Old Car Detective

Book excerpt: In this hilarious collection of old car stories, Canada’s very own "Old Car Detective" Bill Sherk presents 80 of his favourite stories from all 10 provinces, spanning the years from 1925 to 1965. In this book you will meet the man in New Brunswick who chopped the top off his 1927 Whippet sedan in honour of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the young fellow from Kingston, Ontario, who thought his 1937 Ford coach looked better with all four fenders taken off; the owner of a 1947 Hudson that burned so much oil he had to wear a snorkel mask while driving it; the father who borrowed his son’s hot-rodded ’53 Monarch (built only in Canada!) and got pulled over by the police for street racing; and the grandmother who moved from England to Canada and drove her Morris Minor on the wrong side of the road. Behind every old car there’s a story waiting to be told, all the way from your grandparents’ Model T Ford to the Mustang you drove in high school. All the stories and photographs in this book are in chronological order from 1925 to 1965, giving you a 40-year journey through Canada’s rich automotive heritage and brought to life by the people who owned and drove the cars of yesteryear – and some still do! PART ONE (1925 to 1942) takes you from the middle of the Roaring Twenties to February 1942, when the Second World War brought automobile production to a halt for three long years. PART TWO (1946 to 1965) takes you through the Baby Boom years when cars driven by Canadians went through many exciting changes in styling and engineering. If you have ever owned (or still own) a car that was built between 1925 and 1965, turn to the last page in this book to see how you can send in your story for Bill Sherk’s next book.