Back in the 80s, I lived in an apartment and had the daily paper delivered to my door. It started disappearing so, being young and having a lot of electrical engineering knowledge. I decided to teach the thief a lesson. I won’t go into details but the paper was rigged with a difficult to detect electrical deterrent that would send a clear message but wasn’t capable of truly harming the recipient. I heard the trap go off with a loud yelp and my paper (or anything else for that matter) was never messed with again…
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2014 V6 cars had dual exhaust, too.
The hot ticket in Florida is the “gated community” Security isn’t any better but people think it is.
The second best is a doorbell button with a built in camera and wifi… Ring or Next make these. Takes good pictures of porch pirates stealing your Amazon boxes.
Yes, you geto see your packages leaving your premises.
Her problem is she is on the third floor, so she can’t see scum damaging her nice Mustang. She would not be watching, anyway.
In Colorado a woman was caught keying a Tesla by the Tesla’s cameras.
Yeah I remember those blue dot tail light lenses were in the old JC Whitney catalog. I think you just replaced the whole lens. I believe they are not legal now, but you’ll see them at old car shows. I’m talking 50’s and maybe early 60’s.
Spinners I think was pretty much the 50’s and by the early 60’s had kind of lost their charm in favor of baby moons or the mag wheels. My head is hurting thinking back that far. Cars were the thing then when they all had different styles.
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Cars were the thing then when they all had different styles.
Back then a parking lot was kaledscope of different shape’s and color’s instead of boring like it is now.
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I was just re-reading Car Emblems, by Giles Chapman. While it doesn’t cover every marque, it is a pretty good history of hood ornaments and badges for a wide variety of marques. His history of the VW marque includes this:
VW badges have been the subject of two crime waves. In 1957-58, over a million of the Wolfsburg crests were stolen from VW Beetles in The US, beginning in NY, and spreading to the West Coast. Professor Muller, of NYU Law School, conducted a criminology investigation, and discovered that the culprits were 13-14 year old boys. If they were pre-pubescent, they kept the badge, sometimes wearing it as a belt buckle. If puberty had begun, they gave them to girlfriends as keepsakes. In the UK in 1986-87, thousands of the round VW badges were stolen by teenagers, who wore them on neck chains to emulate the white rap group, The Beastie Boys.
The joke used to be that hood ornaments were for lining up pedestrians. And the reason '57 Chevys were so popular was the dual hood ornaments for lining up two at once.
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Those weren’t dual rocket launchers?
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Oh yes, that too! Very multipurpose and versatile ornaments. 
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Yes, this car was perfect for Luddites who didn’t want to advance to the rocket technology of James Bond’s Aston-Martin.
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I’d settle for a car equipped with Marvin the Martian’s ray gun. It would be sooo handy dealing with obnoxious motorists.
Many years ago, I read about a guy who equipped his Rolls-Royce with an extra windshield washer reservoir and a nozzle that was mounted on the trunk of his Roller. When he was being tailgated, he would hit the button, and spray the tailgater with some sort of colored liquid that he had placed in the reservoir.
However, those were simpler times. Nowadays, that type of reactive prank would likely result in armed assault.
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I remember the swan hood ornaments on the Packards through the 1950 models.
In my high school years, the in thing was to remove the hood ornament and other emblems and fill in the holes. Maybe this is where the manufacturers decided that the younger generation didn’t want hood ornaments. My dad had a 1947 DeSoto where the hood ornament lit up with the headlights.
Actually it started out called a pelican, later they called it a cormorant.
“Whatever happened to the 3/4-inch blue lens inserted in brake lights?
Fascinating how they made the whole brake light appear purple from a distance!
Did one drill outhe plastic brake light cover to inserthe lens?”
No. They were an aftermarket purchase item. There was one primary source which did business under two names.
If you lived within 100 miles of Chicago (as I did), you purchased from J. C. Warshawsky & Co. If you lived further away, you ordered from J. C, Whitney & Co,
If you lived nearby, you purchased directly, at 1900 S. Archer Ave. It was right in the middle of a heavily Polish district.
I don’t get the geographical distinction. I used to order from Whitney, and when I was at a friend’s house (also in NJ), I noticed the Warshawsky catalogue, from which he used to order. A cursory glance proved to me that it was the same company, operating under a couple of different names.
Somehow, I wound-up on their Whitney mailing list, and he wound-up on their Warshawsky mailing list, but we lived in the same state, several hundred miles from Chicago.
It wasn’t the last time but pretty close to it when I ordered a couple of used tires for my Morris Minor in 1966. When they came in, one of the tires actually had a side casing from another tire glued onto it. Yeah I sent them back. The guys at the trucking warehouse were amazed they would even ship something like that. Then the chrome paint that was pretty much just aluminum paint. I’ll say the headliner for my VW though was good quality OEM like. Back then there just weren’t many places to get stuff like this.
With those difficulties were you tempted to steal a Mustang badge from a car? I am having difficulty making the connection.
The boys just took a little side trip. But I’m sure you could order a new emblem from JC, no problem.
"If you lived within 100 miles of Chicago (as I did), you purchased from J. C. Warshawsky & Co. If you lived further away, you ordered from J. C, Whitney & Co,
“If you lived nearby, you purchased directly, at 1900 S. Archer Ave. It was right in the middle of a heavily Polish district.”
Ya gotta read all of the response or ya miss stuff.