My First Forty Cars: An Automotive Memoir

With a grandfather who drove a horse car in 1900 and who later had a 25-year career as a chauffeur for a wealthy family, Nelson Bolan has a unique viewpoint about the automotive industry during the first half of the 20th century. In later years, Bolan began his own car acquisitions. His first, a 1929 Chevrolet, was purchased for ＄100 in celebration of his brother’s safe return from World War II and his own high school graduation. It had an outside gasoline gauge, and if the driver forgot to read the gauge before getting into the driver’s seat, he had no way of knowing how much fuel he had. (Chevrolet made the change to dashboard gauges in 1930.) The car also had actual wooden floor boards, which were removed and reinstalled easily when servicing was necessary.

This automotive memoir includes a chapter for each of Bolan’s first forty cars, including photographs of the actual vehicles where possible. Most were well aged at the time of purchase; the earliest was a 1917 Dodge Brothers. A nostalgic but factual recollection of each car in the order it was acquired, the book includes interesting information about each model and Bolan’s mechanical adventures from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Nelson Bolan’s lifelong interest in cars led to a career in the automobile business. He lives in Florida.