Haunted by Certain Cars
In the course of hitting countless car shows, swap meets, junkyards and car collections over the last three decades, I’ve seen a zillion cool old Mopars. It gets to a point that I have a hard time remembering them all. Oh, I love to check them all, out but for the most part, “Oh, it’s another Cuda, Charger, Dart” gets to be the familiar routine. But there are a few that haunt me.
These are cars I stood before but, for whatever reason, failed to recognize their significance at the time. Weeks, months or years pass and then suddenly I’m hit with the realization of what these cars are, or more sadly, were.
One classic example is the 1949 Chrysler Crown Imperial limo I spotted not long ago in the now-defunct Curboy’s Auto Wrecking in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I’m not into the snob mobile aspect of this car, rather I’m captivated by the fact these limited production cars
(45 are known to have been built) came right from Chrysler with four wheel disc brakes. Though the 1949 Crosley Hot Shot is usually lauded for being the first American iron with discs (on the front wheels only), few remember that Chrysler used Ausco-Lambert discs at all four corners of the Crown and a few other top Imperial models until around 1953.
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Unlike the traditional Budd, Bendix, Girling, Kelsey-Hayes disc brake configuration, where a steel rotor is pinched by the caliper, these Ausco-Lambert discs were designed more in line with the clutch and pressure plate principle used in front of a manual transmission. The rotors were nearly fully encased within rigid housings and when the brake pedal was pushed, dual circular friction linings were forced against both faces of the rotors. The system got a lot of press in the day but was heavy and the fact that the rotor was encased no doubt made venting heat just as troublesome as with drum brakes.
Now here’s the part that kills me. I was so taken by the fact that this once posh limo was a radio delete car I completely neglected to check to see if it had these rare brakes. In fact, I wrote a story about this and several other radio delete cars I spotted at Curboy’s that appeared in Hemmings Classic Car magazine. In the story I hinted at the possibility of Ausco-Lambert disc brakes but assumed none were present. Well, you know what happens when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. It was only after my return to my home in California that I realized it was indeed an Ausco-Lambert disc brake car.
