Old Cars sat down with Becky Bauer of FPM Metals

FPM Metals, headquartered in Nebraska, is surely one of the oldest automotive-related companies in existence. It was originated by current owner Stephen Gasper’s father in the late 1800s and is run as a family affair these days — with Becky working for her father as sales manager, her mother Ruth working in the office, and brother Keith serving as vice president. “The company is up to the fourth generation being involved,” Becky notes.

The company is best known to car enthusiasts for its ability to deliver custom engine-turned metal plates and pieces for an endless variety of uses.

Becky recently put up with our “10 Questions” treatment.

Gerald Perschbacher talks on the secret purple Packards

In 1954, the Packard Motor Car Co. built a test run of five purple-and-white Pacific hardtops, a senior model in the Packard offerings for that year. This was initiated by request of Earle C. Anthony, Jr., a West Coast distributor and then-current board member for Packard based in Detroit.

Bob Tomaine waxes on affordable finds in Hershey

Taking $15,000 as the cutoff figure, the affordable vehicles are, indeed, out there, as proven by what was spotted on a walk through the flea market and car corral at Fall Hershey. 

10 questions with the ATHS

Don’t call the American Truck Historical Society (ATHS, www.aths.org) a club — it’s much more than that. The organization was founded in 1971 to “preserve the history of trucks, the trucking industry and its pioneers,” states the society. Sure, it also has a giant annual national convention where thousands of members gather around 1,000 big trucks, plus many chapter meets, proving the society enjoys camaraderie as much as any other vehicle organization. However, the ATHS is deeply focused on preserving trucks and trucking history by more than in-person meetings. It also boasts a library in Kansas City, Mo., filled with literature, technical manuals, books, contemporary journals, photographs and other artifacts of the trucking industry.

We sat down with ATHS Executive Director John Gravley to learn more about the organization he represents and what it’s doing to continue its mission of preserving trucking history.

Old Cars shares reader rides

Old Cars readers show off their sweet wheels!

Ken Gross speaks on the ‘Other Cheetah’

As chief judge of the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance, I always carefully check the applicant lists. This year, I was surprised to see an entry called a 1953 Cheetah. That was too early for a Bill Thomas California Cheetah, but I was pretty sure I knew what car it was. When the Cheetah was a no-show, I was very disappointed.

I resolved to track it down. Armed with a name and a phone number, I called the owner, David Pacqua, in Norwalk, Conn. He, too, was disappointed,  as he and his wife had hoped to have the car ready for Greenwich. He’d inadvertently fitted the wrong flywheel and the starter motor wouldn’t engage.

“Do you own John Plaisted’s old race car?” I asked. When he said, “Yes,” the memories flooded back.

Al Rogers catches up with Chrysler Turbine

We visited Jeff Stumb, executive director of the Stahls Motors & Music Experience in Chesterfield, Mich., as he prepared its 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car for the Hilton Head Concours d’Elegance. 

Chrysler Corp. produced its most famous turbine car from late 1962 to October 1964 as 1963 models. Bodied by Carrozzeria Ghia of Italy and final-assembled in Detroit, only 55 cars were built. Of those 55 Turbine cars, 5 were prototypes and 50 were built for public testing. Nearly all of them were finished in a paint color that Chrysler called Turbine Bronze that was complemented by a black vinyl top.

10 questions with Barry Lowe of Gatsby Autoworx

Barry Lowe is the founder and owner of Gatsby Autoworx. Based in Liberty, N.C., Lowe is an entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for cars, who turned his hobby of restoring classic vehicles into a thriving business with help from his nephew, Micah. Together, they create stunning custom builds and bring forgotten cars back to life, with a special affinity for rare prewar machines. He’s also a fun guy.

Recently, we caught up to him for “10 Questions.”

Gregg Merksamer gives us another helping of Weathered Wheels

“Weathered Wheels” hawk Gregg D. Merksamer always seems to make it a point to travel back roads and keep his eyes out for rusty relics. Following are a few of the “Weathered Wheels” that he’s come across in recent years that we haven’t had space to publish yet on these pages. We say, “Thanks again for the pix Gregg! Keep ’em coming!

Old Cars reader, Jon Wessel gives us the scoop on his ’68 Cutlass Supreme with W-31 power

My father was an Oldsmobile dealer from 1966 until the end in 2004. When I turned 16 years old in 1971, my first car was a 1969 Cutlass Supreme convertible off the used car lot. It was pale yellow with a black interior, bucket seats and chrome Super Stock I wheels. I was in seventh heaven. After a few months, it had to be returned back to inventory to be sold, but you never forget your first car.

In 2018, I decided to go back to my roots and find a 1969 Cutlass Supreme convertible. I actually did find a twin to my ’69 — it was even the same color combination — but the price was far more than I wanted to pay. During my search, a particular 1968 Cutlass Supreme hardtop caught my eye.

Bob Tomaine takes us back to 1911 for a recycled Brass Buick

With the progression of the automotive industry many of the older cars were left behind. Some of the lucky old cars became trucks. Whether orphans or just outdated, they had little to no resale value, and so a conversion made sense. In some cases, the conversions amounted to not much more than chopping off the rear half of the body and replacing it with boards. Others benefited from kits that could include everything from a cargo box or platform to a heavier axle. In between were those one-offs that didn’t always approach a cabinetmaker’s craftsmanship, but were well done and served their purpose without embarrassing their owners.

Manny Rein, of Mahwah, N.J., has a truck that fits perfectly into the latter category.

“It’s a 1911 Buick Model 21, which is a pretty rare model,” he explained. “ … It was a touring to begin with and somebody — I guess in the ’20s or ’30s — converted it.”

Mike Puma unearths a post-war electric piece of history

The 1959 LaDawri Conquest was saved by one if its engineers and only recently uncovered.

GE began the experiment at its DC Locomotive plant in Erie, Pa., around late 1957. The choice of the LaDawri Conquest to serve as the test mule for its system isn’t entirely known, but there are a few clues. Based on the documentation and Jim’s recollections of his uncle’s stories, GE was considering mass production of its own electric car. The company wanted a car that was lightweight and could serve as a second household car for shorter “around town” trips. 

These articles and a whole lot more can be found inside the January 15, 2026, issue of Old Cars.

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As many classic car aficionados know, electric cars are as old as their internal-combustion cousins, which quickly surpassed them in large part to the introduction of the self-starter. Ironically, that technology was borrowed from an electric car even though Cadillac is often credited with having the first self-starter. 

By the 1920s, the electric car was largely a thing of the past, but over the following decades, experimentation continued to improve their range, speed and reliability. They became more ubiquitous by the 1970s with the gas crisis, but the cars in that era were often very small compared to their full-size counterparts of the early 20th Century. 

In the decades between, many individuals and companies tried their hand at making a full-size electric car, but most have been lost to history or modified beyond recognition, with the exception of the car that we’ll be talking about today: the 1959 LaDawri Conquest by General Electric.

Like so many others out there looking for their next project, I found myself searching eBay for classic cars close to home. Having just turned 30 years old and growing bored with the same old production cars, I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find. Scrolling through the usual suspects, I finally saw something I’d never seen on eBay or anywhere else: a LaDawri Conquest. It was a car so obscure that eBay didn’t even have an option for it in the auction title; it was simply listed as “1959 Other Makes,” but the photo was intriguing enough. The listing description wasn’t much more informative, just noting the make and model and a short, casual note about it being an experimental electric prototype built by General Electric.

I couldn’t reach out to Jim, the seller, fast enough. He began sending me little snippets of the car’s history, which were just the tip of the iceberg. Jim was settling the estate of his uncle, Edwin Kolatorowicz, who served as one of the main electrical engineers on the project. Edwin had an impressive resume, having studied engineering at MIT and Purdue University and had several patents in the field to his name. Jim recalled him fondly, remembering his uncle picking him up from school in the unique car and driving it around their hometown of Erie, Pa.

We formed a good rapport over the course of the auction, and I hoped to be the next steward of the car and its unique history. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough at the end of the auction and lost out. A bit devastated, I reached back out to Jim and wished him luck with the sale, but let him know that if the buyer backed out, I’d be waiting in the wings. 

Just about a month later, the buyer had completely disappeared, and I had my shot at redemption! As it turned out, the buyer had planned to gut the entire drivetrain and put the body on a Corvette chassis. If that came to pass, it would have destroyed what we now know to be the single-most intact, postwar electric hybrid in America.

The LaDawri had been stuffed into the garage at Edwin’s home since at least 1962, and a half-century of stuff had been piled around and on top of it, making it barely visible. Anyone who has an engineer in their family or as a friend knows one consistent thing amongst nearly all of them; they can be real pack rats, which isn’t always a bad thing.

After the family cleared a path to the car and had it pulled out, it was time for a long overdue bath. Unbeknownst to them, Uncle Ed had wisely put all the documents about the construction of the car and drivetrain in the passenger footwell. That was a saving grace, as they almost certainly wouldn’t have been found otherwise.

The extent of the documentation was far more than I could have hoped: departmental correspondence about the project progress, drawings, diagrams, component manuals and a few historic photos. Most notably, there was a file an inch thick that chronicled the build from start to finish, which was sent to their internal patent attorney at GE for consideration.

GE began the experiment at its DC Locomotive plant in Erie, Pa., around late 1957. The choice of the LaDawri Conquest to serve as the test mule for its system isn’t entirely known, but there are a few clues. Based on the documentation and Jim’s recollections of his uncle’s stories, GE was considering mass production of its own electric car. The company wanted a car that was lightweight and could serve as a second household car for shorter “around town” trips. 

In 1961, after a visit from the president of GE to see the completed car, the project was shuttered, having been deemed too expensive to competitively bring to market. Edwin made his bid to purchase the car, likely saving it from destruction. He was able to bring it home for his personal use.

The body and mechanicals

LaDawri Coachcraft was one of many bespoke sports car companies producing uniquely designed sports cars and fiberglass bodies for people who wanted to build their own sports car. The Conquest was the first model designed (1956) and was offered by Les Dawes, who ran the business with his wife, Joan. They quickly expanded their range of offerings to many other models and later acquired several other sports car body companies, such as Victress. The depth of their offerings made them the largest company in the era before they called it quits in the mid 1960s.

Joan is still with us today, and while she didn’t recall this specific car, letters that came with the car indicated that Les knew about the project. There wasn’t a letter with the files from GE explaining the project to Les, but we do have a response he sent them asking for “full information on the project as it progresses,” which must have been exciting for him to see such a unique drivetrain envisioned for his car.

A few different iterations were being considered for the drivetrain, including the potential for dual motors at the rear and a unique fuel cell that would be used for recharging the batteries. After evaluating several different battery options, it became clear that nothing was going to be fully up to the task for a standalone electric system. 

Instead, the team took a new approach for a hybrid design. The propulsion would still be entirely electric, but onboard recharging would be gas powered. They used almost entirely off-the-shelf parts from GE, and every component used had the product spec kept with the documentation. 

Ultimately, the system had half a ton of lead-acid batteries under the hood with the complete drivetrain in the rear. The battery power passed through a massive generator, which sat behind the passenger compartment, sending power to the Truck-O-Dyne electric traction motor and propelling the car. Mounted to the backside of the seat, within the rear engine compartment, was a massive switchboard of relays, fuses and wires acting as the brain of the system.

When it came to the on-board recharging, the generator was tied to a custom 5.75-hp Briggs & Stratton gas engine by a clutch pack with three phenolic discs. The output shaft from the generator to the gas engine spins freely until energized, which compresses the phenolic discs and enables the generator to start the gas engine. Once running, the clutch pack is disengaged, allowing the engine to spin the generator at a set rpm for the onboard recharging.

‘Jump starting’ an old electric

Once the car was home and I started poring over the documents, it was clear I was in over my head if I hoped to get the car back on the road. There were no notes about why the car had been parked for so long, the electric drive motor was full of nuts from squirrels and the batteries were long gone.

Enter the real hero of the story, my friend and automotive expert, George Dellapenta. George had worked through some electrical gremlins on my other cars and was thrilled at the opportunity — once he had a chance to see the car. His passion for it was equally matched to my own and he was willing to take it on, the caveat being that we may not be successful as there certainly was no shop manual to go by here.

After about a year, George had worked his magic and gone through every component of the car to ensure success. He was meticulous in his repairs and barely had to replace a wire or two along the way, keeping it as intact as possible. 

Since GE shuttered the program, likely considering it a failure, there was no press about the car and it never received its place in electric car history. But that is changing. The systems are fully operational, thanks to George’s hard work, and it can operate under its own power for the first time in half a century.

This hybrid-electric car by GE is special in many ways, but one of the most interesting is based on the size of the car. Virtually all postwar electric cars of the ’40s and ’50s were small cars — microcars, or shopping cart-sized cars — not full-size cars, or at least as large as an American sports car. The GE LaDawri Conquest is about the size of a Corvette. We’ve only identified five large fiberglass-bodied cars of this size or near this size that were built and shown in the immediate postwar years. These fiberglass-bodied electric cars and hybrids include: 

1953 Glasspar Moto or Banning Special
1955 LaSaetta “Electronic”
1956 Victress Pioneer
1958 Alken Nik-L-Silver Special
1959 GE LaDawri (car in this story)
1960 Nu Klea (owned by Jeff Lane)
1962 Voltra 

Except for the LaDawri, most of the cars on the list above are lost to time or are so modified with the removal of their electric systems that they may not be recognizable. Now that this GE LaDawri Conquest is operational and its history is known and ready to share, we’re looking for our first public display of this intriguing car. Are there any museum curators interested in helping celebrate this car? Think of it as a long, lost early postwar relative to the electric cars that are becoming so popular today. We think it could be fun for the museum and public alike.

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