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Going out on a limb here with the location of these three photos. The source of the photos, one of our own classified ads for the Volvo-based special seen below, doesn’t offer the location, but there is still a Hurt Seed Company in Falls, Tennessee, which happens to be right beside the Arnold Field Airport, which from the air looks like it has the same wide apron that we see in the photos. Sports car historians can probably tell us more about where these photos were taken, we’re more concerned with the cars in the background and the other cars on the grid. What do you see here?

Once prevalent across America, Volkswagen Beetles (original ones, with air-cooled engines mounted behind the rear wheels) are now somewhat scarce. Worse, many come with unknown histories or shoddy attempts at restoration, leaving new owners to experience the joy of welding in new floors or hunting down replacement sheetmetal. This 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, for sale on Hemmings.com, was originally purchased by Road Test magazine, and is still owned by the former Tech Editor. Though 178,000 miles have rolled beneath its wheels, it’s described as in excellent condition with only minor paint issues and no rust. The original 1.5-liter flat four was updated to 1.6-liters early in its life, and replacement engine parts remain readily available from numerous sources. Best of all, it can be repaired with hand tools and a minimal amount of mechanical ability, making it an ideal starter car for those new to the hobby. From the seller’s description:

In 1967 Jim Gilbert, Managing Editor of Road Test Magazine, and Dick Brashear, Tech Editor of Road Test went to the VW dealer in Pasadena California and purchased the demo car owned by salesman Al Kaudebeck. In those times VW salesmen owned their demo cars and mostly just took orders and put the new buyer on a waiting list. Jim bought the car and I (Dick Brashear) cosigned. In 1999 I took ownership, restored it to its present condition, or nearly so, and gave it to our son to learn to drive. We named his car “Lurch” from his early clutching attempts.It wasn’t long before more modern wheels became necessary for our son and I got Lurch back again. It has been driven regularly short jaunts once a week or so. It drives beautifully. I showed it to a client one time and when she opened the door she took a deep breath, smiled and said ” oh, I had one like this and this one even smells the same”. This car causes smiles making it great to drive.

I listed it in excellent condition. It truely is. There are some small paint issues but absolutely no rust. Mechanically it is all in good order. Original engine (1600 kit installed in its early years) and all numbers match. As far as the car is concerned I would drive accross country without hesitation.

1939 Cadillac Sixteen seven-passenger sedan. Photos courtesy Russo and Steele.

Rick Nuckolls didn’t visit McPherson College with the intent of buying an unrestored and mostly disassembled 1939 Cadillac Sixteen seven-passenger sedan, but that’s ultimately what happened. Blame it on Jay Leno, who encouraged the car’s previous owner to donate the sedan to the Kansas school’s automotive restoration program. Three years later, the Cadillac has been restored, and Rick believes it’s time to pass the car to a new owner; next month, the rare Cadillac will cross the auction block at Russo & Steele’s Scottsdale, Arizona sale.

The 1930s were not kind to luxury automobile sales, and Cadillac was no exception to this rule. Introduced in 1930, the automaker’s V-16 engine was the height of luxury and performance, but as the effects of the Great Depression took hold, sales of V-16 models plummeted. The same was true of its V-12 powered cars, also introduced in 1930, and it became apparent that producing a V-16, a V-12 and a V-8 was no longer cost-effective. Cadillac’s engineers went back to their drawing tables, and for 1938 the brand discontinued the V-12 and debuted an entirely new, less complex (and hence, cheaper to produce) V-16 engine.

While the previous 452-cu.in. V-16 used overhead valves and cylinder banks on a 45-degree angle, the new 431-cu.in. V-16, detailed by David LaChance in the February 2007 issue of Hemmings Classic Car, was an L-head design that spread cylinder banks by an impressive 135-degrees. To improve durability, the engine featured a short stroke (3 ¼ inches, the same as the bore), a nine-bearing crankshaft, dual fuel pumps and dual water pumps. Each cylinder bank received its own distributor, and each was fed by a separate downdraft carburetor. While output remained at 185 horsepower, the new design was some 250 pounds lighter than the V-16 it replaced, aiding performance. The engine’s lower center of gravity, thanks to the 135-degree cylinder bank angle, further improved handling.

Not that either was a significant factor to Cadillac buyers in 1938. Instead, the new engine was marketed for its inherent smoothness, as well as its ability to dash from 10 to 60 MPH in just 16 seconds, in the transmission’s third and final gear. In Cadillac’s words, the Sixteen was the “World’s Most Luxurious Motor Car… yet to be approached in any particular by any car American or European.”

With so many significant changes for 1938, Cadillac left the 1939 Sixteen largely unchanged. Twelve models remained available, ranging from a two-door coupe to a seven-passenger town car, including the seven passenger sedan seen here. Among the lower priced Sixteen models, the seven-passenger sedan, style number 9023, still carried a price tag of $5,375, four times the price of the average car in 1939. Of the 138 Cadillac Sixteens built for 1939, just 18 examples of body style 9023 were produced.

The early history of this particular car is unknown, but in the 1980s it belonged to a collector in New York State. His intention was to restore the car, and while work began, he died before any significant progress was made. His son then inherited the car, and after storing the Cadillac for several decades, came to the conclusion that the project was beyond his capabilities and interests. Somehow, he managed to track down Jay Leno, and pitched the comedian on buying the Sixteen. With one too many projects underway, Leno reportedly passed, instead selling the owner on the merits of donating the car to McPherson College’s Auto Restoration program. In 2011, the school took delivery of the Cadillac and immediately placed it into storage for a potential future project.

Enter Rick, who was touring McPherson with Ford executive Paul Breary in 2012 when he spotted the V-16 emblem on the Cadillac’s grille. If it wasn’t love at first sight, it was certainly infatuation, and Rick confessed to us that had he looked more carefully at the car and its condition, he may have walked away from the project. Instead, after repeated phone calls to Brian Martin, McPherson’s director of auto restoration projects, a deal was struck and the car was shipped off to Rick’s home town of Wichita.

From the beginning, Rick’s goal was to keep as much of the restoration work local as possible. The Cadillac’s V-16 was rebuilt by Earl Lauer and Lauer’s Service in Clearwater, Kansas, and Earl’s sister, Bernice Martling, performed the upholstery work when she wasn’t stitching aircraft interiors for Cessna in Wichita. We asked Rick why he opted for leather over the period-correct broadcloth, and it came down to perception. The reproduction cloth samples received seemed insubstantial compared to the original material, so Rick made the decision to recreate the upholstery in leather, believing it would hold up better than the available broadcloth. Before disassembly, Bernice photographed every component in the interior, ensuring that, materials aside, the finished product would be as close to the original as possible.

Paint and body work was carried out by Tony Deese in Wichita, who sprayed the car in its original livery of black with red wheels. Final assembly was turned over to Rick and his friends, and he’s quick to credit all those who had a hand in the car’s rebirth, including Curtis Crain, Tim Bonnell, Bob Crager, Dave Thompson and Chad Thompson. While he didn’t shy away from hard work (such as the weeks spent wet sanding the car to a high gloss, ahead of its debut at the 2015 Black Top Nationals), Rick is well aware of his own mechanical limitations.

Now that the car is done, Rick believes it’s time to pass it on to a new owner, or perhaps even a museum. It’s not clear exactly how many of the 18 body style 9023 seven-passenger sedans built in 1939 remain, but the Cadillac database shows no more than five worldwide, one of which has been rebodied. Much of this information is years old, and based on reported membership in the Cadillac LaSalle Club, Rick believes that his example is one of two roadworthy sedans left. We reached out to the Cadillac LaSalle Club for further clarification, but have not yet received a reply to our inquiry.

What that means in terms of a selling price is anyone’s guess. The Cadillac Sixteen will be offered at no reserve (a prospect that makes Rick a bit nervous, as this is his first time selling a car at auction) when it crosses the auction block in Scottsdale next month.

For more information on the upcoming Arizona sale, visit RussoandSteele.com.

Photo by David Zaitz/Courtesy of the Petersen Automotive Museum

Photo by David Zaitz.

A few weeks back on Hemmings Radio, we kicked around the topic of what makes a car collectible. While rarity comes into play, perhaps the biggest single factor is relevance, which explains why once-common cars occasionally become sought-after by those in the hobby. Perhaps they trigger memories of a relative, or of family road trips, or perhaps they’re simply more affordable than other classic cars.

Not every lot in this week’s spanning-four-decades $5,000 Challenge will spur a trip down memory lane, but many will. My family had a Comet, (a 1962, if I remember correctly), and our milk came delivered in a slightly more modern version of the International for sale here. For the generation that came after me, the K-car was often the family car of choice, and I’m sure plenty of readers have tales of top-down afternoons in a faux woodie Chrysler LeBaron, or the more practical Dodge Aries wagon. Which of these restoration candidates take you back?

1958 Chevrolet Delray

Someone in the Hemmings Nation grew up taking family road trips in a 1958 Chevrolet Delray sedan, probably hovering on the floorboards for fresh air while mom, dad, Uncle Ted and Aunt Betty chain-smoked Kools, Tareytons, Camels and Newports. With just 32,000 miles on this numbers-matching example, chances are it wasn’t the same one that carried you to Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon, or even down-the-shore, but someone reading this is thinking, “For under four grand, this car needs to be saved.” So are we.

1974 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC

Mom and dad may not have owned a Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC coupe, but perhaps that rich, eccentric uncle that the family only talked about in hushed tones parked one in his garage. While the coupe may not have been as popular as the open-air 450 SL convertible, it was still stuffed full of as much luxury and performance as the Stuttgart automaker could muster, and in 1974 such an automobile would have stickered at $19,450, enough to purchase a Porsche 911 coupe and a Chevrolet Corvette coupe and still get over $3,000 cash back. That makes the $4,500 asking price of this example seem reasonable, assuming that the needed TLC isn’t specialist-only work.

1962 Mercury Comet

Used Comets once filled the driveways of suburban America, often purchased for mom and then handed down through the family to a chain of new drivers. Somewhere along the line, this example fell into enthusiast hands, and the original inline-six was pulled to shoehorn in a 289 V-8 and a four-speed Toploader transmission. That should make it fun to drive, but the car will need some sorting, new floors, interior work and paint to make it a daily driver. Think of the $5,000 asking price as a down payment on restoration training that will include welding, paint and upholstery practice.

1950 International Metro Milk Van

Vans like this once prowled the early morning streets of suburban America, delivering milk, dairy products and bread to a slumbering populace. Today, they make great rolling billboards for small businesses, or even semi-practical toy haulers (try fitting a pair of muddy dirt bikes in the back of an SUV or minivan). This 1950 International is in rough shape, but it’s nowhere near too far gone to save. Spend the $4,000 asking price, get it running and paint it, and perhaps you can even launch a crazy new kind of business, like delivering dairy products to sleeping suburbanites.

1985 Chrysler LeBaron convertible

At some point in the not-too-distant future, a Chrysler K-car convertible will cross the auction stage and hammer for a positively jaw-dropping price. Why? Even drop-top examples were intended to be disposable cars, driven until the cost of upkeep no longer made sense, then traded in on the latest compact-minivan-crossover-utility-pod, meaning that few K-cars survived into the 21^st century. More significantly, these were the family cars for a generation that’s only now earning the kind of money needed to enter the collector car hobby. Combine low availability with increasing demand, and the net result is a jump in pricing. Will this 1985 Chrysler LeBaron ever be a six-figure car? Probably not, but there’s a good chance that, if preserved, it will be worth more than the $4,500 asking price in the coming years.

I am really proud of our KaiNexus customers – the progress they are making and the example they are setting with continuous improvement. They are getting great results, as they report. Beyond safety and quality improvements, cost savings, and other end results, there’s a process measure that matters.

Our customers, if you add up all of their continuous improvement activity, implement 75% of their employee ideas that are submitted through our software.

75!!!%

Most suggestion box systems (paper based or electronic suggestion boxes) typically only have 1 to 3% of ideas get implemented. The rest get rejected. How discouraging is that?

KaiNexus is built around the Kaizen model of continuous improvement. One critical aspect of Kaizen is that managers don’t simply accept or reject employee ideas. They have to be coaches… they have to be collaborative to help turn a “bad idea” into some other idea that solves the problem at hand (or at least makes things better).

The Toyota benchmark is 90% implementation rates… but again, that doesn’t mean 90% of ideas were awesome to start with. They worked to find SOMETHING to implement.

One of our customers that has made great strides with daily continuous improvement throughout their hospital in the past year is Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC) in Ames, Iowa. They’ve been a KaiNexus customer for a few years, using our software initially to help track improvement events and projects. They have a CEO and other leaders who believe strongly in Kaizen and the need for everybody to be involved in improvement. They have a foundation of quality improvement that includes their state-level Baldrige recognition. Listen to my podcast with their VP of quality Karen Kiel-Rosser as she talks about all of that.

I worked with them on site a year ago as a coach to introduce KaiNexus and a daily Kaizen model into two pilot units. From that initial experience, they took it from there. Karen and their continuous improvement coordinator, Ron Smith, helped spread Kaizen practices (and our KaiNexus software) across the entire hospital in a very systematic way.

You can hear Karen and Ron tell more about their story in a webinar they are presenting tomorrow, via KaiNexus. I’ll be playing the role of host. You can attend live or sign up to be sent a link to a recording.

They have a very compelling story. I saw them give a version of this presentation at our KaiNexus User Conference back in October.

Some highlights and key topics that you’ll hear about tomorrow: