Hemmings Motor News Blog Blog

Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

Previous in Blog: Jacksonville, Florida’s Ford Plant: A Wistful Monument of the Great Depression   Next in Blog: Has Our Taste in Cars Changed as We’ve Grown Older?
Close
Close
Close
5 comments
Rate Comments: Nested

What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

Posted August 25, 2014 10:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: classic auto lexicon vocabulary

Editor's note: This Open Diff piece comes from Hemmings Motor News account executive Bradford Kosich, who perpetually has grease beneath his fingernails and some sort of injury from working on his latest project car.

One of the great things about working at Hemmings Motor News is that readers frequently share pictures of their restoration projects with staff members. Just the other day, a reader sent me photos of his 1974 Plymouth Satellite, documenting the entire restoration process. One of the shots featured an old-style horizontal speedometer, which brought me back to the days of my youth and the old Pontiac Bonneville that I learned to drive on. We affectionately called the car "Meatloaf" due to its brown color and large, homogenous shape, but the car's saving grace was the 455-cu.in. V-8 beneath its hood.

As I traveled down this nostalgic road, I remembered a term from my youth that has all but disappeared from today's lexicon…"pinning" the speedometer.

Discuss what terms are approaching obsolescense on Hemmings.

Reply

Interested in this topic? By joining CR4 you can "subscribe" to
this discussion and receive notification when new comments are added.
Guru
United States - Member - New Member Engineering Fields - Mechanical Engineering - New Member Popular Science - Weaponology - New Member Hobbies - Target Shooting - New Member Safety - ESD - New Member Technical Fields - Education - New Member

Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 635
Good Answers: 20
#1

Re: What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

08/26/2014 8:50 AM

Using the "chrome horn"

Tune Up

Wind wings

Curb feelers

Hi-Fi Stereo

Door key (being different from the ignition key)

"Fill 'er up"

"Check the tires"

Room enough in the back seat to get in trouble.

-A-

__________________
question everything
Reply
Guru
Engineering Fields - Instrumentation Engineering - New Member Hobbies - Automotive Performance - New Member Technical Fields - Education - New Member Fans of Old Computers - TRS-80 - New Member Hobbies - Musician - New Member

Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 1331
Good Answers: 30
#2

Re: What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

08/26/2014 1:53 PM

"Suicide Knob"

"Reversed Shakle"

"Rumble Seat"

"CD station" (on radio dial)

"Wind Vents"

"Hood Ornament"

"Leaded body work"

__________________
...and the Devil said: "...yes, but it's a DRY heat..!"
Reply
Guru
Hobbies - DIY Welding - Wannabeabettawelda

Join Date: May 2007
Location: Annapolis, Maryland
Posts: 7940
Good Answers: 458
#3

Re: What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

08/26/2014 3:31 PM

Dwell meter

Points

Condensers

Timing Light

Feeler Gauges

Degree Wheel

Vacuum Dashpot

Choke

Carburetor

Vapor Lock

Float Gauge

Pilot Jet

Main Jet

Reply
Guru

Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: About 4000 miles from the center of the earth (+/-100 mi)
Posts: 9910
Good Answers: 1141
#4

Re: What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

08/26/2014 9:11 PM

Affordable Repairs

Reply
Guru

Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: South of Minot North Dakota
Posts: 8376
Good Answers: 775
#5

Re: What Automotive Terms are Facing Extinction?

08/27/2014 5:27 PM

What I miss with the newer vehicles is when I am scrapping them once all the plastic is burned out they only weigh half as much as before I lit it up.

The old vehicles never had enough plastic to get them to keep themselves lit unless you took the tires off and stuffed them in the cab and under the hood first.

Reply
Reply to Blog Entry 5 comments
Copy to Clipboard

Users who posted comments:

-A- (1); 70AARCuda (1); Brave Sir Robin (1); Rixter (1); tcmtech (1)

Previous in Blog: Jacksonville, Florida’s Ford Plant: A Wistful Monument of the Great Depression   Next in Blog: Has Our Taste in Cars Changed as We’ve Grown Older?

Advertisement