Carmakers failing to learn history are doomed

Hey Messrs. Wagoner and Nardelli: Looking for a plan that will make the American people want to float you a loan? Hmm… now let’s see, where did we put that plan…? Oh that’s right it’s here! And here! After Lee Iaccoca cajoled congress into forking over a loan to bail out Chrysler, the company paid off the $1.2 billion three years early, not by building high-profit-margin Escalades with Tony Soprano-sized leather seats and illuminated, air-conditioned drink holders, but by building...

24/11/2008

Crew-cab curiosity

Last week, our Editorial inbox contained an e-mail from Georgia resident Josh Thornton, who presented us with something of a Holmesian mystery that we’re inviting you to help resolve. Josh is seeking historical information on the Ford F-100 pickup depicted here, which he describes as a 1965 model, or ideally, somebody interested in restoring it. As he tells the tale, the F-100 was originally built by Ford, with a four-door cab, for his great-grandfather, who then owned the local Ford...

12/11/2008

car forum poetry - stoplight ode

Spotted on the MustangWorks.com forum: Red, thou art my companion. Hasten now your quickened metamorphosis to Green that I may conquer all who dare abide there beside me. May they be left thither behind burnt black.

11/11/2008

check it out, we’re launching video classifieds

If you didn’t happen to see the mention in today’s Hemmings e-Weekly Newsletter (you do have the free newsletter subscription, don’t you?), we’re now starting to offer the option of uploading video to your classifieds in an effort to help sell your car or, alternately, to help you get a better idea of the condition of the car you’re thinking of buying. Oh, and no, McGean’s not selling his Camaro; that’s just a sample vid. So give it a whirl, and keep...

16/10/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 16

This appears to be orderly, well-behaved parking outside a Roman post office. Clearly, there is something wrong here. Something very, very wrong here. Was May 22, 1960, when Cushman took “Post office,” some sort of holiday? Is this a War of the Worlds scenario? Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

29/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 15

From the opposite side of the Maginot Line, Cushman visited Paris in the spring of 1960. On May 10, he took “Rue Chanoinesse,” a spectacularly evocative shot of the 4th arrondissement in Ile de la Cité, the historical heart of Paris. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

26/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 14

Charles Cushman made a number of trips to Europe and the Middle East in the early and mid-Sixties. As usual, he was concerned with architecture and the human landscape, and in Europe, it looks as though that meant he was interested in the integration of the automobile into the urban environment. He visited Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and the United Kingdom; coming from California it must have been mindboggling. “Watzmann in distance” comes...

25/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 13

It sure looks as though Cushman actually took this one from the drivers’ seat of a car. He took “Across Union Square from Geary & Stockton’s” in San Francisco on June 16th, 1954. According to our model year economic theory, the city’s doing all right. San Francisco is the most enduring theme in all Charles Cushman’s work, clearly his true love. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program,...

24/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 12, Cushmanmobile Mk. II

The Cushmanmobile Mk. II makes its first appearance in the second week of June, 1940, in a series taken in L.A. Cushman seems mighty pleased with it, and features it by itself in a number of similar slides, such as “New Zephyr in Elysian Park, L.A.,” taken on June 14. He was clearly a dedicated FoMoCo man, and it was a long time before he got tired of taking pictures of it. We sure hope 54 P 934 didn’t get scrapped. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection,...

23/09/2008

cranky newspaper columnist lumps all old cars and junkers in the same category

Andy Rooney, watch out. Paul Muschick of the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call seems to be auditioning for your spot. Then again, not even Andy flies off the handle at such little provocation. It seems Paul spied a story about a motorcycle accident, discovered that Pennsylvania doesn’t have the same safety regulations for older cars that it does for newer cars, and decided that, well, that’s just not fair. No one’s checking the brakes, tires, lights, bodies and other...

22/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 11

It’s the same today–the farther you get from the centers of industry and employment, the older the cars get. Tucson, Arizona, was so far off the beaten path in 1940, it might as well have been 10 years earlier. Cushman took “Indian Grandma + little papoose” on a Saturday afternoon in February, in what was probably downtown Tucson. There probably aren’t many people around today who remember those days, but if you can help identify the spot–or recognize your...

22/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 10

In October of ‘38, Charles Cushman and the ‘38 Ford Cushmanmobile (Mk. I) were in Montana; by November, they’d made their way to Indiana. No wonder he only kept it two-and-a-half years. Here it is in the Wabash Bottoms, “where Tall Corn Really Grows:” Grand Chain farm, Posey County. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

19/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 9

The original Cushmanmobile, the ‘38 Ford, makes another appearance in this photo from October 1, 1938. Cushman obviously wasn’t afraid of steep grades, unpaved roads or early-season Donneresque snow, because this one is titled “Red Lodge Hwy in Autumn.” It was taken near Cooke City, Montana, on the way to the Bear Tooth mountains. Plus, Bonus Vintage Road Grader Action! Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital...

18/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 8

In March of 1944, Charles Cushman began work in the War Department’s Chicago Ordnance District, where he was responsible for conducting contract termination work. As Indiana University Archives bio says, “At this point, with the exception of what may be gleaned from his images, virtually nothing is known about Charles’ career and life.” Glean what you can from one of the first photos of his Chicago period, “2222 So. Dearborn–Old Capone GHQ,” taken on...

17/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 7

While the 1942-1944 gap in the Cushman Collection suggests he was in the service, Charles Cushman was actually a WWI-era Navy veteran, (although he never saw combat). Instead, he was the senior liquidator-at-large for the federal Office of the Alien Property Custodian, which apparently kept him sequestered at Area-51, providing plans for Vogon Destruct-O-Rays to McDonnell-Douglas, or so we presume. Shortly before his war work commenced, he made a trip to New York. The change from the white...

16/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 6

It looks as though Cushman made a swing through the upper northwest in ‘55, hitting places north of his home in San Francisco. Klamath Falls, Oregon, lives up to its vertiginous name in his shot “Looking South down 6th St in very late afternoon-toward city center,” from June 15, 1955. Heavy cars…manual drum brakes…fun. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

15/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 5

Cushman’s photos for ‘55 were heavy on long views of San Francisco and the bay area, but he did catch “A couple of natives and a jeep” at Zabriskie Point on March 22, 1955. Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

12/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 4

If that’s Jean Cushman, then we’re guessing that ‘68 is a new Cushmanmobile. But what’s with the ‘58, and all the other old iron? Car show? His notes say this is September 27, 1968, at “Corte Madera O & S.” Any longtime Marin County residents have an idea? Photos copyright Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program, used by permission.

11/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 3

After about 1953, Cushman, now in San Francisco, gets increasingly concerned with broad cityscapes and still-lives, and car-laden street scenes thin out, as does his overall body of work. Ghermann, or Gherman, Titov, was a Soviet cosmonaut, the second man in space. Cushman was apparently in the back of a car with him in San Francisco on May 8, 1962, a little to close for even his 25mm lens to focus. Given Titov’s status, and the angle of the backlight, we’d guess Lincoln...

10/09/2008

Custom Champion Comets at Hershey

We can’t deny that the parts scene at Hershey isn’t what it used to be. How could it be, in the age of eBay? Not that its not worth going, and there’s no shortage of vendors, its just that some of the old iron has been replaced with what we’d call novelties. Thankfully, worthwhile replacements for the swap meet action are developing. Last year saw both an AACA (Antique Automobile Club of America) show and car corral of world-class proportions, along with the debut of an...

09/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 2, the Cushmanmobile

Nowhere does it explicitly say so, but the same red ‘38 Ford turns up in a whole bunch of Cushman photos taken in the western US from 1938 through April of 1940, so we’re thinking it was his. In early June of 1940, it’s replaced with a gold Lincoln–and his notebooks state proudly, “the new Lincoln-Zephyr.” After the war, he’s located in Chicago for a few years, and if there’s a single car in repeated photos, we haven’t spotted it yet. But if...

09/09/2008

Cars in Kodachrome, 1

A while back, Dinosaurs and Robots (the Fifties nostalgia-historico kitsch blog from Mister Jalopy and Mad Professor) showed a couple of photos from the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection at Indiana U. They (the Indiana University Archives) are in mid-digitization of 14,400 color Kodachrome slides shot from September 3, 1938, to April 20, 1969, and they’ve barely touched another five cubic feet of B&W negatives (probably 15,000 more photos) from 1876 through 1941. What we saw was...

08/09/2008

Caddywagon, beater Delahaye and British British Cooper MG - not nearly done with the archive box

From the same September 1978 issue of Hemmings Motor News as the sixwheelrabbitamino, we unearthed a few more classified photos of interest, starting with the above 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood station wagon. Offered for $6,450 out of Natick, Massachusetts, the classified only said that it was “custom built.” A-duh. Rob Einaudi had a post about Traditional Coach Works and their custom Caddy wagons, but this one doesn’t seem to match the profile. Guesses as to the...

01/07/2008

can’t compromise when it comes to top quality: Packard’s proving grounds film

The same uploader who digitized and shared with the world the Lee Breedlove AMX Texas Takeover video has quite graciously given us enough YouTube videos to keep us slacking off at work for at least a month straight, and it seems he not only hails from Sweden, but appreciates the American independents, as evidenced by the nearly 15-minute Packard-produced 1954 film, The Watchdogs, which showcases the Packard proving grounds in Utica, Michigan, and illustrates the Packard engineers’...

30/05/2008

Citroën + Pirelli + the Seventies = Mime Love

If you’re going around thinking that the Europeans weren’t doing drugs in the Seventies, and that companies as classy as Pirelli and Citroën never did anything they later regretted, you’ve obviously forgotten Kar-a-Sutra. Designed by Mario Bellini, Kar-a-Sutra was “a mobile human space,” and it debuted at MoMA in 1973 at a show called Italy. The New Domestic Landscape. In Kar-a-Sutra, you could “stretch out, sleep, smile, chat face-to-face, stand up, enjoy...

27/05/2008

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