Vehicles are defined by the era of their manufacture, and those eras are, in turn, defined by the technology available. The configuration of the Model T would have been intolerable twenty or thirty years after its demise, and the concept of an automatic transmission or fuel injection would have been unthinkable at its inception. With every substantive advance in technology, our standards of expected performance, comfort and reliability change and older configurations disappear. Sometimes, technological eras overlap, by a lot or a little. A bit more than a year ago, we looked at production cars that straddled the age of the carburetor and the six-speed gearbox. Surprisingly, the Hooniverse hive-mind was able to name only a single model. Today, we examine another such pairing of features. Radial tires were a huge step forward in tire construction over earlier bias-ply tires. As the sun was rising for the radial tire, it was setting on another technology: drum brakes were rapidly being replaced by discs. Your assignment for today is to name cars that have one foot in the earlier era and the other in the later. We want cars that came from the factory either equipped with front drum brakes and radial tires, or had disc brakes and bias-ply tires. The Caveats (there are always caveats):
- Cars and light trucks allowed.
- Production road-legal vehicles only, please.
- This one’s a biggie: OE tire fitment is a bit of a tough call. Many times, a particular model would leave the factory rolling two or more different tires simultaneously, and it’s tough to know if cars today are rolling on the original spec rubber. Likewise, many models were equipped with discs as an option that may or may not have dictated a different choice of tire. Take care to verify your assumedly matched tire and brake really were available together on the particular vehicle you’re claiming to add to the list.
Difficulty: Surprising easy to guess, surprisingly tough to verify. How This Works: Read the comments first and don’t post duplicates! Bonus points for adding photos. Remember, you can simply paste in the raw image URL now, thanks to the magic of Disqus. Image Sources: chevyhardcore.com and continental-specialty-tires.com.
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