Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305150007
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He should know.
Kostrzewa owns Past Gas, a Cocoa, Fla., business that deals in old gas pumps. Kostrzewa buys, sells, collects and restores pumps made from the early 1900s to the 1960s.
In recent years antique pumps have become sought after by movie studios, car collectors and by interior decorators who use them in restaurants, nightclubs, department stores and for other businesses, such as theme parks.
Today's modern computerized pumps, he thinks, never will be collectible.
"I think collectible pumps are gone." Of today's gas pumps, he said: "I can never, ever comprehend restoring anything like that in years to come. I just can't see that stuff being in someone's living room."
What does find its way into living rooms, garages and businesses are the brightly colored decorative gas pumps built from the early teens to the late 1960s.
One of the most popular - and hard to find - gas pumps is the old Sunoco pump from the late 1950s and early '60s muscle car era. That pump had a chrome dial on the side that motorists could twist to select the grade of gasoline.
Sunoco 360 was one of the highest octane gasolines available, and it went into such cars as the Pontiac GTO and the Jaguar XKE.
"People that are, you know, between 35 and 45, they can relate to the '50s style pump because they can remember pumping gas from them. A lot of people who can relate to old pumps from the teens and '20s are dead," said Kostrzewa, 44.
As with cars, or just about anything else mechanical, gas pumps have also evolved into complex pieces of machinery. A modern gas pump is a far cry from the first ones.
Kostrzewa said filling up 80 years ago was a chore. The first pumps were called "curb pumps." They were very tall and didn't have much in the way of convenience.
Motorists used a lever and manually pumped gasoline up into a cylinder. Then gravity would force it to flow throw a hose and into the tank.
He said motorists had to estimate how much fuel to pump because cars didn't have fuel gauges and the earliest pumps didn't register the amount of gasoline.
Later versions of curb pumps came with glass cylinders that allowed motorists to estimate how much fuel to pump. These pumps are called "visibles" by collectors.
In the 1920s, "clock-faced" pumps were introduced. An arrow pointed to the number of gallons a motorist pumped.
The first electric pumps came out in the 1930s. They were called computer pumps because they featured roller numbers that showed dollars and cents and the number of gallons.
by CNB