I’ve seen plenty of photos of ’63 Corvettes, and I’ve seen plenty at car shows and occasionally on the road. But seeing the ’63 Sting Ray in the January 2010 issue of Motor Trend (“Archive” feature on last page) for some reason took me back to the day in spring 1975 (I was 11) when [...]
Posts under ‘Interesting stuff’
A Ferrari Painter’s Story
Author’s note: I met the artist Bob Mittenmaier last spring at a relative’s 90th birthday party. Years before that, the relative, my wife’s Uncle Joe, had told me about his friend “who does paintings of Ferraris.” Bob and I finally got to sit down for lunch in January this year. Just a couple of weeks [...]
Rotary Ruminations
In a recent post, I referenced my fifth-grade science project, a car of the then-near-future powered by a Wankel rotary engine. But I was mistaken. I think it was sixth grade. So I was 11, not 10. That was spring 1975, and I was merely synthesizing what I was reading in Motor Trend at the [...]
Achtung, Trabant! Part 2
Three days after writing my last post, The New York Times published three articles on the Trabant by Towle Tomkins. Now, anyone can experience how just how badly the worst-of-the-worst commie cars drove. And it seems this horrid little car has a small fan base in the U.S. A Red Menace That You Can Drive [...]
(Super) Chevy “Celebrity”
Can you tell from my blog entries that I like the new Camaro? In my post “Perfect Pony?” I discussed good proportions for a modern ponycar. Chevy prefers the term “sports car” to avoid that lineage to the original Mustang, but the Camaro is no sports car. At first glance, the published specs for the [...]
All American Racers?
I originally wrote the following as a sidebar to a “Dodge Wins Daytona 500″ story for Mopar Action magazine earlier this year. It was not published, however. The car in the photo, in case you can’t tell by the decal tail lights, is a “Camry.” All American Racers … Sort of. When Toyota clinched its [...]
Grease is the Word
In the July issue of Car & Driver, a reader takes the editor to task for not mentioning in a story on new diesels the cars’ ability to run non-petroleum fuels. Specifically, the reader talks up used fryer grease. So-called “grease cars” seem to get media attention wherever they go, and this company is one [...]
Fireball
People ask me about a photo I use on my bio page and in some marketing materials. It’s me in my first car, a Fireball pedal car that I received for Christmas in 1967. My father and uncle assembled it on Christmas Eve, just in time for Santa to park it under the tree. Made [...]
