven once a month as Driven Regularly?
My co-worker has approximately one for every day of the week and it’s rare that he doesn’t drive one the 30 mile trip to work. Sometimes he drives the same one for a couple of weeks. I know of others that get driven as weekend cars. Not daily drivers, but not just car show cars either.
But I imagine very few are driven because they have to be. Anyone who can afford a car that old and can afford to keep it running can afford a more modern car too and would probably rather put the miles on it rather than the antique. Anyone who can’t afford to keep an old car running can sell it to a collector and get a honda.