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5 hours ago, John Z. Goriup said:

I looked up 1950s buicks in some ancient books on American cars I still have laying about and as  a result I am amending my original guess of a '57 to a 1958 Buick, the year in which I think the chrome content of General Motors cars exceeded the weight of all other materials in their products. 

JZG 

1958 is correct. And the bit between Buick and Super?

William

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Thank you, William...........my next 'mystery car' is one I fell in love with when I first saw it. For this post I have removed the radiator badge and marque logo.

Make, model and year ( approximate )  please.

JZG

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7 minutes ago, John Z. Goriup said:

Thank you, William...........my next 'mystery car' is one I fell in love with when I first saw it. For this post I have removed the radiator badge and marque logo.

Make, model and year ( approximate )  please.

JZG

 

John, that is too easy.  1938 Horch 853, Erdmann and Rossi body at PB in 2016

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4 hours ago, John Z. Goriup said:

Thank you, William...........my next 'mystery car' is one I fell in love with when I first saw it. For this post I have removed the radiator badge and marque logo.

Make, model and year ( approximate )  please.

JZG

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You have still not given me the full title of the Buick. I will post it in about an hour.

William

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The car was a 1958 Buick Riviera Super, although I would have accepted Buick Special Super as it it was nearly identical, the main visual difference being the indents on the corners of the rear bumper. It was not for nothing that the car was christened 'The Queen of Chrome', as it had the most chrome of any US car at that time, and Wilson did indeed drop a hint in that direction. The colour here is Spray Green. The 58 KK on the registration plate back has nothing to do with the Klan, but it means that the car was first registered in County Kilkenny in Ireland in 1958. The covered external spare wheel seems to have been a rare accessory.

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Over to John who has already put his foot on the accelerator.

William

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Sorry I jumped the gun on the Buick - in any event, Hektor got it right.

JZG

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Yes that detail had me stumped as well. I must confess that I would have guessed “Riviera” as the missing name - but only because that’s the only one I can recall....

I was similarly intrigued by the whole notion of the rear “deck” instead of the simpler/more common  rear spare housing) so did a bit of research and that particular detail doesn’t seem to feature in the options list for the any of the 58 Super models as far as I could find to date (some build catalogs etc are online).

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American designers seem to love hiding fuel fillers in odd places. In various hire or borrowed cars I have had in the USA over the years, I have sometimes really struggled to find where to put in gas and have had to ask for help. On one, an old Thunderbird, you had to unscrew one of the rear reflectors and on another, a Chevvy Caprice, you pressed a concealed button under the front seat and the rear licence plate dropped down. 

Wilson

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As to matters Horch, here is another easy one with an interesting provenance.  The car was a gift from Adolf Hitler to Sven Julin-Dahnfelt, the Swedish military attaché in Berlin at the time.  Julin-Dahnfelt took the Horch back to Sweden and after the war gifted it to his nephew.  In the early sixties said nephew drove the car to India, via Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass (I have pictures of the trip) and from India by ship to Australia where during a Brisbane flood the car was completely submerged.  As you can see it was finally restored:

 

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6 hours ago, a.j.z said:

Could it be that this is an additional fuel tank?  This looks like a tank cap in the middle of the bumper. 

 A friend who has classic cars, and brings them to shows, knows some of the classic car people in Kilkenny Motor Club. I will see if he can get me the contact details of the owner of this car. I have looked at photos of the 1958 Buick range, particularly the Rivieras and the Specials, but I have not seen one with as extensive a rear deck as this one, nor have I seen one with the spare wheel enclosure. I have seen this car at a few shows and the first thing that strikes one is the massive extension at the rear and that is the view from which to photograph the car. I suspect that the little lid over the number plate is the fuel cap. It definitely is the 'Queen of Chrome'. The car is left hand drive and has two front wing mounted spotlights.

William

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This strange design conceit was called a "continental kit," referencing what some North Americans thought  would add a European sophistication to one's car.  The hidden fuel caps Wilson references were very common from about 1957 through about 1962, most commonly on cars from General Motors.

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I have taken the opportunity to trawl through lots of buick specs/build docs and promotional literature and info on the "continental kit" (s) is very hard to come by. There is  another '58 version with the external spare wheel housing but an extended fender with 45degree angled sides but no flat "deck" section. It looks equally odd but perhaps less strange than Kilkenny car pictured. I will try to find a link somewhere... I wonder if this option was somehow a special "dealer request" option rather than a book one - like some of the rarer items from a certain camera company we know?

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