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" Recently I bought a Dodge Coronet two-door station wagon. Although we were never a wagon family when I was a kid--there were just four of us--my friend&amp;#039;s parents had a &amp;#039;54 Plymouth Belvedere wagon with a flat-head Six. So when I saw this Dodge, it brought back those fond memories.  The Coronet weighs 3400 pounds, about the same as the ZR1 Corvette with all its carbon fiber. The Dodge has a 150-hp 241-cu.-in. Hemi V8 and a three-speed stick with overdrive. The original owner bought it to tow a boat. It&amp;#039;s got a radio, a clock and a heater. Back then, that was really all you needed.  My little Dodge was considered an extremely powerful car for the day. And it still gets up and goes. You can lay a nice strip of rubber. There&amp;#039;s a sort of agricultural honesty to this car, too. Open the hood--there&amp;#039;s the carburetor, there&amp;#039;s your spark plugs, there&amp;#039;s your coil, and there&amp;#039;s a glass bottle for windshield-washer fluid. It doesn&amp;#039;t have a rear-window cleaner, because the rear window doesn&amp;#039;t get dirty. And it rides pretty nicely. You can put it in overdrive and go down the road at 60 mph. This car just seems to make people smile. Before Chrysler&amp;#039;s Forward Look styling of the late &amp;#039;50s, the company built solid, friendly cars. If a Cadillac was a little too flashy, but you wanted solid engineering, Chrysler was the company. It pioneered the TorqueFlite transmission and the Hemi V8. The Hemi was an expensive engine to build and machine, but it really had the power. We all like the legendary 426 Hemis, but this 241 is a nice little revver. Step on the gas, and it just goes eeee\u00ADrrrrrrrrpppppp. The 241 has all the power you need. When you drive this wagon, you feel like you should be smoking a pipe, because that&amp;#039;s what dads did in those days. I drive for about an hour, and I find myself saying, &amp;quot;Hey! Keep it up, and we&amp;#039;ll turn this car around right now!&amp;quot; I feel I have to say that once or twice, like there are some kids in the back. K.T. Keller, the chairman of Chrysler at the time, said that no car would be designed such that he couldn&amp;#039;t wear a hat while riding inside. So mine has a nice high roof area. There are vent windows but no air conditioning. You could have had Airtemp for $643, but most people didn&amp;#039;t order it. This two-door wagon predates the Chevrolet Nomad that everybody still goes crazy for. I like the Coronet better, because of its style and rarity. This Dodge was perfect for the small family. It looks like the car from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. You might live in Connecticut. And you&amp;#039;d drive down to the train station to commute into New York City in the days when there was no graffiti on the trains. Yes, it was a more honest time. It all hearkens back to when I was a kid--lots of folks lived in rural areas. You could play ball, you could go down to a stream ... or you could go for a Sunday drive! Hey, gas was only 35 cents a gallon. But back in that time, they couldn&amp;#039;t give gas away. It was pleeeassse buy gas for 35 cents a gallon; here&amp;#039;s some free steak knives. They actually gave you something you could rob them with. If you just come in, we&amp;#039;ll give you all this stuff. I remember when my Dad filled up the tank and we got pens, pencils, glasses, steak knives and S&amp;amp;amp;H Green Stamps. They&amp;#039;d check your air and your oil. Today, the concept of the service station is gone. You pull into a gas station now, you can&amp;#039;t even get air! You can get Ding Dongs and Ho Hos and Powerade drinks, but you can&amp;#039;t get anything for your car. Safety is different now, too. In those days, cars had virtually no safety equipment. We didn&amp;#039;t know any better. When we traveled in our &amp;#039;57 Plymouth, I would fall asleep on the parcel shelf behind the rear seat. When my Dad hit the brakes, I&amp;#039;d fly forward and hit the back of the seat. Dad thought it was a hilarious joke every time. He&amp;#039;d actually wait till I was asleep, slam on the brakes and I&amp;#039;d roll right down. Now, of course, he&amp;#039;d go to prison for that. It gets better. In 1964, when we bought our new Ford Galaxie, seatbelts were about to become mandatory. We went up to Shawsheen Motors, and my father asked, &amp;quot;How about seatbelts?&amp;quot; The salesman said, &amp;quot;Seatbelts? Seatbelts? Hey Louie, we gotta race-car driver here. He&amp;#039;s goin&amp;#039; to the Indianapolis 500. He wants seatbelts!&amp;quot; My father was so humiliated. When Preston Tucker built his &amp;quot;safety car&amp;quot; in 1948 with its pop-out windshield, he wanted safety belts, too. But the marketing guys said, &amp;quot;No, no. Folks are going to think this car is unsafe.&amp;quot; So he told people that in the event of a crash, they should dive for the padded area under the dash. He called it a &amp;quot;safety cell.&amp;quot; I remember if you were sitting in the front seat of our car, and you were about to have an accident, my dad would have one hand on the wheel, then his arm would come across and hit you in the nose. Somehow, that was supposed to protect you from a 70-mph crash. That was our safety cell back then. When we finally got the new Ford with seatbelts, the salesman showed my dad how, if you tipped the seat forward and then rolled up the belt, you could stick it into the crack between the seats so you&amp;#039;d never have to use it. The salesman actually showed us that. My dad would only buy whatever the car in the showroom had in it. If there was no radio in the demonstrator, he&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t get radios in these.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Dad, you can order one.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;No, you can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Luckily, when we bought our &amp;#039;64 Ford Galaxie off the floor, it had a knob on the dash that moved the sound from the speaker in front to one in back. Now that&amp;#039;s technology! My dad would say, &amp;quot;Ooooh, look at this.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d be in the back seat, and he&amp;#039;d turn the radio knob, and all the sound would go to the back so he didn&amp;#039;t have to listen to &amp;quot;all that crap.&amp;quot; My dad loved that feature. Like I said, cars were a lot simpler then. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a3535/4277863/>