Special Collection

I was happy to learn that the California Auto Museum will be hosting a microcar show next year, from March 15 to August 5, 2019 - especially great news for me, given that CAM is about a mile and a half from my house. A friend of mine is on the Board of the museum was talking about the show and knew I had a microcar (or, uh, four). I told him about the Crosleys and one of the things I mentioned was that my 1950 wagon had been featured in Road and Track Magazine back in 1975.  He couldn't even picture what a Crosley looked like, so I told him I'd send him a few photos.

Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries

As I got the pictures together I looked to see if the R&T article had ever been posted online. I did some googling and found what seemed like it might be an online version of the article. I clicked through to the site and could not believe what I was seeing...

Cruikshank the Crosley

"Cruikshank the Crosley" by Andrew McWhiney is probably the single best article about Crosley ownership ever written.  Originally published by Road and Track in their July 1952 issue, "Cruikshank" perfectly captured the absurdity, novelty and charm of Powell Crosley's pint-sized econobox; McWhiney's experiences still rang true when I read them nearly 50 years later.  Ironically, the article was published just about the time Crosley halted production.

Below are some high res scans of the whole original story, along with some other nuggets from the same issue...