My dear Reader, for those of you who know me – perhaps more keenly than I care to confess – I have long suffered to endure a fascination with the North American passenger automobile. Though I am inclined to blame my father and his father (because each was throughout his life devoted to the same retail amusement) I recall being distracted as though instinctively by such conveyances from a very early age – say at least 9 or 10 when I recollect driving my father’s Oldsmobile sedan much the same way a young boy might play upon his father’s country tractor. At the time we lived in a remote rural area where the opportunity to do so presented itself. I should add in my defence that I knew from a young age that my father had previously owned a Studebaker sedan with power seats and windows; and that my grandfather’s 7-passenger Packard limousine was complete with a chandelier in the back. Indeed I later discovered that the vehicular trend insinuated the entire Chapman family and beyond. My cousin Richard Kitchen’s father (Uncle Herb) was a shameless champion of the Oldsmobile 98 (which was then an impressive display of sheet metal).
