A Normal Car

Posted on August 5, 2024 by admin

When I see a car decked out like this, I admire the effort that went into it. Spotted in a large parking lot in Normal, Illinois, a little over a week ago.

That effort is more than decorating the car’s surfaces. Cars move around. This isn’t going to be set and forget. What happens when you drive on the highway in that machine? Or a hard rain falls? Or wind gusts, even when it’s parked? Things fly off, of course. Lose, replace, lose, replace. The enthusiast who owns this car has to work at it that much more, and more often.

So – interesting to look at, but I wouldn’t want it in my driveway.

Not a Ford Falcon, But Still Evoked Childhood Memories

Posted on July 17, 2024 by admin

What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.

I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.

My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.

I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.

Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.

Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?

Pontiac-Oakland Museum and Resource Center

Posted on November 30, 2023 by admin

Not something you see very often: a wall of motor oil.

I’d never seen such a thing until I came across it just a few doors down from the Museum of the Gilding Arts, in the Pontiac-Oakland Museum and Resource Center, which also faces the elegant Livingston County courthouse in Pontiac, Illinois. In the case of the museum, Pontiac refers to the car brand of that name, and Oakland does as well, as the predecessor of Pontiacs. Both brands are defunct now, but not in the hearts of enthusiasts.

The many cans of motor oil happen to be a backdrop for one of the cars on display: a 1960 Pontiac Venture.

Nearby are other cars of roughly the same era.

A 1964 LeMans Convertible and a 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge, respectively. Not sure if that counts as a Little GTO.

The collection on display isn’t that large – not compared to Fairbanks or Reno, say – but it was well worth a look. Before its absorption into GM, and in fact before horseless carriages, Pontiac got its start as a carriage maker.

An 1890s product of the Pontiac Buggy Co. “One of a handful known to exist,” its sign said.

Soon enough, Pontiac Buggy founder Edward Murphy began building 2-cylinder runabouts called Oaklands, and later built more successful 4-cylindar models, as products of the Oakland Motor Car Co. GM bought Murphy out in 1909, and focused on Oaklands for some decades. The GM Pontiac model didn’t exist until 1926, and then the Depression killed off the higher-priced Oaklands.

A 1929 Oakland.

A Pontiac sedan of the same model year.

Also on display: marketing odds and ends that emphasize the Native roots of the name.

Some might object these days, but I can’t help suspect that Pontiac – Obwandiyag – able 18th-century leader of the Odawa – might have liked being associated, however tenuously, with such a solid object of commerce.

Wiki, citing a 2002 academic work, notes: “Their neighbors applied the ‘Trader’ name to the Odawa because in early traditional times, and also during the early European contact period, they were noted as intertribal traders and barterers.”

The National Automobile Museum

Posted on October 20, 2022 by admin

One upon a time, gaming businessman William Harrah owned a lot of cars, maybe more than any single individual ever. The dosh to put his collection together came from Harrah building a large hotel and casino empire in Reno and other places in the years after WWII. Sources put the number of vehicles at around 1,400, but maybe that’s an undercount.

Harrah died in 1978. Eventually, most of his cars were sold at auction, but a nucleus of the collection remained intact and formed the basis of the National Automobile Museum in Reno. Intrigued by the prospect of seeing them myself, especially with the impressive Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks in mind, I arrived not long before noon on October 3.

Auto museums are a fairly new interest of mine, spurred by my good experience in Alaska last year. And why not? I like good airplane collections and historic trains, too. If I’m ever in southern Germany again, I’d look at the Zeppelin Museum as well, because how cool is that?

The scope of the Reno museum is wider than the one in Fairbanks, considering that it has cars from the dawn of automotive travel through close to the present day, as opposed to a collection that extends only until the end of the 1930s. Quite a lot to see, beginning with the beginning.

That’s an 1892 Philion. I’d never heard of it either, and for good reason: this is the only one. There only ever was one, since it was never intended to be mass produced. The story of its owner is just as interesting as any of the mechanical aspects of the vehicle.

Achille Philion, a French acrobat and showman in the U.S. who called himself the Great Equilibrist and Originator, acquired a steam-powered quadricycle and had it modified, even going so far as to register a few patents associated with early autos. He used the car to draw attention to his performances, which involved — well, let a poster tell the story. Nothing really to do with automobiles.

According to the plaque at the museum, the car changed hands a number of times after Philion sold it, and it even made an appearance in The Magnificent Ambersons.

Other early autos at the museum include the 1899 Locomobile, one of the first production autos in the U.S., and another steamer. Cool name.

An 1899 Winton.

Auto design and innovation progressed quickly in the ’00s. Pretty soon carmaker Thomas Motor Co. created a car that could drive most of the way around the world: The 1907 Thomas Flyer.

As far as I’m concerned, this was the centerpiece of the museum. Sure, there are also dozens of cars from early motoring, sleek pre-WWII machines, mid-century racecars, and the Batmobile driven by Adam West, among many, many interesting vehicles.

Nothing tops the Thomas.

This isn’t an example of just any 1907 Thomas. This is the car that won the 1908 New York to Paris Automobile Race, traveling 22,000 miles by land and sea over 169 days, despite there being very little in the way of infrastructure to support such a drive.

“After this victory, Thomas auto sales increased for a period; however, by 1912, the company was in receivership,” the sign at the museum says, and the car was sold during the bankruptcy proceedings.

William Harrah found it in the early 1960s, neglected and forgotten, and authenticated its participation in the race in a most amazing way, namely by bringing George Schuster, who had driven the car to victory in 1908, to Reno. Schuster was 91 at the time (he lived to be 99), and “during the dismantling of the Flyer, [he] witnessed cracks in the frame and repairs he had made during the race, proving its authenticity. The Thomas Flyer was restored to the condition [it was] when it finished the race.”

Elsewhere in the museum is this.

It shows the route of the race.

Accounts of the race say the prize for winning wasn’t money, but honor and glory — and “a trophy.” The plaque at the base says this globe was indeed presented to the Thomas Motor Co. by the organizers, so I guess this is it.

One more legacy of the race: it inspired The Great Race. Among silly early ’60s epic-long movies, it’s one of the more silly (and could have been trimmed by an hour with no loss).

Moving on to other fine machines of the pre-WWI period. A 1908 Brush (gas), a 1909 White (steam), and a 1912 Selden (gas), respectively.

Those were just part of the contents of one room. Other rooms had more recent vehicles. Such as these arrays.

Here’s a 1956 Mercedes-Benz.

“[It] has a 6-cylinder OHC fuel-injected engine developing 240 hp with an advertised top speed of 146 mph… The car was entered in the 1959 Bonneville Salt Flats Class D speed trials and set a new record at 143.769 mph,” the museum says. Those doors are referred to as “gullwing.”

A ’53 Hudson.

The Hudson line lasted only until 1957. By that time, the company was known as American Motors Corp., which had a future ahead of it that included the AMC Pacer. I didn’t have one, but a friend of mine in high school did, and I remember it fondly. Maybe more than he does.

A ’47 Volkswagen.

Uncomfortably close to its origins as the people’s car of National Socialism, but never mind. Another high school friend of mine had a ’73 Super Beetle, and occasionally he took that car to places where cars really weren’t supposed to go. What a gas.

The museum’s collection also includes a fair number of less-than-standard cars. Take the three-wheeled, piscine 1937 Airomobile, for example.

The only one ever built. “It failed to attract financial backing,” the museum explains drily.

Maybe the ultimate vehicular oddity is the 1934 Dymaxion.

Looks something like a Volkswagen Microbus except, of course, for having three wheels and an even rounder contour. Bucky was trying to smash paradigms, but no go: only three prototypes were built — and this is the only one still in existence. Still, revisionist thinkers closer to our time admire the Dymaxion. Well, maybe. Fuller’s house design didn’t catch on either, but it is interesting to look at.

The museum also has an impressive cache of cars used in movies and TV shows, such as in The Green Hornet, a modified 1966 Imperial, one of two created for the show by car remodeler Dean Jeffries.

A close replica of the DeLorean put to such good use in Back to the Future. More gullwings.

And of course — what could be better? — a Batmobile (a modified 1966 Lincoln).

An original George Barris Batmobile, the museum says, and you can see Barris’ autograph inside, along with those of Adam West and Burt Ward.

All together, the museum sports a fun lot of cars to see, even if you’re not too keen on all the technical specs. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that its collection includes plenty of other other car-related items. My own favorite were a line of vintage gas pumps. Rare to see anything like them in situ, but not impossible. Modern gas pumps pale (stylistically) by comparison.

After all, without gas, where are all those cars going to go? Unless they’re steamers. Imagine the advanced steamer tech we’d have now — we wouldn’t think a thing of it — if they’d caught on instead of internal combustion, or even developed in parallel.

Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum

Posted on August 16, 2021 by admin

Usually it isn’t a good idea to quote promotional material too much, since it has a tendency to exaggerate. But for Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in Fairbanks, I’m going to borrow an entire paragraph from its site, so fitting is it.

This “living museum” is home to over 95 pre-World War II automobiles, with 65 to 75 stunningly lit and staged rare automobiles at all times. This expansive collection encompasses horseless carriages, steamers, electric cars, speedsters, cyclecars, midget racers and ’30s classics.

Not just stunningly lit and staged, but each vehicle is described by a concise and expertly written sign. Also, the museum displays period clothing on mannequins, artfully interspersed with the autos, so that the two kinds of artifacts complement each other to evoke their precise period in the history. Yet another array of period detail is found in the large photographs from early 20th-century Alaska on the walls.

As if that isn’t enough, popular music of the period — from roughly the first four decades of the 20th century — plays not quite in the background. Unobtrusively at first, but then you begin to hear it as a worthwhile background. Once I started listening to the songs, I found the variety remarkable: the popular jazz tunes you’d expect, but also other kinds of hits from the period, such as a few opera or opera-inspired songs.

The museum entrance gives no hint of what’s ahead. But the place doesn’t need a fancy, name-architect structure; it’s got content.

Once inside, the museum’s sizable scope becomes clear.

Most of the vehicles have been restored to factory appearance, or at least to highly presentable, and according to the museum, all but a handful are functional. There were many vehicles I’d never heard of.

A 1901 De Dion-Bourton.

A 1903 Toledo. “This is the only gasoline-powered Toledo known to survive.”

A 1917 Owen Magnetic.

Plus others, such as an Argonne, Auburn, Grant, Heine-Velox, Hupmobile and Oakland. The display also included a 1911 EMF. Nickname: “Every Morning Frustration.”

Plus plenty of models I knew, but maybe not much about their early models beyond the names: Brush, Cadillac, Lincoln, Packard and Rambler.

Plus at least one celebrity car. Mostly the museum doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, but it does have Wallace Reid’s 1919 McFarlan. It was a speedy car to suit Reid, whose motto seems to have, “die young, stay pretty.” He did.

I could make a entire long posting from the hood ornaments, nameplates, horns and lamps I saw.

Let’s not forget the period clothing. Tended to be on the posh side, but what else survives?

The fur set in the second picture is described as men’s wear. This is early 20th-century Alaska, after all.

This displayed not so much the bonnet or the dress.
But rather the eyeglasses. Nearby was a glass display case of glasses from the period.

Autonomous Pods, The Black Mirror Version

Posted on November 15, 2017 by admin

Something I read today: “[He] spoke at length about the future he imagines for the automobile industry: autonomous pods that consumers hail on demand rather than owning, networked together in ways that render such familiar 21st-century headaches as traffic jams and car accidents largely (perhaps entirely) a thing of the past.”

Oh, really? Call me a skeptic. Or maybe it’s just that I can imagine some of the new inconveniences, or worse, of such “autonomous pods.”

Hail a pod? Maybe that would work well in a dense city. Here in the suburbs? I don’t have to wait for my car at all. It’s here. It’s now. How can pods possibly match that?

Every trip you take will be monitored. Some system somewhere will know everywhere you go. That kind of thing is bad enough already, this will make it worse.

There will be advertisements in the pods, based on where it thinks you might go. Or just advertising. Maybe it will be loud. It isn’t your car, so you can’t turn it off. Or maybe you can, for a price.

Will pods refuse you service if you want to pay in cash (assuming there is such a thing)?

What happens if you’re mistakenly put on a terrorist watch list, and the pods refuse to pick you up?

Impulse destinations will be, sadly, a thing of the past.

Demand pricing for the pods, just like Uber. That’ll be terrific.

Of course the systems will be privately owned. This is the USA. What happens when cities start granting local monopolies for pods and price increases far outstrip the rate of inflation every year?

Taking items with you will be no extra charge. For a while. Then items will become revenue streams for the autonomous pod companies.

No eating or drinking allowed in the pods. Except for food and drink purchased from the glove compartment minibar.

Your pod will pick you up in 10 minutes. Except, there’s a system failure on a road nearby, so it doesn’t come for two hours. Your alternative? Not that car in your garage.

If you’re late for work, I imagine “the pod was late” will be no excuse.

What happens when two autonomous pods run into each other? Impossible, say the engineers. Ha, ha, say I. Of course it’s going to happen.

One reason for traffic jams is that too many people want to go the same place at the same time. So will a pod ever say, sorry, you can’t go there because there’s too much traffic already?

First Thursday in February Misc.

Posted on February 2, 2017 by admin

The only good thing about the beginning of February is that January is over.

A picture from this moment in history.

Ann was with me, and I had take this shot with her phone. The car was in a northwest suburban parking lot.

Speaking of cars in parking lots, as I was walking the dog the other day, I passed through the parking lot in front of Lilly and Ann’s former elementary school, and saw a Tesla parked there. As if were any other car. Which I guess it is. Still, I can’t remember seeing one around here before. New, they’ll set you back at least $68,000. So you don’t see too many.

I had no idea the French used the suffix -gate as we do. Headline from today’s La Parisien about the hot water that François Fillon, candidate for the presidency, is in: Penelope Gate: toutes les fois où l’épouse de Fillon disait ne pas travailler pour lui. Are there Frenchmen who think the real scandal is that obvious anglicisme being used to describe it? A silly objection. English has borrowed plenty of French; time to give something back.

One more item out at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery, near the church: a memorial to Gen. Dragoljug Mihailovich, the Chetnik commander whom Tito ultimately had shot after the war.

Whatever else you can say about him — and apparently that’s quite a lot, for good and ill — President Truman did award him a Legion of Merit (Chief Commander) posthumously in 1948, the text of which is on the memorial in English and Serbian. It cites his efforts in rescuing U.S. airmen downed over Yugoslavia.

Things You See in Mount Carroll

Posted on June 30, 2014 by admin

Somewhere or other at some time, I read that Mount Carroll, Illinois, had enough things to see to recommend a short visit (how’s that for source amnesia?). Wherever I got it, I can pass along that recommendation. It’s a small place, with only about 1,800 people, but it has a sizable concentration of historic structures. We took a look at a few of them on the afternoon of June 20.

That includes a fine courthouse, the Greek Revival part of which dates back to before the Civil War. Elsewhere on the courthouse grounds are a few monuments – but not quite as many as some courthouses I’ve seen – including a tall one dedicated to Union veterans. Turns out that Lorado Taft sculpted the cavalryman at the top of the monument, which is formally called the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument.

Writing in the short-lived blog Larado Taft: The Prairie State Sculptor, Carl Volkmann says, “Lorado Taft was a member of a team of artists who was commissioned to create the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument. George H. Mitchell designed the monument, and Josiah Schamel constructed the foundation. John C. Hall designed the annex that was added later when county officials determined that there were many names missing from the original honor roll list.

“The monument consists of a fifty-foot vertical shaft with a Lorado Taft-sculpted soldier holding a flag at the top. Lewis H. Sprecher of Lanark posed for the statue and made several trips to Taft’s Chicago studio to model for it. Two additional statues are attached to the base of the monument, one an infantryman and the other a cavalryman.”

Not far from the town square is a genuine, honest-to-God Carnegie Library that is, in fact, still a library. We went in for a look around. It seemed like a nice facility for a town the size of Mount Carroll. We were the only ones in the library except the librarian – it was about 30 minutes ahead of closing time on a Friday afternoon – and I spoke briefly to her, telling her that I wanted to show my daughters what a Carnegie Library was. I also wanted to come in because they aren’t exactly common sites.

Later, I checked, and my feeling wasn’t quite right. At least according to this Wiki list, some 60-odd Carnegies are still functioning libraries in Illinois alone, out of more than 100 originally built. Seems like most of them are in small towns away from metro Chicago, so unless you frequent that kind of small town, you won’t see them much.

Just before we left town, we came across something that’s presumably not always near the courthouse in Mount Carroll: this unusual car.

Unusual for American roads, that is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Morris Minor in this country. It’s so unusual that besides it being a Morris, I didn’t know anything else about it.

Naturally, I had to look it up. Through the marvel of Google images, I was able to pin it down to a Morris Minor 1000 Traveller. In its pages on Morris Minor history, Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre Ltd. in Brislington, Bristol, says “there is only one other car on British roads today which is as familiar as the Morris Minor, and that’s the Mini. That both were designed by the same man is no coincidence, and indeed Sir Alec Issigonis is one of the very few car designers whose name is recognised by the man or woman in the street and not just by enthusiasts or fellow engineers. [This might be true in the UK, but I have no way to judge that.]

“The products of Sir Alec’s genius have had a profound and highly beneficial influence on the British motor industry, so it is hardly surprising that it is his first car, the Morris Minor of 1948, which has become the subject of this proposal for a long-life car.”

More about Sir Alec here. I’m not sure I’d want to own a Morris Minor myself, but it’s a distinctive design. Good to see one loose on the roads of North America. I’m glad there are enthusiasts in this country. Any fool with money can buy a snazzy new sports car or a Lexis or the like, but it takes some imagination to invest in a Morris Minor.

Dodging a Few Maintenance Bullets

Posted on January 10, 2013 by admin

Earlier this week my ancient Sienna started shaking like an old wino, and I imagined that a wheel was coming off. A visit to my trustworthy mechanic — glad to have found him — revealed it sounded and felt worse than it was. Repairs came in at only a couple of hundred bucks. Annoying, but passable.

If it had been a more expensive job, that would have been the end of the line for the car. It’s reached that point. Going to have get another car soon. Some people seem to enjoy acquiring cars, but not me. I once worked with a fellow who bought a car every other year or so, trading the old one in each time. I never understood that psychology. When you have a car the object of the game is to keep it as long as possible.

Also this week, a large amount of vile water collected in our dishwasher, which we seldom use, and refused to drain. Meaning that water from the kitchen sink drain had diverted into the dishwasher because of some blockage somewhere. Would Power Plumber fix this?

First, though, I had to get the nasty gray water out of the dishwasher. I considered various ways to do that before I remembered, having stupidly forgotten, that I have a small Craftsman wet/dry vac out in the garage. The water responded to its suction, and then I applied Power Plumber to the underlying problem. It worked. How often do I get to dodge two potentially expensive problems on the same day? Not often.

That’s what we need nanobots for. To make things that fix themselves. Of course, self-repairing machines would upend a lot of the service economy, but then again the economy’s been continuously upended since the Industrial Revolution. Not that I expect to live to see such things, but it’s a nice techno-pipe dream.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: cars