Street Cars Named Desire

In my 1958 children’s I-Spy Book of Motor-Cars, such mundane and common models(!) as Graber-bodied Alvis and Jaguar XK150s warranted a haul for the spotter of 10 or 20 points apiece. Not bad when a Morris Oxford only earned you two. However, when you reached the center two pages of the little book, these were devoted to Ferrari, where 410 Super Americas and 250 California Spiders were worth no less than 100 points each.

The compiler of these tiny tomes for kids must have had a chuckle to himself as the chances of seeing an example of either in the UK, or the U.S., were about as high as the likelihood of the Edsel topping the car-sales charts.