Forget baking them cookies or letting them borrow your lawnmower, the best way to get to know your neighbors is by parking an old car out front for a few days, as Tim Pitt of Motoring Research recently found out when a Citroen ID he’d borrowed for a road test broke down and gave him a chance to bond with his neighbors.
* Another voice to add to our ongoing documentation of current-day Cuba’s old car scene: Desmond Boylan’s profile of a Cuban named Fidel (not that Fidel) and his 1952 Chevrolet named Miss Green that resides in his living room and that Fidel counts as his most prized possession. (h/t to Mark Axen)
* The blueprints donated to the Checker Cab Club earlier this year promised all sorts of new revelations about Checker’s history, and those now have started to come to light, among them a look at Checker’s proposed Model C airport limousine, a decidedly different and ahead-of-its-time take on the people mover.
* How exactly did Detroit beat out Cleveland, Indianapolis, and several other cities in the United States to become the country’s center of automotive manufacturing? Nick Kurczewski examines the city’s 20th century history and the factors that led to its rise.
* Finally, Alan at Auto Neurotic Fixation takes a look at Volkswagen’s proposed oval-cylinder diesel engine from about 1990.
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