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A Kodachrome slide I acquired, showing a car dealer somewhere in Ontario, Canada, circa 1958. I've tried to find the exact location. Another picture shows the crossing with Eastville Avenue. View full size.
I had an uncle by marriage who was on a different wavelength. He bought a new red-and-white Nash Metropolitan in the early 1950s, drove it to a storage building he had in Fernandina Beach, Florida, and stored it for many years. He had the thing on blocks and would start the engine once a week or so just to keep things from freezing up, I guess. The wheels were in a stack behind the car.
He thought he'd get rich when some collector would pay a fortune one day for a mint Metropolitan that was basically undriven. When he died in the early 1970s, I believe, the Nash was still in the shed. His family didn't know what to do with the car because at that time and in that place, it wasn't valuable. So they sold it for a couple of hundred bucks. Pretty car, though.
The car lot is long gone, but the church may be part of the current Joy City Church, near 3060 Kingston Road in Toronto. Love the Canadian Red Ensign (pre-1965) flag on the pole.
Based on the clues, I'd say it is now the Canadian Tire store at Kingston and Eastville. The sign on the building says it's 3060, which works with Kingston Road.
In Toronto in '58, local TV was one station: CBLT channel 6 operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. But with a good antenna you could get the 3 American networks from Buffalo across Lake Ontario: WGRZ channel 2 (NBC), WBEN channel 4 (CBS) and WKBW channel 7 (ABC.) As a kid in Toronto, I knew the names of all the neighbourhoods and major streets in Buffalo thanks to Eyewitness News :)
They still haven't invented a time capsule to go back. The slide showing the Eastville Avenue crossing is now here. Thx guys.
flies the red ensign, the flag I grew up with until 1965, I assume most of those TV antennas were picking up stations in the U.S.
Is easily the hottest car of all those in view, especially if it has the optional J-2 setup with three two-barrel carburetors, giving it the magic for the '50s 300 HP rating. When Consumer Reports evaluated the 1957 Olds 88, it said it was the fastest car they had ever tested up to that time with the exception of the Chrysler 300B.
Suspect the used car dealer may have been on the northeast corner of Eastville Avenue and Kingston Road.
I had a silver 1957 Olds Super 88 four-door during my college years circa 1975-1977. Seeing this one brought a smile to my face.
The car was very sophisticated in many respects and quite comfortable inside.
It also had a lot of torque with a touchy throttle, which was due to having a four-barrel carburetor with four equally-sized large bores.
(There was a version that had three two-barrel carburetors. I can only imagine what that was like!)
It was like sitting in a bay window and driving an apartment house.
The Oldsmobile means business. Was it a Rocket V8? I can't tell.
I don't think I've ever seen so many tall TV antennas in one picture before!
I lived about a mile east of here on Shirley Crescent in the 1980's. Back then it was a typical suburb with single family homes, shopping malls, strip malls, lots of gas stations and car dealers. But if you were lucky enough to live south of Kingston Road the view of Lake Ontario from the top of the bluffs was quite beautiful.
Outside of the beautiful cars, I'm struck by all of the television antennas in the background!
Regarding the cars, my mom's first car was a little yellow Nash Metropolitan convertible like the one in the foreground.
We'll keep the black one and ship all the pastel cars to Cuba.
Look at the lines on the rear door of that OLDS !!
Great to see these in their original, unrestored, unmodified condition.
There is an Eastville Avenue in Toronto. Runs south from Kingston Road to Bluffers Park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Only cross streets are Kingston, Stoley Road, Barkdene Hills, Sunnypoint Crescent, and, possibly, Gradwell Drive.
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