1955 Hudson Italia 2-Door Coupe

What is it that makes certain cars more collectible than others? Certainly the car’s condition, its documentation, and any unusual factory options can affect a car’s value. However, I think the most important factor is rarity. The less common a car is, the more valuable it becomes.

Sometimes car manufacturers deliberately make small runs of cars, ensuring that they will become instant collectibles. Take a look at some recently produced exotic cars and their prices:

Lexus LF-A Supercar – 500 units – $375,000 each
Aston Martin One-77 – 77 units – $1,000,000 each
Lamborghini Veneno – 3 units – $3,000,000 each

It boggles my mind that automakers can produce a run of $1 or $3 million dollars cars and have no trouble selling all of them. However, it wasn’t always this way. There was a time when automakers had a hard time finding buyers for hyper-expensive cars. One of the first manufacturers to create a ridiculously high-priced supercar was none other than the Hudson Motor Company.

Continue reading

1951 Kaiser Manhattan Custom ‘Dragn’

As an automotive journalist, I am constantly on the lookout for cool cars to write about. Most of the time I have to work hard to seek them out, but every once in a while the cars seem to find me. This particular car and I keep running into each other, so I knew it was time to write about it.

I first ran into this heavily customized 1951 Kaiser Manhattan at Cars and Coffee in Scottsdale. I saw it again at SEMA 2012 in Las Vegas. Then it popped up on my YouTube subscriptions for Jay Leno’s Garage and the Eastwood YouTube channel. It was just begging to be written about!

Continue reading

Custom 1957 Buick Century Caballero Wagon

If you saw my previous post about Buick Century Caballero Wagons, you may remember that they are pretty rare cars. Because they were only produced for two years, they will fetch quite a premium whenever you do see one for sale. You can imagine my excitement when I saw this one at Barrett-Jackson 2013.

There’s more to this ’57 Century Caballero than just low production numbers. This is an award winning custom build by OZ Kustoms in Oroville, California. They have nicknamed the car “Dorothy” after the main character from “The Wizard of OZ.”

When you compare this car with the stock Century Caballero Wagon from the previous post, you will notice some significant changes in the body work.

Continue reading

1957 and 1958 Buick Century Caballero Estate Wagon

One phrase that I often overhear at car shows is: “They sure don’t make ’em like that anymore.” In the case of the Buick Century Caballero Estate Wagon, they didn’t make ’em like that then, either!

The Caballero Estate Wagon was produced for two years only in 1957 and 1958. This ultra-rare car features a pillarless 4-door design and was GM’s only hardtop wagon. According to HowStuffWorks, Buick produced 10,186 Caballero Estate Wagons in 1957 and just 4,456 in 1958.

Continue reading

Kaiser Manhattan 2-Door Sedan

I spotted this gorgeous Kaiser Manhattan 2-door sedan at a church car show in Glendale, Arizona in 2009. Kaisers were produced after World War II and are notable for being the first production passenger cars to offer supercharging (beginning in 1954).  Kaiser and Willys-Overland merged in 1953 and stopped making passenger cars in 1955.

As you can see, the deep cherry color of this car is very vibrant even in this crappy cell phone picture I took. If you look closely, you can see the ghost flames on the car’s front fenders.

From this angle, we have a few more clues that this Manhattan isn’t exactly stock. The wide rear tires and monster tach on the dash indicate that this car may have undergone a performance rebuild. I wish I had more details about it, but sadly I do not.

Bonus: The gold colored car in the background of the first picture is a Frazer Vagabond, a sister marque of Kaiser.