Auto Doctors

During the early 1950s, the fastest stock car in the U.S. was the Hudson Hornet, the pride of the Hudson Motor Car Company. Drivers in Hudson Hornets took virtually every major NASCAR event, and the wins paid off in sales. That got the attention of the Big Three: Ford, Chrysler, and GM. They began supporting stock-car racers the way Hudson did, and soon began to win. In an effort to stay ahead, Hudson merged with the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation, which let Hudson replace the Hornet's old flat-six engine with the big Nash V-8, providing more power. The first Hudson Hornet with a Nash engine was offered on this day. But the new Hornet didn't handle as well, and the Big Three kept improving. After 1954 the Hudson Hornet's fortunes declined quickly.

The Porsche 912 Targa was turned over to the Baden-Wurttemberg state police during a small celebration at the factory. The 100,000th car, carrying appropriate engraving on a silver dash plaque, is one of the first Porsche safety cabriolet Targas delivered, a design particularly well suited to police use thanks to its basic concept. A later press release noted ”40 police cars, mainly 912 Targas and some six-cylinder Coupés were delivered in 1967 alone”. In the late 1960s, Japan employed four 912 Coupes as Police Cars, one for each of their north, south, east and west highways, where they were faster than anything else on the road in Japan at that time.

The first 6,155 cars were built between 1964 and 1966 and powered by the 260; they were followed by just 534 examples of the Mk II, which used Ford's 289cu in (4727cc) V8 engine pushing out 200bhp; giving it a top speed rose to 125mph. Who knows how long Tiger production might have continued if Rootes Group, which produced the Sunbeam, had not come under the control of Chrysler in 1967. Selling a car powered by a competitor's engine was impossible, and no Mopar V-8 was judged suitable for the task. And so, the Tiger was retired.

The Ford L-series (also named Ford Louisville or, for the 1990s aerodynamic models, Ford Aeromax) is a range of heavy-duty trucks that were assembled and marketed by Ford between 1970 and 1998. Ford had been producing their "Heavy Duty" trucks since 1948 and their "Super Duty" lineup since 1958 marketed by various GVW ratings. Truck weight classifications 1-8 were a new concept brought about by the DOT National Highway Administration. The first dedicated Class 8 truck produced by the company, the L-series range replaced the F-series "Super Duty" and N-series.