----- Original Message -----

From: Robert Kirk

To: Crosley@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:45 AM

Subject: =CROSLEY= web site of interest

 

I thought I'd share an interesting web site I recently discovered.  http://www.microcarmuseum.com/events.html Regards, Robert Kirk www.kirks-auto.com

By G. Thatcher Darwin

"The Crosley requires no pampering, is cleverly designed, soundly constructed
and driving it is going to be fun. It IS a fine little car, game for anything,
and full of pleasant surprises."

----- Original Message -----

From: LouRugani

To: Crosley@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 12:20 PM

Subject: =CROSLEY= It's a Tractor -It's a Truck- It's a Crosley Car.

 

It's a Tractor -It's a Truck- It's a Crosley Car
by Paul Gorrell
11306 Mill Dam Road, Burlington, Iowa 52601-8503
==================
The only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys! The only transformer available in 1950 was a Crosley FarmORoad. I've been told there were only 400 built. I watched the only one in our area go from new, down to a parted-out ball of rust that was never for sale, until one day I traded a 1949 Crosley Hot Shot for it. Then I restored it back to a like-new green F.O.R. again.

This agreement in the trade was, I would bring it back for him to see when finished. So before we even picked the tools up out of it, I put on the license plates and my three sons and I hit the highway, driving it back to the original owner's house. His wife gave him a real bad loud lecture for letting it turn into a parted-out ball of rust in the first place. So we got the heck out of there flying like sixty in the F.O.R. While going down the highway a black Chevrolet pulled right out in front of us. I went for the shoulder telling the three boys to hang on tight, but there was not enough shoulder. Next was the deep grass in the ditch, but it had big rocks in it which tore out the front axle making it unsteerable. It went up a big bank and rolled over back down the bank. The boys used their arms for seat belts and my shoulders for a roll bar. The tools and hood went flying to where it got smashed. But we didn't t-bone that Chevy! I don't think the driver even saw us and I was too busy to get his number! Not much crash protection in an F.O.R.! I got the front axle and the rest of the pieces, piled them on the F.O.R. I had the three boys stay with it in the ditch so the highway clean-up crew wouldn't trash bag it. I walked cross-country, waded the deep creek to home, drove the truck back, winched it on, hauled it home and re-restored it immediately.

Later we hauled the F.O.R. to Maryland to trade for a Crosley 4x4 Pup or military Jeep. We restored the Pup and took it back east to a show in a few months where the man I got it from would see it. I later bought a 1948 Playboy car from him.

I still needed an F.O.R., so when we were at Evel Knievel's jump site in Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho on the way back from Portland, Oregon with three Crosleys on my trailer, two boys from Michigan told me their dad had an F.O.R. for sale. We got 2300 miles home to Iowa with that load. Then we went to Michigan to get the F.O.R. It served its life as a floor scrubber and was retired with a driver who found out he was zoned to not have a vehicle that old. So we bought it for $115 and added it to our load. Then headed for the national Crosley Show in Wauseon, Ohio, to be there when it started the next morning.

We used this F.O.R. about like it was when we got it. My kids learned to drive in it. We used it for landscaping, mowing, lawn rolling, pushing snow, and plowing the garden. We were always searching for a full set of original equipment for the F.O.R. I finally loaded the last piece of equipment on my trailer near Atlanta, Georgia, a year ago. Then in a few months of winter spare time I restored the F.O.R. and each piece of equipment. We found an F.O.R. with equipment has twice as many pieces and weighs twice as much as a regular Crosley car. I have the equipment fastened together so I can drive it all in one piece. Maybe you saw it at one of the many shows in the five states where we show it annually. It's one of our 50 different Crosleys in our world's largest Crosley collection. We have every year, color, and body style, including nine prototypes, Crosley motorcycles, snow mobile, 4x4 Jeeps and a three wheeled looking prototype 1937 first Crosley car. We collect seven brands of cars, gas engines, tractors and anything real interesting.

This F.O.R. and forty of my items will be on display at the annual Southeast Iowa Antique Gas Engine, Tractor, Hobby, and Car Show and Flea Market at West Burlington, Iowa, the first full weekend in June. See GEM ads or contact me, Paul Gorrell, 11306 Mill Dam Road, Burlington, Iowa 52601. Telephone: (319) 753-1837.

It's a Tractor -It's a Truck- It's a Crosley Car
by Paul Gorrell
11306 Mill Dam Road, Burlington, Iowa 52601-8503
==================
The only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys! The only
transformer available in 1950 was a Crosley FarmORoad. I've been told there were
only 400 built. I watched the only one in our area go from new, down to a
parted-out ball of rust that was never for sale, until one day I traded a 1949
Crosley Hot Shot for it. Then I restored it back to a like-new green F.O.R.
again.

This agreement in the trade was, I would bring it back for him to see when
finished. So before we even picked the tools up out of it, I put on the license
plates and my three sons and I hit the highway, driving it back to the original
owner's house. His wife gave him a real bad loud lecture for letting it turn
into a parted-out ball of rust in the first place. So we got the heck out of
there flying like sixty in the F.O.R. While going down the highway a black
Chevrolet pulled right out in front of us. I went for the shoulder telling the
three boys to hang on tight, but there was not enough shoulder. Next was the
deep grass in the ditch, but it had big rocks in it which tore out the front
axle making it unsteerable. It went up a big bank and rolled over back down the
bank. The boys used their arms for seat belts and my shoulders for a roll bar.
The tools and hood went flying to where it got smashed. But we didn't t-bone
that Chevy! I don't think the driver even saw us and I was too busy to get his
number! Not much crash protection in an F.O.R.! I got the front axle and the
rest of the pieces, piled them on the F.O.R. I had the three boys stay with it
in the ditch so the highway clean-up crew wouldn't trash bag it. I walked
cross-country, waded the deep creek to home, drove the truck back, winched it
on, hauled it home and re-restored it immediately.

Later we hauled the F.O.R. to Maryland to trade for a Crosley 4x4 Pup or
military Jeep. We restored the Pup and took it back east to a show in a few
months where the man I got it from would see it. I later bought a 1948 Playboy
car from him.

I still needed an F.O.R., so when we were at Evel Knievel's jump site in Snake
River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho on the way back from Portland, Oregon with
three Crosleys on my trailer, two boys from Michigan told me their dad had an
F.O.R. for sale. We got 2300 miles home to Iowa with that load. Then we went to
Michigan to get the F.O.R. It served its life as a floor scrubber and was
retired with a driver who found out he was zoned to not have a vehicle that old.
So we bought it for $115 and added it to our load. Then headed for the national
Crosley Show in Wauseon, Ohio, to be there when it started the next morning.

We used this F.O.R. about like it was when we got it. My kids learned to drive
in it. We used it for landscaping, mowing, lawn rolling, pushing snow, and
plowing the garden. We were always searching for a full set of original
equipment for the F.O.R. I finally loaded the last piece of equipment on my
trailer near Atlanta, Georgia, a year ago. Then in a few months of winter spare
time I restored the F.O.R. and each piece of equipment. We found an F.O.R. with
equipment has twice as many pieces and weighs twice as much as a regular Crosley
car. I have the equipment fastened together so I can drive it all in one piece.
Maybe you saw it at one of the many shows in the five states where we show it
annually. It's one of our 50 different Crosleys in our world's largest Crosley
collection. We have every year, color, and body style, including nine
prototypes, Crosley motorcycles, snow mobile, 4x4 Jeeps and a three wheeled
looking prototype 1937 first Crosley car. We collect seven brands of cars, gas
engines, tractors and anything real interesting.

This F.O.R. and forty of my items will be on display at the annual Southeast
Iowa Antique Gas Engine, Tractor, Hobby, and Car Show and Flea Market at West
Burlington, Iowa, the first full weekend in June. See GEM ads or contact me,
Paul Gorrell, 11306 Mill Dam Road, Burlington, Iowa 52601. Telephone: (319)
753-1837.

The 12x2-1/2  4/4" '39-'42 wheels were also used on the '46s as well.


=Lou=

~~~~~~~~~~ **-=\/=-** ~~~~~~~~~~

The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.       Robert Anthony

Chevrolet VEGA wheels will fit but are 13".  CUT

--- In Crosley@yahoogroups.com, Lee Bartell <lbartell@...> wrote:
>
> What wheel fits the Crosley lug pattern other than Crosley?
>

Friday, July 16, 2004

Mixed Signals: Crosley name still moves products, but is that a good thing?

Business Courier of Cincinnati - by Dan Monk Courier Senior Staff Reporter

The ghost of Powel Crosley Jr. is stirring on the Internet.

Just point and click your way to www.crosley.com, where you'll find Crosley's
black-and-white visage smiling over an array of home appliances. Or surf on over
to crosleyradio.com, where a Louisville-based firm markets retro radios,
jukeboxes and telephones under the Crosley name.

Still not satisfied? Try eBay.com, where a Crosley search produces 411 products
-- Shelvador refrigerators, a four-cylinder engine, even a 1940s television set,
"Unit WORKS, sound and picture," for $250.

In fact, four decades after the death of Cincinnati's most famous entrepreneur,
the Crosley name remains a potent and growing brand, generating more than $650
million in annual sales for Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Crosley Corp., which
bought the Crosley trademark from Avco Corp. in 1977.

The company is negotiating new licensing agreements that could expand Crosley's
reach to companies that sell furnaces, central air units and water heaters to
home builders. One Crosley licensee, Louisville's Modern Marketing Concepts
Inc., is generating revenue growth of 20 percent a year with Crosley-branded
products. It recently introduced a new line of record players, called the
Crosley Stack-O-Matic, and an Elvis Presley commemorative jukebox, which,
through separate licensing agreements, bears both the Crosley and Presley names.

"In certain areas, (the Crosley name) still has brand equity, particularly in
the Midwest. That's where our strength is," said John Colbert, executive
director of Crosley Corp., a consortium of 39 independent distributors, whose
history is chronicled in the new book "The Crosley Legacy."

The book is a collection of notes and press clippings from Buddy Dixson, a
Carolina appliance distributor who bought the Crosley name in 1977. It's a tale
that Crosley himself might have appreciated about a plain-talking salesman who
bucked an industry trend and defied Avco's threats of a lawsuit over using
Crosley's name.

But it's also a troubling tale to Crosley purists, who note that Crosley never
made most of the products now being marketed under his name.

"The only thing he'd be happy about is that the Crosley name is still alive and
well. That's all," said Dave Crocker, a Crosley collector in Cape Cod, Mass.
"The radios aren't even old Crosleys. They're an imitation of an old Zenith
design. The jukebox that they're selling was either an AMI or a Wurlitzer. The
name Crosley is getting thinned out more and more."

Another Crosley aficionado, former WLW-AM 700 radio engineer Charles Stinger,
frets that modern Crosley marketers have lost the "better costs less" mantra
that Crosley preached.

"Crosley believed very much in products that could be produced at a lower price,
so middle- to lower-class people could use them," said Stinger, a Hamilton
resident who recently published a brief history of Crosley's manufacturing and
broadcasting ventures in the '20s and '30s.

Stinger views Crosley as a civic giant who saved the Cincinnati Reds from
bankruptcy and employed thousands during the Great Depression. It bothers him to
think out-of-town companies are profiting from using the Crosley name.

"Crosley is Cincinnati," Stinger said. "That's where it belongs."
=======
Crosley to Avco to Buddy
=======
Never mind that Crosley himself helped it slip away by selling the Crosley
Manufacturing Co. to New York-based Aviation Corp. (Avco) in 1945 for $22
million. By then, Powel Crosley Jr. was already a Cincinnati icon known for a
string of innovations that included the world's first low-priced radio, the
"Shelvador" refrigerator (the first to include shelves in the door) and the 1939
Crosley, a $325 car that got 50 miles to the gallon and resembled Chrysler's PT
Cruiser. Crosley also was known for starting WLW radio, the "nation's station,"
and bringing night baseball to the Reds' Crosley Field in 1935.

During a Federal Communications Commission hearing on the transfer of Crosley's
broadcasting licenses to Avco, Crosley said he feared "a forced sale" of his
company following his death. He also said he wanted to focus more attention on
his car business, which peaked with sales of 30,000 cars in 1948 but folded amid
rising labor and materials costs in the early '50s.

By then, Avco was expanding its fleet of television stations and phasing out the
home-appliance lines it acquired from Crosley. In 1956, Avco sold its appliance
division to Ford's Philco division. In 1960, it removed the Crosley name from
its defense-electronics division. Crosley died in 1961. Avco exited the
broadcasting business in 1975 and was itself acquired by Textron Inc. in 1984.
=======
South end of a northbound horse.
=======
The Crosley name might have perished forever if not for Buddy Dixson, a
Winston-Salem, N.C., native with a penchant for R-rated aphorisms and background
that included a dozen Duke University tennis titles and World War II service as
a supply sergeant for the U.S. Army Air Corps.

In 1976, Dixson was president of Brown-Rogers-Dixson, a regional appliance
distributor stunned by Ford's announcement that its Philco division would no
longer produce refrigerators. Some 40 other Philco distributors were in a
similar bind. None was large enough to get pricing and product support from
manufacturers, who preferred to deal directly with large retail chains.

"The obvious answer was for us to band together into a buying cooperative and
create our own brand, which could be put on any number of appliances," Dixson
told Business Week in January 1977.

Dixson found that brand in his Carolina warehouse, where he still had
merchandise left over from his days as a Crosley distributor in the 1940s. When
he learned that Avco hadn't been using the Crosley name, he shipped an old
Crosley refrigerator across state lines and registered the Crosley brand as his
own.

Avco responded with a "cease and desist" notice from its patent counsel, Irwin
Garfinkle. "Avco Corporation is the owner of the Crosley name," Garfinkle wrote
in a 1977 letter to Dixson. "We strenuously object to its appropriation."

Crazy little Crosleys were America's first micro cars of the modern era. Powel
Crosley was a successful industrialist who manufactured millions of radios and
refrigerators and owned the Cinncinati Reds baseball team. When buyers
complained that they couldn't pick up any stations on his low budget radios,
Powel Crosely started his own high-powered broadcasting network. But Crosley
wasn't satisfied - he wanted to produce basic, economical vehicles that anyone
could afford.

The first Crosley car was introduced in 1939. It weighed less than a thousand
pounds and cost just $250 when a Ford cost $850. Still the little bantam
struggled to find a place in the market and ceased production during WWII,
resuming just after.

With just under 25,000 little Crosleys sold, the car-starved postwar market gave
the slab-sided cartoon beast its best sales year in 1948 but soon the Big Three
manufacturers got new designs on the road. Though Crosleys got 50 miles per
gallon, gas was cheap and no one cared. Americans flocked to buy Detroit's big,
flashy new models and Crosley was doomed. He sent his workforce off for the 4th
of July holiday in 1952 and closed the plant forever.

CROSLEY FIRSTS

Micro compact
First mention of Sport Utility Vehicle
Mass-production of OHV engine
Four wheel disc brakes
First postwar sports car
Slab sided body (no separate fenders)
All-steel station wagon


CELEBRITY OWNERS

Humphrey Bogart
Gloria Swanson
Frank Lloyd Wright
Paulette Goddard
General Omar Bradley
Pamela Harriman (bought #1, 1939)
Dwight David Eisenhower (CCOC Member 1,000)
Since 2007, the Smart Car has taken Crosley's place in the autoscape, the first
microcar to make serious inroads into the U.S. market since Powel Crosley's
little car that could.


Crosley cars: America's first micro car beat the Smart by 60 years

Lee, in reference to your question, Crosley wheels are not all alike. The
'39-'42 wheels are 4-1/4" wide while the later wheels are 4-1/2" wide. It's a
difference that's difficult to spot at first glance. However, all wheels are
interchangeable.

On the topic of wheels: 1975 Chevrolet truck red is an exact match for the
Chinese Red wheel color, and Ford's Wimbledon White is a very close match for
the later standard white wheel color.

Postwar Crosley wheels are thankfully not in short supply. Check with Service
Motors for hubcaps.

Hope this helps.

=Lou=

More than 2,000 auto companies have been started in the U.S. Long ago there was Stanley, the Auburn, Rickenbacker and even a Flint. Many of us recall the Willys and Hudson and Nash and Studebaker and Packard, old companies that succeeded for years and then vanished after World War II. And Crosley, King Midget and Tucker. Yes, they were real companies.

The last serious new American automaker was the Kaiser-Frazer company in the late 1940s. Joe Frazer knew the car business; Henry J. Kaiser--the construction giant and ship builder who launched his Liberty ships faster than German U-boats could sink them--had the money.

It cost big money in those days, too. Preston Tucker raised $25 million selling franchises and stock. And when Kaiser-Frazer finally died, Henry J said, "We expected to toss $50 million into the automobile pond, but we didn't expect it to disappear without a ripple."

Back then people put up their own money and found private investors to back them. Most failed, but some made it, such as Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler and Billy Durant, who created General Motors.

Free enterprise we called it.

But now there's another way: Government money. Washington is offering millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars, to carmakers, and even to companies that haven't built a car yet. Battery makers are eligible for the money, too, and even makers of three-wheelers, if any appear, are eligible. Imagine that: Our government is willing to finance three-wheeled cars.

But I don't expect that this new infusion of federal money will create successful new companies, or even new technologies.

Big winners so far include Fisker, which is headed by a Dane and is about to build expensive sport cars in Finland. It's been promised $528 million of U.S. government money. The money is to go for a new electric sedan to be built in the U.S. Tesla, which started with its own money, will keep going with government funds, $465 million promised, to build a new electric sedan. These are loans, but it's always easier to give money out than to get it back. And when money comes from Washington, it's no secret that who you know may be more important than what you know.

But as long as there is taxpayer money to pass around, we may expect volunteers ready to accept it. For example, there's talk of an electric car to be built in Syracuse, N.Y., with $52 million to come from the federal government and $12 million from the state. The car would be a version of a hybrid from India. Will it happen? Who knows, but I have my doubts. This is just the beginning.

Perhaps I'm too critical. General Motors took $50 billion of our government's money, Chrysler took $12 billion, and even Ford has been promised $6 billion for energy-saving vehicle development. Even Japanese Nissan is getting $2 billion to help build electric cars in Tennessee. And when the foreign plants were built here, most received huge grants in aid from state governments for the jobs they could--and did--create.

But most auto companies have failed. We've had more than 2,000, remember?

We had handouts during oil crises a few decades back. Washington put up money to unknowns to come up with new technologies, and gave lots to Detroit to come up with super high-mileage cars. Nothing much came of it all.

There are many fuel-saving technologies and companies around the world working to develop them, from fuel cells, which create electricity to drive cars, to diesel-like gasoline engines. They just need lots of work by engineers who understand automobiles.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with all this taxpayer money going into the car business. Perhaps costs are just too high now for any single rich man, or even a group of them, to create a going auto company. Perhaps it's sensible for the government to spend billions to preserve industry and jobs and try to create new automobile technologies. Perhaps the government must invest to build battery-charging stations, just as it built highways.

Times have changed, but don't you wish that we could do it the old way?

"It destroys the craft not to learn it"

Stuart M. Kaminsky: Toby Peters books: An appreciation
Posted by Lars Walker @ 8:29 pm EST

Last night I noted, belatedly, the passing of author Stuart M. Kaminsky last
month. Purely by happenstance, I was reading several of his Toby Peters
mysteries at the time, and was already planning to post about them.

The hero of the series, Toby Peters, is a shabby, distinctly down-market private
eye working in Los Angeles in the late '30s and the '40s. Despite the fact that
he can't afford any better office than a closet in a dentist's office, lives in
a seedy boarding house overseen by a batty landlady, drives a tiny old Crosley
automobile, and can never find a clean shirt to wear, he continually takes cases
involving prominent personalities, especially movie stars.

It has occurred to me that Kaminsky was having a joke on us, and that the real
secret of Toby Peters is that he was delusional.

But when I look past that bit of spontaneous deconstruction, I find the Peters
mysteries simply a lot of fun. Peters is no Philip Marlowe. Although he can
handle himself in a fight (he used to box and his face shows it), he injured his
back doing bodyguard work for Mickey Rooney a while ago, and has to sleep on a
mattress on the floor. He doesn't drink at all, and his favorite food is cold
cereal. He has an ex-wife whom he loves, but she won't go out with him because
he's immature. He has a brother who's a cop, and who generally seems to hate him
(he gave him his first broken nose), but who usually comes through for him in a
pinch. When he needs help with his cases, he can sometimes hire an old cop or
security guard, but most of the time he ends up enlisting his friends—Gunther,
his next-door neighbor, who is a three-foot-tall Swiss translator, Sheldon, the
fat and unhygienic dentist from whom he rents his office, and Jeremy, the
retired wrestler and poet who owns the office building. The result often
resembles a Keystone Kops chase more than the elegant payoff in a William Powell
movie.

The books I've read in this spree were Down for the Count (concerning Joe
Louis), Think Fast, Mr. Peters (concerning Peter Lorre, a splendid opportunity
for some Sam Spade dialogue), Buried Caesars (Gen. Douglas MacArthur) and
Tomorrow is Another Day (Clark Gable).

They were fast reads. They didn't offend me (though there's a little rough
language and implied sex). They were often very funny, and always well-written.

Recommended.

Hey, all ...

In response to some queries about plans for 2010, we've definitely meet near
Chicago during mid-August, and there'll be announcements forthcoming.

Other decisions:
Membership will stay dues-free.
In response to requests, we'll have CCOC decals available, also free to members.
There won't be a printed periodical publication - in the near future, at least -
because with today's emphasis on the modern Internet, the news and photos can be
sent instantly. One option is to offer a printed digest on request to members in
nursing homes (we have a few).

Anyone wishing to offer suggestions offlist, please email X779@....
Thanks!



=Lou=

~~~~~~~~~~ **-=\/=-** ~~~~~~~~~~

The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.       Robert Anthony

New, on our Crosley Service site: www.onelist.com/group/CrosleyService.