So I'm doing some research on some old car stuff and I come across The Old Car Manual Project and I am instantly transported back to my childhood of wandering around various swap meets across the Midwest with my dad while he looks for parts for his old cars (this is the car I spent half my childhood watching him restore) and thumbing through old car advertising and brochures. I had forgot how wonderful the old auto ephemera art truly was. I spent way too long looking through the collection, and I was particularly transfixed by this brochure for the 1968 Firebird.  Just look at the description of the interior: "The standard---but hardly ordinary---Firebird interior sports slimline buckets in expanded Morrokide, deep-pile carpeting, simulated burl wood grain dash. . ." God, when did they stop making cars with interiors that could be used for a Playboy photo shoot? I had to look up what Morrokide was and apparently it was a special vinyl used only in 1960s Pontiacs. Something tells me making out with girls in my red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix with the gray fender would have been better on Morrokide seats. But anyways, beautiful:

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She was waiting for her husband to close up his car wash/detail shop as the sun set. I stopped to admire the candy apple red 1974 Cadillac convertible, and asked if I could take a picture. "What a beauty!" I said like a character from an Archie comic.

"Thanks," she shouted. "But what about the car? Let me open the door so you can get a picture of my matching outfit."

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

At some point in my childhood, my dad extended our garage a full-car length and turned the old part of the garage into an extension of our basement. In short, that meant he could keep one of his cars in our house, a 1931 Buick convertible. He decorated his "car room" with his collection of smaller car stuff like brass headlights and horns that went "ah-ooh-gaa!" But what I remember best was his collection of old hood ornaments/radiator caps. I can remember spending hours as a kid looking at all the chrome icons from the teens to the forties, many of them were from automobile companies that hadn't existed for decades (and, in some cases, might have been manufactured in some of the long-abandoned automobile factories I would explore as an adult). They were so cool---winged ladies and art deco birds and mythical gods.

I have no idea what kind of car this belonged to (maybe a Mercury?), but I think it's pretty beautiful. Over the holidays I spent some time down in my dad's shop looking at his hood ornament colelction (over the years, he moved the collection from the "car room" there, and, sadly, over the years he's sold off many of his hood ornaments/radiator caps). Whenever I spend time down in my dad's shop, I am reminded of a childhood spent being taught the beauty of the early-American automobile. I guess that's why I had such a dumbfounded and then angry reaction to America's recent indifference to the plight of the American auto industry and the constant echo-chamber assertions that American cars lack quality. I was raised to believe that American car companies perfected the automobile and built the American middle class, and though there may have been some years in the 1980s/90s when car quality declined (something that even JD Power and other reviewing agencies acknowledge has been reversed), there is no way that when times got tough, I would turn my back on them.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

Watch this animated cartoon.

Also, from Tom Walsh's column in today's Detroit Free Press:

"When Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Alabama on Aug. 29, 2005, the automobile companies of Detroit did not harrumph that the gulf coast should have been better prepared. They didn't sit back and wait for New Orleans to submit a detailed plan for future repair of the ruptured levees. General Motors Corp., on Aug. 30, donated $400,000 to the American Red Cross 2005 Hurricane Relief Fund, pledged to match up to $250,000 more in employee contributions, and sent more than 150 vehicles to the stricken area for use in relief work. Ford Motor Co. and the UAW quickly made a joint donation of $100,000 to the Red Cross. The Chrysler Group gave $150,000 to the Red Cross and $200,000 to local New Orleans charities. DaimlerChrysler Services chipped in $200,000 for the Red Cross and pledged to match employee donations up to $50,000. The three Detroit auto companies together gave more than $18 million in cash and vehicles to the Katrina relief effort in the ensuing months. No strings attached."

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

At some point during all this auto-industry bailout talk, I remembered my favorite all-time silent comedy short---it doesn't star Chaplin, Keaton, Arbuckle or even Roach, but the venerable but nearly-forgotten Snub Pollard as a wacky inventor in 1923 ready to save everyone driving Detroit's newfangled machines from the greedy oil men. His own "car" is extremely fuel efficient: it doesn't use any fuel. Nor does it create any emissions. I sincerely hope that some of the CEOs of the Big Three watch this video over the next few weeks to get some ideas.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.