Instagram Jump Start: Three-finned Manta Ray swims past Mustang

It was concept car versus icon this week and, as is often the case, “different” won. A Studebaker-based 1953 “Manta Ray” edged a ’66 Ford Mustang as the most-liked post on Hagerty’s Instagram account. There’s just something about a car named for a fish that looks like a jet, isn’t there?

Get your workweek started with something a little more fun than answering emails and check out the most viewed/liked posts on HagertyClassicCars over the past week:

1. 1953 Manta Ray concept car (1,242 likes) – Starting with a 1951 Studebaker chassis, Glenn Hire and Vernon Antoine created the 1953 Manta Ray concept car. Hire and Antoine, who worked in North American Aviation’s jet aircraft division, created the three-finned car’s unique nosecone from scratch, first making a wooden buck and then casting a 1/4-inch shell. The automobile’s original Studebaker 232-cid V-8 was eventually swapped out for a more powerful Cadillac engine.
   
2. 1966 Ford Mustang (1,203) – Ford put more than one million Mustangs on the road within the model’s first two years, still the fastest that any new nameplate has reached that sales milestone. We saw this 1966 coupe in Traverse City, Mich.
   
3. 1972 DeTomaso Pantera (1,053) – When Alejandro DeTomaso retired as a race car driver he turned to auto manufacturing, and by the late 1960s had given the world the Vallelunga and Mangusta. Ford had been seeking to acquire an exotic car company, and a deal was struck to import the DeTomaso Pantera. This 1972 model, powered by a mid-mounted 351-cid Cleveland V-8, was at Hagerty’s Cars and Caffeine gathering last Friday morning in Traverse City, Mich. The Pantera is only 43 inches tall.
   
4. 1964 Buick Electra 225 (1,050) – The 1964 Buick Electra 225’s numeral designation represented its length – 225 inches, or nearly 19 feet. It quickly gained the nickname “Deuce and a Quarter.”
   
5. 1948 Ford F-1 pickup (1,028) – Front fenders on the new 1948 Ford F1 pickup truck featured a wraparound appearance, coming together around a five-bar horizontal grille. The hood featured two half-oval air vents up front. The base engine was a 226-cid, 95-hp flathead six, with a 239-cid, 100-hp V-8 optional. From 1948-51, Ford truck engines were painted red.
   

One We Love But You Only Liked – Every week there’s a photo that we think deserved a lot more “likes” than it received. This one – an interior shot of an unrestored 1925 Packard Phaeton – is one of those.

Best of the Rest – If you follow HagertyClassicCars on a regular basis, you know that we also enjoy classic boats. So hopefully it isn’t too much of a surprise that of all the automotive posts we saw on Instagram during the past week, a seaside photo was our favorite. Congratulations to @pepisgerbi, who created a showstopping boat image – without showing any water. Absolutely stunning.