tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41032965668664783482024-03-13T00:34:14.238-04:00Twisted from the SprueDonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-62847110274882915252020-04-19T20:46:00.000-04:002020-04-19T20:46:16.402-04:00Time FliesThis post marks an aniversary of sorts. The first time I wrote one of these "Twisted From the Sprue" stories was in the summer of 2000. My IPMS chapter was trying to launch a monthly newsletter and I had a "column" under the" Twisted from the Sprue" name. One of those first essays was about packing and relocating my modeling workbench as my family moved to a bigger house, a memory that came flooding back as my wife and I took the downsizing plunge this and moved once again.<br />
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Statistics say that American adults will move about 9 times in their life. That just sounds ridiculous - until you think about all those moves when you first set out on your own and hopped from one shabby apartment and bad landlord to another. Most suburban Americans follow a path that goes something like:<br />
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<li>Crummy single-person apartments, stay just long enough to find a better place.</li>
<li>Get married and buy a small starter house that is all you can afford, own it about 10 years until...</li>
<li>You have kids and buy a big family house in a good school district. Live their 20+ years until the kids have all moved out, and then...</li>
<li>You downsize to a smaller low maintenance house to retire in.</li>
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Here in Pittsburgh I suspect we tend to move less than the averages. The city is divided up into a lot of small neighborhoods, and people become strongly attached to where they grew up or bought their first home: I know quite a few people who will likely live all of their adult life in just <i>one</i> house. <br />
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I was ready to live in my 2 story 4 bedroom until they carried me out (I was patiently waiting for my last at-home kid to "leave the nest" so I could move my modeling stuff from the basement into her room). But there is an old Yiddish proverb: "We plan, God laughs". Bad knees run in my wife's family; a few years ago she let me know she would not be climbing stairs every day during our retirement years. We started preparing for our last move to a ranch-style house, where "preparing" was equal parts fixing things and painting rooms to make our old house more sell-able while getting rid of stuff that we wouldn't have room for in a smaller house.<br />
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That downsizing thing is harder than it sounds, especially for your typical pack-rat modeler like me. I can do the math: total-kits divided by builds-per-year isn't just longer than I'll ever live, its approaching infinity. But I don't care - my model stash is modest and it makes me happy to look at the kits and think about which one I'll do next - and its not going anywhere.<br />
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The nice thing about "ranch" style houses is that they have giant basements. The previous owner of the house we bought had finished half the basement, including an office with an entire wall of built-in bookshelves - shelves that would swallow both my model stash and reference books with room left over for a few select new kits. And the unfinished half of the basement has plenty of room to store holiday decorations and left-over buckets of paint and such; for once my modeling space is not competing for square footage with anything else and I'm hopeful it will help put a few more finished models on the display shelf. I even snagged a display shelf - an aging glass curio cabinet that used to be in our dining room that wouldn't fit in our new space.<br />
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Still, it was kind of sad to pack up my stuff and see how many projects had stalled and ended up "resting in pieces", tucked back into boxes and placed on the "shelf of doom".<br />
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A lot of those projects stalled when it came time to paint, which meant dragging out an airbrush - so I'm trying to figure out how to install a proper spray booth vent in the unfinished half of my basement. Or maybe in the garage, which would mean carrying parts from the basement through the house for painting sessions - but still worth it for a more permanent setup.<br />
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Writing this made me think of the <a href="https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/12/31">last Calvin & Hobbes comic strip</a> - click through and take a look at what I mean when I say this about my downsizing adventure: "Its a day full of possiblities".<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-33861293372850935952019-01-24T23:28:00.000-05:002019-07-15T23:54:43.253-04:00 50 Years Beyond the Infinite - Kubrick's Space OdysseyBack in September I saw the 4K (digital) re-release of <i style="font-weight: bold;">2001: A Space Odyssey </i>on the <a href="http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/">Carnegie Science Center's </a>big screen (yeah, if you' look at the dates that was about 4 months ago - now you know how long it can take me to write these). The digital version was released at roughly the same time as a new 70mm film print produced under the supervision of Christopher Nolan, and there is a lot of discussion as to whether the digital "print" was made from the new Nolan print or the original negative and how accurate the colors in the digital version are - it <i><b>seems</b></i> that the two are unrelated and the 4K version has received good reviews for image quality and for its accuracy in reproducing the original theater images. It certainly looked <i><b>really</b></i> good to my untrained eye. The 4K print is now available on Blu-ray disk for a very reasonable (about $20) street price.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Well worn 1968 paperback copy of 2001 - bought at a used book sale for $1.</td></tr>
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<b><br />Warning</b>: this article contains spoilers about the movie and book <i><b>2001: A Space Odyssey. </b></i>If you've managed to never see the movie or read the book or hear them discussed in the last 50 years, you're probably not going to, but don't complain to me if I ruin the surprise...<br />
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When <b><i>2001</i></b> first hit the theaters in the spring of 1968 I was all of 7 years old and relied on Mom and Dad to take me to the movies. The year before Dad had taken me to see <i><b>Fantastic Voyage</b></i> - where a submarine and crew are miniaturized and injected into some VIP's body to remove a blood clot from his brain - and I remember being a little scared (the anti-bodies attacking Raquel Welch had me freaking out) and pretty confused about whether that story was "real" or not. The word of mouth that <i><b>2001</b></i> was a "drug movie" made my going a lost cause. Of course the studio didn't care if people showed up stoned to see the movie as long as they paid for a ticket - they added the tag line "The Ultimate Trip" to the movie posters to encourage them!<br />
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<i>A bit of history: in the 1960s there were a lot fewer theater screens - many theaters had just <b>one</b> screen, and there were far fewer actual film prints made than screens. New movies would run in the big city "first run" theaters for several weeks, and really popular movies could play in the same theater for <b>months;</b> eventually the films would shift to smaller 2nd and 3rd run theaters. On every trip through the projector the film picked up dust and scratches, so by the time a blockbuster movie made it to the small town theaters it looked like that clip of the Zapruder film the History Channel pulls out every November. </i><i>Its hard to imagine, but in small town America you could hear about some big new movie - and see the commercials on TV - and then either wait 6 months or drive 100 miles to see it.</i></blockquote>
A few years later I had chewed through the sci-fi shelf in the kid's section of my home town library and moved on to prowling the adult fiction shelves. I found a copy of Clarke's <b><i>2001</i></b> novel, complete with several pages of glossy black and white photos taken from the movie. I checked it out along with some <a href="http://www.tomswift.info/homepage/"><b><i>Tom Swift Jrs</i></b> </a>I had already read as camouflage just in case my parent's censorship might extend to print, and I was careful to pull the book out only when they weren't around. The book was a bit of a challenge for a 12 year old, but its not a long book and Clarke's writing style was straightforward; I easily finished it in the 2 weeks before I had to return it.<br />
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I can remember being confused by the first section of the book following the "man-ape" <i style="font-weight: bold;">Moonwatcher </i>and wondering how the story was ever going to make it to the spaceship stuff in just a few hundred pages, and by the end I remember being somewhat let down: by then I had read a <i>lot</i> of science fiction and <b><i>2001</i></b> just didn't seem all that earth shaking in comparison to the library's <b><i>"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Science_Fiction">John Winston</a>" </i></b>and <a href="http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/novels/heinleinjuveniles.html"><b><i>Robert Heinlein</i></b> juveniles</a> I had cut my literary teeth on.<br />
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I finally saw the film around 1980 at the<i style="font-weight: bold;"> Pittsburgh Playhouse - </i>a small theater owned by Point Park College where their drama department put on plays. The <i><b>Playhouse</b></i> helped keep the doors open by showing cult classics and artsy foreign films with subtitles to the college crowd. Their print was well worn and the projection equipment was tired, but seeing <b><i>2001</i></b> has always been an <i><b>experience</b></i> - and seeing it with 300 other slightly drunk engineering students was certainly that! Since then I've seen <i><b>2001</b></i> on late night cable channels and an early blu-ray version on my 50 inch plasma TV, but I had never seen a high quality print on a really <i>big</i> screen with a crowd of people.<br />
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I guess its true that "you can't go home again" - I enjoyed seeing the new digital "film" for the imagery - it really is spectacular - but it wasn't the <b><i>experience</i></b> that it was the first time (it probably didn't help that I wasn't a starry eyed 20 year old this time around). The special effects that were ground breaking in 1968 and still pretty amazing in 1980 just aren't as mind blowing after 3 decades of CGI, and that lack of wow-factor made the film's pacing seem even slower.<br />
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A few days after seeing the movie I pulled out my dog-eared <b><i>2001</i></b> paperback for my first re-read in a long time. Even having seen the film and read the book multiple times, the two tend to run together in my mind. The back-to-back comparison was enlightening: while the two share a basic outline they have very different view points so that they are almost <i><b>different stories</b></i>. Being the 50th anniversary, there are lots of articles, and a new book - <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Space-Odyssey/Michael-Benson/9781501163937">Space Odyssey by Michael Benson</a> with inside-info from the people who actually worked on the film, and they help explain how the two diverged so much. I think I've pieced the history together reasonably well.<br />
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Kubrick famously proposed the project to Clarke in a letter in early 1964. At the time Kubrick's movie <b><i>Dr. Strangelove</i></b> was a huge success; Kubrick was a whiz-kid at the top of his game and had the reputation to allow him to make any movie he wanted. Clarke, while a big name in the science-fiction world, had not yet had a truly <b><i>big</i></b> book and hadn't published a science-fiction novel since <i style="font-weight: bold;">A Fall of Moondust </i>in 1961 (Clarke had contracted polio in 1962, which lead to partial paralysis and no doubt put a crimp in his writing). Clarke was also somewhat broke: he was living in Sri Lanka, supporting his partner's low-budget film making projects and going through a complicated divorce settlement; let's just say he was motivated by Kubrick's idea.<br />
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Clarke had an engineering and science background, and his writing leaned heavily toward the "hard science" end of the sci-fi spectrum - his stories were all built on solid scientific and mathematical ideas. In the early 1960s science fiction was shifting towards more high-concept stories that focused on the social impact of technology and appealed to a broader audience. Robert Heinlein had published the controversial and new-agey best-seller <i><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land">Stranger In a Strange Land</a> </b></i>in 1962 - which was decidedly not "hard sci-fi". I don't think Clarke was envious of Heinlein, but its easy to imagine him wanting to explore this new direction that the genre was moving in.<br />
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Clarke would cobble together two of his short stories (<b><i>Encounter at Dawn</i></b> and <b><i>The Sentinel</i></b>) into the beginning of a story, then he and Kubrick would collaborate for most of 1964 to flesh that beginning into a feature-length story. There seems to have been a general agreement between them to use the theme of Clarke's novel <i style="font-weight: bold;">Childhood's End </i>- about mankind advancing to a higher level of civilization - but also agreeing that the story itself would not work as a film.<br />
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Clarke - who seems to have done most of the typewriter pounding - had no experience writing screenplays and so wrote the story in the form of a novel, to be translated into a screenplay once it was finished. For months Clarke and Kubrick spent much of their time together, doing background research and discussing possible story lines. The first draft, still missing an ending, was finished in December of 1964 and used as the basis for a movie deal with MGM.<br />
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Clarke was never an equal partner in the collaboration. Kubrick was experienced in making films and had very good lawyers, while Clarke was naive and naturally trusting. Unlike the more usual scenario where a movie was made from a successful book, the two were writing a story in the form of a book that was first and foremost a movie. Clarke was hired on as a salaried writer, with no percentage in the film. Clarke would negotiate a 60% share of the book he and Kubrick had decided to release, but Kubrick would retain final approval of the book.<br />
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And so a few days after turning in what Clarke thought was the final draft of the book, in keeping with his agreement with Kubrick he was officially terminated. Kubrick quickly realized that as filming began the story would likely require revisions, and there was still the issue of an ending - so Clarke was quickly hired back - but it demonstrates that while Kubrick was by all accounts a nice guy all of his thinking and decision making centered on a shrewd responsibility to the <i>film</i> he was making. Another example: to handle all the special-effects in <b><i>2001</i></b> Kubrick would hire several bright up-and-comers - including future effects wizard Douglass Trumbull. Kubrick would give them lots of freedom and resources - and when they delivered amazing results he continued to pay them the entry level wages they had signed on for. Kubrick honored his deals, but he always put the film first and expected the people he hired to look out for themselves and honor their commitments.<br />
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Filming of <b><i>2001</i></b> would start a few months into 1965 in a giant studio MGM had built in England (lower taxes than Hollywood). Through most of that first year there would be continual rework of the story to match the limitations of the special effects and what looked good on the screen. The mysterious "monolith" would start as a 10 foot tall transparent pyramid as described in Clarke's short story <b><i>The Sentinel </i></b>but it couldn't be cast as a solid piece of Lucite and so morphed into an (expensive) transparent rectangular slab - but <i>that</i> didn't photograph well - so it changed again into the featureless black slab we've all come to know and love.<br />
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To make the imagery more believable Kubrick would work with big companies to use their ideas for future technology - and more importantly their <i style="font-weight: bold;">logos,</i> like the big PanAm globe on the space shuttle. Kubrick would probably be surprised that 50 years later those logos make his film look dated, as many of the companies are either gone or no longer technology leaders.<br />
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IBM was a big supporter - until the story changed and the ship's computer killed off most of the crew! If you look hard there are still a few IBM logos (check the corner of the iPad-like tablets that Frank and Dave use on the ship) but nowhere on the HAL 9000 camera panels around the ship or on the racks of hardware Dave visits to pull Hal's plug. That suggests the character of the ship's computer went through a lot of changes in 1965 - in some ways becoming the central character of the story!<br />
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<i>Interesting aside: in late 1965 Robert Heinlein would publish the novel <b>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress</b>, that featured a character who was a sentient super computer, who helps the lunar colonists fight a revolutionary war with Earth. The computer - named Mycroft Holmes, or Mike - could speak directly with his human friends and a had a distinct and colorful personality; it was a fairly innovative idea for the time. Did Mike influence HAL, or vice versa? </i><i>Heinlein and Clarke knew each other socially, and may have discussed the idea previously. </i><i>Heinlein's story clearly came first, and Clarke and Kubrick were reading lots of sci-fi for inspiration. Or were both influenced by Asimov's robot stories, and the near simultaneous stories were just coincidence? I haven't been able to find even circumstantial evidence either way - if you know please share!</i></blockquote>
And most importantly the story's ending proved to be elusive. The 1964 "final" draft had taken Dave Bowman into the "Star Gate", but neither Clarke or Kubrick had a satisfying idea for what was on the other side. One idea was that Dave would just walk off "into the sunset" with an alien, much like the ending of <i><b>Close Encounters of the Third Kind, </b></i>but creating a believable alien effect was the sticking point - the film was already behind schedule and over budget - and that ambiguous ending was not especially satisfying. The "Star Child" ending was Clarke's idea - an ending Kubrick didn't really like - but it had the advantage that the aliens were never actually <i>seen</i>.<br />
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It seems that Kubrick tried to recruit several other British science fiction writers to help with the ending, but they would decline out of respect for Clarke. Filming the astronauts excavation on the Moon and the astronauts on their way to Jupiter would take up most of 1965 and part of 1966, and the whole time the ending was in flux. Clarke's "Star Child" ending followed a sort of logic - that is spelled out in heavy handed prose in the book - but it seemed too upbeat for Kubrick. With no good or workable alternative, Kubrick would plow ahead with the "Star Child" ending, but filmed lots of different scenes and lines knowing he could spin the ending in different ways in the final editing.<br />
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With the filming on the big sets used for the surface of the Moon and the Discovery interiors finished, the focus moved to special effects and the African desert scenes. While these were a small part of the overall film, they were technically challenging in their own way. Creating a believable tribe of man-apes was nearly as hard as building the big rotating space-craft interior: on top of the challenge of creating costumes and masks that looked right, they needed to find and train actors who could move like apes (human legs are just too long to look truly ape-like so the actors had to develop movements that hid their incorrect proportions). Kubrick had a major aversion to air travel, so the African scenes were filmed on a stage in England - but crew members were sent to South Africa to photograph authentic background shots to be added to the scenes with a new front-projection process.<br />
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The space scenes were a combination of models filmed with motion controlled cameras, and stuntmen in spacesuits hanging from wires. A lot of work went into lighting and camera work to make sure that the effects shots had the same colors and general "look" as the interior scenes.<br />
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Creating these scenes was slow and tedious work: the model photography had to be done frame-by-frame with long exposures, people couldn't wear the airtight space helmets very long before they blacked out from CO2 buildup! More importantly these scenes had little dialogue and were in well established parts of the story, so there was little reason for Clarke to stick around the studios; he went back to Sri Lanka to try to rescue a film project his partner had sunk lots of Clarke's money into and then abandoned.<br />
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Clarke was desperate to make a <b><i>2001</i></b> book deal to generate much needed income. He and Kubrick had agreed to this in theory, but Kubrick quickly realized releasing the book before the movie might hurt at the box-office; he would simply delay approving the various re-writes needed to bring the book into synch with the film. Being on the opposite side of the world would limit Clarke to sending increasingly angry telegrams, which had little impact on the film-maker. When the book was eventually published - hitting store shelves just after the movie's premier - many of the updates had never been made as Clarke plowed ahead to avoid additional reviews by Kubrick, leading to the many detail discrepancies between book and film.<br />
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Kubrick would make more controversial decisions as he began assembling the final movie from the mountain of 65mm film he had shot. Clarke had long expected the film to have voice-over narration to explain the sudden transitions between the man-ape, lunar-surface, Discovery and Star-Gate segments. This was natural given Clarke's writing background: since books must describe action in words they are often written from a god's-eye-view, describing not only all the action but the thoughts inside the character's heads. Movies of course are a much more <b><i>visual</i></b> form of story telling, and movie-makers have come to see narration as a crutch for when the director wasn't clever enough to tell the story through imagery. Kubrick kept pushing Clarke for less narration, and Clarke had dutifully pared the text down in multiple edits, even during his time away.<br />
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During the final edit Kubrick would not only decide to <i>drop</i> the narration - he would also cut much of the dialogue - especially the little bits of expository dialogue that most every film uses to provide background - leaving nothing but the most inane exchanges. It was one of those artistic decisions that might have worked with a western or spy story where the audience knew what to expect, but in a movie as unique as <b><i>2001</i></b> it made for an indecipherable plot; Kubrick turned his film into an ink-blot test where everyone found something different.<br />
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A side effect of the minimalist dialogue was the importance of background music - what the movie people call the <i><b>score</b></i>. At the time major motion pictures would have a composer create an original orchestral score - allowing the music to match the length and feel of particular scenes. When Kubrick started watching the spacecraft effect sequences he added some classical music to fill the quiet - and he liked it. In 1966 the Beatles had been famous for all of 2 years; rock-and-roll was still considered a bit of a fad. Kubrick's generation had grown up with classical music, and backed up by a 100 piece orchestra the classical pieces would blow your hair back - it fit perfectly with the grand <i>feel</i> Kubrick wanted for his film. Kubrick would go for industrial strength German pieces from Richard and Johann Strauss, and a few more modern pieces by Ligetti - written in a style that could set your nerves on end.<br />
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When Clarke saw the completed film at a big premier event in April of 1968 he reportedly walked out at the intermission holding back tears. Many critics gave the film bad reviews, one famously describing it as "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring". Kubrick had watched the audience at the premier to see where they became bored and fidgety; he went back to the cutting room and surgically cut 20 minutes from the film. Most would agree it helped. <i>Amazingly several prints had already been shipped to big theaters around the country - the projectionists at those theaters would (hopefully) reproduce Kubrick's edits from written instructions!</i><br />
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Of course in the end the effects would carry the film: lots of people showed up just to see the space scenes and the psychedelic star-gate sequence and left the theater with no clue what the movie was about, and they told their friends how strange it was and of course their friends had to see for themselves. Teenagers would declare it amazing - at least a little to defy their parent's sensibilities. Newspaper critics who had panned the movie would print retractions a few weeks later - saying they were wrong and it really was an amazingly good movie all along.<br />
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Lots of movie goers trying to figure out what the movie was about would buy Clarke's book: the paperback would hit store shelves in July in time for summer reading. All of Clarke's work on the movie narration did not go for naught, as much of that prose is in the book, and it is arguably some of his best writing. Even though the book didn't exactly match the movie it at least gave the movie goer some good clues. And it made Clarke a lot of money - at least by science-fiction writer standards - and it cemented Clarke as a "big name" once again.<br />
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Clarke would write several more novels, including 3 sequels to <b><i>2001</i></b> - although none would be as famous (or in my opinion, as good). The first <i><b>2001</b></i> sequel - <b style="font-style: italic;">2010: Odyssey Two</b> - would be made into a movie in 1984 by Peter Hyams: <b><i>2010</i></b> was a fairly conventional film and it did OK at the box office, but by 1984 America was knee deep in big-budget sci-fi movies and it took more than well done special effects to pack 'em into the multiplex (the multi-screen theater was another game changer - in 1984 movie goers had far more choices about what to see than two decades earlier).<br />
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Kubrick of course would go on to make several more big-name big-budget movies, and he would continue to frustrate authors; Kubrick could completely change a story just by changing the way the actors spoke their lines or how the scenes looked on screen, and he often did exactly that. Both Anthony Burgess (<b><i>A Clockwork Orange)</i></b> and Stephen King (<i><b>The Shining</b></i>) would have fairly public arguments with Kubrick over the movies he made from their books. Kubrick simply cared more about making the film <i><b>he</b></i> wanted than being faithful to a book he had bought the rights to.<br />
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Kubrick's ability to change a story was obvious when I compared <b><i>2001</i></b> the film and book back-to-back: Clarke's story is undeniably positive, while Kubrick's is a cautionary tale about man's arrogant embrace of technology (the folks that look for symbolism in films can give you a list of the parallels Kubrick makes to the Frankenstein story). I've always thought that Kubrick ruined Clarke's story by making his movie so hard to understand, but the reality is that the collaboration made Clarke's book better, simply by forcing him to think and rethink the story and polish the text more than he ever would have - compared to his other books I think <b><i>2001</i></b> is some of his best writing. A director like Stephen Spielberg or James Cameron could make a <b><i>2001</i></b> that audiences liked but that no one remembered or talked about a year later, let alone 50 years on.<br />
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What Kubrick <i>did</i> was lay the foundation for modern science fiction films. MGM's experience with <b><i>2001</i></b> would make the movie industry skittish to fund another sci-fi block buster, but over time they would forget the pain and remember the box-office success. Moreover, Kubrick had done the hard work figuring out the effects technology; others would build on his work. A few years later <b>Universal Pictures </b>would take a chance on the movie <i style="font-weight: bold;">Silent Running, </i>with a young Doug Trumbull - a veteran of <b><i>2001</i></b> - directing. The movie was a little preachy and Universal didn't do a great job of promoting it - it wasn't a big success - but the film would cost a little more than a million dollars, a tenth of what Kubrick had spent on <i><b>2001</b></i>.<br />
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But sitting there in the movie theaters watching Bowman go through the Star-Gate in 1968 were a new generation of film makers: James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and George Lucas to name a few. Lucas would make a lot of money for Universal with his first movie - <i style="font-weight: bold;">American Graffiti </i>- a low budget kids-in-cars nostalgia film that cost about $750,000 and sold 140 <b><i>million</i></b> dollars worth of tickets! That was the kind of success that gave Lucas a little bit of Kubrick-style clout: 20th Century Fox would give him 11 million dollars to make an old fashioned space opera with ground breaking effects called <b><i>Star Wars</i></b>.<br />
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The 1970s had been a gloomy time for America: we had given up in Vietnam, forced a corrupt president from office, NASA stopped sending missions to the moon, there were oil shortages and unprecedented inflation and budget decifits, and Japan was building better cars and TVs. The country needed a <i>fun</i> movie and Star Wars delivered - it would hit theaters in the summer of 1977 and go on to gross over <i style="font-weight: bold;">$750 million in its first release</i><br />
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Overnight movies with space themes were hot: Paramount would finally make a <i style="font-weight: bold;">Star Trek </i>movie, Fox would take a chance on <i style="font-weight: bold;">Alien</i>, Disney would try for a piece of the pie with <b><i>Black Hole</i></b>, and every space film that was even a little successful would get a sequel or six. Science fiction had gone mainstream, and the basic space exploration stories spilled over into other sci-fi themes: the 1980s would bring <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Terminator, The Thing, Back to the Future, ET, Blade Runner, The Last Star Fighter, Predator, </i>and of course numerous <b><i>Star Wars </i></b>and <i><b>Star Trek</b></i> sequels.<br />
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Not a bad legacy for a story Arthur Clarke had pieced together from ideas kicking around the corners of his brain!<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-817425024649769352018-04-09T22:46:00.000-04:002018-09-15T11:33:45.045-04:00A Car Modelers Guide to IPMSIt seems like the guys (and a few gals) who spend their time gluing bits of plastic together to make model cars should have a lot in common with the guys and gals who glue bits of plastic together to make model planes and tanks. But walk around the automotive tables at an IPMS show and you’ll almost certainly hear someone whispering something like “these IPMS guys just don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to cars”. Usually they say it a little more colorfully than that. And you hear it again at the end of the show when the whispering is a little louder and along the lines of “how did that ever win!”.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The <b><i>International Plastic Modelers Society</i></b> has been around for over 50 years, and has gone through many changes. In the earliest days IPMS was just a mimeographed newsletter - a way for modelers to share information before hobby magazines existed. It quickly grew into a network of local clubs and contests, and played a big part in shaping the hobby.<br />
<br />
IPMS has always been open to all kinds of modeling, but before long it became clear there were two schools of modeling: those focused on building strict replicas and those building hypothetical subjects in a more stylized way. Military modelers typically fell into the replica builders, while auto modelers leaned toward the more creative side. IPMS - in the way their contests were judged - leaned towards the replica school. At the time modeling was incredibly popular; it was easy for auto modelers to split off and start their own clubs and the separations weren't always amicable.<br />
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I’m not going to dig up 40 year old dirt about who said what to who. Most of today’s modelers either weren’t born or were trying to figure out the mysteries of elementary school when that went down, and I think it’s time to move on. I’ve got a much simpler and practical goal in mind: I want car modelers to come to IPMS model shows - especially my club’s show - and have a good time and leave wanting to come back the next year. If that makes a few car modelers decide to checkout an IPMS club meeting, so much the better.<br />
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I think a big step in that direction is to correct some of the misunderstandings about IPMS and IPMS contests, and hopefully that will make everyone a little better prepared and a little more comfortable entering one. And maybe a little more understanding of why at the end of the day some models win, and others don’t. I don’t want to come off as some elitist IPMS dweeb telling car modelers how they should build. For most of us modeling is what we do for fun - you should build for yourself first. But for those car modelers who want to compete at IPMS shows, I want to explain what it takes to do well. I’ve judged cars at lots of IPMS shows - including at IPMS National Conventions - and I see a lot of automotive models with amazing work that don’t make the first “cut” because of little things that could have been easily fixed. If you want to do well at an IPMS show, I think the info here will help.<br />
<h4>
Without further ado… </h4>
First the <b>Rules. </b>
There is a perception that IPMS contests are well defined, strictly regimented processes with lots of rules and procedures, all run with military precision. The reality is a little more complicated. If you poke around on the main IPMS website at<a href="http://ipmsusa.log/"> ipmsusa.org</a>, you should find a list of things labeled as <a href="http://www.ipmsusa.org/national_contest_committee/files/2016_national_contest_rules.pdf">rules</a>. Some important details:<br />
<ul>
<li>IPMS only enforces these rules at the <b>IPMS National Convention</b>. This is the big, once a year IPMS show and contest held every summer at some location that rotates around the country - this year its <a href="http://www.ipmsusanationals2018.org/">Phoenix</a>. This is the <i><b>only</b></i> IPMS contest that you <i><b>must</b></i> be a National IPMS member to enter (anyone can pay general admission just to go in and look around). National IPMS membership costs $30 per year, and registration for the convention is another $50 or so. It's a multi-day event, so add on 3-4 nights at a hotel plus restaurant meals, and then there will be a lot of really good vendors there to tempt you - it can easily become a $1000 outing (car pooling and sharing a room with a few friends can help keep the costs down). A Nats is also a lot of fun, and I highly recommend you go at least once if you can.</li>
<li>A few of the rules specify administrative things like who can enter (for the National Convention, only paid-up IPMS USA members), the age brackets for the junior categories, and what kind of models you can not enter: sexually explicit figures and various “adult” subjects are not allowed (there are a lot of subtleties covered in lawyer-ese written by an actual lawyer; you should read the rule if you think it might affect you, but it's more a figure thing than anything likely to affect car modelers).</li>
<li>Most of the things referred to as rules are really definitions of the many (100+) categories in the contest. For example, there are a number of categories for “Out of the Box” models and “Scratchbuilt” models and those names don’t necessarily mean what you might think. At one time this terminology was a little fuzzy, leading to too many “spirited discussions” during judging; the latest version of the rules go into painful detail.</li>
<li>One other twist comes at the very end of the rules: the IPMS Nationals is a <b><i>no-sweeps</i></b> contest. That means that in any category, you can only win 1 award (the Nationals is always a 1-2-3 show so that means a 1st or 2nd or 3rd place award). And that means it can be in an entrant’s best interest to spread their models around multiple categories, which can involve a bit of gamesmanship that I’ll talk about a little later.</li>
</ul>
Now for the complication: many IPMS clubs will adapt these rules for their local shows, removing parts that don’t make sense at a smaller show, and picking and choosing the parts that the club agrees with and leaving out the bits they don’t. The only way you can know exactly what rules are in effect at a local IPMS show is to find them (check their website) and carefully read them.
Something to watch out for is that some IPMS local and Regional contests do not allow models that have won at an IPMS Regional or National contest to be entered, or require them to be entered in a special Ace-of-Aces category. Read any such rules very carefully; traveling to a show and not being able to even enter your models can be a pretty rude surprise.<br />
<h4>
Gaming The Automotive Categories </h4>
As I mentioned above, at many IPMS contests you can improve your chances of winning an award (or winning multiple awards) by entering your models in more than one category. This is often possible regardless of what kinds of models you build because some categories are defined by subject and some by how the model was built (remember that local contests will generally have fewer categories and other variations in the rules, so everything I’m saying here may or may not apply outside of the National Convention).
For example, most IPMS contests have some sort of <b>Street Stock</b> category for models representing cars (mostly) as they were built by the factory. Many IPMS contests also have a <b>Curbside</b> category, where the judges don’t look at the bottom of the car or under the hood (the model can’t be displayed with the hood open either). Practically any model car can be entered in the Curbside category by simply leaving the hood closed, so if you’ve built two factory-stock models, you can enter one in the Street Stock category and one in Curbside.<br />
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It can get stranger. Many IPMS contests have some sort of <b>Out-of-the-Box </b>(OOB) category for models that are built without any aftermarket parts or major modifications - just what comes in the kit box built according to the kit instructions. Usually you can use whatever decals and paint you want. Here is the confusing thing: you can use all of the photo-etch and resin you want<i><b> if </b></i>you start with a multi-media kit that includes all that stuff “in the box”. The only catch is that you must provide the instructions that come with the kit as proof that you built the model “out-of-the-box”. Many contests take that rule about the instructions being there pretty seriously; even if the model is obviously out-of-the-box, it will get moved to another category if the instruction sheets aren’t there.<br />
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Even if you build two basic Revell kits straight out-of-the-box, you can enter one in the OOB category, and the other in the “regular” (not OOB) category. Because of the way IPMS judging works (see below), a true out-of-the-box model is not at a big disadvantage to one with all the detail parts added.<br />
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A word of warning: While literally everyone uses this strategy, I have seen it backfire. I’m going to leave out the details to protect the guilty, but here is what happened: a modeler brings an Italian supercar, a gorgeous build with the best parts from a number of different kits to get all the details right, finished with a beautiful coat of red paint. For whatever reason, it is entered in Curbside, which is perfectly within the rules, and the model rightfully takes first place. Comes time for the judges to vote on Best-Auto, and no one gives this model much of a look, because… a lot of the work in this build is not all that obvious and the judges are too tired to read the build-notes on the registration form, and it is entered in Curbside which some judges think of as a “soft” category.<br />
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I argued this red sports car should be Best-Auto until I was sure the other judges were going to work me over and toss me out the back door so they could get on with the show, and then I watched them award Best-Auto to a nicely weathered commercial vehicle that appeared to be a much more ambitious model, but was a mostly out-of-the-box build of an obscure kit. Then the Internet lit up with car modelers saying “man, those IPMS guys just don’t understand car models”.
So read the category definitions very carefully, plan out where you want to enter the models you’ve built, and if you’ve got a really nice model, be sure to enter that one in one of the mainstream categories.<br />
<h4>
1-2-3 vs Open Judging </h4>
Most IPMS contests use classic 1-2-3 judging. The models are grouped into categories of roughly 15-20 models, and a team of judges picks the best, second best and third best of each group to take home a plaque. All of the 1st place winners are then considered by all of the judges for the overall <b><i>Best Automotive</i></b> award. The head class judges will then discuss and vote for which of the Best-of-Subject winners will then become Best of Show.<br />
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Even a small IPMS contest will usually have 5 (or more) automotive categories with 3 awards each, so a fair number of models can go home with a plaque or medal. Seems like a fair system, and it is simple and easy to run. 1-2-3 judging is the system that IPMS officially endorses; it is how the contest at the IPMS National Convention is organized, and probably always will be. And it is how the majority of local IPMS shows are run.<br />
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The problem with this style of judging is that at a big show the competition can be a lot stiffer in the more popular categories. If four really good modelers enter a popular category (say they all enter ‘32 Ford Coupes in the Hot Rod category) one of them is going home with nothing, even though their model may be practically the same in build quality as the 1st place model. Which model takes 1st (and so goes on to compete for Best Automotive and possibly Best of Show) will come down to a mostly subjective judgement by a 3 man judging team. Meanwhile some less popular category may end up with just 2 or 3 poorly built models entered, and yet one will be a “1st place” model.<br />
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An alternative to 1-2-3 judging is the so-called <b>Open</b> system, also known as <b>“Chicago Rules”</b> or <b>G-S-B</b> judging. This system is similar to that used at many art and photography competitions; it was adapted by figure modelers years ago, who introduced it to the armor modelers, who were copied by everyone else. An Open Judged event is more of a group evaluation than a contest: the top tier of models earn a gold medal, those that aren’t quite as good get a silver, those with a few more problems get a bronze, and everything else gets no award.<br />
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In Open Judging there are usually only a few categories, and they don’t really matter much: each model is being evaluated on its own merits, based on the same criteria as used to choose the top models in a 1-2-3 contest.
Most Open Judged events add an element of true competition by considering the gold medal winners for Best-of-Subject awards (Best Automotive, etc), and then picking a Best-of-Show winner from the Best-of-Subject models just like at a 1-2-3 event.
In my hypothetical example where four modelers all bring really nice 32 Fords, all four can earn gold medals. And perhaps more importantly, all four models will be considered by the full automotive judging team for the big Best Automotive award. This is the kind of judging used at my chapter - Three Rivers IPMS - annual show.<br />
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Just so you know, there is a variation of Open Judging where each entrant receives at most 1 medal for their best model, regardless of how many models they enter. This variation is used largely to limit the number of medals the contest hosts need to buy, but there is also a bit of philosophy: a gold medal recognizes a top tier modeler; receiving 2 or 3 (or more) gold medals doesn’t mean they are a better modeler than someone who built only 1 really good model. Often the medals at this type event are a little bigger and fancier than at a show where every model can take a medal. As always, read the contest info carefully to figure out exactly how the medals will work.<br />
<h4>
How the Sausage Gets Made</h4>
I can hear you thinking: enough with all this rules stuff, what are those IPMS judges looking for and what are they thinking when they look at my model? Again, if you poke around on the IPMS USA website, you’ll find the <a href="http://www.ipmsusa.org/competition_handbook/index.shtml">Competition Handbook</a>. It tells you what judges should be looking for; if you follow all the guidelines in there you should do well at a contest. What isn’t in there is how the judges use those guidelines to decide who wins. I’m going to try to do that here.<br />
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Mostly Judges are looking for obvious mistakes that distract from the realism of the model. Here is how it usually goes;<br />
<ul>
<li>First they look at the big flat surfaces of the body: the roof and hood and decklid, then sight down each side. The judges will look out across those big smooth surfaces, and they better be smooth - no sink-marks or molding seams; dust free and uniformly glossy paint. There should be no signs of glue or bare plastic where the body was assembled and small parts like door handles and mirrors and chrome trim are attached. The windows should fit snug in the body with no visible glue around the edges. A little bit of orange peel is not automatically fatal, but is usually enough to knock the model down a place or two.
While they’re looking at the body, any decals are going to get scrutinized too: there should be no silvering and the edge of the decal film should be nearly invisible. Yes, some real-world race cars use vinyl stickers for markings that have a visible edge, but they do not have a clear film extending around the marking proper. If you’re trying to model a vinyl sticker, trim all the carrier film and explain what you did on the model registration sheet.</li>
<li>The next big thing are the wheels (some judges will look at the wheels first). All 4 wheels should be square to and touching the ground and parallel left-to-right. The tires shouldn’t be rubbing against the bodywork. If the kit’s wheels fit loosely to allow them to roll and so flop around a bit, you should glue them solid so the model sits right - you get no extra consideration for “working” wheels.</li>
<li>Overall straightness and symmetry. The body should be level side-to-side and straight with the wheels, and small parts should all be straight and square. Wheels should be centered in the wheel openings. If the real car being modeled is not straight and level and centered for some reason, you should mention it on the judging sheet and provide a picture if possible.</li>
</ul>
This is literally the first 30-45 seconds, and these are make-or-break items. At competitive 1-2-3 and G-S-B contests, models with any of these type of mistakes are usually “cut” from consideration without a further look (at a less competitive show you might get away with 1 or 2 mistakes).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>A brief aside: a common misconception even among some IPMS members is that IPMS assigns point values to various kinds of mistakes and just totals them up like golf, with the lowest score winning. IPMS judges might tell you something like “you lost points for wheel alignment”, but those “points” are figurative. IPMS USA does <b>not</b> have a list that says “wheel alignment - 10 points, silvered decal - 5 points, etc”. Other modeling organizations, such as the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society (AMPS) do use such a point system, and while it is possible an IPMS club could invent such a system for a local show, by-and-large no IPMS contests do. The final ranking of models at a 1-2-3 contest is usually determined by discussion among the judging team (usually 3 modelers), with the rare unresolvable difference settled by the head judge. </i></blockquote>
Assuming your model makes it past this first “cut”, the judges are going to get really picky.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Next step is under the hood (if the hood is open). A common trick for judges is to look straight down into the engine bay (and use a flashlight if the room lighting is bad) to spot shiny spots where glue is showing: there shouldn’t be any. </li>
<li>Next up for scrutiny is the top of the radiator and the top of the master-cylinder to check for uncorrected mold lines. In general the engine and underhood area should be prepared and assembled just as cleanly as the rest of the model: there should be no gaps, no misaligned parts, no seams, no ejector pin marks, no unpainted plastic. The separation between paint colors should be straight and clean. </li>
<li>Important tip (affects a lot of models): if you display your model with the hood open or off the model completely, judges are going to look at the bottom of the hood. Yes, most IPMS contests tell judges not to handle the models, but if the hood is just sitting there, a lot of judges will pick it up and look. Make sure the ejector pin marks have been fixed and there is no unpainted plastic lurking there. </li>
<li>Now a quick look inside: The interior of the car should be as cleanly built and well detailed as the rest of the model. If there are visible ejector pin marks in the floor fix them (if the floor has molded-in carpet texture, consider flocking the floor after fixing the marks). Remember that on a hatchback type car the judges can look straight down into the rear luggage compartment; big ejector pin circles on the floor staring back can easily drop a model a spot or two in the rankings (maybe right out of an award).</li>
<li>Most IPMS contests either forbid or strongly discourage judges from picking up models to look underneath, but judges will almost certainly slide the models on the table to see them better. Once your model is near the edge of the table, it’s easy for the judges to get eye-level with the tabletop and see quite a bit of the chassis. The mistakes the judges are looking for are unpainted plastic, mold-lines on the exhaust pipes and exhaust systems that are not connected to the engine or otherwise dangling in mid air. If you are going to put your model on a mirrored base, judges are going to look closely and count the mistakes against you. </li>
</ul>
This level of mistake is generally not fatal, but if a judge finds too many of them (if he runs out of fingers to keep track) the model is likely to be eliminated from judging. At a G-S-B event, the difference between a bronze and a silver medal is the number of these minor mistakes the judges find - a silver medal model usually has no more than 1 or 2 such problems.<br />
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Once a model makes it through the mistake hunting phase, the judges are finally going to look at things like detailing, scratchbuilding, and advanced finishing techniques. These are the things that make the difference between a silver and a gold medal, and at a very competitive 1-2-3 show like the IPMS Nationals, these are the tie-breakers that will set the award winners apart from the also-rans.
Here are some specifics of what judges are going to look for:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Fingerprints and dust turn judges off; they figure if the modeler doesn’t care enough to fix the easy stuff why should the judges care about the model. Sloppy, obviously hand-brushed detail painting is another killer: judges expect to see sharp, straight separation between colors and smooth paint everywhere. If you can’t get smooth paint with a brush, bite the bullet and mask and spray it - even if it is some tiny little part. </li>
<li>A big one: realistic finishes. Rubber hoses and wires and vinyl upholstery are not deep saturated colors, and they often have a flat or barely semi-gloss sheen; don’t paint them gloss black - some judges may count this as an outright mistake! Few parts of a car are exactly the same color or have exactly the same finish; using a few different shades of paint and varying the gloss level will add visual interest and make the model more believable. A couple specifics:</li>
<ul>
<li>Real bare metal parts in the engine bay are generally not uniform in color or finish: an aluminum cylinder head will generally not look exactly like an aluminum engine block or an aluminum transmission housing. Again, use a few different shades to create a more “real” look.</li>
<li>It’s tempting to leave real metal kit parts unpainted for an easy “real metal” look, but that can just highlight the fact that other parts of the model are metallic-painted plastic. It is usually better to paint everything to get a consistent look, or at least limit the real bare metal to those few places where you are representing highly polished metal or chrome. </li>
<li>I feel like I should use all capital letters for this, but I’ll settle for an exclamation point at the end: IPMS does not give any extra credit for simply using photoetch or machined metal parts in your model, so do not leave them unpainted just so the judges know that you did! The air vent grilles and header collectors on real cars are not brass, so don’t leave them shiny brass on your model even if you think it looks cool.</li>
<li>Real car interiors are not uniform in color or finish either; if you want to impress the judges don’t just spray the whole interior semi-gloss black and call it a day. Carpets should look different than the seats and the seats should look different than the dash. Add some detail painting to highlight knobs and switches and door handles and such.</li>
<li>About chrome: The plated parts in most model kits do not really look like chrome or polished metal, and preserving that plated finish means not fixing mold-lines in the part. Many top auto-modelers strip the plated kit parts and use something like Alclad paint to create a more believable chrome finish (even though it is not quite as bright and shiny as the kit plated parts). Most IPMS judges will cut some slack to a model using the plated kit parts, but in a competitive 1-2-3 show the Alclad chrome can make the difference between an award and going home empty handed.</li>
<li>And about weathering: Military modeling has long embraced the idea of weathering models to make them look realistically worn and dirty. No one polishes a tank; their usual state is sun faded and mud spattered, and a model tank just doesn’t look right if it’s perfectly clean. The same is true of automotive subjects such as off-road vehicles and racing cars. Here’s the thing: like everything else the weathering has to be believable. Mud looks different than dirt looks different than tire dust, and where and how they accumulate and rub off and streak will depend on the vehicle and where and how it was used. Just slopping a mud-colored wash (or even real mud) over the model may look good at arm’s length, but when a judge is looking from inches away it just looks like sloppy paint. If you weather your model so heavily that you can’t see the basic assembly work, most judges are going to assume the weathering is there to hide poor workmanship underneath. Weathering for a contest model is truly one of those “less is more” situations (the folks who model tanks are really good at weathering if you’re looking for good advice). </li>
</ul>
<li> Detail work in the engine bay is a two edged blade: it can push a model up in a judge’s ranking, but if done poorly it can knock a model right out of the hunt. A common mistake is to try to reproduce every hose, fitting, clamp and wire, but it is very hard to to do that in a realistic way- especially for the thinner wires and hoses. Real rubber hoses and ignition wires bend and drape differently and have different surface finishes, and they should look different on your model. Judges will usually cut some slack for slightly out-of-scale detail parts, but sometimes it is better to leave a detail out than to reproduce it in an unrealistic way. </li>
<li> Few auto modelers give a second thought to the interior, which makes it easy to impress the judges with just a little extra work. Adding printed gauge faces and photo-etched emblems and such to the dash will really stand out. Modeling two-tone upholstery is another way to liven up what is generally a dark featureless pit. This is really important for open-top cars.</li>
</ul>
<h4>
A Bit of IPMS Philosophy </h4>
<div>
I’m going to wrap up with a bit of the IPMS judging philosophy that will hopefully guide your thinking about how to build for an IPMS contest. There are three important points: </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>IPMS strongly believes that models represent real things, and the judge’s job is to decide how close to reality the model comes. That makes a lot of sense for military subjects, but less so for cars that are manufactured in large numbers and can be optioned and customized to suit each individual owner’s tastes. Instead of looking for absolute accuracy, automotive judges are looking for realism or believability: does the model look like a car that could have actually been built.<br /><br />Most judges will not know if a ‘59 Impala ever came from the factory with pink paint, white interior and wire wheel covers, or know if someone actually modified their own Impala that way, but they know the exhaust manifolds were burnt iron and the tires were black rubber and all 4 of them were touching the ground. Judges are not going to check that you got the firing order right when you wired the distributor on your ‘59 Chevy, but they will ding you if the wires do not look like plug wires!</li>
<li>IPMS judging emphasizes what can be seen, not the amount of work that might have been needed to achieve that result. You do not get extra credit for taking a crude 40 year old kit and turning it into a respectable model, or machining your own wheels out of blocks of aluminum. All things being equal, a modeler buying a better kit, or buying aftermarket wheels, will get the same consideration when it comes to judging even though they invest less time and effort to get those results.</li>
<li>IPMS judging gives little consideration to “Wow Factor”. A hot-rod with a fade paint job and flames will have little advantage over a similar model with basic solid color paint. Your post apocalyptic Rolls Royce may be really cool, but the idea doesn't buy any consideration with the judges. The IPMS terminology for this sort of difference is “degree of difficulty” or “scope of effort”, and it only comes into play as a tie-breaker. The only real advantage for a flashier or otherwise more interesting model is that it will catch the judge’s attention and earn a closer look - the “wow” factor only helps if the entire model is well built. </li>
</ul>
Something that falls out of this is that scratchbuilding gives a model little real advantage (except that it may qualify the model for a Scratchbuilt category if the show has one). Judges will look just as hard for all the little mistakes they would look for on a regular kit build, and scratchbuilding creates more opportunities for the modeler to make those kind of mistakes. </div>
<h4>
A Final Bit of Advice and Perspective </h4>
<div>
If your main goal in entering an IPMS contest is to take home a plaque or medal, there is a simple formula that IPMS members figure out or have explained to them soon after their first contest:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Target a category that is not especially popular. It’s hard to predict which categories will be the least popular, but you can generally guess (and stay away from) the categories that are really popular (the Street Stock and Hot Rod and Competition Vehicle categories are generally the biggest). </li>
<li>Pick a subject that is simple; when it comes to cars avoid those with heavily sculpted body work and lots of chrome. </li>
<li>Start with a modern, good quality kit. It's hard to go wrong with Tamiya or Hasegawa, but even a newly tooled Revell kit is much better than a 1960s AMT reissue.</li>
<li>Build it nearly out of the box; don’t take chances with modifications or scratchbuilt details. </li>
<li>Build the model as clean as you can. Go with a basic 1 color paint scheme (red or black tend to be the most striking colors). Pay attention to the gotchas listed above. Above all else, do not brush paint anything.</li>
<li>Add just a bit of aftermarket bling to catch the judge’s eye. Limit yourself to a few parts that are a simple add-on or drop-in replacement for kit parts: PE badges or turned metal wheels.</li>
<li>Repeat for another 2 or 3 categories. </li>
</ul>
This is basically the “Money Ball” approach to modeling: avoid taking chances that can lead to mistakes and count on the odds to knock the more daring modelers out of the race. This might not get you a 1st place or a gold medal, and it almost certainly won’t earn a Best-Automotive award, but it is generally enough to put you near the top of most categories.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If playing the odds isn’t your idea of fun, if you want to be the modeler who takes chances, builds the cool model and then takes home the big awards, the only thing you can do is work at eliminating your mistakes. The biggest problem is that after you’ve spent countless hours working on a model, you literally become blind to your mistakes (just like when you can’t find the ketchup in the refrigerator when it's right there on the shelf). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A good way to spot those mistakes is to shoot closeups with a digital camera and zoom in so the model appears twice life-size. Enlarging and isolating on a single feature can make the mistakes more noticeable. Volunteering to judge at your local IPMS contest is another good way to get plenty of experience looking critically at lots of models - both good and bad. After taking the judging plunge, many modelers say that is the best way to learn to build better models. </div>
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OK, I’ve run out of things to say for now. I will try to keep this article up-to-date with changes in IPMS rules and trends in the hobby. If you think I’ve left out something important, or you disagree with something I’ve written please leave a comment here. Thanks for reading! </div>
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If you got here from the <i><b>Three Rivers IPMS </b></i>webpage here is a quick link back:<a href="http://tripms.org/"> tripms.org</a></div>
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-54902127510490621052018-01-06T18:15:00.004-05:002022-01-21T22:49:27.381-05:00May your hands always be busy...In the unlikely event you've been reading these articles from the beginning, you know that this blog was <i><b>supposed</b></i> to be about the hobby of scale modeling - building miniature cars and planes and such. In the first few installments I actually tried to find some tie-in between the hobby and whatever I wrote about, but it kept getting harder to do. If you want to talk about scale modeling, you really have to <i><b>do</b></i> scale modeling, and I found myself drifting away from the hobby. I still get to club meetings and buy the occasional kit, but I'm spending less and less time at the workbench and actually finishing a model has become largely hypothetical. From the people I've met at IPMS club meetings and model shows, that is not an uncommon thing. Which made me a little curious about <i><b>why</b></i>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I grew up with the usual blue collar skepticism of <i><b>psychology</b></i>. I don't think we had a psychologist or psychiatrist in my home town, and if I had told my parents I was "depressed" they would have told me something like "yeah, everyone is - get used to it!"<br />
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When I went to college I had a friend that was studying psychology who was happy to tell me all about it. It turns out there is a branch of psychology called <b><i>cognitive psychology </i></b>that deals with <b>how</b> people behave. Rather than come up with abstract theories to explain <b><i>why</i></b> individuals do things, cognitive psychologists observe people and use the data to understand and <i><b>predict</b></i> behavior in general. While individuals can vary a lot for lots of different reasons, over large groups patterns emerge. There is real science here: this sort of research is used to do things like design highways to have fewer accidents and help grocery stores to sell more vegetables.<br />
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What does this have to do with building models?<br />
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It turns out psychologists have spent a lot of time looking at <i style="font-weight: bold;">procrastination </i>- putting off important tasks until the last minute, and then generally doing a crummy job of whatever needed doing. People who procrastinate generally aren't happy; they feel frustrated when they don't get things done on time and guilty when they're not working on the things they know they should be doing. Procrastination generally spills over into all areas of a person's life; the guess is 70-80% of Americans procrastinate at least occasionally and 20% of Americans procrastinate so much as to affect their health, jobs and families.<br />
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While a lot of behavioral research is done in the real world with trained observers and hidden cameras, figuring out more complicated behaviors is often done with somewhat contrived experiments. A classic experiment related to procrastination involves little kids and cookies: an adult gives a kid a cookie and tells them if they don't eat the cookie right away, they'll get a second cookie a few minutes later. Then the adult leaves the room while a hidden camera watches. A few kids just straight away eat the cookie; many struggle a bit and eventually eat the cookie, and about 1/3 actually wait the 15 minutes for the adult to come back and give them a second cookie. By running these tests on young children, the assumption is that the kids haven't had time to learn how they are supposed to behave, allowing the experimenters to see their built-in or <i><b>natural</b></i> behavior. Follow ups over the years have found that the kids that waited for the second cookie were more successful in school and work, presumably because of their instinctive willingness to work towards long term goals.<br />
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The statistics in the experiment are suspiciously similar to the procrastination numbers; a good guess is that the kids who waited for a second cookie are the few that grow up to <i><b>never</b></i> procrastinate.<br />
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A lot of everyday behaviors turn out to be based on a rational strategy. If you think about the kids waiting for the second cookie a lot of things could happen: they might drop the first cookie in the dirt, or another kid might come along and take the cookie, or maybe the adult lied and they weren't really coming back with another cookie. All of these are very real possibilities the average 5 year old has most likely experienced that make <b><i>not waiting</i></b> make sense (if you think adults don't lie to little kids, you're probably not a parent or teacher).<br />
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Once one psychologist gets interesting results, everyone wants to get in on the fun; there have been lots of variations of the cookie-experiment over the years to try to understand what is going on. As much as these results are ever certain, it seems that kids are more likely to wait for the second cookie if they believe they can trust the adult running the experiment - either because the adult does something to gain their trust, or because they live in an environment where they can trust other adults (like their parents). If the experimenter does something to seem unreliable before hand, the kids notice and are a lot less likely to wait for the second cookie.<br />
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To be sure adults usually develop a little more self control than a 6 year old, but the basic behavior seems to be built in, as if our brains are wired to get excited about getting what we want <b style="font-style: italic;">right now. </b>When our hunter-gatherer ancestors came across a tasty antelope, they didn't think "let's wait and see if the rest of the herd comes along and we can take a few home and invite the neighbors over for a barbecue" - instead their adrenaline kicked in and they speared the one that was already standing there <b><i>now</i></b> and called it a day. When it comes to survival, the bird in hand usually beats two in the bush. Trading an immediate reward for something better in the future - <b><i>delaying gratification</i></b> - only makes sense when that future is reasonably <b><i>predictable</i></b>; it is a winning behavior in our regimented rule-driven modern world, but its not surprising that the desire for <b><i>immediate gratification</i></b> developed over millennia drives many of our decisions.<br />
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And yet we're talking about procrastinating from a <b><i>hobby</i></b>: something that is supposed to be fun. You would think that when modelers procrastinate, we'd spend that time building models. Instead we re-watch old TV shows, play computer games, or research and <i><b>think</b></i> about that model we're going to build "someday". One of the interesting things the psychologists have found is that procrastinators rarely do anything constructive when they are procrastinating: its almost as if we <i><b>want</b></i> to feel guilty for completely wasting our time.<br />
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<i>It is possible that TV itself is part of the problem. There is evidence - by which I mean the best pop science websites I could find - that TV is naturally hypnotic and addictive - and that the people making the shows have learned to tailor the content to be even more habit-forming. </i><br />
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Some of the earliest behavioral experiments were done with animals - applying science to the traditional methods of animal trainers. The researchers quickly noticed that behaviors seen in animals are often reflected in in humans - presumably because our brains have evolved under similar conditions and so work in similar ways.<br />
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One of the more interesting animal discoveries is something called <b><i>learned helplessness</i></b>. Researchers were doing basic conditioning experiments with dogs, where they would ring bells and give the dogs electric shocks. Typically the dog could turn off the shock by doing something, and they would quickly learn to do whatever it was to avoid the shock. Soon the dogs would associate the bell with the shock, so that just ringing the bell would cause them to take action to avoid the shock. Lots of variations were tried to figure out what factors affected the dogs learning to escape.<br />
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Out of completeness, someone had the bright idea of putting dogs in a cage where they couldn't escape the shocks no matter what they did; these dogs received the same shocks for the same amount of time as the dogs who had a way to turn off the shocks, they just took away the dogs ability to turn the shocks off. It turned out those dogs quickly learned to not even try to avoid the shocks, even when they were later given a way to escape. They had been trained to give up without even trying - not just in the experimental environment but in general. These dogs started to act like dogs that were abused: they were passive and fearful and had poor health compared to the other dogs.<br />
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Now think about the path many of us took into modeling as adults: we got married and bought a house, and suddenly had more free time and less disposable income than in those halcyon days of our youth. We were primed to be sucked into a hobby, and somehow we discovered and were drawn to model making. So we bought a few kits and magazines, joined the local IPMS chapter, started learning about more advanced techniques - and then ran into some job or family obligation that got in the way. A new baby was born, some big home remodeling project came along, work demanded overtime, our parents had health problems, we changed jobs, our kids joined a sports team - the disruptions can seem endless, and typically it is our hobbies that take the hit.<br />
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So thanks to whatever the most recent disruption was, the model we had planned to have finished for the big contest ended up half-built in a box. When we finally got back to the workbench we had lost enthusiasm for that model; while it was sitting there on the shelf we had learned new techniques and bought new tools and kits and got excited about some other subject. Hey, let's just rip the plastic-wrap off another kit! We can get back to that other build <i>later</i>. Not finishing a model has few consequences: we can still go to a club meeting and talk to our friends and stop for pizza after the meeting, we can still go to a contest and look at the models and buy more kits even if we don't enter any models.<br />
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Years go by and it gets easier and easier not to build. We feel bad, but the bad feeling doesn't last long enough to motivate us to do something about it. Our natural tendency to procrastinate has helped us train ourselves to<i><b> never actually finish anything!</b></i><br />
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If psychology explains our procrastination, does it tell us how to fix it?<br />
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Many human behaviors are more a product of habit than conscious thought. Doing the same thing the same way over and over becomes instinctive. Practice helps us to do those things with less effort and fewer mistakes. As part of becoming empty-nesters my wife and I worked out a deal where she cooks and I clean up the kitchen. After months of having to be reminded, it finally became automatic for me to carry the dishes to the dishwasher after dinner - to the point where I feel a little uncomfortable when we're in a hurry and we just stack the dishes for later.<br /><br />
If this sounds a lot like teaching a dog to sit or roll-over, you're right: habits are formed in a part of the brain that is common to most animals; they represent one of the most basic sorts of learned behavior. At least in humans these automatic behaviors are monitored and can be overridden by the more conscious parts of the brain, but the habits themselves seem to be formed in the same way in dogs and people: through simple repetition.<br />
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What the animal trainers have known for a long time is that developing these automatic behaviors is a lot easier when there is <i><b>immediate</b></i> feedback to reinforce the desired behavior: a reward for getting it right or a punishment for getting it wrong. If the reward comes too late its not nearly as effective - we don't associate the behavior with the reward. The problem with building models is that the feedback is not immediate: it can take weeks or months at the workbench before we get to show off the model at a club meeting or enter it in a contest. If you - like me - are a natural born procrastinator, you need to come up with some more timely sort of feedback to keep you focused. Here is a laundry list of such techniques - a few that have worked for me and some recommended by others.<br />
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<b>Schedule your work sessions.</b> Take a calendar or datebook and mark off all the obligations you just have to do and figure out when you <b><i>can</i></b> model. Be realistic. You can't model from midnight to 2AM if you have to get up at 6AM for work the next day. If your whole family gets together to watch a TV show, you don't want to miss that time together (and you probably won't no matter what you think you're going to do). If you have small children you probably aren't going to get 5 hours uninterrupted at the bench. But try to find a time-slot or two where you can fairly reliably get to the bench, and put it on your calendar (or the calendar app in your smart phone). Remember the idea is to make your modeling part of your regular routine.<br />
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<b>Commit to a Goal. </b>For the modeling procrastinator, just having a newly finished model to take to a contest can be its own reward. The trap is that there is always another contest just over the horizon; if you don't get a model finished for one of the "spring shows", maybe you can get something done for the IPMS Nat's in mid-summer, and if not there are always the "fall shows" a few months after that. When the reward is not immediate, having a reminder of the specific goal/reward you're working to can help keep you motivated.<br />
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Pick a specific show a few months out and commit to taking a model: hang the show flyer over your workbench. Make plans with your friends to attend. Pick a model you've been working on (don't start another new kit) - because the less you have to do to finish the better.<br />
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And then count the days until the show. In the old science fiction movie <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Worlds_Collide_(1951_film)">"When Worlds Collide"</a></i>, a rogue star is going to destroy the Earth and the good-guy scientists are building a spaceship to allow a lucky few to escape. At the gate to the factory where they are building the spaceship there is a sign counting down the days to the end of the world, with the caption "waste anything except this time". You can easily make a sign like this with a pack of sticky-notes; tearing the days off on every trip to the work bench will help you avoid the trap of thinking "I still have all the time in the world" (the sticky notes you tear off have lots of uses, like masking or a handy place to mix epoxy).<br />
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<b>Doggie Treats. </b> If you've ever tried to teach a dog some simple trick like shaking hands, you know how important it is to reward the dog with some praise and an occasional biscuit when they get it right. A lot of behavioral research has found that rewards work much better than punishments, and the reward has to come immediately after the desired behavior. So try to build some simple rewards into your modeling routine:<br />
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<li>If you model in the evening finish up with a late night snack or an adult beverage, or watch your favorite TV show before calling it a night (DVRs are great for fitting your modeling around your TV watching and are worth the few extra dollars your cable company changes).</li>
<li>If you spend all Saturday afternoon at the workbench take your <i><b>Significant Other</b></i> out for dinner or to the movies afterwards.</li>
<li>If your modeling club gets together before or after the meeting for pizza and beer, make that your reward for taking something, even a work-in-progress, to the meeting to show.</li>
<li>When you finish an old kit allow yourself to buy a new kit. </li>
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Keep it simple, but try to associate your modeling sessions and especially finishing models with something else you really enjoy.<br />
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<b>Checklists</b>. One of the things I noticed in my IPMS club is that some (certainly not all) of our more prolific modelers have military backgrounds. It got me thinking there was something about their training and way of life that taught them not to procrastinate.<br />
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Since I was never in the military this is a bit of guesswork, but from talking to my friends who are veterans I suspect what makes a difference is the military's tendency to "procedure-ize" tasks. For every job a serviceman needs to do there are an exacting set of steps to complete it. While the "Army Way" is the butt of a lot of jokes, it does insure a consistent, generally more than adequate result. More importantly for our purposes, crossing off each step provides immediate feedback of progress. I've had some success in modeling making to-do lists for each session, and literally crossing things off with a big black marker can be a real morale booster, at least for some folks.<br />
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If you're comfortable with using computer spreadsheets (like Excel) they can be used to keep checklists that can be sorted and updated in ways you just can't do with paper. I've been poking around with this; when I work the bugs I'll share the results in another one of these articles.<br />
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<b>Greasing the skids. </b>Procrastinators love excuses for not doing things. Anything you can do to remove roadblocks will make it more likely you actually get to the bench and stay long enough to accomplish something. Clean your bench so there is just 1 model taking up space and sort your tools so you can actually find them. Get a radio or small TV so you can listen or watch sports while you're modeling (baseball and football games are full of long stretches of commercials and guys standing around doing nothing). If your metabolism relies on coffee to keep your heart pumping, take a few cups in a thermos or add a small coffee maker to your work space.<br />
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<b>Enough theory. </b> I'm going to put this to the test by finishing a model for the R4 Regional Convention in April; watch this space to for updates on what does and doesn't work for me. Or leave a comment with <b><i>your</i></b> favorite tips for beating procrastination (aka <i><b>modeler's block</b></i>). Now go build something!<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-56994564246018840322017-11-19T23:28:00.001-05:002020-11-07T10:21:50.290-05:00A GT40 Detective StoryI thought I knew all there was to know about the GT40 - Ford's legendary race car from the 1960s. And then I saw a picture on Facebook of a GT40 at the Holman&Moody shop sometime between 1988 and 1990, taken by Russ Haines when he worked at H&M. Russ had asked if anyone knew anything about where this car was now. I thought this was going to be easy, but I would learn a lot more about the GT40 then I imagined before I figured it out. Not that I discovered something no one else had known, but this was a pretty obscure piece of GT40 history and putting it all together was kind of fun. <br />
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<i><i>Many thanks to Russ Haines for letting me use his photos!</i></i></div>
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<a name="more"></a><b><span><a name='more'></a></span>A bit of background</b> for those who are not hardcore GT40 aficionados... In the 1950s Ford cars had gained a reputation as reliable but dowdy. After the war, GM had developed new overhead-valve V8s for all of their product lines, but Ford kept flogging their flathead V8 that had its origins back in 1932. When Ford finally developed new V8s of their own, they were heavy, conservative designs with limited performance potential.<br />
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Then in 1960 Lido "Lee" Iaccoca became general manager of Ford. Iaccoca had worked his way up through the Ford sales and marketing organization, and he knew what made people <i><b>want</b></i> to buy cars. He would launch a new marketing campaign known as <b><i>Total Performance</i></b>, which focused on racing and offered big-motor versions of most of Ford's various models.<br />
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Ford's lineup was especially weak when it came to sports cars. Ford had dabbled with the 2-seater Thunderbird in the mid-1950s, but had pulled the plug in the face of limited sales. What the bean counters failed to realize was that cars like the T-bird helped generate excitement that brought people into the showrooms, even though they might leave with a Falcon or Galaxie family car. Chevy's Corvette owned that market niche, and Ford had nothing in the pipeline that could compete (the Mustang was still just a glimmer in Iaccoca's eye, and would take another 4 years to develop).<br />
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As a stop-gap Ford would make a deal with Carroll Shelby to build Ford powered Cobras, but they lacked even basic creature comforts like roll-up windows and heaters. The well-heeled buyers who might buy a Cobra to impress the boys at the country club were unwilling to pay top dollar for a car that could only be driven on sunny summer days. So in early 1963 Ford decided they would buy Ferrari. Today that sounds a little ridiculous, but at the time Ferrari was only selling a few 100 cars a year and Ford was one of the biggest companies in the world; Ford was paying just $10 million dollars for half-ownership. And then at the last minute Enzo got cold feet and backed out of the deal. Henry Ford II was not happy, in an "I want revenge" kind of way.<br />
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Ford bought the design of the Lola GT from Eric Broadley, a thoroughly modern (for 1963) mid-engine race car built around Ford's new small V8. And then opened a production line in England to produce the cars necessary to qualify it to race in the FIA sports car races in Europe - races that had been dominated by Ferrari for a decade. It would take millions of dollars and years of development, but Ford GT40s would finally sweep LeMans (placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd) in 1966 and win again in '67, '68 and '69. Along the way, the GT40 would go through several iterations:<br />
<ul>
<li>The original Ford GT. This first batch of cars were intended to be powered by Ford's 255 cubic inch pushrod Indy-car engine, developed from their new small block V8. This sounded good on paper, but Le Mans is a lot longer than the 500 mile Indy race, and the engines - not to mention the transaxles - didn't have the necessary durability.</li>
<li>The GT40 MkI. This marks the point where Shelby took over development of the car, adding the "40" to the name. The Indy car motor was swapped out for the same production based 289 inch version of the Ford V8 that Shelby used in the Cobras, and the bodywork was tweaked for 200 mph stability. The MkIs had some racing success, and were eventually sold in (theoretically) street drivable "road coupe" form.</li>
<li>The GT40 MkII. This was essentially the MkI chassis with a NASCAR derived 427 inch "big block" V8, de-tuned slightly for reliability in endurance races. These were the cars that won all the big races in 1966.</li>
<li>GT40 MkIIa and MkIIb. These were just MkIIs upgraded for 1967 with the latest engines, bodywork and safety equipment. Most notable differences were dual 4-barrel carbs on the big V8, a new dash and a roll-cage in the cabin. These cars were essentially backups for the new MkIV.</li>
<li>GT40 MkIII. These were just MkIs modified to be slightly more street-legal (the headlights were re-positioned to meet height standards and mufflers were added to the exhaust). The revised bodywork was a little clunky and only a handful were sold.</li>
<li>GT40 MkIV. This was an all new car, developed in the US by Ford's Kar Kraft subsidiary. It bore a family resemblance to the MkII, but was a completely new design with an aluminum honeycomb chassis to reduce weight. Power came from an uprated version of the 427 used by the MkII. Less than a dozen MkIVs were built, and they were purely race cars. Development of the MkIV had started in 1965, when it wasn't clear the MkIIs would be able to get the job done against the Ferraris; Ford continued the program even after winning Le Mans in '66 to allow them to notch an "All American" victory. The MkIVs would only enter (and win) a few races in 1967, including a 1st and 4th finish at Le Mans, before Ford pulled out of endurance racing.</li>
</ul>
All of the MkI-MkII-MkIII cars used chassis built in England; the mechanicals and bodywork were added at either FAV in England, or shipped to the US for completion at Kar Kraft or Shelby American or H&M. The earliest cars were issued 3 digit serial numbers starting with 101; with the name change to GT40 the numbers switched to 4 digits, starting with 1000. Since the cars were repainted frequently and were driven by a number of different drivers at various races, GT40 aficionados use the chassis numbers to keep track of their favorite cars, and throw the numbers around when discussing their racing history. For example car 1075 is well known as the Gulf sponsored two time ('68 and '69) Le Mans winner.<br />
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<b>Back to that picture... </b>What jumps out at you is that this is a red GT40 with white stripes, like the factory cars wore in the 1966 racing season. The doors are missing, but there is a bit of a roundel visible on the rocker panel under the door with the bottom curve of a number that could be a 3, 5, 6, 8 or even a 9. The rear bodywork and wheels are also missing, but the engine is all there - and it looks to be a big-block 427 with a single Holley carburetor. The dash looks to be the original MkI/MkII item. According to the Facebook post the car was rumored to have a Le Mans history.<br />
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Taking all this at face value suggests this is a 1966 GT40 MkII. I say "face value", because there were a lot of these cars built and it is fairly common for a pedestrian MkI with no racing history to be done up as a more famous car. But leaving aside that possibility, I checked <a href="http://www.racingsportscars.com/photo/Le_Mans-1966-06-19.html">racingsportscars.com</a> to see which car (or cars) it might have been.<br />
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And the obvious answer is chassis 1047 - driven by Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant. This car had started from the pole and was at the front of the pack (trading the lead with Ken Miles and Denny Hulme in MkII 1015) when its radiator was damaged, putting 1047 out of the race after 257 laps. 1047 was painted red with white stripes and wearing a big number 3.<br />
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There are a few websites with fairly complete histories of all of the GT40s, organized by chassis number (like this <a href="https://autooftheday.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/gt40s-chassis-by-chassis/">one</a>). According to the registries, after the 1966 Le Mans, the 1047 car was upgraded to MkIIb specs and raced again at Daytona in 1967 where the engine would fail.<br />
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After Daytona, 1047 was sent to H&M to be prepared for Le Mans. And then something curious happened. GT40 1031 was a sister-car to 1047, and it too was at H&M being updated to MkIIb specs in preparation for Le Mans. While the details are fuzzy, it seems that when the two cars were put back together their chassis numbers were switched, with 1031 renumbered as 1047, and the "real"1047 becoming 1031. In 1967 the MkIIs were repainted several times, and parts were constantly being swapped, making their identities somewhat fuzzy. Given the number of cars H&M was readying for Le Mans it would have been easy to mix up parts, and as long as the two numbers matched the Le Mans registration no one may have noticed.<br />
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At Le Mans the car previously-known-as-1031, painted light blue with black-striping similar to that used on the new MkIVs and wearing number 57 - would lose an engine. The car now-known-as-1031, painted gold with white-stripes and wearing number 5 - would crash into a MkIV in rather spectacular fashion. After the race both MkIIs were sent back to H&M to be repaired. Ford had promised Ford France a MkII to run at the smaller European races for the rest of the season, and the car they sent back across the Atlantic was 1031-wearing-number-1047.<i> </i><br />
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<i>Some big-names believe that the number swap happened <b>after</b> Le Mans, when H&M quickly salvaged the two cars to ready a replacement for Ford France. One theory is that the renumbering was <b>intentional</b>, to match the registration paperwork at 1047's next scheduled race at Riems - where it would win. The current thinking, based on carefully comparing photographs, is that the number swap happened before Le Mans, and some of the online registries have changed their chassis listings for Le Mans - and some haven't - which can really make things confusing!</i><br />
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What is certain is that at the end of the 1967 season 1031/1047 would be sold off to the first of several French collectors, who kept it in their private collections for the next 30 years. Meanwhile H&M would put the "other" car back together; now wearing 1031, and sell it to a Japanese collector. That car seems to have spent most of 3 decades in a storage container in Japan. Being on opposite sides of the world, no one noticed the number foul-up until both cars were bought by US collectors in the early 2000s and sent out for restoration (details <a href="http://www.racingicons.com/gt/1031_1047.htm">here</a>).<br />
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Back to the picture taken in the late 1980s: neither of the two cars that <i>might</i> have been 1047 were in the US at this time. So much for the obvious answer. Back to the theory that this was a MkI car that had been turned into a MkII (there were only a bakers dozen of MkII cars built, and aside from the 1031/1047 mix up their history is fairly well known). Assuming the mystery car <i>was</i> at Le Mans in 1966, there were only a handful of MkIs, and only 1 was <b><i>red</i></b>. Car 1040 belonged to Scuderia Filipinetti, a private team owned by Swiss businessman Georges Filipinetti; at the 1966 Le Mans it was painted red with white stripes, and wore number 14.<br />
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But a little digging ruled out 1040 as well. In 1967 that car crashed at LeMans and then caught fire at Monza; it was repaired but painted gold until 1989 when a full restoration began that would take 18 years to complete; it was not in pristine red paint in the 1988-90 time frame.<br />
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This whole time I had been chatting with Russ; he found another picture of the car in one piece on the road outside the H&M shop.<br />
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All of the details in this picture scream GT40 MkII. For me, this picture was the last nail in the coffin of my theory that this was a MkI rebuilt into a MkII; everything just looked right. Below is a picture of MkII 1032 I took at the <a href="http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/at-the-track/museum">Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum</a> just after it was completely restored to Le Mans specification by a group of retired Ford engineers; it looks just like the red mystery car (several of the Le Mans cars got gaudy day-glow graphics like this to help the pit-crews tell the cars apart at night).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MkII #1032 restored to the way it looked at LeMans in 1966.</td></tr>
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I was ready to admit defeat. And then while looking through the chassis number registry, I noticed there were a few cars listed way down at the end of the page that did not have 3 or 4 digit numeric chassis numbers. Instead these cars had numbers mixed with letters, like AMGT-1 and XGT-1.<br />
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A little more Googling turned up yet more GT40 trivia. Enter <b>Alan Mann</b>, a British version of Carroll Shelby; Mann was a weekend racer who had wrangled a job at a British Ford dealership, and would use his connections to get Ford to sponsor a small racing team that had a fair amount of success in the early 1960s. In 1964 Ford would use the team as a sort of skunk works to test the racing capabilities of the new Mustang; the team would get several Mustangs before they even appeared in American show rooms. As John Wyer struggled to turn the early GT (with Ford's Indy engine) into a proper race car, Mann had an idea for a lightened version of the GT40: he would replace some of the steel chassis with aluminum, and instead of the high-strung Indy engine the car would be powered with a hotted up production Ford 289 like the ones H&M had sent for his Mustang race cars. Mann would use his connections with Ford to buy 5 MkI chassis (not complete cars) from Ford; they would be delivered <i>unnumbered</i>.<br />
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Mann would actually build two lightweights, attaching his own chassis numbers AM GT-1 and AM GT-2, and while the idea showed promise, by that time Ford and Shelby had settled on the 427 powered cars as the path to greater performance and reliability. <i>Some Mann insiders claim Ford intentionally delayed sending the latest 289 performance parts to make sure the big-block cars had an edge; the parts would only arrive after Le Mans. John Wyer would use this basic strategy in his Gulf sponsored cars, dominating the '68 and '69 racing seasons, including back-to-back wins at Le Mans.</i> The three remaining, unnumbered chassis were sent to Shelby to be modified to MkII specs, and returned to Mann, who would run a third team of MkII cars at European events during the 1966 season. These three cars would receive chassis numbers XGT-1, XGT-2 and XGT-3. Mann would race XGT-1 and XGT-2 at Le Mans in 1966, although neither would finish. XGT-3 was at Le Mans too, but as a <i><b>spare</b></i> - it did not run during the race.<br />
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After Ford's big 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans in 1966, most of the MkIIs in the race were repaired and sent back into the fray, running at various European races or sent back to H&M to be rebuilt for the 1967 season. Even car 1046, the black-with-silver-stripes MkII that <i><b>won</b></i> the '66 Le Mans for Ford for the first time ever would race again the next season, and eventually be scavenged for parts before finally being restored years later. In 1967 the drivers had yet to become racing icons and the GT40s were just worn out and fast becoming obsolete race cars; after Le Mans most of the team cars would be sold off to private racing teams to flog a few years longer, or sold to a celebrity looking for something outrageous to drive to Hollywood parties. A few left over MkIs would bounce around the US for a few more years, some would eventually sell for as little as $8000 versus the original $18,000 asking price (in 1969 $8000 was still a lot of money - it would have bought <b><i>two</i></b> BOSS 302 Mustangs with plenty of change left over for gas).<br />
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But XGT-3 had <i>never</i> raced; it was in pristine condition and painted an eye-catching red. It and a few other MkIIs were sent back to the States for publicity purposes, touring Ford dealerships and county fairs on a trailer behind a Ford Ranchero. Most of the MkIIs from the tour eventually made it back to the race track in '67, but XGT-3 was special: it had become the star of a series of Autolite sparkplug advertisements. After a few years having its picture taken, it would end up in storage at Ford headquarters until years later when Ford did some house cleaning and sold it off to a collector.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1967 Autolite Ad featuring XGT-3.</td></tr>
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Needless to say, typing XGT-3 into Google image search turned up a bunch of pictures of a car just like the one in Russ's photographs; today it seems to make regular appearances at the Pebble Beach Concours. The final bit of confirmation: the registry showed that XGT-3 was offered for sale through H&M's brokerage service in 2003, which would make sense if it was being maintained at H&M prior to that. This is about as sure as I'm going to get that the car in Russ's photo <i>is</i> XGT-3.<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-61917100684929510232016-12-11T22:58:00.000-05:002017-03-05T11:50:41.082-05:00The Gulf Boys Go Racing (part 2)In <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-gulf-boys-go-racing-part-1.html" target="_blank">part 1 </a>we ended with Grady Davis teaming up with John Wyer in late 1966, leading to the formation of <b>JW Automotive Engineering</b> (JWA) in England and the first official <b>Gulf Racing </b>team making its debut in 1967. Lets pick up the story there...<br />
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Wyer knew he had to move fast; even with his plan to breathe new life into the GT40, the design was already showing its age - its steel monocoque chassis would soon be too heavy to be competitive with newer cars using lightweight composite materials. Neither Wyer or Davis wanted to spend all of 1967 developing cars that wouldn't race for another year. With Gulf's money, Wyer had a chance to have his reworked GT40 (to be named the <i><b>Mirage</b></i>) ready for Le Mans in June, but the big races at Daytona in February and Sebring in April were a bit of a stretch. Enter Davis's personal GT40, the dark blue "road coupe" that Dick Thompson had been flogging around Pittsburgh area SCCA races in late 1966.<br />
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Wyer would ship all the parts needed to turn Davis's car into a state of the art "race coupe" (many of the parts had been developed for the big-block MkIIs and were significant upgrades over the MkI race cars from just 2 years earlier). Davis would add a wide orange stripe and a few "Gulf" decals. Dick Thompson - a veteran of the early unofficial Gulf Racing team and still a Washington DC dentist - would join with John Wyer's driver Jacky Ickx for Daytona, pulling off a 6th place overall (the Ford factory team's big-block GT40 MkIIs would all break due to faulty gearboxes). At Sebring Davis would tap Ed Lowther, another Pittsburgh businessman who raced on the weekends (and who had driven for Davis occasionally since the early Corvette days) to team with Thompson. They wouldn't be so lucky this time, losing the engine early in the race, but gaining valuable experience.<br />
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Davis's old friend Don Yenko was also at Sebring, driving an L-88 Corvette - sponsored by Gulf rival Sunray Oil. The striking red, white and blue Sunray Corvette was essentially a test-mule for a bigger effort Sunray had planned; a similar Corvette (built by Dana Chevrolet in California) would run at Le Mans that summer with Dick Guldstrand and Bob Bondurant driving. Yenko and Sunray would have some success, but it would be short lived; in 1968 Sunray would be bought by Sun Oil (aka Sunoco), who already had their own racing program - most notably Richard Penske's Corvette and Trans Am efforts - and the Sunray team would be shutdown. Over the next few years Don Yenko would come close to driving at Le Mans several times but never actually would.<br />
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A month after Sebring, Dick Thompson would fly to Spa for the the first big race of JWA's new Mirage, teaming with Jacky Ickx again - a driving team that seemed to have luck on their side. Ford had provided Wyer with a number of new 302 and 351 inch versions of their small block V8, prepared by the engine gurus at Holmann&Moody. The Mirage was painted in powder blue (the corporate color of the Wilshire Oil Company, a California oil company Gulf had bought in 1960) with a Gulf orange stripe over the roof, a color combination that would become one of the most famous racing liveries of all time. The two would win at Spa, raising hopes for a good showing at Le Mans.<br />
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But Le Mans is rarely kind to optimists or the ill prepared. One of the Mirages would last just 29 laps, the other 59. 59 laps at Le Mans, about 1/4 of a whole race, is nearly 500 miles - but that's about twice the length of the typical Trans Am race. While the small-block Ford engines were plenty strong, ancillary parts - especially head gaskets - weren't up to the long term punishment. Wyer would continue to develop the engines until they were reliable at Le Mans distances, and would have some success the rest of that summer, but not surprisingly that first year was a mixed bag, with a number of DNFs.<br />
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As expected, for 1968 the FIA lowered the displacement limits for the endurance racers, and threw everyone a curve by limiting the engine displacement of the low-production "prototypes" to just 3 liters. "Sports cars" (requiring at least 25 units be built) were allowed 5 liter engines (at least for the moment), but Wyer had built only 3 Mirages. This was a technicality: a Mirage was essentially a re-bodied GT40, but it was officially manufactured by JW Engineering, not the Ford Motor company, and the FIA was not about to do any favors for teams with American hardware, regardless of what name was on the paperwork. So instead Wyer "re-built" the Mirages back into GT40s so they could continue to run the "big" 5 liter Ford V8s.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Replica of 1969 Le Mans Winning Gulf GT40,<br />
Photographed at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix 2016</td></tr>
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Dick Thompson - who had been driving and winning for Grady Davis since 1960 - was 48 years old in 1968, and still spent much of his time drilling teeth: he was out of his depth competing with professional drivers half his age at the big high-speed European races. Moreover, he had not impressed John Wyer the year before, having wrecked a Mirage at Brands Hatch on one of the few occasions the JWA car was running well. After the '67 season he would "retire", and John Wyer would hire a few young-guns with solid endurance racing experience - Belgian Jacky Icxx, Brits Brian Redman and David Hobbs, and Mexican Pedro Rodriguez would all win races in the Gulf/Wyer GT40s.<br />
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Wyer would finally have his revenge, winning 5 of the 10 FIA sanctioned events, <i>including</i> Le Mans. Since the GT40s were still considered Fords, he would also earn Ford another FIA Manufacturer's Championship in 1968. Wyer would nearly repeat in 1969, winning Le Mans again with the <i>same </i>GT40 that won the year before, and earning Ford a 2nd place in the Manufacturer's Championship.<br />
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A brief diversion: in 1958 a young Bruce McLaren - a budding race driver and car builder - had left home in New Zealand for an apprenticeship with the Cooper F1 team in England. He proved to be a talented engineer, mechanic and driver and was soon working his way up through the F1 ranks. In 1963 John Wyer would recruit him to drive for his last Aston Martin team, and then brought him on to the GT40 effort the following year, culminating in McLaren taking Ford's first Le Mans win in 1966 - an impressive addition to the young driver's resume.<br />
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By the time of Wyer's Gulf deal, McLaren was having some success building cars and driving in both F1 and the new North American CanAm series. Wyer would introduce Davis and McLaren, resulting in the iconic orange McLaren's wearing Gulf logos during the 1968 and 69 series when the CanAm series became known as the "Bruce and Denny Show", with Bruce McLaren and teammate Denny Hulme winning nearly every CanAm event that season.<br />
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But back to JWA. All good things must come to an end; in 1970 the basic GT40 design was 7 years old and Ford was no longer putting millions of dollars into its development. In 1969 Porsche had gotten serious about an outright win at LeMans and had developed a GT40-killer: the 12-cylinder Porsche 917. Not surprisingly, the Porsche's first outings against Wyer's GT40s were plagued with reliability and stability problems, but the writing was on the wall: the 917 - with its lightweight tube frame, composite body panels and all new flat 12 engine - was more than a match for the aging Ford and its push-rod V8.<br />
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Porsche wanted their first outright Le Mans win as badly as Ford had in 1965, and they knew Ferrari was building a new 5-liter 12-cylinder car of their own for the 1970 season, so they would take a page from the Ford play book: Porsche would do a deal with John Wyer and Gulf Oil to further develop the 917 and race it in the 1970 season in much the same way Shelby had developed the GT40 for Ford, and then Porsche quietly set up <i>another</i> factory 917 team, officially sponsored by the Porsche Salzburg holding company, and also provided significant support to a third team sponsored by Italian beverage company Martini&Rossi.<br />
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Porsche had designed the 917 to be very low drag to allow high top speeds at fast tracks like Le Mans, but with the limited aerodynamics of the time <i>low drag</i> also meant <i>low down-force</i>, making the car difficult to drive. JWA would put a lot of effort into making the 917 more stable; they would eventually shorten the rear bodywork and add a horizontal spoiler, trading a small bit of drag for a lot of stability and creating the 917K variant ("K" for <i>kurz heck</i>, German for <i>short tail</i>).<br />
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There would be 8 Porsche 917s entered at Le Mans that year - including 6 of the short-tail 917Ks - plus 2 new 917L (<i>lang heck</i> - long tail) cars with a big rear wing added to improve stability, plus 11 of Ferrari's new 512Ss, plus a number of slightly older Porsche 908s and Ferrari 312Ps. It must have been amazing to see and <i>hear</i> all those 12 cylinder cars facing off on the Mulsanne Straight. Wyer ran three 917Ks, and would have had four - with actor Steve McQueen driving the fourth car - except the FIA had declined McQueen's entry at the last minute. At the end of the race, everyone - especially John Wyer - was a bit surprised to see a 917K finish in first place <i>not</i> wearing Gulf colors. The three Gulf cars had all DNF'd due to accidents and engine failure while the Porsche Salzburg team, with Hans Herrman and Richard Atwood driving, would bring home the win, followed by a Martini 917L in second and an aging Martini 908 in third.<br />
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Despite the bad luck at Le Mans, that year Gulf-Wyer 917s would take first place at 7 of the 10 FIA races, insuring Porsche the manufacturers championship. In 1971 Wyer's 917s would do almost as well, winning 5 of the 11 FIA races and placing second at Le Mans, sealing another manufacturer's championship for Porsche.<br />
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Then in 1972 the FIA would finally kill off the big-motor cars. Under their new rules, the top-dog prototype cars were limited to 3.0 liter engines, with the intent of allowing race teams to use F1 engines. JWA would go back to building their own cars - Mirages - powered by the already venerable Ford-Cosworth DFV engine. The new Mirages showed promise, but it was clear the DFV would require a lot of development work for 24 hour reliability. John Wyer would retire at the end of 1972, turning JWA over to new managment. Back in Pittsburgh, Grady Davis was also nearing retirement age; he managed to lock in funding for what was left of the JWA team for a few more years and got a retirement present in 1975 - the year after his last day at Gulf Oil - in the form of one more Le Mans win by a blue and orange Mirage.<br />
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With the OPEC oil shortages of the mid 1970s, Gulf had little interest in racing. Consumers cared more about mileage than performance and FIA racing focused more on production based cars - even the European auto makers gave up on developing and building super expensive prototype racers.<br />
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By the early 1980s the oil industry was in turmoil. Starting in the 1970s the middle east oil countries had nationalized their oil businesses, breaking the sweetheart deals the US oil companies had made back in the 1930s. The oil companies were still making money, just not quite as fast as in the past, and the impact of that drop on stock prices - compared to the value of all the refineries and tankers and such - made many oil companies prime targets for takeovers by so called "corporate raiders". To "protect" themselves, in 1985 <b><i>Gulf Oil</i></b> would merge with <b><i>Standard Oil of California,</i></b> creating the new company <b><i>Chevron</i></b>, with offices in California. Chevron would shutdown the Gulf offices and research facilities in Pittsburgh, putting lots of executives and scientists out of work and leaving their 1930s art deco headquarters building empty (my first real job with a real office, at a Pittsburgh software startup company in the 1990s, was in that building - at the time all but 4 of its 44 floors were deserted).<br />
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Don Yenko was killed in a crash while landing his private plane in 1987. John Wyer retired to Arizona; he passed away in 1989. In the 1990s Chevron would dabble with reintroducing the Gulf name, resulting in a few McLaren F1 GTRs racing in Gulf's trademark blue and orange colors. Grady Davis would die in the fall of 1995, living long enough to see a Gulf sponsored car run at Le Mans one more time, although the Gulf McLaren would only manage a 4th place. The Gulf McLarens would have a good run through 1999, although they never matched JWA's dominance.<br />
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In 2010 Chevron would finally sell off the <b><i>Gulf</i></b> name; it is now owned by a petroleum distribution company who owns and operates oil terminals and gas stations and such around the world. This new Gulf Oil company would continue sponsoring assorted racing teams through at least 2014 with the blue-and-orange scheme gracing both Audi prototypes and Aston Martin race cars. Today - 2016 - Gulf Racing seems to have faded away again - maybe for the last time. If the stunning blue-and-orange cars do make a comeback, the modern team will be hard pressed to match the passion and spirit of adventure that Davis and Yenko and Wyer brought in those simpler days. But we can hope...<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-9438952414307010002016-09-12T23:43:00.000-04:002016-12-28T09:44:25.275-05:00The Gulf Boys Go Racing (part 1)<div style="text-align: left;">
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When Andrew Carnegie sold the <i>Carnegie Steel </i>company in 1901 to create <i>US Steel</i>, he became - at least by some measures - the richest private person then or since. But Carnegie had accomplished something even more impressive: <i>Carnegie Steel </i>had attracted and nurtured a technology base in the Pittsburgh region that would be unmatched until the rise of Silicon Valley nearly a century later. The Mellon and Pittsburgh National banks had grown rich financing the fledgling steel industry, and would continue to invest in Pittsburgh's entrepreneurs and engineers to develop the modern electrical power industry (Westinghouse), the aluminum industry (Alcoa), processed food (Heinz), and heavy manufacturing (Blaw-Knox, American Bridge and others).</div>
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At the same time that Andrew Carnegie had been building <i>Carnegie Steel,</i> John D. Rockefeller was building the <i>Standard Oil </i>empire. While the automobile had not yet been invented, neither had the the electric light bulb or commercial electricity generation; petroleum products were in demand for lighting, heating and increasingly for commercial lubrication. In 1900 a number of Pittsburgh businessmen lead by William Mellon decided to get into the growing petroleum industry, and it wasn't their style to make a small investment in someone else's company; instead they got together and built a refinery near the newly discovered oil fields in Texas, followed by a number of pipelines, service stations, a fleet of oil tankers and other bits of infrastructure to support the rapidly growing automobile industry. A few years later, these investments were consolidated as the <i>Gulf Oil</i> company, which would soon grow to rival giant <i>Standard Oil.</i><br />
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<i></i>Born in 1908, in a <i>really</i> small town in Texas not too far from Austin and the East Texas oil fields, <i><b>Irion Grady Davis</b></i> (you sometimes see him use his first initial, but mostly he just went by "Grady") had studied geology at Texas University, followed by a few years of polishing at Harvard. Fresh out of school, he went to work for Gulf Oil, spending 20 years in their Venezuelan operation. He apparently knew how to work with foreign governments to get things done, and in the mid 1950s was promoted to Administrative Vice President of Gulf Oil and transferred to Gulf's headquarters in Pittsburgh. A few years later he was promoted to Executive Vice President - the number 2 spot in the company. He would play a big part negotiating with the Kuwaiti government for access to cheap middle eastern oil, which would allow Gulf to expand into Europe.<br />
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Grady Davis - early 1960s</td></tr>
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Image shamelessly stolen from the <a href="http://www.corvettemuseum.org/learn/about-corvette/corvette-hall-of-fame/grady-davis/" target="_blank">Corvette Hall of Fame</a> website, lots of good stuff there.</blockquote>
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Davis may have looked like an escapee from a <a href="http://www.amc.com/shows/mad-men" target="_blank">Mad Men</a> episode, but he had a passion for fast cars - he was one of the first in the city to have one of the new V8 Corvettes. <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2013/02/thinking-pink.html" target="_blank">Donna Mae Mimms</a>, another local Corvette owner and sometimes racer, would see Davis's car parked on the street and leave a card on the windshield inviting him to join the local <a href="http://www.ccwp.org/" target="_blank">Corvette Club of Western Pennsylvania</a>. Donna would introduce Davis to Don Yenko - the son of a local Chevy dealer who had been racing Corvettes in SCCA events for several years - a relationship that would grow into the early semi-official Gulf racing team.<br />
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Between Davis's own substantial fortunes, his access to Gulf Oil's engineering facilities, and Yenko's connections at General Motors and his driving skill, they made an impressive team. In late 1960 Davis bought two new '61 Corvettes, with Yenko checking off all the unofficial racing options on the order sheet: high performance fuel-injected 283 engine, heavy duty 4-speed, posi-traction rear end, bigger brakes and stiffer springs. Along with the cars a number of boxes arrived without official part numbers, including a massive 37 gallon fuel tank and aerodynamic headlight covers.<br />
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Davis and Yenko took the cars to the 12 hour race in Sebring that spring; one blew an engine, while the other (co driven by Don Yenko and accomplished Corvette driver Ben Moore) held on to finish 32nd overall and 3rd in the over 3 liter GT class.<br />
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After Sebring the team would run in a number of east-coast SCCA races, and Don Yenko racked up a number of victories on the club-racing circuit. Grady Davis did drive at a few races, but without much success (best finish was a 5th place overall), and Gulf wasn't exactly happy about having a senior executive dicing with part-time racers on small-time race tracks, so the team would typically recruit local drivers to pilot the second car.<br />
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Halfway through 1961, a tech inspection at an SCCA race found an aluminum flywheel in Don Yenko's Corvette, legal for the FIA race in Sebring but not for use in SCCA events, resulting in a 6 month suspension from SCCA racing for Yenko. In need of a top-notch replacement driver, Davis would reach out to Dick Thompson, a dentist from Washington DC who was building a reputation as a solid driver in SCCA events. Thompson would win the rest of the SCCA events the car was entered in that season, resulting in a B-production SCCA class championship for Thompson (and unofficially for Davis's informal team).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dick Thompson driving the '61 Gulf Corvette -<br />
Picture taken from a period Gulf ad</td></tr>
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1962 went like a replay of the '61 racing season. Chevy would offer a new 327 inch version of their small-block V8 in the Corvette that year, giving the Corvette enough power to compete with the Ferraris in the top A-production SCCA class. Davis would run the previous year's 283 and a new 327 powered car, covering both A and B-production. The team would start the season with a 1st and 2nd place GT class finish at Sebring, followed by top finishes at most of the season's SCCA races, resulting in both Dick Thompson and Don Yenko taking (respectively) the A-production and B-production class championships.<br />
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1963 promised to be a repeat of the previous two years, with Davis buying - and Yenko's shop preparing - two new for '63 Corvette Stingray split-window coupes, the first Corvette with independent rear suspension. The car was ordered with Chevy's Z06 racing package - essentially all the heavy duty parts Don Yenko had special ordered for past Gulf cars. Davis would again take two cars to Sebring to start the season, although one would blow an engine and the other would only manage a 4th in class. In SCCA racing Don Yenko would clean up in B-production yet again, but the top-dog A-production class was a different story: a funny little car - something called a <b><i>Shelby Cobra</i></b> - would appear at race tracks and literally run away from Chevy's plastic sports car.<br />
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Despite the Corvette's powerful 327 engine and new IRS, compared to the Cobra the new 'Vette was <i>heavy</i>. In racing, weight is the enemy: in addition to the obvious impact on acceleration, weight adds to increased fuel consumption and stress and wear and tear on everything - especially on brakes and tires. Chevy had used fiberglass for the Corvette's body because it was cheaper to manufacture in small volume production than stamped steel. Contrary to common wisdom the thick fiberglass was not much lighter than steel and was not nearly as strong, requiring a heavy steel frame to give the car reasonable stiffness. By comparison, the Cobra was smaller and its light weight aluminum body was tightly integrated with the cars steel tube frame for strength (much like a WWII aircraft) making it a relative featherweight. Even with the Corvette holding a 50 horsepower advantage the Cobra still had a big edge in power-to-weight.<br />
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But Zora Arkus-Duntov - head engineer for the Corvette - was a racer. Carroll Shelby had been openly driving Cobra prototypes - powered by rival Ford's new small block V8 - around Southern California since early 1962, and Duntov knew exactly what that meant for the 'Vette's dominance in club racing, and its potential impact on sales; the Corvette was still not a big seller and could easily be canceled outright.<br />
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General Motors had officially stepped away from racing in 1957, part of a strategy to avoid increased government scrutiny of the automotive industry (which might draw too much attention to GM's near monopoly status in the US auto market). But while GM's senior management saw the racing ban as a good idea, the product managers and engineers, whose job was to build cars that people wanted to buy, were not exactly on-board. They would play a game where performance options were euphemistically described as "severe duty parts" and racing teams were given backdoor technical support.<br />
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Duntov would push the back-door policy to the limit, building a few <i>Grand Sport Corvettes: </i>purpose built racing cars thinly disguised by stock-looking Corvette body work. The Grand Sports had large diameter steel-tube frames - stronger and lighter than the production Corvette's stamped steel frame. The suspension parts were one-off forgings - again stronger and lighter than stock. While the body work was similar to the production 1963 Corvette, the fiberglass was thinner, and the weight-adding retractable headlights and chrome bumpers were missing. Inside, the cockpit was race-car sparse, without the street car's plush carpeting and sound deadening, or creature comforts like a radio or heater. An aluminum version of the 327 small block Chevy with a stroker crank (377 inch displacement) and 4 big side-draft Weber carbs pushing 500+ horsepower was developed for the car. The plan was to produce 125 of the cars, to be sold directly to select private racing teams, and so qualify as a "production" car with the FIA (just like the Cobras).<br />
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In early 1963 Zora would sneak one of the five (or was it six?) prototype Grand Sports out the back door to none other than Don Yenko and Grady Davis. The stroker engine was not yet ready, so the Gulf boys would make due with a stock fuel-injected 327, which was still plenty of power in a car weighing 1000 pounds less than a stock Corvette. I couldn't find a photo of this car I was comfortable using here, but you'll find some awesome pics of the Gulf Grand Sport from when it was restored <a href="http://www.racingicons.com/gs/004/004-01.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Unlike the scooped and flared Grand Sports we're used to seeing on T-shirts and in model car kits, the original Grand Sport looked very much like a stock Corvette and so the Gulf car attracted little attention - especially when it wasn't winning. Not surprisingly the car had teething pains - the front end wanted to lift, making it vicious on a fast track - and Yenko and Davis were not afraid to saw holes in the sides of the car to try to fix it. The Gulf R&D lab in Harmarville evaluated a number of engine setups on their dynos - including a 327 with dual fuel-injection units.<br />
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The first win would come at the Connellsville SCCA race on August 11th with Dick Thompson driving. Connellsville is a small town 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, and the "race track" was laid out on the local municipal airport pavement, but it was the closest road-course to Pittsburgh, and it drew some big name racers; the summer before Ed Hugus had brought one of the first Cobras in the eastern US to Connellsville to see what it could do.<br />
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Dick Thompson would rack up another win with the Grand Sport at a bigger SCCA race at Watkins Glen a few weeks later, which generated some real attention - the kind Chevy did not want to have. Gulf Oil was aggressively expanding their operations into Europe; having the Gulf name on cars at the big European races was more than a mid-life ego-trip for their boy-racer VP, it was good business. If the Grand Sports were campaigned by some rich gentleman racer, GM might have had plausible deniability as to their involvement, but the Gulf car had been supplied to an executive of a major oil company by way of the owner of a major Chevy dealership. It seemed just a little too <i>official</i> for the GM brass. Davis had suggested - <i>in writing</i> no less - having Gulf sponsor a team of Grand Sports at <i>Le Mans</i>, and that was never going to fly with the GM management.<br />
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So after Gulf and their unofficial racing team had spent many months developing the Grand Sport into a proper race car, Chevrolet took the car back and told Grady Davis to forget about Le Mans. Duntov would further modify the cars with wider wheels, wheel flares, a vented hood, and (finally) the all-aluminum engine - presumably hoping he could change management's mind about backing a racing program. And eventually management solved the problem by selling all of them - all five (or maybe six) to John Mecom Jr., son of a very rich Texas oilman, whose hobby was collecting racing teams. Mecom would take several of the cars to Nassau Speed Week in December of 1963, where Dick Thompson would manage a 4th place against some fairly hairy competition - including a number of Shelby's Cobras. Mecom would sell off a few of the Grand Sports to other private racing teams. Roger Penske would buy one, stuff in a big Chevy 427 and have a bit of success in 1964, but without a well-funded development effort the cars were quickly outclassed and faded from view - just as Chevy hoped they would.<br />
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GM shutting down the program did not sit well with Davis: there were no new Corvettes ordered for the 1964 SCCA racing season and no trip to Sebring that spring; the existing team cars were sold off. Gulf would continue to sponsor Don Yenko and Dick Thompson in various races, but Davis no longer owned the cars. Davis still wanted Gulf to go racing in Europe, but it was clear that wouldn't happen with General Motors.<br />
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In 1964 Ford would introduce their new Mustang and launch their <i><b>Total Performance</b></i> marketing strategy, which included a big investment in the GT40 program in European sports car racing. It looked like a perfect match, but Ford was not ready to share the spotlight with anyone else (race cars had yet to become rolling billboards, and the factory teams were happy just to have the factory's name on the cars). There were private teams campaigning GT40s, but they had little chance of competing with Ford's factory teams, and Davis was not interested in a second-tier effort.<br />
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Not much more would happen until 1966. In 1965 Shelby GT350R Mustangs were cleaning up in SCCA racing, and with GM still out of the racing business (and the Camaro still a year away) Don Yenko had the bright idea of building an R-model Corvair, to be known as the <i><b>Stinger</b></i>. Just like the GT350s, the Stingers were technically <i style="font-weight: bold;">Yenkos, </i>not Chevys. That meant Yenko was free to toss the rear seat making it a sports car in the eyes of the SCCA, and to heavily modify the suspension and engine for racing duty. The only catch was that Yenko needed to build 100 of them, which he did - turning part of the family's Canonsburg Chevy dealership into a production line.<br />
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Grady Davis would buy a Stinger for his daughter, and would sponsor old friend Dick Thompson to drive one at a few SCCA races. At a few of those races Davis would bring along a new toy for Thompson to drive in C-modified events; a new dark blue MkI GT40.<br />
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Grady Davis had gone to Sebring in 1966 "just to watch", knowing that Sebring would be the shakedown race for the armada of factory team GT40s being prepared for Le Mans. Davis would meet John Wyer, the manager for the Ford Advanced Vehicles shop in Slough, England where the GT40s were manufactured. Wyer had originally ran FAV <i><b>and</b></i> Ford's European racing team, but after poor results Ford had moved the race team to Shelby American and engineering and development to Dearborn, leaving FAV to crank out enough small-block powered MkI cars for sale to privateers to meet the FIA homologation requirements.<br />
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In late 1965 FAV had started producing "road coupes" - just MkI GT40s with slightly upgraded upholstery, detuned engines and even air conditioning - that at least in theory were "street legal" (although convincing your local DMV of that might be a bit of a challenge). Anyone with $16,000 burning a hole in their pocket could walk into a Ford dealership and order one. At the time $16,000 was enough to buy 3 new Corvettes with money left over, or even a nice ranch house in the suburbs - so not many folks would take Ford up on the offer. Shortly after Sebring Grady Davis would order one of the "road coupes".<br />
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What exactly Davis had in mind for the car is a bit of a mystery. Rumor has it he drove the GT40 around Pittsburgh, but it couldn't have been much fun on the city's many narrow, potholed and cobble-stone paved streets. By early May, Dick Thompson was driving the car at the SCCA race at Virginia International Raceway, so Davis may have always intended to evaluate it for a Gulf Oil assault on Le Mans. As evidence, the engine in this GT40 is said to have been quite a bit closer to race-spec than the "standard" 289 V8s installed in the "road" cars.<br />
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In October 1966 John Wyer was in New York on business. Grady Davis sent Gulf Oil's private plane to bring Wyer to Pittsburgh for a meeting. What Davis and Wyer knew from their many contacts in the auto industry and racing world, or could have guessed, was that the FIA did not want to see the big European road-races dominated by hordes of thundering American V8s; they would simply change the rules to phase out the big engines, most likely setting a new maximum displacement of 5 liters. The new rules would be the last straw for Ford; their 1-2-3 win at Le Mans that summer had generated the publicity they had wanted, and the mounting deaths of drivers and spectators was threatening to undo the positive exposure. 1967 would be the last year for the 7 liter engines Ford had built their plans around; Ford would run their new GT40 MkIVs one more season and call it a day.<br />
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Having met the FIA homologation requirements, Ford had already stopped producing MkIs at Slough, and had offered to sell the left overs - lots of parts and all the tooling to build the cars - to John Wyer at a very good price. There were plenty of GT40s in the hands of small race teams, and having Wyer keep the shop running to rebuild them as needed would keep the cars in the public eye for years to come at no cost to Ford.<br />
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John Wyer had a slightly grander plan in mind: along with cranking out replacement parts for the original MkIs, he would further develop the car, lightening the chassis and improving the aerodynamics. Power would come from Ford's new 302 and 351 small-block V8s in TransAm tune, which could make nearly as much power as the big block engine it would replace - enough to stay competitive with Ferrari and Porsche. Wyer had a willing partner in British Ford dealer John Willment; Grady Davis and Gulf Oil sponsorship was the last piece of the puzzle. In the fall of 1966 Wyer would go home with a 1-page contract in his pocket to form the first official Gulf Oil racing team to compete in major league endurance races - he would go back to England and start <b><i>J.W. Automotive Engineering</i></b> (whether J.W. was John Wyer or John Wilment is open to debate - they may well have chosen the name just to make people wonder).<br />
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Which is probably a good time to take a break, because the story is about to get a lot more interesting. Check out <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-gulf-boys-go-racing-part-2.html" target="_blank">part 2</a>!<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-25915188051809852682016-09-09T23:34:00.004-04:002017-01-25T21:46:45.947-05:00The Lost Art of Demolition DerbyLast August I stopped by my parent's house unexpected and found Dad wearing his good go-to-town blue jeans. Dad was getting ready to make his yearly pilgrimage to the county fair to see the Demolition Derby, something I hadn't done since my short-lived career as a derby driver back around 1980. Of course I tagged along, both to spend some time with Dad and relive old memories, not to mention the gastronomic wonders of a sausage and onion sandwich fresh off a food-stand griddle.<br />
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At least in rural western Pennsylvania, demolition derby is held on mud, in a rectangular space about the size of a football field marked off with giant earth mover tires. As the grandstands fill up and the spectators dig into their burgers and sausage sandwiches, a big front-end loader does its best to level the mud and push the tires into place. And then after an enthusiastic attempt at <i><b>The Star Spangled Banner</b></i>, the first heat of cars, many looking like escapees from a Mad Max movie, make their way into the arena, parking nose first against the tire barrier. A flagman perched atop one of those tires waves a green flag, and all hell breaks loose - as the cars go backing furiously trying to smash into one another.<br />
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And oh, the cars... In the late 1970s when I took took my shot at the Derby, well worn full size V8 family cars - Ford Galaxies, Chevy Impalas, Plymouth Furys - where the standard fodder. For some reason - maybe their unibody construction - the Chrysler products were tougher than the others, giving the midsize Dodge Coronets a fighting chance. You could find these cars sitting in front yards with "For Sale" signs and expired inspection stickers going for $50 - most were really rusty with big holes in their heavy steel frames. Engines were mostly work-a-day V8s: 350 Chevys, 390 Fords, 383 Chrysler motors - although you could find just about anything Detroit had ever produced.<br />
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The derby drivers - mostly kids just out of high school (you had to be 18 to enter) - would buy one of these in the spring, park it in some remote corner of their yard to avoid annoying mom and dad, and then spend all summer preparing it. The rules required the side and rear windows and the stock gas tank to be removed and the doors chained shut. A five-gallon gas can was bungied to the floor where the rear seat had been and a rubber fuel line plumbed through the firewall direct to the fuel pump. The battery was likewise relocated to the floor of the passenger compartment, and if you were smart the key-switch was replaced with big toggle switches hard-wired directly to the ignition coil and battery. The heater core was bypassed with a piece of pipe to keep scalding hot water away from the driver. The exhaust pipes were cut off just below the exhaust manifold and removed to avoid falling off and getting caught in the wheels. The most heavily treaded tires you could find for $20 - often recap snow tires on their last legs - were mounted on the rear wheels. The engine was "tuned" - which meant cleaning and gapping the plugs, setting the points and changing the fuel filter. And then of course we had to paint on "competition markings" - our favorite number on the doors and snarky sayings everywhere else.<br />
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Of course these cars were totally illegal to drive on the road, but 19 year old kids didn't have the money to have a truck haul them to the fair grounds. If you were lucky enough to know someone with a pickup and a tow bar you might get your car there semi-legally. The rest of us would fire up our open-piped monsters in the middle of the night and take as many back roads as possible to the fair grounds, with a friend tailing along closely behind to hide the lack of a license plate, and then take us home. I'm sure a few state policemen must have looked the other way that one night of the summer.<br />
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My first attempt at "demo" was in a '68 Galaxie, with a 2-barrel 390 - that had been our family car for most of the 1970s. I had gotten into a fender bender in this car shortly after getting my drivers license, and my dad had declared it too worn out to fix, so I got to stare at that hammered out front fender for the next 3 years as a reminder to be more careful behind the wheel (which may have helped me survive my teenage years). When the frame finally went too swiss cheese to patch, I was happy to pay dad $50 to get rid of it.<br />
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When I fired up that big 390 and spun into the arena on my nearly smooth tires, I had no idea what to expect. In demo derby, the main strategy is to avoid taking hits to the front of your car, which will push the radiator into the fan: if that doesn't immediately lock up the engine, the resulting water leak will quickly overheat the engine to destruction. So you start with back-to-back hits, and if you're lucky the back of your car will fold up into a battering ram that you can bash away at the other cars with, and if you're not lucky the back of your car will bend down and start dragging on the mud, which will quickly end your race. I knew what the frame of the Galaxie looked like, and I wasn't hopeful it would last very long.<br />
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When the green flag fell and two dozen unmuffled V8s went full throttle, I hesitated until the car next to me backed up and launched the Galaxie sideways into the his front fender, hoping to break something in the front suspension and spare the Ford's rear end as much as possible. Nipping away at the surrounding cars worked for a while, until someone with better traction managed to push me sideways into a pack of dead cars, where my tires did nothing but spin - which is another way to lose. I ran two heats that night with similar results, and at the end of the night I sold what was left of the car to a junk dealer for $20, so I didn't have to worry about getting it back home.<br />
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The king of demolition derby was the 1966 Chrysler Imperial, a heavy and incredibly solid luxo-barge with the "big" big-block 413 V8. You didn't find these going for $50 - more like $500 - so the only people that ran them in the demos were people with big flatbed trucks who could haul them home to fight another day. At the time there was a towing service with a fleet of about 5 Chrysler Imperials, and they generally won.<br />
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The year after my adventure with the family Galaxie, a friend offered to sell me the one car that had a fighting chance against an Imperial - a Dodge Polara station wagon. Fold the wagon's 3rd row jump seat down and there was a solid steel deck creating a cargo area about the size of a pickup truck bed, forming an incredibly solid structure. Under the hood was a 383 that someone had grafted a 4-barrel carb to by way of a steel plate and plenty of silicone sealer. The car had already been "demo prepared" and had run in one demo with only minor damage. Most importantly, my friend was willing to let it sit in his backyard for the summer, so I didn't have to talk my parents into parking another junkyard escapee behind their garage.<br />
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In my first heat I was pecking away at the cars next to me, doing a fair amount of damage and getting the hang of backing the big Dodge when something hit me hard enough to get my attention. One of the big Imperials had been chewing through the cars on the other side of the arena, and had worked his way to me. The Imperial pulled away to take another backwards run at me, and I got on the gas quickly to try to win the momentum war. We hit back-to-back hard enough to rattle my fillings, but the wagon - and of course the Imperial - took the hit in stride.<br />
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I pulled forward to take another backwards run, but the Imperial - with a driver who had been in a lot more demos than me - took off somewhere among the clumps of already dead cars. I went chasing after him - in reverse of course - backing the Dodge as fast as I could - but I lost site of him in the steaming wreckage. And then I heard the bellow of that big Chrysler motor - in <i>front</i> of me - and I turned my head just in time to see that big chrome bumper coming at me. I hit the gas to try back away but the Imperial had the edge in power and tire-traction and it had a head start, and Detroit had yet to discover the idea of crumple zones - the Imperial hit <i>hard. </i> As the seat belts dug into my body I had a flashback to my dad swatting a bee with a badminton racket - and I wondered how many pieces they would find <i>me</i> in. <br />
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As my brain started working again I noticed I had my foot planted on the brake pedal but my car was still going backwards - sliding all 4 wheels in the mud. Eventually the wagon stopped - it probably slid 30 feet into another car - and the motor was dead. I wasn't processing things all too clearly then, and when I hit the big toggle switch for the starter I heard the shriek of fan against radiator, turning too slowly for the big V8 to fire. There was nothing left to do but wait for the heat to be over and to try to steer the wagon as a big tow truck drug it out off the way for the next heat. It would be an inglorious end to my short-lived demolition derby career.<br />
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While the basics of demolition derby haven't changed much over the years, the details certainly have. Most of the cars now are mid-size front-wheel drive sedans with 4 or 6 cylinder engines, and while their open exhausts are loud, its not the bellowing all capitols <b><i>LOUD</i></b> of a pack of big-block V8s. There <i>is</i> a separate category for rear wheel drive V8 cars, but there aren't very many of them and they are mostly small block V8s. Back in 1980 we would have 5 heats of 20 or more cars, followed by a championship match going until midnight; today there are 2 or 3 heats and its all over by 9:30. And not all, but a lot of the guys driving the cars are well past middle aged and probably started demo driving about the same time as me!<br />
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I wonder if the Missus would notice an old Crown Victoria parked behind the garden shed???<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-16983375560449363642016-04-16T10:15:00.001-04:002017-06-20T08:43:58.821-04:00Reichholds Cafe - Basic Breakfast in the Great White North<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Its been a while since I made a <i><b>Breakfast in the 'Burgh</b></i> post. I just figured out how to turn on photo-backup on my phone, and shazam - I've got a bunch of pictures in my photo account that I forgot I had taken. This is Reichhold's Cafe, on Route 8 near the Allegheny-Butler county line - about 15 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh (<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Reichhold's+Cafe/@40.7471349,-79.9278709,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x883484b19da6b069:0x2f60c88aefcfb80f" target="_blank">map</a>). <br />
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Reichhold's is a breakfast and lunch only place; it opens ungodly early and closes at 2PM on weekends and 4PM on weekdays. Some folks might characterize Reichhold's as a "dive", but that just means they have never been to a <i><b>real</b></i> dive. Reichhold's is a little dim inside and the furnishings are a little worn, but the floors aren't sticky and the silverware is clean.<br />
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The menu is basic diner fare: eggs and pancakes and bacon and sausage and potatoes in all the usual combinations. This is basic home cooking - there is no cilantro or other foodie ingredients in sight - but everything seems fresh and the coffee is strong and tastes unabashedly like - <b><i>coffee</i></b>! My favorite is the sausage-mushroom-cheddar omelette (you can pick your favorite meat, veggies and cheese), most items come with home-fries that are obviously potatoes and actually <i style="font-weight: bold;">fried </i>(and a little burned on the edges) just like the ones that came out of Mom's cast iron skillet. I know it sounds a lot like that chain with the smiling cookies, except the food seems a lot more <b><i>real</i></b> in both appearance and taste.<br />
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Reichhold's portions are big. If you remember when your basic bacon-and-eggs breakfast went for $1.99 the prices might seem a little steep, but as long as you stick with the combinations on the menu the prices are in line with other breakfast places (including that one with the cookies). My favorite omelette and potatoes plus coffee costs about $10+tip. They don't do substitutions, and if you start adding on side orders like extra bacon you can crank the tab up pretty quick.<br />
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They do have burgers and sandwiches on the lunch menu, but I usually get breakfast no matter what time I go - and so do most of the regulars there - so I can't comment.<br />
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I'm not exactly on a first name basis with the waitresses, but I've always had friendly service, and its usually pretty quick unless you hit a rush; late Sunday mornings can get pretty busy. I've seen a few snarky online reviews complaining about screwed-up orders, but I have to wonder if they were in the same place (I suspect waitresses recognize I'm from a generation that tips well for good service - and not at all for bad - and maybe that makes a difference).<br />
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If you're in the neighborhood, a short mile north on Route 8 is <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Freedom+Farms+Donut+Shop/@40.7528695,-79.9333387,15z/data=!4m18!1m15!4m14!1m6!1m2!1s0x883484b19da6b069:0x2f60c88aefcfb80f!2sReichhold's+Cafe,+772+Pittsburgh+Road,+Butler,+PA+16002!2m2!1d-79.9256769!2d40.7471309!1m6!1m2!1s0x883484aa6b4f007d:0xf4bd4efd2d3933ec!2sFreedom+Farms+Donut+Shop,+663+Pittsburgh+Rd,+Butler,+PA+16002!2m2!1d-79.923448!2d40.758328!3m1!1s0x883484aa6b4f007d:0xf4bd4efd2d3933ec" target="_blank">Freedom Farm Donuts</a>, which are not the best donuts in the Pittsburgh area but they are pretty good compared to the chain stores and a nice follow-up to breakfast; if you're like me by the time you get home you should have enough room for a creme-filled or old-fashioned. If you're a car modeler who dabbles in diecasts (this <i>is</i> supposed to be a scale modeling blog), 5 miles south of Reichhold's is <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Diecast+Country/@40.7123394,-79.9659744,13z/data=!4m18!1m15!4m14!1m6!1m2!1s0x883484b19da6b069:0x2f60c88aefcfb80f!2sReichhold's+Cafe,+772+Pittsburgh+Road,+Butler,+PA+16002!2m2!1d-79.9256769!2d40.7471309!1m6!1m2!1s0x88348dc7936dce8b:0x25328d4008ab5961!2sDiecast+Country,+1413+PA-8,+Valencia,+PA+16059!2m2!1d-79.932935!2d40.67757!3m1!1s0x88348dc7936dce8b:0x25328d4008ab5961" target="_blank">Diecast Country</a>; I've never been there but have heard they have a pretty good selection of high end die-cast cars. Its not exactly close, but two of the Pittsburgh area's few remaining hobby shops, <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hobby+Express+Inc/@40.6930745,-80.1028199,15z/data=!4m5!1m2!2m1!1shobby+shops+cranberry+pa!3m1!1s0x8834880937da7449:0x8f1eed7749ff6e03" target="_blank">Hobby Express</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Grand+Central+Hobby/@40.7022648,-80.113914,15z/data=!4m5!1m2!2m1!1shobby+shops+cranberry+pa!3m1!1s0x0000000000000000:0xcb816f55a804d0fb" target="_blank">Grand Central Hobby</a>, are about 12 miles away in Cranberry - if you don't make it to the northern 'burbs very often its worth hitting them all in one trip.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>If you can't tell, I <b>love</b> breakfast and breakfast joints. If you've got a Pittsburgh area favorite please let me know so I can add it to my rotation! Thanks! </i></blockquote>
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-86133574689406683972015-09-27T00:37:00.000-04:002019-11-21T22:39:34.261-05:00The Faceless Heroes of Shelby American (part 2)If you read <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-faceless-heroes-of-shelby-american.html" target="_blank">part 1</a> of this story, you've met many of the little known names that helped make Carroll Shelby a household name (at least in households full of gear-heads). But part 1 left off in 1965, with Shelby's greatest accomplishment yet to come, so sit back and read along while I try to wrap this all up.<br />
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After the GT40's dismal showing at LeMans in 1965, the Ford camp headed home to regroup. By that time the GT40 program was much bigger than Shelby. Ford <i><b>really</b></i> wanted a GT40 victory at Le Mans, and while they trusted Shelby to run the racing team and test the car, they weren't going to trust a few California hot-rodders to do all the development work when they had an army of engineers and some of the best manufacturing facilities in the world back in Dearborn.<br />
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Ford would hold a "Come to Jesus" meeting in the fall of 1965 among the various engineers and managers working on the GT40, and come up with a strategy of further developing the big-block MkII cars for 1966 and at the same time designing a much lighter and more aerodynamic follow-on car for 1967. For 1966 both Shelby and Holman&Moody would field racing teams and develop the cars; legend has it that the H&M cars were intentionally built and driven more conservatively than Shelby's to improve their chances of finishing.<br />
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At the time, Shelby was already up to its ears in Mustangs and Cobras. The GT-350R Mustangs Shelby had built the year before were doing well and attracting attention in SCCA club races, which meant Ford wanted more of the street versions to sell through their dealerships and serve as a "halo car" to generate interest in the work-a-day Mustangs they were stamping out in record numbers. With the SCCA homologation out of the way all Ford really wanted were some slightly warmed up street Mustangs with racing stripes, and Shelby was happy to oblige - leaving out many of the suspension and engine modifications they had made on the first batch of GT-350s - but they still had to run nearly 2400 cars through their shop (including 1000 rent-a-racers for Hertz).<br />
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Then in the fall the SCCA responded to the popularity of the Mustang by inventing the Trans-Am racing series for small 4-seat sedans, which <i>should</i> have included the GT-350s - except Shelby had just gone to great lengths to convince the SCCA that the fastback GT-350 was a <i>two-seater</i>. Of course the SCCA wanted Fords in the new series as much as Ford wanted to race in it, so they worked out a deal where the notchback Mustang body-style was homologated for the Trans Am. The rules for the new series were quite a bit looser than for traditional SCCA classes, so there was no need for the games Shelby had played to become the <i>manufacturer</i> of the GT-350 - the Trans Am Mustangs would officially still be Ford Mustangs - but under their notch-back sheet metal the cars would get the same modifications as the GT-350Rs. Shelby would build 16 of the Trans Am cars, which quickly made their way to experienced drivers, allowing Ford to win the Manufacturer's Championship that first year of the series.<br />
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Shelby and AC had also introduced the new big-block "coil-spring" Cobra in 1965, and Shelby American was still doing final assembly of those cars. By this point, Shelby was too busy with the Mustangs and GT40s to give the new Cobra much attention. Ferrari had stopped fielding factory GTOs in the FIA GT class, leaving the new Cobras with no worthy adversary to challenge: Shelby would not build enough of the racing version of the car to be homologated for FIA racing, making it only eligible for SCCA club racing in the US, and in the fledgling USRRC series. The vast majority of the big-block cars were built as street cars for those well-heeled buyers who wanted to be sure they had the fastest car on the block.<br />
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Shelby had already handed off racing the Daytona Coupes in Europe to Alan Mann, who would run several of the cars throughout the 1965 season and finally bring home the FIA Manufacturer's Championship for Shelby American - with three year old cars! But at that point the Daytonas were just aging race cars; Ford would sell them off for cheap in Europe rather than pay to ship them back to the U.S.<br />
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Pete Brock had been working on a coupe-body for the new Cobra, but when Ford and Shelby made it clear they had no interest in racing the new Cobras he became the first high level defection from Shelby American. Brock found a deal with <b><i>Hino</i></b>, a big Japanese manufacturing company known for building heavy trucks that was looking to break into the US auto market; in December of 1965 he would start Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) to do some design work on a new race car and to race their dumpy <i>Contessa</i> sedan. It wasn't exactly Shelby's Cobra deal with Ford, but Brock was all of 29 years old, and bigger things were soon to come.<br />
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Starting in the fall of 1965 the Mustangs and Cobras would take a backseat to the GT40 at Shelby American. Phil Remington would make modifications to lighten the car, improve the aerodynamics, strengthen the chassis, and then Ken Miles would take the car out on a track and run it at racing speeds to see what worked, and then start over on another round of changes. Ford's Engine division would modify the 427 engine to be lighter and more reliable than the original NASCAR item. Kar Kraft would hand off manufacturing their new trans-axle to the Ford Transmission division, who knew how to do more careful testing and assembly to reduce failures. In short, Ford and Shelby did the fine tuning and quality assurance work they should have done the year before.<br />
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The 1966 Daytona and Sebring races (held in early spring) proved Ford had done its homework. At Daytona GT40 MkIIs placed 1-2-3-5, with just one MkII failing to finish. Also racing were four 289 powered GT40s entered by private teams, that placed no higher than 14th - the competition (Ferrari and Porsche) were getting better too.<br />
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A few weeks later at Sebring, Shelby would run an experimental GT40 "roadster" - a GT40 with the roof over the cockpit removed - an idea that didn't work as the lack of chassis stiffness ruined the handling - but the car hung on to win when the MkII in the lead broke its timing chain on the last lap of the race. Driver Dan Gurney would push his broken MkII across the finish line and be disqualified - if he had just sat in the car he would have taken 2nd - instead an H&M MkII would finish second, and a privately entered GT40 MkI would fall into 3rd, giving Ford another 1-2-3 finish. Through a combination of skill and luck, the winner of both races would be Shelby development driver Ken Miles with co-driver Loyd Ruby, who was building a reputation in Indy cars.<br />
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Making its first appearance at Sebring was a 427 Chevy-powered Chaparral coupe, looking a little like a slimmed down GT40, and built by Shelby's old Texas business partner Jim Hall. Chevy's 427 was a more modern design than Ford's now aging NASCAR motor, and the Chaparral was a lighter car; it held its own against the GT40s until mechanical problems would put it out. The Chaparral's would strike fear into the Ford engineers who knew Chevy could be a very strong competitor if they ever decided to go racing for real.<br />
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Sadly, Sebring would also mark the death of driver Bob McLean while racing a privately entered GT40 MkI; the car's brakes would seize sending it off the track and into a pole, rupturing the fuel tanks and starting a massive fire. Four spectators would also die when a Porsche went off the track and spun through an area where spectators were not supposed to be; safety at Sebring had not kept up with the increasing size of the crowds and speeds of the cars. It would be the first of several tragedies that would eventually discourage Ford from sponsoring racing teams; driver Walt Hangsen would die just a month later driving an H&M MkII in the rain at the Le Mans trials.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S6ObiN5FB34/Vgdxw5vqLiI/AAAAAAAACEM/Apj5cdaI-KQ/s1600/DSC06432.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S6ObiN5FB34/Vgdxw5vqLiI/AAAAAAAACEM/Apj5cdaI-KQ/s320/DSC06432.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alan Mann GT40 MkII - DNF'd at LeMans in 1966.<br />
Photographed at the Simeone Museum.</td></tr>
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There were no less than 13 GT40s at Le Mans for 1966, with 8 Ford "factory" cars: 3 entered by Shelby American, 3 entered by Holman&Moody, and 2 under the Alan Mann Racing banner. The list of drivers read like a who's-who of the top drivers of the day: Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme, Chris Amon, a young Mario Andretti.<br />
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And of course Ken Miles, the man who had spent more time driving a GT40 than all the others combined. Miles' usual co-driver, Lloyd Ruby, had crashed his private plane a few weeks before Le Mans, knocking himself out of the race (Ruby's driving talent was exceeded only by his bad luck). That would lead to New Zelander Denny Hulme - an up and coming F1 driver - filling in at the last minute. The Miles/Hulme car would run near the front for most of the race, trading the lead with the Gurney car.<br />
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The three Shelby MkIIs driven by Gurney/Grant, McLaren/Amon and Miles/Hulme would set a brutal pace, seeming to dare the Ferrari's to keep up, and it quickly turned out neither the Ferraris or anything else could. An H&M MkII driven by Ronnie Bucknum and Dick Hutcherson cruised along comfortably in fourth place in their "just-in-case" role. Then at the 17th hour, Gurney's car lost its radiator, moving the remaining MkIIs up one place. After 24 hours, only 15 of the 55 cars that had started were still running. A gaggle of Porsche 906s finished 4th through 7th, doing surprisingly well with just 2 liters of displacement. Only 2 of the 14 Ferraris entered actually finished, in 8th and 10th place. Despite all the preparation, 5 of the factory-sponsored MkIIs and the 5 privately entered MkI GT40s DNF'd. Even Phil Hill's legendary driving could not save the lone Chaparral, which DNF'd after just 6 hours.<br />
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But despite the Fords being unchallenged, the race would not be without controversy. With an hour or so left, and with 3 MkIIs comfortably leading the race, Ford PR man Leo Beebe (some say at the urging of Bruce McLaren) "requested" that the cars group up and cross the finish line 3 abreast, the perfect photo-op payoff in return for all the millions of dollars spent to win that one race. Which would have been no big deal, except against all odds after 23 hours Ken Miles and Bruce McLaren were still on the <i>same</i> lap. Because the Miles/Hulme car had started from the 2nd spot, and the McLaren/Amon car had started in the 4th spot, and because Le Mans was a <i>distance</i> race, if the two cars crossed the finish line side-by-side McLaren's car would have traveled 20 feet further than Miles's car and would win despite Miles having lead most of the race.<br />
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Miles followed the order to slow down and allow Bruce McLaren to catch up. At Le Mans in 1966, the official finish line with the electronic timer attached was actually a few feet ahead of the guy holding the checkered flag and as the cars crossed the official finish line Miles suddenly slowed, allowing McLaren to pass him and actually pass the flagman slightly ahead of Miles. Whether Miles intentionally lifted (or even tapped the brakes) to ruin Ford's picture perfect finish - while still exactly following the order - or whether McLaren took advantage of Miles slowing down to try to outright win the race is lost to history; in any event the cars were only 3 abreast for the briefest moment. Immediately afterwards Ken Miles seemed somewhat surprised to have come in 2nd; it is possible he thought he was 1 lap ahead of McLaren (or just didn't want to believe he had been asked to lose the race after all he had done for Ford). Regardless, officially Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon won the race - something many racing fans still refuse to acknowledge.<br />
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Carroll Shelby has taken responsibility for this decision, saying he discussed the request with Bebee and agreed to it, not knowing how the French officials would interpret the rule. Which is a little unbelievable, given how many times Shelby had been to Le Mans, but it was somewhat unlikely this rule had ever been applied before (or after). A popular theory is that Bebee (or even Henry Ford II) knowingly ordered Miles to lose for being a pain-in-the-ass to deal with, which would be doubly low considering that it kept Miles from being the first driver to win Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans in the same year (the triple crown of endurance racing). Just after Le Mans, Shelby would give Miles a new Lotus Cortina, maybe to say "thank you" for all Miles had done and "sorry" for a decision he quickly came to regret.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WoRRGGhLd8w/Vjg942wEVNI/AAAAAAAACE0/I6__OXgSrBs/s1600/IMG_2693.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WoRRGGhLd8w/Vjg942wEVNI/AAAAAAAACE0/I6__OXgSrBs/s320/IMG_2693.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bust of Ken Miles at the Shelby American Collection in Boulder, Colorado</td></tr>
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And then, with Shelby seemingly on top of the world, everything went to crap. Just two months later Ken Miles would die testing the next generation "J-car" at Riverside. The new car was the first complete car to come from Kar Kraft, and one of the first racing cars with a chassis built from honeycomb aluminum - it was basically one big 200 mph science-fair project. The J-car was a mid-engine design much like the GT40, but the body had a boxy rear section reminiscent of the "Breadvan" Ferrari raced by a private team a few years earlier. The long flat top of the car probably reduced drag, but at the speeds the new Ford was capable of it also made for stability problems. During a high-speed test some part of the new chassis or suspension would break and when the car subsequently rolled the honeycomb chassis basically disintegrated around Miles - he would be killed instantly.<br />
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Miles death seemed to knock the wind out of Carroll Shelby, but at that point Ford's GT40 program was literally too big to stop, or even slow down; Phil Remington and the engineers at Kar Kraft would strengthen the chassis and rework the body, closely following the design that had worked for the MkII. The car would be re-named the GT40 MkIV for the 1967 season. Shelby would again take a Ford supported team to Le Mans, and the new car would crush the competition again, with all star drivers Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt bringing home the win, and up-and-comers Bruce McLaren and Mark Donohue taking fourth.<br />
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Unlike Ferrari, who only bothered to build street cars to finance their racing team, Ford had gone to Le Mans purely for the advertising value, and like an ad campaign that has run its course endurance racing was rapidly losing its luster. In the US muscle cars and pony cars ruled the showrooms, and the new Trans Am and Can Am racing series were becoming incredibly popular. For 1968 the FIA would rewrite the rule book to outlaw the big-block American cars, setting a displacement limit of just 5 liters. Ford saw no reason to develop new cars for the new rules; they would pull the plug on the endurance racers and instead focus on Trans Am and dabble in Can Am, leaving Shelby American in a bit of a lurch.<br />
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Ford had re-styled the Mustang for the 1967 model ear, taking it more in the muscle car direction, but they still wanted a flashy Shelby version to draw buyers into showrooms. Shelby would lighten the car with a fiberglass hood, tweak the suspension and add spoilers and functional side-scoops to cool the brakes and make the car look like a first cousin of the GT40 - it was a spectacular looking car - but mechanically it was little different than a stock Mustang. Ford had designed the new Mustangs to hold their big-block V8, and offered a 390 inch version of that engine; Shelby would one-up the stock Mustang by swapping in a 428 "police interceptor" version of the big V8 to create the new GT-500 Shelby Mustang, holding the unofficial title of "Fastest Mustang" a little while longer.<br />
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The '67 GT-500 would be the last hurrah for the Shelby Mustang. With the cars selling in large numbers through Ford dealerships, and carrying hefty price tags, Ford worried about the build quality of the cars and whether Shelby's tiny shop could keep up with demand. For the 1968 model year production of the Shelby Mustangs would move to the larger facilities of the A. O. Smith company, a manufacturer of fiberglass body parts, conveniently located in Detroit. Shelby would add little more than his name to the new cars.<br />
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1967 also marked the last year for the 427 Cobra roadster; the cars were even more expensive and impractical than the earlier small-block cars and they didn't sell in large enough numbers to make much of a profit for Ford or Shelby. AC would continue to manufacture the new coil-spring version of the car powered by a small block Ford V8 and sell it in Europe for a few more years before calling it quits.<br />
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Pete Brock and Shelby would cross paths once again in 1967. Hino's plans to enter the American auto market, and Brock's deal with Hino would end when Hino merged with Toyota. But Brock had so impressed the managers at Hino that they offered him an even better deal, asking him to race Toyota's new GT2000 sports car. The GT2000 was intended to show that Toyota was capable of building world class cars; it packed a DOHC 2-liter 6 cylinder engine and clean, elegant styling with just a hint of E-type Jaguar stirred in. The car is best known in America for its appearance in the James Bond film <i>You Only Live Twice</i>. For BRE racing the GT2000 for Toyota was the chance of a lifetime.<br />
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Except somehow just days after the Toyotas were delivered to Brock's shop, they were picked up and hauled off to <i>Shelby's</i> shop. Shelby had somehow scooped Brock's deal, setting off a feud between the two that would last for years. Brock would use his connections in Japan to make a deal with Nissan to race their American market Datsuns - which would prove to be a very successful relationship when the 240Zs appeared a few years later. As good as the 2000GT was, it proved to be too expensive to attract US buyers (the cars cost more than a new Corvette). Despite Shelby having a bit of success on the track, the program ended after just 1 year, becoming little more than a footnote in Shelby American history.<br />
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Shelby American would build a few more notch-back 1967 Mustangs for the Trans Am that did well and helped bring Ford another manufacturers championship, but '67 was essentially the end of Shelby's involvement in <i>developing</i> the TransAm cars. For the 1968 season, the SCCA would loosen the rules on Trans Am such that only the factory engineers could develop competitive engines and suspensions; Ford no longer trusted Shelby (or any other racing team) to rebuild and modify the engines in their new race cars, and not surprisingly engine reliability suffered. Ford's new Tunnel-Port 302 proved so unreliable that Ford scrapped their plan to sell the engine in a special edition Mustang.<br />
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In 1968 Shelby would take a little-remembered shot at the Indy 500, jumping on the turbine car bandwagon. He would team with Ken Wallis, who had developed the STP turbine car the year before to build an all new car. The Indy establishment had just weathered the change to rear-engined cars and were not at all happy about the turbine cars taking over; they passed rules limiting the air-intake size to make the turbines un-competitive. Shelby would eventually withdraw from the race, but his willingness to "bend" the rules caused Phil Remington to resign; he would take a job at Holman&Moody (he would return to California a short time later to work for Dan Gurney's <i>All American Racers</i> for the next 40 years). It was the end of an era: Pete Brock, Ken Miles and Phil Remington - the 3 men most responsible for Shelby's success - were gone. Many of the mechanics and shop workers who had assembled the Cobras and Mustangs and maintained the GT40s were let go in a big layoff, and then in dribs and drabs as the various future projects that had been in the works fell through.<br />
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With little else to do, Shelby would run a Ford backed Trans Am team for the '68 and '69 seasons, but without much success; thanks to Roger Penske and Mark Donohue rival Chevy would win the TransAm Manufacturer's Championship in '68 and '69. With the end of the muscle car era in sight Ford would pull the plug on their support for the Trans Am after the '69 season, leaving it up to the Bud Moore team and top-driver Parnelli Jones, running with little factory backing, to bring home one more Manufacturer's Championship for Ford in 1970.<br />
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In late 1966 Ford offered Shelby's old friend John Wyer a chance to buy the parts and tooling left from the original GT40 program in England; Wyer would team up with British Ford dealer and retired racer John Willment to form JW Automotive, a racing team with sponsorship from Gulf Oil. Even though the FIA now limited engine displacement to 5 liters, small-block American V8 engines had come a long way since Ford had decided to use the 7 liter NASCAR engine in 1965; JWA would use what were essentially Trans Am engines in the original (and lighter) GT40 chassis, and would be competitive in endurance racing for two more years, including wins at Le Mans in '68 and '69. Shelby had little if any involvement in the project.<br />
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<i>Shelby Automotive Racing </i>- the new name for what was left of <i>Shelby American</i> - would close its doors in late 1969 and end its relationship with Ford in early 1970, but by then very little was left to close down. Carroll Shelby would bounce around the world, getting married a few more times and putting his name on various business ventures - some more successful than others. In 1990 he would receive a heart transplant, and in 1996 his son would give him a kidney, which kept him going until May 10, 2012 when old age finally caught up to him. But it was those few shining years from 1962 to 1967 - the Cobra and GT40 years - when Shelby would cement his name in automotive history.<br />
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You can look back and say Shelby was just lucky to always be in the right place at the right time, but he did it so consistently that you have to think he somehow made his own luck. More than anything, Shelby's story is a testament to what can be accomplished by daring to do bold things and then just not giving up. As Woody Allen put it "80% of success is just showing up", and Carroll Shelby <i>always</i> showed up.<br />
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Shelby was a freakishly good driver, an amazing deal-maker, and at times a genuine SOB, but his success at Shelby American came from his ability to find good people who shared his enthusiasm and passion and then let them do their job. Beyond the few names I've mentioned here were many talented mechanics, welders, machinists, body and paint men, aspiring race drivers - all working at Shelby American to build and race the cars that would make Shelby a legend - names you will find only as brief mentions in the most detailed histories of the Shelby era (if you're interested I suggest reading the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Shelby-American-Wrenching-Carroll/dp/0760343942" target="_blank">Inside Shelby American</a> by race driver <b>John Morton</b>, who got his start pushing a broom at Shelby's shop).<br />
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Carroll Shelby certainly earned his fame and reputation, and while it was his name on the cars, countless others provided the heart, soul and sweat that made it possible.<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-45404187140348501592015-08-16T13:01:00.000-04:002016-06-20T21:10:34.749-04:00The Faceless Heroes of Shelby American (part 1)Out on the Internets Carroll Shelby has become a legend of Paul Bunyan proportions; he is credited with designing and building every Ford racing car of the 1960s and single-handedly putting Enzo Ferrari in his place. Not only is Shelby's history as a racing driver largely forgotten, but so are a few people who did much of the real work of making the Shelby name larger-than-life. Trying to explain the history to someone on a social network is pointless, but maybe here someone will read and appreciate it...<br />
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Unlike the U.S., European cities had grown up hundreds of years <i>before</i> the automobile and were naturally pedestrian friendly, so cars there tended to be smaller (to deal with the narrow streets) and more of a luxury item than in the US. These were the perfect conditions for the <b><i>sports car</i></b> to develop and flourish. Sports car racing developed on "The Continent" much like NASCAR had in the States, starting as a way for car owners to have a bit of fun and measure their driving skills and the speed of their cars against the other guy's. Unlike a NASCAR race that was for some set number of laps or miles, sports car races were typically <i>endurance</i> races, run for a set number of hours, with the car covering the greatest distance taking the win.<br />
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With even the short races lasting 6+ hours, there wasn't time to have more than 1 race on a weekend, so there were multiple classes of cars running at the same time. The classes and rules were established and enforced by the <b style="font-style: italic;">Federation Internationale de l'Automobile </b>(the FIA). The most visible classes were <i><b>GT</b></i> - for the fastest true production sports cars, and <i><b>Prototype</b></i> - which allowed nearly unlimited technology but still required the cars to be road-worthy (they were required to have two seats, room for a standard size set of luggage and had to run with a spare-tire). Most manufacturers would compete in GT, with just the top few marques (Ferrari and Jaguar and Porsche) dabbling in the Prototype class more as a demonstration of their engineering capabilities than a preview of future production cars.<br />
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Endurance races were often held on the public roads and streets of a city, with the events taking on a festival air. Thanks largely to a course that allowed very high speeds, the 24 hour race at the French town of Le Mans became the crown jewel of European sports car racing.<br />
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A bit of a diversion: <i><b>Le Mans</b></i> is the name of the <i style="font-weight: bold;">town </i>where the race is held, the name of the <i><b>race </b></i>is the <i style="font-weight: bold;">24 Hours of Le Mans </i>(in French <i><b>24 Heures du Mans</b></i>). The name of the <b><i>race course</i></b> they hold the race on is the <i style="font-weight: bold;">Circuit de la Sarthe - </i>so named as it follows the <i><b>Sarthe</b></i> river - and you sometimes hear sports car fans throw<i style="font-weight: bold;"> La Sarthe </i>into their bench-racing bull-sessions to sound sophisticated.<br />
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While we're covering the complexities of French names, let me throw in a brief mention of the straight-away that Le Mans is famous for: in French this part of the course is known as the <i><b>Ligne Droite des Hunaudieres ,</b></i> which is typically Anglicized as the <b style="font-style: italic;">Mulsanne Straight. </b>Hunaudieres is the name of a village in the middle of the straight, Mulsanne is the next town just past the far end of the straight and much easier for English speakers to pronounce, though the course never actually <i>reaches</i> Mulsanne. The name isn't so important as the fact that the straight is nearly 4 miles long and for much of the track's history it was a true straight allowing cars to run full throttle and reach serious top speeds (in 1990 two "chicanes" - sharp kinks - were added to the straight to slow the cars down). In the early 1960s, with no chicanes, the fastest cars were pushing 175mph on the not-very-wide tree-lined road before they had to brake for the <b><i>Mulsanne Corner</i></b> at the end.<br />
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Of course it was good publicity for the manufacturers when their cars won races, so before long there were "racing specials" designed just for the track and factory backed racing teams. Right after WWII there was an explosion of new and newly revived auto makers in Europe - Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Ferrari, Jaguar, Mercedes, MG, Triumph, Austin Healey and Aston Martin to name just the bigger players - and all of them were hoping to sell high-profit sports cars in America where the economy was booming and the growing middle-class was developing a taste for luxury items. Sports car racing would take on a new urgency in Europe during the early 1950s.<br />
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Compared to a Chevy Impala or Ford Galaxie, a tiny two seater with an only somewhat water-resistant canvas-top was totally impractical as everyday transportation in the auto-centric United States, but that was the point: owning these cars was all about having fun and showing off while doing it, and a certain breed of Americans took to them with a vengeance. Many of the eccentric folks buying these cars were also interested in racing them, and so by the mid 1950s there were a number of amateur racing series in the States, many organized by clubs such as the fledgling <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sports Car Club of America</span><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i><u>(SCCA).</u><br />
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With the background out of the way, lets rewind a bit. Carroll Shelby was born in small town Texas in 1923. Despite a heart condition that kept him bed-ridden for much of his childhood, he had the usual school-kid's interest in go-karts and motorcycles and things mechanical. In November 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor, he would join the Army (which at the time included the Air Corps) becoming a pilot. As a flight instructor he would spend the WWII years stateside, getting married in 1943 and becoming a father a year later. After the war he would bounce between jobs in the Texas oilfields and small business ventures such as trucking and chicken farming with varying amounts of success.<br />
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In 1952 a friend who was one of those amateur "club racers" would let Shelby drive his MG TC in a small race in Oklahoma. The fact that the car belonged to someone else may have made Shelby a bit more willing to push the car to its limits: surprisingly for someone who had never raced before, Shelby would handily win two races, including a race in a class with much more powerful Jaguar XK120s. Word spread quickly of Shelby's talent behind the wheel; he would have plenty of offers to drive other people's cars, including the then hot Cadillac V8 powered Allards.<br />
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Along the way Shelby managed to make friends with some important people in the racing world (Shelby always seemed to have friends in the right places). One friend in particular was <b>John Wyer</b>, an Englishman who was running the Aston Martin factory racing team. After seeing Shelby's driving, in 1954 he would offer him a ride in a DB3 at the big 12 hour endurance race in Sebring, Florida. Shelby would pull out a 2nd place finish and earn an offer to drive for Aston Martin in Europe, where he had quite a bit of success against serious competition from Jaguar. He would also have his first race at Le Mans, ending in a DNF.<br />
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In the fall of 1954 Shelby would have a fairly spectacular crash while driving an Austin Healey in the Carrera Pan Americana in Mexico. The crash may have made the big name racing teams wary of Shelby, but he still managed to bounce around the racing world, racking up wins and gaining notoriety. Ever the entrepreneur, in 1957 Shelby would team with oilman Dick Hall (brother of <b>Jim Hall,</b> creator of the Chapparal racing cars) to open <b><i>Carroll Shelby Sports Cars</i></b> in Dallas. Shelby would use his considerable contacts at the various European automakers to import and sell a number of foreign marques - both high-end Maseratis and more pedestrian Lotuses and Austin Healeys and such - to wealthy oil-men and well paid oil-workers.<br />
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Shelby would continue driving for various teams through the late 1950s, eventually bringing home a win for Aston Martin at Le Mans in 1959, but he had his sights set on bigger things. Or maybe he just realized that being a race-driver was a young-man's game and he was getting older. In 1960 a heart condition would force him to retire from driving. Shelby's next goal was to build his own cars and run his own racing team much like American <b>Briggs Cunningham</b>, who a few years earlier had used part of his family fortune to develop a line of sports cars powered by first generation Chrysler V8s, taking them to Europe to do battle with Jaguar and Aston Martin and rising star Ferrari (although with only limited success).<br />
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<tr><td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DBI98mwu0HA/VcAznYrYIsI/AAAAAAAAB2E/ks4iYS10QzA/s1600/DSC06437.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DBI98mwu0HA/VcAznYrYIsI/AAAAAAAAB2E/ks4iYS10QzA/s320/DSC06437.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">A 1954 Cunningham C4R, photographed at the Simeone Museum in Philadelphia.</td></tr>
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Without a family fortune of his own, Shelby fell back on his network of contacts. In 1959, with backing from Dick Hall and minor support from Ed Cole at Chevrolet, Shelby sent three new Corvettes to Scaglietti in Italy to be re-bodied with Ferrari inspired, lightweight aluminum coachwork, with the idea that GM would produce the cars as limited production racing specials. Unfortunately GM had just entered a self-imposed ban on racing (intended to show GM was a responsible company who <i>cared</i> about safety) and Shelby's idea was quickly squashed by GM management - the 3 Corvettes would find homes with sports car enthusiasts and car collectors, becoming a minor footnote to the Shelby story.<br />
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In 1960 Shelby would divorce his first wife and move to California, opening a Goodyear Racing Tire dealership in Los Angeles in the back of <b>Dean Moon's</b> hot rod shop. He would also start the <b><i>Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving</i></b> at the Riverside race track (Shelby knew his name was one of his most valuable assets and he put it right up front on all his ventures) . Shelby would run an ad in <i>Sports Car Graphic</i> magazine, offering to send information on the driving school for $1; legend has it Shelby carried around the big stacks of $1 bills this generated to pay for his also legendary bar tabs.<br />
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Enter <b>Pete Brock</b>, a California kid who had grown up building hot rods. After a short, failed attempt at an engineering degree he would end up enrolled at the (now famous) <i><b>Art Center College of Design</b></i> in Los Angeles. Brock was an incredibly talented automotive designer; in 1957 while still a student GM would hire him into their styling department, where he would work on the design of the second generation Corvette. But as soon as he turned 21 and qualified for an SCCA racing license, Brock left GM to go racing in California, where he ran into Carroll Shelby, who promptly hired him to set up and run his new driving school.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHdHEOrRo7g/VdC9vO3kxPI/AAAAAAAAB34/1tUnOZ2vn3g/s1600/IMG_0734.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHdHEOrRo7g/VdC9vO3kxPI/AAAAAAAAB34/1tUnOZ2vn3g/s320/IMG_0734.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AC Ace - photographed at the 2015 Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix</td></tr>
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But all of this was just setting the stage for much bigger things. In 1961 Shelby learned that in England, Bristol Cars - a high end luxury car maker - had finally stopped building the hoary BMW-designed 6 cylinder engine that they were selling to several of the small boutique car makers in England, including tiny <b>AC</b> cars who were using the engine in their <b><i>Ace</i></b> roadster. Contrary to popular legend, AC <i>would</i> find a replacement 6 cylinder engine from Ford of England, but not before Shelby pitched AC on the idea of developing a version of the Ace to use an American V8. Shelby was thinking of using the small block Chevy, but he would find a more willing partner in <b>Lee Iaccoca</b>. Ford had just launched their <b><i>Total Performance</i></b> marketing strategy, but had no cars available or even in the development pipeline able to compete with Chevy's Corvette. What Ford <i>did</i> have was an all new small V8 of their own, developed for use in their forthcoming mid-size Fairlane model; supplying those to Shelby for his V8 roadster would give Ford instant credibility in the sporty car market and help build a solid reputation for the new engine. Shelby wheedled a $25,000 loan from Ford to set up shop and a deal to supply him with engines and transmissions.<br />
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In early 1962, AC would modify an Ace to mount the new Ford V8, using a stock 260 engine on loan from an English Ford dealership to work out the mounting points. In February of 1962, AC shipped the car (minus engine) to California. Ford sent a warmed up 260 V8 and 4 speed transmission. Shelby and some guys at Dean Moon's shop spent a day stuffing the engine into the little car, after which Shelby and Moon headed off looking for Corvettes to street race. The stock 260 V8 was rated at 160 horsepower, but the "hi-po" version Ford supplied had the usual hot-rod tricks (higher compression, solid lifter camshaft, 4 barrel carburetor) to push that to somewhere close to 260 horsepower.<br />
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The little Ace weighed barely 2000 pounds (compared to a '62 Corvette at 3000 pounds) - 260 horsepower made the Ace a rocket. Shelby moved fast; within days he had shown the car to a magazine writer friend, and just a month later it would appear in sparkling yellow paint at the New York Auto Show, wearing the "Shelby Cobra" name. The new Cobra was the star of the show, and Shelby began taking orders from dealerships interested in selling the cars.<br />
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With AC supplying cars and Ford providing engines, Shelby would need a place to actually put the two together. At the time, <b>Lance Reventlow</b>, another wealthy racer trying his hand at building his own race cars (the <b><i>Scarab</i></b>), had just admitted defeat and was closing down his shop in Venice, California. Shelby would pick up the lease on the building, and pick up Reventlow's chief engineer <b>Phil Remington </b>as a bonus. Remington was another California hot rodder; he had lied about his age to join the Army during WWII, and had ended up as a flight engineer flying on a B-25 bomber in the Pacific. Remington understood engines and how to keep them running as only someone who had bet his life on that ability could; he was known as the kind of guy that could make <i>anything</i> with hand tools and scrap metal. And now Shelby had him to work the bugs out of the Cobra and prepare it as a race car.<br />
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One of the non-Ford dealers who signed on with Shelby was Pittsburgher <b>Ed Hugus </b>(you knew there had to be a Pittsburgh connection in here somewhere). Hugus was essentially an east-coast version of Carroll Shelby; he had come back from being a paratrooper in WWII and opened a European car dealership in Pittsburgh, which helped support his racing habit, including multiple drives at Le Mans. When AC sent the first two Ace/Cobras destined for customers to the US, one went directly to the Hugus shop in Pittsburgh for final assembly (a few other early east-coast bound Cobras were probably finished there as well). Cobra <i><b>CSX 2001</b></i>, the first ever customer Cobra, was sold to a Pittsburgh doctor, who would return it a few months later, asking to trade it on a car with an actual heater! This legendary car was then bought by an amateur racer and shipped back across the Atlantic where it was prepared for racing and campaigned at various races throughout Europe for many years before ending up in the hands of a US collector today.<br />
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Back in California, Shelby was chasing his real dream of building a racing team around the new Cobra. Shelby had run a few races in late 1962 with the early Cobras, with up and coming driver Billy Krause at the wheel, including a trip to the Nassau Speed Week, only to have the car break in various ways. In 1963 Ford would build a 289 inch version of their new small V8, which was a literal bolt-in upgrade for the Cobra; in racing tune the new 289 was good for at least 350 horsepower. The AC chassis had also benefited from 6 months of development by Phil Remington - it was becoming a serious competitor for the Corvettes and even the more powerful European marques.<br />
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However Mickey Thompson had lured Krause away to drive a Corvette in '63, putting the Shelby American team in need of drivers. Shelby would lure top Corvette driver <b>Dave MacDonald</b> and add successful car-builder and club-racer <b>Ken Miles,</b> an Englishman transplanted to southern California, to his team. MacDonald was young and talented and had experience driving the powerful Corvette, Miles was grizzled and wily and had made a reputation driving small bore MGs and Porsches. Miles also knew the importance of physical condition on driving: he ran and exercised to stay in shape at a time when most drivers quickly developed the physique of a major-league first baseman. Despite being 18 years older, Miles gave up very little if anything to MacDonald on the race track and would do most of the development driving for the Cobra. The two would finish first and second at their first race with Shelby in 1963 and frequently thereafter.<br />
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Even with the success of the Cobras in the 1963 season, Ford was hesitant to take them to Le Mans that summer. In the spring of 1963 Ford was secretly negotiating to buy Ferrari, and Ford's support of Shelby was a sticking point; there was no need to rub Enzo's nose in the fact that Ford was sponsoring a competing racing team in Ferrari's own backyard (the deal would fall through anyhow). The reliability of the Cobra and Ford's new V8 were also largely unknown; Ford may have wanted to avoid an embarrassing first showing while Shelby was still working out the bugs.<br />
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But Shelby being Shelby, there <i>were </i>Cobras at Le Mans in 1963: AC would prepare two cars - one entered as an AC factory team, the other as a private entry paid for by Ed Hugus (who would co-drive). The Hugus car would break down about 10 hours into the race, but the AC car would finish 7th overall, behind 6 assorted Ferraris. The Cobras had plenty of power and reasonable handling, but its weak link was aerodynamics: even with a "Le Mans" hard-top the aging roadster's bodywork limited the Cobra's top speed too much for a fast track like <b><i>La Sarthe.</i></b><br />
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After a year of experience racing the Cobra, in which Shelby had won the USRRC Manufacturer's Championship, Shelby set his sights on winning in Europe. Shelby had a plan for 1964 - actually two plans - to address the limited top-speed of the roadster body. The merely crazy idea involved upping the horsepower ante by dropping a 427 inch Ford NASCAR motor into the Cobra; the really insane idea was to build a more aerodynamic coupe body for the standard Cobra roadster.<br />
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For all their success, Shelby's "engineering division" was made up of a couple of California hot-rodders and an aging English tank mechanic whose main job was driving the car. Ken Miles took on the 427 project, wedging a Holman & Moody NASCAR 427 into a Cobra roadster, and while the car showed promise the lightweight AC chassis was not up to the weight or the stresses of the big-block V8. Eventually Shelby would develop a new tube-frame Cobra roadster around the big-block, but it became clear that in the short term the focus should be on the new coupe body, using the tried and true Cobra chassis and small-block 289.<br />
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<tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-05bgdHYnIzQ/VcA6nppMASI/AAAAAAAAB2k/ls4mIkLNSrk/s1600/DSC06394.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-05bgdHYnIzQ/VcA6nppMASI/AAAAAAAAB2k/ls4mIkLNSrk/s320/DSC06394.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The first Cobra Daytona Coupe - also photographed at the Simeone Museum.</td></tr>
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In 1964 aerodynamics was a black-art and the only experts had been quietly smuggled out of Germany at the end of WWII to work at American aircraft and missile companies. Engineering school dropout Pete Brock would come up with the design for the new body, going largely by instinct. The design would adopt a Kamm-tail that reduced drag while keeping the car's overall length within the limits imposed by the AC chassis. Brock didn't just draw the car and send it off to a coach builder to manufacture; he and a few of Shelby's technicians would build full size wooden forms and hammer out body panels much like the British craftsmen who were building Cobra bodies.<br />
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The new body - generally referred to as the <i><b>Daytona Coupe</b></i> - was surprisingly successful, pushing the car's top speed up to about 190mph and making it competitive with Ferrari's 250 GTO. At the car's first outing at the Daytona Continental (a 2000km race) in February the car did well before a fire put it out of the race; at the Sebring 12 hours a month later the Coupe would win the GT class and come in 4th overall, (barely) behind a handful of Ferrari Prototype cars (two 275Ps and a new 330P), and ahead of several 250 GTOs. A number of Cobra roadsters helped fill out the top 10 finishers.<br />
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Ferrari had set a precedent with their limited production GTO, claiming it was simply a re-bodied version of the 250 SWB that had preceded it in order to homologate the car without producing the 100 copies required by the FIA to count as a GT car. Shelby would exercise the same loophole to homologate the new coupe; with Ford's backing, he would have another body built in Italy and take the first two Daytonas racing in Europe for the '64 season.<br />
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Sadly Shelby driver Dave MacDonald would be killed at Indianapolis that May, causing Shelby to find a new driver; he would recruit already legendary Corvette driver <b>Bob Bondurant</b>. Bondurant had quite a bit of success with the Coupe that summer, including a first-in GT, 4th overall finish at Le Mans (again, beaten only by Ferarri Prototype cars).<br />
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At the same time Shelby was campaigning the Daytonas in Europe, Ford was supporting an English racing team run by Brit <b>Alan Mann. </b>Interestingly, in conjunction with<b> Holman&Moody</b> (of stock car fame), Mann was running a bit of a skunkworks project for Ford: he had prepared two of the first Ford Mustangs for road racing - running them in many of the same events as the (much faster) Cobra coupes. Mann had already been running the Ford Falcon (a twin of the Mustang under the sheetmetal) before the Mustang's debut; in 1964 Mann was the expert at making the Mustang go fast.<br />
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Shelby was looking to win the FIA GT Manufacturer's Championship with the Daytona that year, and with one race left in the season at Monza (in Italy) he was within spitting distance of the necessary points to beat Ferrari, but Enzo was not about to be beaten on his home turf: Ferrari tried to have the Ferrari LM (a newer, faster Prototype car than the already aging GTO) classified as a GT car even though not enough had been built. The FIA balked, but under threat of the Ferrari team never racing at Monza again the race ended up not counting for Championship points - giving Ferrari the Championship in 1964. Shelby was not happy.<br />
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Shortly after Shelby got home to California he got a call from Ray Geddes at Ford: they wanted an SCCA legal version of the Mustang to compete in American club-racing (which had no class for 4 seater cars) and oh, by the way, it should be competitive with the Corvette. Having seen the Alan Mann Mustangs, Shelby knew there was no way to turn a production Mustang into a race car with just the modifications allowed by the SCCA; he would have to produce at least 100 "Shelby-ized" Mustangs to base the race car on. Shelby wasn't all that excited about the project, but he was relying on Ford for Cobra engines, and Cobra sales weren't exactly through the roof, so he agreed. Shelby American would need a bigger shop to turn the 100+ white Mustang fastbacks shipped from Ford into Shelby GT350s.<br />
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We need to rewind a bit again... When the deal to buy Ferrari had fallen through in 1963, <b>Henry Ford II</b> (aka The Deuce) wanted revenge, and not just a win in the GT class, but an outright win at Le Mans. Ford went out and bought the design for a new prototype racing car from Eric Broadley's Lola Cars in England. The new car was a totally modern design - a lightweight steel monocoque designed around a mid-engine V8 and a Colotti trans-axle out back, sitting low to the ground and fitted with swoopy fiberglass body work. The car would originally be known as the Ford GT, and the initial thinking was that it would run the all-aluminum 4.2l push rod V8 that Ford had developed for their attack on Indianapolis in 1963 - a much modified version of Ford's new small block street V8. Responsibility for building the cars and organizing a race team were given to Shelby's old friend, John Wyer, who set up a shop in Slough, England.<br />
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On paper the Lola/Ford should have crushed the Ferrari 330Ps; in actuality that first year was an ugly time for John Wyer. The Indy V8 made plenty of power, but it had been designed for a 500 mile race - a mere warm-up at Le Mans where the winners would travel over 2500 miles in one shot. The Colotti trans-axle was the same part used by Ferrari, but it simply wasn't up to the torque of an engine with 40% more displacement than the 3-liter Ferrari V12s, and it broke often. And while the Lola body was low-drag, it was also low on down-force, making for erratic handling at 200mph speeds.<br />
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Being on the opposite side of the Atlantic - 6 timezones away from Dearborn - meant Wyer had limited support from Ford and their massive engineering resources, and from the many hot rod and specialty suppliers setting up shop in southern California. Wyer was spread thin trying to run both a racing-team <i>and</i> a manufacturing operation, while sorting out a race car like nothing ever built before. Not surprisingly, in that first year the Ford GT had 10 starts and 10 Did-Not-Finish (DNF) results.<br />
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Henry II was losing patience, so after another disappointing outing at the Nassau Speedweek in November of 1964, Ford packed up the battered racing cars and shipped them to Shelby American. With less meddling and more help from Ford, Shelby's team - with Phil Remington and Ken Miles doing much of the work - quickly made the cars competitive. The Indy-Ford motor was replaced with a race-spec Cobra 289, and Ford engineering produced a few heavy duty parts to reinforce the Colotti trans-axle. Miles would spend days driving the cars on the track to find the right combination of bodywork and chassis settings to make the car stable at Le Mans speed. After just 2 months of work, the Shelby-ized Ford GT, re-christened the GT40, would take 1st and 3rd overall at the Daytona Continental in February of 1965.<br />
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But the final piece of the puzzle was still to come. <b>Roy Lunn</b>, one of the Ford engineers who had been working with John Wyer on the GT40 in England had just returned to Dearborn to set up KarKraft, a small shop intended to handle special development projects for Ford. Lunn knew that it wouldn't be long before the competition caught up to the performance of the small-block Ford (John Mecom had brought a Grand Sport Corvette to Nassau that fall that had outrun everything - including Cobras and Ferrari LMs). Lunn had already been thinking about how to improve on the GT40's power-to-weight, including building an all-aluminum GT40 chassis, but his ultimate plan was to replace the Ford small-block with their big 427 inch (7 liter) NASCAR engine - the only snag being the lack of a trans-axle able to handle the massive torque of the big-block. Not surprisingly, the first special project at KarKraft was to build a trans-axle around the internals of Ford's heavy duty 4-speed "top-loader" transmission.<br />
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The first GT40 "Mark IIs" with big-block power would arrive at Shelby American just in time to be packed up and shipped to France for the 1965 Le Mans, where they would join two small-block GT40s and two Cobra Daytonas under the Shelby banner. Two other GT40s and three other Daytona Coupes were also entered by various teams. But while it was a miracle that KarKraft and Shelby had gotten the cars ready for LeMans, there was no overcoming the lack of preparation and development: by the 6 hour mark all of the GT40s and 4 of the Daytonas had DNF'd, a lone Daytona Coupe entered by AC Cars being the last Ford still running at the end of the race, in 8th place overall behind a number of Ferraris and Porsches. 1965 would be prove to be as bad for Shelby and the GT40 as 1964 had been for John Wyer; it would be still another year before Shelby and Henry Ford got their revenge on the "Old Man" in Maranello.<br />
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Which seems like a good place for both of us to take a break before I try to wrap this all up in <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-faceless-heroes-of-shelby-american.html" target="_blank">part 2</a>. Stay tuned...<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-65094180819602474352015-05-17T15:34:00.003-04:002016-09-20T23:07:49.408-04:00The Death of Apollo: A Failure of Science Fiction?One of the things that keeps me writing these little essays is that whenever I research something I find two or three other seemingly unrelated bits of trivia I never knew about, and since I'm willing to write about most anything, there is always a story to be told. In one of my recent missives I wrote about the demise of the 1960s muscle car, I mentioned that like the Vietnam War, spending on the 1960s US Space Program contributed to the inflation and economic turmoil of the 1970s. I still believe that is true, but proving it to myself sent me down a research rat hole to try to understand why the space program met with the same fate as the Pontiac GTO, so all that remains are a few artifacts in museum displays. Its an interesting tale, so pull up a chair...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XMwaN9eMmNQ/VVjmuq_A-BI/AAAAAAAABmE/zoPTHpB-rlo/s1600/IMG_0374.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XMwaN9eMmNQ/VVjmuq_A-BI/AAAAAAAABmE/zoPTHpB-rlo/s320/IMG_0374.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper, on display at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, VA.</td></tr>
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For a kid growing up in the 1960s the space program was hard to miss. At school the <i>Weekly Reader</i> (a kind of newspaper for 8 year olds) was full of stories about the astronauts and the Apollo program. As the TV generation, we were treated to frequent "Breaking News from the Cape" reports in the middle of our after school cartoons, and then there were prime-time TV shows like <i><b>Lost in Space</b></i> and <b><i>Star Trek</i></b>. And for birthdays and Christmas there were space related toys - space helmets and ray-guns and model kits and action figures and flying model rockets. Not surprisingly lots of kids wanted to be astronauts, except the geeky kids like me who wanted to be engineers and <i>build</i> the space ships (we also thought Scotty was way cooler than Captain Kirk).<br />
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15 years later I was one of the disillusioned geeky kids who had struggled through an engineering degree only to find that NASA wasn't hiring and lots of aerospace engineers were working in burger joints in southern California. On the early internet newsgroups we debated what had happened, what had gone wrong, why we weren't watching the first Mars landing on TV and building the ships in orbit that would take humans to the outer planets - just like in <b><i>2001 A Space Odyssey. </i></b>In the early 1980s the end of the Apollo story was still playing out, but now that most of the people involved have retired and their books have been written its easier to piece together what happened.<br />
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What we forgot or didn't know in 1982 was how much NASA and the space program were really products of the Cold War. Scientific accomplishments were a way for a country to flaunt its technical and industrial abilities in a seemingly peaceful way while reminding everyone of their military strength. During WWII Russia suffered significant losses to the little bits of industry it had; launching Sputnik in 1957 and then Gagarin in 1961 demonstrated that Russia - under communism - had not only recovered from the war but had become as technically sophisticated as the western democracies. It also sent a subtle message to western militaries: a rocket that could put a man into orbit was capable of delivering an atomic bomb anywhere on the planet.<br />
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With the Soviets getting their name in the headlines and record books with a string of "space firsts" based largely on ICBM technology, the US had no real choice but to respond with something even more ambitious. It went beyond simple prestige: maintaining the perception of technical and military leadership translated into incredibly valuable geo-political influence. If such a highly visible demonstration of technology made the Soviets unsure of America's military capabilities, or pushed them to use up their more limited resources trying to compete in a space race, it could reduce the chance of a confrontation escalating to a nuclear war, which would make the space program a few billion dollars well spent.<br />
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We have all seen clips of President Kennedy's "we choose to go the Moon" speech, but the truth is Kennedy was not especially interested in space; he just asked his experts to come up with a flashy medium-term goal that would play to the strengths of the US, giving NASA time to catch up to and pass the Soviets. Going to the Moon required lots of engineering, but it didn't require any real breakthroughs - just lots of existing (and extremely expensive) technology. If there was one thing the US government was good at, it was spending massive amounts of money!<br />
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Kennedy would appoint James Webb as the NASA Administrator who would serve for most of the Apollo program, and he deserves much of the credit for getting the job done. Webb was an experienced Washington insider (and a WWII Marine pilot); he knew how the Federal Government worked and he knew the program's bottomless budget would make it a target for budget-cutters and political hangers-on. So he spent money as fast as possible - building facilities and buying equipment before they were really needed - to make it harder to cancel the project. He would quickly place contracts - spread among all of the major US aerospace companies - for components to build 15 Saturn V rockets, 12 of the smaller Saturn IBs (used for test flights to earth orbit) and a number of Apollo spacecraft and landers.<br />
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The budget for the entire US Apollo program, from 1959 to 1972 (including the Mercury and Gemini projects) was about $25B(illion) 1970 dollars. That's about $140B in 2015 dollars, but comparing dollar amounts across 40+ years can be deceptive - to get an idea of how much money that was lets stick with (approximately) 1970 dollars. Its tempting to take the $25B total spent on Apollo and divide by 13 years to get a little less than $2B a year, but the true cost is skewed by the fact that NASA spent very little until 1964, and was already winding things down by 1968. During its peak years NASA was spending about $5B per year, which is a reasonable guess at what it would have spent for the Apollo follow-on projects NASA was planning for the 1970s.<br />
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The entire US Federal Budget in 1969, the year of the first moon landing, was (ballpark numbers) $200B, with about $100B of that being spent by the military. Of that $100B in military spending, about $25B was the cost of the Vietnam war. In 1969, the US Gross Domestic Product - essentially the total of every working American's paycheck - was $1Trillion - or $1,000B dollars, so the US Government was taking (on average) 20 cents of every dollar out of everyone's paycheck as income tax, and of that 20 cents NASA was getting half a penny. Supporters of manned space flight often compare the $5B per year cost of Apollo to the much larger military budget or the GDP, but for a single civilian project $5B was a ridiculously large amount of money. For comparison, the Navy built its first <i>Nimitz</i> class nuclear powered aircraft carrier over the years 1968-1973 at a cost of $4.5B, so NASA was spending the equivalent of an aircraft carrier per year to get to the moon. And unlike an aircraft carrier with a 30+ year lifetime, that $5B was essentially <i>gone</i> - traded for a few 100 pounds of moon rock and some cool photos.<br />
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The 1969 Federal budget actually <i>balanced - </i>the IRS collected as much in taxes as the government spent<i> </i>(officially there was a 0.3% surplus). That means the U.S. could technically afford the Space Program <i>and</i> the Vietnam War - the government was not (as I had thought) printing money to pay all those soldiers and contractors and NASA engineers - at least not yet. But that extra $30B a year in government spending ($25B for the war and $5B for Apollo) was being pumped into factories producing tanks and bombs and moon landers instead of pickup trucks and TV sets. It created a situation where there was a shortage of consumer goods, which pushed prices up, and a shortage of labor that pushed wages up - a perfect storm for an inflationary spiral that coincidentally started in 1965 - the year that troop levels in Vietnam jumped and James Webb started buying moon rockets. The US economy could have absorbed the cost of Apollo by itself, but added on to the cost of the Vietnam War it became the straw that broke the camel's back: 1969 would be the last Federal surplus for nearly 30 years.<br />
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Lets rewind a bit. By 1966 the shine had already worn off the space program. The public had lost its initial enthusiasm and Congress was already tired of paying for it. While the public was all for the idea of space exploration in general, everyone could think of other things that were more deserving of all that money. Sure, NASA was still popular with the 8 year old crowd, but when it came to entertainment value <i><b>Star Trek</b></i> had the real thing beat six ways from Sunday and it didn't cost tax payers a dime.<br />
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Most of the folks at NASA were too busy building rockets and spacecraft to worry about public opinion. The Gemini program was in full swing, launching a mission every 2-3 months to train the new batch of moon-bound astronauts and work out the techniques and procedures (like on-orbit rendezvous and docking) required for the moon missions. Saturn I rockets were being flown with mocked up Apollo capsules to test hardware and gather data on reentry. Engineers were working out the last design and manufacturing problems with the new Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft. Kennedy had called the shot - "to go to the Moon in this decade" - and James Webb took that date very seriously; he knew that worrying about what came next, and trying to do too much, could easily derail that goal.<br />
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But Apollo was too big, and the lead times were too long, to not give some thought to the future. Assuming there was a moon landing sometime in 1969, on January 1st, 1970 there would still be 400,000 NASA employees and contractors expecting to meet the <i>next</i> decade with a job. Long before 1970 there had to be new programs to take to Congress to fund the groundwork for whatever came next. As early as 1965 there were a few top-level managers and engineers planning what would come after that historic landing.<br />
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Most of the fleet of big and small Saturn rockets had been bought as insurance against design problems and accidents. Through a combination of passionate engineering, extensive ground testing and sheer luck the Saturn V proved to be surprisingly error-free right out of the box; after just two test flights it was declared "man-rated" and on its first manned launch it sent Apollo 8 on a fly-by of the moon. If all went as planned, and surprisingly it would, only 6 of the 15 Saturns would be used getting to the first landing, leaving 9 Saturn Vs for follow on missions.<br />
<i><br /></i><i>Conspiracy theorists use the seemingly miraculous early success of the Saturn V as proof that it was faked, ignoring the fact that the Saturn V was an evolution of the Saturn I that had been flying since 1961. Still, Apollo 8 was a huge gamble, motivated by CIA information that the Soviets were about to attempt a moon mission early in the coming year.</i><br />
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Of course there would be more than one mission to the Moon, but the thinking was there was no reason to immediately fly 9 more identical lunar missions. The expectation was that there would be a continuing series of missions to the moon, and NASA would buy more Saturn Vs (or even more powerful rockets) going forward. But a Saturn V could lift a <i>lot </i>to orbit, so there were lots of ideas for other kinds of missions bouncing around NASA to fill up the launch calendar of the 1970s. In 1967 a few NASA big-shots put together the <i><b>Apollo Applications Program</b></i>, a sort of plan-for-a-plan that identified a number of projects, both in Earth orbit and additional lunar missions. The AAP was intended to use up the remaining Apollo hardware <i>and</i> justify the purchase of another batch of Saturn rockets (projections were for an ongoing launch-rate of 6 Saturn Vs and 6 Saturn IB's per year).<br />
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And what exactly was the <i><b>Apollo Applications Program</b></i>? Despite being authored by some of the smartest people at NASA, AAP was basically a collection of ideas taken straight from 1950s science fiction: space stations and space telescopes and lunar bases, running experiments, making astronomical and solar observations, and lunar sample and return on a grand scale.<br />
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What NASA really wanted, and knew Congress would never pay for, was a Mars landing. As early as 1951 those wacky guys at the Los Alamos National Lab that brought us the atomic bomb had been working on a nuclear powered rocket; by the early days of Apollo they were fairly far along. With a tiny fraction of NASA's budget in the 1960s they would develop a viable rocket engine with the idea of using it as the third stage of a stretched and upgraded Saturn V that could deliver serious tonnage to the Moon and put Mars in reach, but at a cost that would dwarf Apollo. One of the less obvious goals of AAP was to quietly lay the ground work for that Mars mission until a more agreeable Congress was seated, presumably when the Vietnam War was over.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_8eETNKIE-w/VVjoC2h_RRI/AAAAAAAABmM/m8jkFqzLnVU/s1600/IMG_0618.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_8eETNKIE-w/VVjoC2h_RRI/AAAAAAAABmM/m8jkFqzLnVU/s320/IMG_0618.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the more interesting items at the Neil Armstrong Museum: classic SciFi of the 1960s,<br />
taken on a 1995 Space Shuttle Mission by Astronaut Janice Voss.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The problem with the AAP was that all of those aging science fiction stories it was built on had missed the mark. Before space probes actually visited Mars and Venus, sci-fi writers had expected them to be at least somewhat habitable and had set all sorts of adventures on those worlds, when in truth living there would require a man-made environment much like a space station. The stories had also failed to predict computers and telemetry and reliable solid-state electronics, and assumed that humans would be needed to flip switches and replace vacuum tubes and pick up rocks. By the late 1960s - thanks largely to technology developed <i>for</i> Apollo - practically all of those tasks could be handled by simple robot hardware without the added cost and complexity of keeping a human alive in the harsh environment of space.<br />
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Even with nuclear rocket engines, a trip to Mars will take months, for a handful of astronauts squeezed into a spacecraft about the size of a nice Winnebago. Kubrick's <b><i>2001</i></b> was one of the few 1960s era science fiction movies to accurately capture the cramped, slow moving feel of space flight, and audiences - at least the ones not getting stoned for the psychedelic sequence at the end - found it boring. Science fiction had made space travel exciting in a way that NASA could never deliver, and without public support their AAP was going nowhere.<br />
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What actually happened was a series of unfortunate and tragic events. Just days after NASA asked Congress for $500M to start work on AAP, the <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/">Apollo 1 fire</a> would claim the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. While the fire is often seen as a sign of shoddy engineering and poor management at NASA, such a disaster was not unexpected given the complexity of the systems being developed; many more test pilots had died developing military aircraft during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. But the fire was a handy excuse for Congress to slow spending on <i>new </i>things, which would inevitably slow the spending on future projects.<br />
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At about the same time President Johnson, a strong supporter of NASA, decided not to run for re-election. Johnson had escalated the Vietnam war and understood he would never be re-elected; stepping down at least gave the Democrats a chance with another candidate (then vice president Hubert Humphrey). Weary with handling the fallout of the Apollo fire and faced with the certainty of a new president, Webb decided to step down as NASA Administrator before the coming inauguration to make it easy for the next president to appoint a replacement. Webb would discuss his resignation with Johnson in the fall of 1968, just before the election and just days after manned Apollo missions resumed; somewhat surprisingly, Johnson would make Webb's resignation effective immediately.<br />
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<i>Again, the conspiracy theorists point to Webb's sudden resignation as proof of something shady. In his <a href="http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/WEBB-J/webb.pdf">own words</a> Webb says he was one of the first to know of Johnson's decision not to run, and he had told Johnson they "would go out together". Johnson probably realized whoever he appointed as interim would still be there when the push for the moon occurred in the first half of 1969, and decided to put a replacement in the saddle to gain experience as quickly as possible.</i><br />
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Thomas Paine would fill in as acting Director of NASA, and eventually be confirmed by Congress the following year, <i>after</i> President Nixon took office and during the first few Apollo landings. Nixon most likely left Paine in place rather than risk disruption just as the last few moon missions were playing out; the new president had already convened a panel of experts who had recommended winding down manned space in favor of cheap robotic missions. NASA funding in 1972 was about 70% of its maximum in 1965, but there would be no significant increase for the next 10 years while the inflation of the 1970s effectively cut those dollars in half.<br />
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Paine was enthusiastic but he was not politically shrewd in the way Webb had been; he had no success convincing the Nixon government to authorize any new manned programs. Instead NASA was given enough money do a few more more moon landings to use up the existing hardware. After a year and a half fighting in vain for new projects, Paine realized his real job was to quietly turn out the lights at NASA; instead he would resign and return to a job in industry.<br />
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Under Paine's successor, James Fletcher, NASA managed to salvage one of the most basic projects from the AAP, an idea for a simple space-station built in an empty Saturn V third stage, an idea that would turn into Skylab - but fitting that into the budget required scrapping the last three planned moon missions (which may have been scrapped anyhow). In the 1970s NASA would try to make space flight more economical by building a <i>reusable</i> spacecraft, an idea that would eventually become the Space Shuttle. Originally the Shuttle had been imagined as just one piece of a<i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System" target="_blank">Space Transportation System</a></i> that would include reusable spacecraft that stayed in space, moored at a space station, carrying astronauts from orbit to the Moon and beyond just like in Kubrick's movie, but again there was no political or popular support for effectively doubling or tripling NASA's budget to get beyond Earth orbit.<br />
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In hindsight, nothing <i><b>went wrong </b>- </i>NASA accomplished exactly what it was intended to do. The moon landing once and for all eliminated the perception of the US as a purely blue-collar nation of shop keepers and factory workers. Apollo made it clear that America's incredible industrial capacity was backed up with engineers and scientists that were as good (or better) than the technical strongholds of England and Germany. High paying engineering and science jobs were created in southern US states, giving an economic boost to some of the least developed parts of the country.<br />
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And as expected, the Soviets poured huge amounts of scientific talent and industrial resources into the race to the Moon. The Soviet space program had a reputation for doing more with less than NASA's gold-plated way of doing things, but they had to: during the 1960s the Soviet GDP was about 1/10th the size of the US GDP. The Soviet space program put a much bigger dent in the standard of living of the Soviets than NASA ever did in the US. Built on a shoestring, the Russian N-1 moon rocket (their Saturn V equivalent) attempted to use a large number of small, relatively cheap rocket engines, with limited testing - resulting in 4 fairly spectacular test-flight failures before they gave up on a lunar mission of their own.<br />
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NASA is often criticized for being wasteful with money. During the Apollo era that was <i>intentional</i>: NASA had the luxury of trading money for time. Making the Saturn V first stage recoverable might have saved $100M per launch, but would have added a year or two to the design and testing; letting the rocket fall into the Atlantic made more sense when the only goal that mattered was a 1969 moon landing. Since the Apollo years, NASA has learned to work at least a little more efficiently and has managed to continue doing important - if not quite sexy - R&D work long after the bloom has left the rose. While the Space Shuttle failed to deliver on <i>cheap</i> access to orbit, the Shuttle era - the 1980s and 90s - gave us a taste for the commercial value of space-based services such as earth observation, GPS, and phone and data service <i>anywhere</i> on the planet, and that has driven demand for commercial launch providers. If NASA is ever truly asked to send a manned mission to the Moon or Mars, they will almost certainly make use of the high-performance engines developed for the Shuttle and the life-support technology perfected on the International Space Station.<br />
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Today NASA has a plan to get to Mars sometime around 2035 (don't get excited, this is not the first or even the second version of the plan). This latest plan uses Space Shuttle technology and leftover parts to build a new heavy-lift launcher that looks a lot like a Saturn V, to launch a spacecraft that looks a lot like an Apollo CSM. Getting to Mars in a reasonable amount of time (the longer it takes, the harder it is to keep the crew alive) will most likely require a nuclear rocket, like the one the AEC developed in the 1960s. Oh the irony...<br />
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The actual Mars mission in this hypothetical plan requires 8 launches (!!!) of the new heavy-lifter to assemble the spacecraft in Earth orbit before it heads off to Mars. I suspect reality will be quite a bit different than this plan, for the simple reason that it always has been. Not surprisingly, the cost of this new heavy lifter is (adjusted for inflation) about the same as a Saturn V. With 8 launches, plus all the engineering of the new spacecraft, a single Mars mission will be in the ballpark of the cost of the entire Apollo program. Stretching that out over 20+ years makes it look affordable, but really only makes carrying it out riskier, since you can't rely on Congress to keep their funding promises longer than a presidential election cycle. <br />
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If NASA is serious about getting to Mars, they need a plan to go from zero to landing in at most 6 years, at a cost of about $5B (today dollars) per year (on top of the $4B they're spending to keep the ISS in orbit). And even if NASA is serious about a <i>permanent Mars base</i>, they should stop talking about it, because it makes no points with Congress who simply see a base as a way of being held hostage for future space funding.<br />
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Which sounds defeatist, but only because that is how the last 70 years of science fiction have prepared us to think about man-in-space. Instead consider that Elon Musk's <i>Falcon Heavy</i> launcher is expected to put 53 tons into orbit for the low-low price of $100M. That's today's horribly inflated dollars - not the 1960s dollars that paid for Apollo. This is unbelievably cheap by current standards (if it was anyone besides Musk, I would put no faith in that prediction). 50 tons is a fully loaded jetliner with 100 passengers (no, you can't fly a 737 to orbit and back, but I'd expect a spaceplane carrying a similar number of people to weigh a similar amount), or a small space station. Suddenly passenger<i> fare to orbit </i>is in the realm of $1-2M, and a private space station is in the $500M range. Sure, at these prices only Silicon Valley billionaires will be going to space, but there are enough of them to pay the bills and drive demand while the <i>next</i> generation of technology is developed so mere mortals can get to orbit for the cost of a vacation to Europe.<br />
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Cheap commercial launches to orbit have the potential to change the assumptions NASA's current Mars plan was built on. NASA can concentrate on building a Mars spacecraft and a less ambitious heavy-lift rocket to put it in orbit, and then SpaceX can deliver the tons and tons of reaction mass, fuel, oxygen, food, water, and eventually the crew, for less than it would cost NASA to design and build multiple Saturn class rockets. I don't know how likely it is that will happen, but at my age I think its my only hope of seeing a Mars landing while I still have enough brain cells left to appreciate it. I'll remain hopeful...<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-32615537422588157092015-04-25T21:03:00.001-04:002015-11-17T23:05:57.975-05:00The Last of the V8 Interceptors - part 5 of the Muscle Car HistoryIn the last <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/03/life-after-death-part-4-of-muscle-car.html">installment</a> of this mini-series I covered the immediate aftermath of what was the Muscle Car Era through the rebirth of the muscle/pony car in 1982, and after banging away at the keyboard, I was thinking I was pretty much done. I thought this was going to be where I wrapped up loose ends and made a few snarky observations about the state of the performance automobile and today's muscle car culture. But it looks like that will have to wait a bit longer.<br />
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The problem with being 55 years old is that I tend to think everything that I've been around to see happen is recent history. It seems like just yesterday that I traded my well worn '69 Road Runner for a brand new '83 Mustang GT, but a lot has happened since then, and since I'm trying to tell the whole story I just can't leave 30 years out...<br />
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With the sales success of those early 1980s V8 Mustangs and Camaros, the Japanese imports would respond with increasingly powerful cars using turbos to make up for displacement. Without a heavy V8 hanging out over the front wheels, and with an independent rear suspension out back, the turbo Supra and 300ZX and Rx-7 were formidable competition for the pony cars and even GM's Corvette. Detroit would respond with wider tires and stiffer springs and shocks for the new breed of muscle car - cars that were now expected to take a corner almost as well as they could hammer down a quarter mile.<br />
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Probably due to the foreign competition appearing in the late 1980s, pony car sales would sag in the early '90s. During the 1980s Ford and GM were still struggling to modernize their lineups, and the Mustang and Camaro had gone largely unchanged since 1983. Ford dabbled with the idea of replacing the Mustang with a front-wheel drive V6 powered car based on a Mazda chassis; GM considered dropping the Camaro and Firebird outright - but there were enough hard core buyers for the existing cars that in the end both Ford and GM just kept stamping them out with minimal changes.<br />
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In 1994 Ford would restyle the Mustang with just a <i>bit</i> of retro-styling drawn from the first '65 Mustang. Two years later Ford would finally retire their 5 liter (302 inch) small block Windsor V8, replacing it with an all new 4.6 liter V8, both a 2-valve SOHC version for the garden variety GT and a 4-valve DOHC version in the top-dog Cobra, topping out at 305 relatively honest (SAE Net) horsepower - probably the most powerful Mustang up to that point.<br />
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In 2002 GM would discontinue the Camaro and Firebird, due to declining sales and the lack of a rear-wheel-drive platform to build a car for what was becoming an increasingly small niche. Chevy still had the Corvette, and muscle car buyers were increasingly older and wealthier than they had been before; developing two performance cars that competed with each other in the showroom didn't seem to make sense.<br />
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For 2004 Pontiac would import a Holden (GM of Australia) rear-wheel-drive sedan, packing the Corvette's V8, and badge it as a GTO. It was a good modern muscle car, but it lacked any styling or engineering ties to the original GTO and it never sold well.<br />
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For most of the 2000s Ford would cash in on the lack of competition, selling lots of V8 Mustangs. GM couldn't ignore Ford's success, and would come up with a plan for a new Camaro based on the same Holden platform Pontiac had used in their GTO. Somehow it took nearly 5 years for GM to get the new Camaro into production; it finally went on sale in 2009.<br />
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Once proud Chrysler had been hit hard by the shift to smaller more fuel efficient cars in the 1970s; as the smallest of the Big 3 they didn't have the cash to retool their product line as fast as Ford and GM had done, in 1979 they would turn to the US government for an unprecedented $1.5 billion loan to avoid bankruptcy. Chrylser would use that loan to develop the K-car, a modern but uninspired front-wheel drive mid-size car that would keep the wolf away from the door but generated little passion among buyers. In the early-to-mid 1980s the US economy was still shaky from the oil-shortages of the 1970s; the K-cars were cheap and sold well but Chrysler had neither the funds or a rear-wheel drive platform to use to develop a modern pony-car of their own. The best Chrysler could do for performance fans was to add a turbo to the 4 cylinder engine in their front-wheel drive compact <i>Omni</i> and <i>Horizon</i>. These little cars were fast but looked like every other cheap econo-box on the road; no one was lining up to buy them.<br />
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In the second half of the 1980s Chrysler would fall into an unexpected success with their new <i>minivan </i>line. With cars shrinking, the minivan would become the new big-family hauler, and Chrysler would sell a lot of them; the mini-van would finally put Chrysler back on its feet financially.<br />
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While the majority of Chrysler's cars were front-wheel drive with 4 or 6 cylinder engines, they were still building V8s based on their 1960s vintage small-block design, but those engines were going into SUVs and pickup trucks. In the early 1990s Chrysler would stretch a small-block V8 into a V10 to power a modern-day halo car - the <i>Viper</i> - essentially an updated Shelby Cobra - but there would be no main-stream V8 powered cars from Chrysler for another decade. Finally in 2005 Chrysler would launch a new 4-door rear-wheel-drive sedan carrying the <i>Charger</i> name powered by their new Hemi V8 (a further evolution of their venerable small-block V8 and in no way related to the hemi-headed monster motors of the 1950s and 60s). With the continued success of the Mustang and rumors of the return of Camaro flying out of GM, in 2008 Chyrsler would shorten the Charger platform to resurrect the <i>Challenger </i>(by then Chrysler had consolidated Plymouth into history, so there was no '<i>Cuda</i> twin).<br />
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When the new Camaro arrived in 2009, it was like 1967 all over again with V8 powered pony-cars from all of the Big-3 competing for top-horsepower honors. Except today, its not <i>just</i> horsepower; buyers also want to know which is faster around the Nurburgring. Modern pony cars have independent rear suspensions and wider tires and more horsepower than a 1960s NASCAR racer. The latest Challenger <i>Hellcat </i>has a supercharger and 700 horsepower, and runs the quarter mile in the low 11s. A new Camaro is due this year that will at least match the Hellcat, and the next Shelby 500GT Mustang is due out next year and will almost certainly outrun them both and take top spot - at least for a month or two!<br />
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What the future will bring is anyone's guess. While the modern muscle car seems firmly entrenched, in 1969 no one would have guessed the original muscle cars would go from the high-to-the-low-to-the-end-of-the-show in just 2 short years. Over the next 5-10 years gasoline will almost certainly get more expensive and the Boomers who buy many of them will age out of their car buying years. But the basic concept of the muscle car is just too much fun to go away; as long as we're driving cars I'm willing to bet there will be really fast ones for those of us willing to pay extra for a totally impractical vehicle that is more fun than a roller coaster every time we flex our right foot. <br />
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I'm looking forward to 2025 when its time to write the next chapter in this series.<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-17234797214762302462015-03-11T22:58:00.002-04:002016-06-08T08:33:45.538-04:00Life After Death - part 4 of A Muscle Car History When I started writing this mini-history about the American Muscle Car phenomena, I expected to knock out 10 paragraphs and call it a day. When you're doing this blog-thing, 10 paragraphs is sort of the sweet spot for telling a good story, keeping the reader's attention, and not spending all your time writing about things instead of actually doing things to write about. But somehow this story got in my blood and I decided to do a multi-part series, and even after I covered the <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-not-so-brief-history-of-muscle-car.html">backstory</a>, the <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/02/more-muscle-car-history-part-2.html">rise</a> and <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-day-music-died-part-3-of-muscle-car.html">fall</a> of what is generally considered <i>the</i> Muscle Car Era (1964-1970), there was still lots of stuff left over. Let me try to wrap it all up in 10 sweet paragraphs.<br />
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While muscle cars literally went out of fashion in 1970, it was too big a thing to just <b><i>stop</i></b>. Developing new cars and engines takes 3 or more years of engineering, so products that had entered the development pipeline in 1967 were just hitting the market in 1970, including:<br />
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<li>Chrysler had just rolled out their new Dodge <i>Challenger</i> and Plymouth <i>Barracuda</i> pony-cars, based on a shortened version of their mid-size chassis. These two corporate twins finally had the mean, modern styling to compete with the <i>Mustang</i> and <i>Camaro, </i>and an engine bay that made the Hemi look small. OK, not small, but merely average.</li>
<li>Plymouth had restyled their boxy Valiant compact into the swoopier <i>Duster </i>model and offered it with the muscular new 340 inch small-block V8.</li>
<li>Ford's had just launched two new engines families, represented by the 351 inch Cleveland small-block and the 429 inch big-block V8.</li>
<li>Ford's Fairlane would be renamed the <i>Torino </i>and given swoopier (more Chevelle-like) styling.</li>
<li>GM had introduced the first major restyling of the Camaro, with a high-performance version of the trusty 350 inch Chevy small-block V8 that provided big-block power-levels without the big-block's weight and thirst for 100 octane premium. Much like the Cleveland-motored Mustang, this was one of the best performing Camaros ever.</li>
<li>Across GM, the various big-block engines had been stretched to 7.5 liters (454 or 455 cubic inches), and these big big-blocks would be offered in the various GM mid-size models (Chevelle, GTO, Cutlass/442 and Skylark/GranSport) for a few more model years.</li>
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But with muscle car sales in the toilet things would change quickly. <br />
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In 1971 Ford would launch a new much larger Mustang that was more of a cruiser than a sportscar. This new plus-sized Mustang was influenced by Bunkie Knudsen, the father of the GTO, who Henry Ford II had wooed away from GM. Knudsen had revitalized Pontiac with a big-car, big-engine strategy and he would try to do the same at Ford: the new Mustang was offered with the new 429 V8 (<i>without</i> the special NASCAR inspired Boss cylinder heads) and a still fairly stout version of the 351 Cleveland, but the car had lost its athletic looks and engine output would drop over the next few model years.<br />
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In 1972 Ford's racy new <i>Torino</i> mid-size would morph into the <i>Gran Torino, </i>another plus-sized redesign that included a change to body-on-frame construction for improved ride and crash resistance, and would offer the same 351 and 429 engines as the Mustang, and later would offer the 429's big brother - the 460 V8 - but by then it wasn't much of a performance motor. The performance oriented 351 Cleveland (with four-barrel carb) would hang on until 1974, but even it was fairly ordinary by 1960s standards.<br />
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GMs mid-size cars would hang on largely unchanged through 1972, including the new 7.5 liter engines, although selling in ever smaller numbers. The GTO name plate would appear briefly on the 1973 Grand Am (a heavily restyled mid-size Pontiac) and on the 1974 Ventura (Pontiac's clone of the Nova) before disappearing into history.<br />
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The new Chevy <i>Camaro</i> and Pontiac <i>Firebird</i> would soldier on throughout the 1970s, although again every year would bring less powerful engines. Pontiac would make one last gasp in 1973 with a <i>Super Duty</i> version of their 455 V8 that would have been right at home in the 1960s, but it sold in limited numbers and would not be offered again.<br />
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Chrysler would offer the Hemi through the 1971 model year and keep selling the restyled <i>Challenger</i> and <i>Cuda</i> until 1974, but would take the same path as Ford and GM, de-tuning engines every year. Plymouth would field a <i>RoadRunner</i> package on the 1976 <i>Volare</i> (a re-designed Valiant), but it was mostly a decal-package; the real muscle was gone by 1973.<br />
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Sealing the muscle car's fate was something automakers could never imagine and plan for in 1967 or even 1970: the OPEC engineered oil boycott of 1973. While the politics and economics of the boycott are complicated, the end result was simple: in October of 1973, just as the new 1974 model cars were hitting the dealerships, US gasoline prices tripled, and thanks largely to panic buying there were actual shortages - gas stations simply ran out. Suddenly no one wanted the big safe cars Detroit imagined they would be selling through out the 1970s, and<i><b> four-barrel-carburetor</b></i> became a dirty word in auto showrooms and used car lots. <br />
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Even worse, Detroit had no efficient full-size cars in their development pipeline. Ford had their new sub-compact <i>Pinto</i> and Chevy had the <i>Vega, </i>but these were cheap, tiny (and slow) little cars meant to compete with the VW <i>Beetle</i> and the newly arriving Japanese imports. If you wanted a reasonably fuel-efficient car that you could pack mom, dad and a couple kids into, the only choices were the 6 cylinder Dodge <i>Dart</i> and Ford <i>Maverick</i>, which were really crude little cars that dated back to the early 1960s. To be sure, they were reliable transportation, but nobody <i>lusted</i> after a Maverick.<br />
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Somehow the Big 3 had to make 4000+ pound Ford <i>LTDs</i>, Chevy <i>Caprices</i> and Dodge <i>Polaras</i> easy on gas. The only short term solution was to stuff smaller engines and steeper rear-end gear ratios into these land yachts, and hope that since all the other cars coming from Detroit were just as dog-slow no one would notice. That strategy might have worked, except that the Japanese and Europeans had been dealing with expensive gas and safety standards for years; they had already developed space efficient, light-weight and reasonably safe cars that gave reasonable performance with 4 and 6 cylinder engines that were half the size of even a small American V8. Cars like the Toyota Corolla, Datsun 510, BMW 2002 and Saab 99, while not huge sellers would slowly build a following in the US and would show the direction US cars would take.<br />
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Perhaps the low point of the times was the "all new" <i>Mustang II </i>introduced in 1974. The new Mustang had a back-to-basics strategy championed by Lee Iaccoca, and at least on paper appeared to be a first step towards building an American import-fighter: the car was smaller and lighter than the previous generation (1971-1973) Mustang. For the first time there was a true hatchback, a practical feature America was learning to love in the imports. The styling was inspired by the first generation Mustang, but it lacked the chrome of the original, using plastic front and rear bumpers to meet the new 5mph impact regulations. Power was provided by a 2.3 liter 4 cylinder or 2.8 liter V6.<br />
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With gas prices spiking, the new small-motor Mustangs sold well, but they lacked the power and sporty handling of the imports. While seemingly a match for the latest sporty cars from Japan (Datsun's Z-cars and Toyota's Celica), the Mustang betrayed its Pinto roots when pushed hard. After the first year, Ford would offer a (fairly tame) 302 V8 in the new Mustang, which helped, but not nearly enough. Chevy was still offering the 350 small block V8 in the Camaro, and Pontiac the 400 big-block in the Firebird, and while these were heavily de-tuned engines there were lots of performance parts available in the aftermarket. The Mustang would become the poster-boy for the emasculated performance car.<br />
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Of course it wasn't that American automakers couldn't build the same kinds of light, sporty, reliable and fuel-efficient cars that the Japanese and Europeans were building; it was just that they had never <i>had</i> to before. It was a change - not just in their products but in their very business model - that would take another 5 years just to get started. In 1978 Chevy would roll out its new Malibu and Ford the new Fairmont; both reasonably modern small mid-size cars. Not <i>great</i> cars, but respectable first efforts.<br />
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To help pay for developing these new cars (and more new models still in the pipeline) Ford and GM would limit changes to the rest of their lineups (no more yearly updates to the chrome strips and upholstery). Chrysler - always the smallest of the big 3 - didn't have the cash for an all new car and would struggle to survive going into the 1980s.<br />
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By 1978 the Mustang II was 5 years old and really showing its age. For 1979 Ford would return to the original formula for the Mustang, bolting a sporty body to a shortened version of the new Fairmont's chassis. Ford would dabble with a turbo-charged 4 cylinder in this all new Mustang, but would also tool up a small-block V8 option. The new Pony's first few years weren't very memorable - in 1980 and 81 the top engine option was an anemic 255 inch V8 making just 120 (net) horsepower - but by 1982 the world oil market had stabilized and Ford took a chance on a performance option for the Mustang: a 302 with bigger valves and a hotter camshaft sourced from Ford's bottomless parts bins, kicking out 157 horsepower in a car weighing just 2600 pounds.<br />
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No one would confuse this new Mustang GT for a Cobra Jet or even a Boss 302 from 1969, but it was at least in the same league as the first 289 V8 powered Mustangs. And with its light weight and an over-drive 4-speed transmission, the V8 still gave respectable mileage. After most of a decade where high-performance meant a high-revving foreign made 4 cylinder, America would rediscover the wonderful instant-on power available from even a small-block V8, and it was love all over again. If you could swing the insurance payments, you ran out and bought a V8 Mustang before Ford came to their senses.<br />
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Finally the Mustang could hold its own with the foreign competition, and GM had no choice but to upgrade its aging Camaro to keep up. In 1983 Chevy would roll out an all new Camaro and Firebird, with their own high-performance-tuned small-block V8. Ford would up the ante with an honest-to-God Holley four-barrel on the 302, pushing horsepower up to 175 and kicking off a round of tit-for-tat one-upmanship between Ford and GM that continues right up to today. 1983 was like 1964 all over again. <br />
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And - no surprise - it looks like we'll need at least 10 more paragraphs to wrap things up. Stay tuned...<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-13914773402051490462015-03-05T23:43:00.001-05:002015-04-25T21:57:43.929-04:00The Day the Music Died - part 3 of A Muscle Car History <div dir="ltr">
Don McClean released the album <b>American Pie </b>in 1971, his anthem to the rock-n-roll of the just ended 1960s. The title song runs for over 8 minutes and takes up most of the first side of the vinyl LP, but it still managed to be a big hit. The lyrics are cryptic in the way of early Bob Dylan, but while exactly what it all means is up for debate (McClean once said "It means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to!") the names and events mentioned clearly refer to the songs, singers and musicians of the decade. It starts with a verse about the day in 1959 that early rock-n-roll legends Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash - "the day the music died" - but its just as easy to imagine he was singing about the end of the hot-rod and muscle car era.</div>
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The evolution and popularity of fast cars largely paralleled that of rock-n-roll (and a lot of early rock-n-roll featured hot-rods and muscle-cars, including songs like <b><i>Hot Rod Lincoln, Mustang Sally, Little GTO, Dead Man's Curve</i></b>, and every song the <b><i>Beach Boys</i></b> put out before 1966). But by the late 1960s music had gone in a new direction - much like the rest of pop culture - thanks largely to the Beatles and the war in Vietnam.</div>
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Its hard to read about the events that led the US into Vietnam and not think: "Did Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, and Westmoreland all sleep through history class? What were they thinking?!" There were eerie parallels to the American Revolution, except the US was playing the part of the British, and if you remember, they didn't win either. Thanks largely to politicians who didn't want to look "soft on communism" the US got itself entangled in a revolutionary war that had grown into a civil war, in a third rate country half way around the world, of no strategic or economic value - and stayed at it long after it stopped making sense.</div>
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For those of you too young to have picked this up in the newspapers, modern Vietnam started out as a colony of France. It was occupied by the Japanese during WWII, when France was busy being occupied by the Germans. Following the war the native Vietnamese decided it was time for independence, and set about having their own Revolution to kick out the French. It was your typical grimy little war of a colony against a weakened and preoccupied home country halfway around the world, and after nearly 10 years of fighting the French washed their hands of the place.</div>
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Which should have been the end of it. Colonies were very much out of style, and many gained their independence following WWII when the last colonial powers (England and France) were busy trying to put their cities and economies back together. Except most of the Vietnamese revolutionaries were nominally communist (communism probably sounded like a really good idea in a country where the national industry was subsistence farming), and "communist" was a very dirty word in US politics in 1954.</div>
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So the US pulled some strings at the United Nations and managed to take over propping up the remains of France's puppet government in Saigon. For the next 10 years the nominally communist Vietnamese (who mostly lived in the northern part of Vietnam), fought the nominally democratic Vietnamese in the south in a grimy little civil war. The communists had the numbers while the democratic government had US military aid, but that just delayed the inevitable: by the mid 1960s the Vietnamese government was about to collapse. Which led to 200,000 American troops shipping out to Vietnam in 1965, a number that would grow to over 500,000 by 1968.</div>
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As the number of US troops deployed grew in 1965 and 66, public sentiment quickly turned against what was seen as (depending on your point of view) a pointless, immoral and/or un-winnable war. While teenagers facing the draft were the ones protesting in the streets, the war was equally unpopular with their families, religious leaders, celebrities, military veterans and just about everyone else except the defense contractors.</div>
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In 1967 Arlo Guthrie released his first album - <b><i>Alice's Restaurant</i></b> - another LP with one whole side dedicated to the title song - actually more a comedy monologue than a song - encouraging young men to protest the war and the draft. This wasn't the first anti-war protest song, but it was the first really popular one, and it came just as US casualties jumped from in-the-noise to levels not seen since the Korean war. <i><b>Alice's Restaurant</b></i> would set the mood for pop music and American culture for the rest of the war. Hit songs would soon have titles like <i><b>Fortunate Son</b>, <b>Street-Fightin-Man</b>, <b>Revolution</b>, </i>and<i> <b>War.</b></i></div>
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Despite public opposition to the war and some really good protest songs, presidents Johnson and then Nixon both tried hard to "win" the war, believing it would be political suicide to withdraw and accept the stigma of being Commander in Chief of the first ever American military defeat. As a result, the war in Vietnam dragged on for yet another bloody decade.</div>
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But I've drifted way off topic - I was talking about the end of the Muscle Car era.<br />
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Look at the sales figures for any of the popular muscle cars of the 60s and you'll see a big drop in the 1970 model year, even though total sales (across all models of cars) were about the same as in 1969. Mustang sales dropped by about 30% even though the 1970 model was visibly little different than the '69, and with the new 351 Cleveland engine was probably the best of the first generation Mustangs. GTO sales were similarly down over 40% in a single year, as were sales of the Chevy Camaro. And sales would keep falling for the 1971 model year.</div>
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There are a lot of theories as to why.</div>
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In the 1960s people started worrying about <b>leaded gasoline</b>. When it burned, the lead ended up in the air and people breathed it. Even though the concentration was low, the exposure was constant everywhere there were roads, and there was increasing evidence it was causing health problems, especially in little kids. Other kinds of pollution - un-burned hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen - were causing smog in cities like Los Angeles where the geography tended to trap exhaust fumes. In 1970, the newly created <i><b>Environmental Protection Agency</b></i> passed a law phasing out leaded gasoline and setting limits on tail-pipe emissions. Even though the law didn't kick in for several years, in anticipation automakers started lowering the compression ratios of their engines, which meant lower horsepower. But the compression drop didn't happen until the 1971 model year, and the pollution control systems were phased in gradually throughout the '70s, well <i>after</i> muscle car sales had fallen off a cliff.</div>
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<b>OPEC</b> - the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - basically Saudi Arabia and a handful of smaller middle-eastern countries - figured out they could cut production and drive up oil prices and so make more money selling less oil. This was bad news for muscle cars that gulped gas at 10mpg (or less!) but again the artificial shortage and price hikes didn't happen until 1973. In 1969 and 70 gasoline was as cheap and plentiful as it had been throughout the decade.</div>
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<b>Auto insurance</b> companies started raising their rates on muscle cars, presumably because the kind of people who bought them did foolish things in them that caused more accidents than more normal cars (or maybe they just figured out that the people buying new muscle cars had more disposable income and could be squeezed a little harder than most). Its hard to figure out exactly when this happened, but it seems to have been well <i>before</i> 1970. As early as 1967 car makers were <i>under</i>-rating the horsepower of their most powerful muscle car engines (for example the Chevy L88 and Ford "Cobra Jet" engines) to placate insurance companies who thought muscle cars were already too fast. Again, insurance rates were no doubt hurting muscle car sales, but that didn't suddenly change in 1970.<br />
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What <i><b>did</b></i> happen in the run-up to 1970 was a little more subtle.<br />
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First there was<b> inflation</b>. After a decade of stable prices, in 1966 inflation started edging up - not a lot, but a little, and a little more every year. Flash back to the beginning of this ramble: inflation was up because the government was printing money to pay and equip thousands of newly drafted soldiers (and NASA engineers, but that's another story). The government was trying to buy guns <b><i>and</i></b> butter, hiding the true cost of the war in the hidden tax that is inflation while hoping to keep the economy cranking away so hard that no one would notice. Unfortunately the government was buying a <b><i>lot</i></b> of guns and the bill was coming due.</div>
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At the same time the Baby Boomers were just starting to enter the work force, delivering wave after wave of new high school and college graduates faster than the economy could absorb them. 1970 would see unemployment edge up for the first time in over 10 years.<br />
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Neither of these economic factors were big (yet), but they nibbled away at disposable income and consumer confidence. Muscle cars are the kind of guilty pleasures you buy when you've already paid for the important things and still have money left over, and there just wasn't as much left over as there used to be.<br />
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Then there was <b>safety</b>. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s Congress would hold investigations into automotive safety, partly because automakers tended to cover up safety problems (for obvious reasons), and partly because (extremely biased personal opinion) the auto industry was a juicy target. The investigations at least gave the impression that Congress was looking out for everyday drivers/voters, while creating lots of opportunities for politicians to curry favor with rich auto manufacturers. Basically business as usual for Washington, but it helped sow the seeds of American Industry as evil capitalists who would sell their own grandmother for a fast buck.<br />
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One of the government flacks at a few of those investigations was a wet-behind-the-ears Harvard Law School graduate named Ralph Nader. Young Ralph had quickly traded relatively honest work as a lawyer and history professor for a government job. In his spare time he wrote a book called <b><i>Unsafe at Any Speed</i></b> chronicling the evils of General Motors, including an especially damning profile of the handling problems with Chevy's first generation <i>Corvair</i>.<br />
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Nader's book demonstrated a poor understanding of engineering and business and a willingness to twist the facts to support his arguments, but he came a little too close to the truth on the industry's indifference to safety. At the time American cars and roads <i><b>were</b></i> the safest in the world; Detroit's sin was in thinking that was good enough and so putting money into the styling and performance that sold cars instead of making them safer still. As Nixon would discover a decade later, the real damage in any scandal is in the attempt to cover it up: GM would hire private investigators to dig into Nader's personal life, harass him and even try to entrap him with eager young ladies. Nader would sue GM for an invasion of privacy and win a little over $400,000 (which was <i>real money</i> in 1965); he would use the money to lobby for automotive safety regulations.<br />
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Nader's efforts are often credited with the creation of the <i style="font-weight: bold;">National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration </i>in 1970, which finally provided some much needed oversight of the auto industry, but as a side effect the auto makers became increasingly skittish about building performance cars. When muscle car sales sagged, the automakers would abandon that part of their lineup without a fight.</div>
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But perhaps the biggest impact on the muscle car came through a curious bit of serendipity.<br />
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On June 22nd, 1969 the Cuyahoga River would catch fire. That seems ludicrous today - and even in 1969 it was the source of a lot of late-night TV punchlines. Truth be told the Cuyahoga was no more polluted than other US rivers (like Pittsburgh's Monongahela) but it was a winding and slow-moving river running through northern Ohio and past Cleveland on its way to Lake Erie. There was a lot of heavy industry on the river and no one worried if a bit of solvent or lubricant was spilled and made its way into the water, and then all you needed was a spark or open flame. The fire wasn't especially big compared to those in the past: it did only minor damage and was pretty much out before anyone showed up to photograph it.<br />
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But then on July 18th, 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy would drive off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, resulting in the death of a young woman. And just two days later, Neil Armstrong would walk on the moon, bumping the Kennedy story off the front pages. But if you were up late watching Armstrong and Aldrin take their historic first steps, you know the TV camera they had with them wasn't very good. America would have to wait a week for actual <i>film</i> to make the trip back to see clear color images of Neil and Buzz.<br />
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So it was that TIME magazine would put Kennedy on the cover the following week, along with a special feature on the moon landing, and purely by chance, tucked in the back a one-page story on the Cuyahoga fire (they would dig up some photos from an earlier and more dramatic fire in 1952 - the last time the river had burned). Millions bought the magazine for the moon photos, got all the sordid details on Kennedy as a bonus, and eventually got around to reading about the somewhat inconsequential river fire.<br />
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Those two stories - Chappaquiddick and Cuyahoga - would further erode America's confidence in government and industry and kick off a grass-roots effort to clean up the environment. As the 1960s ended, it was like the end of one of those seemingly endless grade-school summer vacations, and suddenly America was ready to deal with more important things. Against this background of public opinion, muscle cars had become a symbol of wretched excess. The times had changed, and the automobile had moved on, at least for a little while.<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-49344303878751718862015-02-22T11:38:00.000-05:002019-01-25T16:41:09.044-05:00More Muscle Car History - Part 2How to describe the 1960s to someone who wasn't there? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... The economy was booming, the US was going to the Moon, there were riots in the streets and 1000s of young men would die in Vietnam. The decade would start with incredible optimism and faith in the "American Way" and end with riots and a deep mistrust of government and industry that lingers to this day. <br />
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In the <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-not-so-brief-history-of-muscle-car.html" target="_blank">part 1</a> of this ramble down memory lane I told the story of the great American performance car from automotive pre-history up to 1964 and the first Mustangs and GTOs, and then I ran out of gas. While the muscle car era lasted less than a single decade, a lot of things happened in that time that would shape the future of both the automobile and American culture. With the background out of the way, lets set the Way-Back machine to the summer of 1962 and take another look.<br />
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In the early 60s NASCAR was the most visible sort of racing in the US. There were lots of races, including a few outside of the core south-eastern states (Heidelberg Raceway near Pittsburgh would host several NASCAR races - the last in 1960 - sadly the historic track was replaced by a strip mall in the 1970s).<br />
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Automakers saw NASCAR as prime advertising. At the time the cars were still largely "stock" - aside from the sponsor names painted on the fenders the race cars looked just like the ones you could buy down at the local dealership and had to be powered by the same basic engine as the street cars. The top drivers were often colorful, bigger-than-life guys who didn't worry about saying something that might offend their sponsors when they talked to the press - they were the rock-stars of the gear-head demographic. A car buyer deciding between a new Ford or Chevy might well be swayed by who won the most races or what car their favorite driver was driving. <br />
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Believing in the theory of "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday", the auto makers would support the top racing teams with special parts and outright sponsorship - even during the years of the unofficial ban on racing (although during those dark days the support was largely of the backdoor variety).<br />
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Because back then NASCAR required race cars to actually be based on stock production vehicles the automakers would build street cars just to meet the demands of racing. The Big 3 had played a long running game trying to one-up each other with ever more powerful engines for NASCAR duty. In 1957 the hot engines in NASCAR were the small block 283 Chevy with fuel injection, the 312 Ford Y-block with a super-charger and the 392 Chrysler Hemi with two 4 barrel carbs. Bill France, founder and CEO of NASCAR wanted to avoid a technological arms race that would make racing too expensive for the teams filling up the grid at NASCAR races, so in 1958 he would issue a ban on fuel-injection, forced induction and multiple carburetors, leaving the manufacturers no where to go but bigger.<br />
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In the late 1950s the Big 3 had all developed new, larger and more modern V8 engines to haul around their ever growing full-size cars. These engines started out around 350 cubic inches - Ford had a 352, Chevy a 348 and Chrysler a 361) - but the basic engine designs had plenty of room to grow. By 1962 they would be pushed to 406, 409 and 413 cubic inches respectively. Pontiac would also get back into NASCAR in a big way, developing a 421 cubic inch version of their V8 to power their big <i>Catalina</i>. These "big" big-block engines were really overkill on the street but they were necessary to be competitive as NASCAR began pushing the 150mph mark. At those speeds aerodynamics would become important, and suddenly lower rooflines and fastback rear windows would come into style.<br />
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1962 would also mark the start of something new from Detroit: the introduction of the Ford <i>Fairlane</i>, their first <b><i>mid-size</i></b> car. The <i>Fairlane</i> (a name previously used on the full size Ford) looked like a 3/4 scale Ford <i>Galaxie</i> (the new name for the full size Fords, and yes, that <i>is</i> how it was spelled), but it was more similar in construction to Ford's <i>Falcon</i> compact car introduced a few years earlier. The car used unit-body construction (opposed to the more traditional body-on-frame design) so that the Fairlane had nearly as much interior space as a Galaxie, while being lighter, cheaper and generally making more sense as basic family transportation. Initially Ford didn't see the mid-size cars as performance vehicles; they would introduce a modern but small and somewhat pedestrian V8 displacing just 221 or 260 cubic inches (officially named the <i>Challenger</i> V8, but eventually to be known as the <i>Windsor</i> engine family) to power the new mid-size - although that would soon change.<br />
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At the same time Chrysler had decided (based on some misunderstood rumors out of Chevrolet) to downsize their full-size cars: the 1962 Plymouths and Dodges were roughly the same size and used the same unit-body construction as Ford's new Fairlane. But Chrysler had no small V8 available, so the new <i>Belvederes</i> and <i>Polaras</i> would be offered with their 361, 383 and even the 413 inch V8 engines. While the downsized Plymouths and Dodges were not exactly pretty (the re-design had been rushed and their styling suffered for it) or popular with buyers, the combination of a smaller, lighter body with a big engine gave them an edge in NASCAR.<br />
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1963 was the year that Ford gave up all pretense of following the racing ban; they would adopt a marketing strategy known as <i><b>Total Performance</b></i> that would create performance oriented versions of every car model they produced and support practically every sort of racing. While Ford had a strong performance heritage in the U.S., they were a global company and in Europe their cars were considered rather dull. This lead to Henry Ford II attempting to buy Ferrari; when Enzo backed out of the deal Henry would launch Ford into European endurance racing to take revenge. In 1963 no one knew how far this new focus would go to actually putting hairy-chested almost-race-cars on the street.<br />
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Ford would respond to the threat posed by the smaller Plymouths by punching their big-block V8 out to 427 cubic inches, developing new heads with bigger valves and reinforcing the block for racing duty. Chevy was in a tighter corner: their top-dog 409 V8 was originally developed as a truck engine and it had been pushed about as far as it could go performance wise. Chevy would develop a radical new canted-valve cylinder head and design an all new block to produce the 427 cubic inch "mystery motor" that bore no resemblance to the then production 409 big block. The new engine was allowed to run in NASCAR with Chevy's promise that it would become a production engine later in the year, but before that happened GM's upper management would decide that their backdoor support for racing was getting out of hand (at the same time Zora Duntov was building Grand Sport Corvettes for road racing and Ralph Nader had started poking around in accident reports for the Corvair). GM would clamp down their no-racing ban and completely pull all support from NASCAR. The "mystery motor" would eventually morph into Chevy's MkIV big-block, the so called "rat motor", but that was still a few years into the future - 1963 and 1964 would be hard times for Chevy and Pontiac based NASCAR teams.<br />
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Back in 1960 GM had launched a grand experiment in the form of a family of compact cars that included the Chevy <i>Corvair</i>, Pontiac <i>Tempest</i>, Olds <i>F85</i> and the Buick <i>Special</i>. Much like Ford's <i>Falcon</i>, these were small low-priced cars meant to compete with the growing numbers of cheap small cars being imported from Europe, especially the VW <i>Beetle</i>. Unlike the <i>Falcon</i>, GM's entries were all somewhat unconventional: the Corvair was rear-engined with an air-cooled flat-6, the Tempest was front-engine/rear-drive but used a big 4 cylinder engine that was essentially half of Pontiac's big 389 V8, and the Olds and Buick were powered by a tiny all aluminum 215 inch V8 with an optional turbocharger (eventually GM sold the design and tooling for the little V8 to British Leyland who used it to power the performance versions of various Little British Cars like the TR8 and MGB GT).<br />
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With gas hovering around 25 cents a gallon, the technology in the GM compacts was a little <i>too</i> unconventional; buyers stayed away in droves, opting for full-size cars with big V8s. So in 1964 GM would revamp the Pontiac, Olds and Buick versions into much more conventional front-engine, rear-wheel-drive mid-size cars with traditional body-on-frame construction to compete with the new Fairlane. The Corvair soldiered on as a rear-engined sporty compact (to give the new Mustang a little competition), but Chevy would receive their own version of the mid-size platform in the form of the new <i>Chevelle</i>.<br />
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A small (300 inch) V8 would have been more than adequate in these cars, and in keeping with their good-boy image, GM would impose a 330 cubic inch displacement limit. But unlike Chevy with its small-block and big-block, Pontiac, Olds and Buick had only one engine family to draw from, and their engines were all on the large side. That meant the mid-size cars were designed with plenty of room under the hood - which made it easy for Pontiac to develop the GTO package for the Tempest on the sly, replacing their small 326 inch V8 with the 389 inch version of the same engine family. The muscle car had been born!<br />
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Back in the world of NASCAR, Chevy's "mystery motor" would have far reaching consequences. Much of NASCAR's success came down to Bill France making rules to keep the cars based on relatively cheap production vehicles and components. Since 1958 the manufacturers had developed a simple strategy for NASCAR: every year they would push up displacement a bit and tweak the heads and manifolds for a bit more power. The changes were incremental, which meant that the factory backed cars were only slightly faster than the privateers pushing year old hardware around the track. By contrast the "mystery motor" was an all out racing motor that made no sense in a street car; if not for the racing clamp-down Chevy would have most likely produced a few 100 of these engines that would have ended up in a very few special "production" cars that only well connected racers could buy. We can guess that, because that is exactly what Chrysler would do the following year when they developed the new 426 Hemi (the so called <i>elephant</i> motor) and dominated NASCAR in 1964.<br />
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Ford responded to the Hemi by developing an overhead cam semi-hemi head for their 427 (the <i>SOHC </i>or<i> cammer</i> motor), at which point Bill France put his foot down and said "no more", banning both the Hemi <i>and</i> Ford's cammer. As a result Chrysler would boycott NASCAR in 1965. Ford wasn't exactly happy with their SOHC motor being banned, but with Chrysler out of the running Ford looked to clean up. Chevy was still officially out of racing, but they would finally put a slightly modified version of the "mystery motor" into production as the "Mark IV" big-block displacing 396 cubic inches; this was enough to give the privately backed Chevy teams a chance to be competitive, especially when the new big-block was fitted to the mid-size Chevelle.<br />
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In the automotive world, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. With GTOs flying out of the showrooms, everyone else quickly stuffed the biggest engine that would fit into their mid-size model and added bucket seats and racing stripes. Chevy would put their potent 327 "big" small-block into the Chevelle, followed by the 396 big-block when it arrived a year later. Plymouth and Dodge would go back to making truly full-size cars in 1965, but would keep the downsized models on as mid-sizes, known as the <i>Belevedere</i> and <i>Coronet</i>, with the full range of Chrysler big-block engines available. Ford's <i>Fairlane</i> wasn't designed to hold a big-block so it would have to make do with a hi-performance version of the 289 small-block until 1966 when a redesign allowed the big-block to be shoehorned between the shock towers.<br />
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In 1966 Chrysler did the unthinkable: they reworked the massive NASCAR 426 Hemi into a streetable engine and offered it to the public in the mid-size Plymouth and Dodge. NASCAR would un-ban the Hemi but not the SOHC motor, sending Ford into a snit of their own, resulting in Ford pulling support for much of the '66 NASCAR season. Making the loss of NASCAR coverage a little easier for Ford to take was that their GT40s - powered by NASCAR derived 427 engines - were cleaning up in road-racing: they would win 1-2-3 at LeMans that year.<br />
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The shock waves of the street Hemi were enormous: suddenly nothing was too extreme when it came to street engines, and even with hefty price tags the gear-heads were lining up to buy them. Chevy would bump their new Mk IV engine up to 427 cubic inches. Ford's 390 that had served for years as their flagship street motor was suddenly not nearly enough; they would bore and stroke it about as far as the block would go (428 cubic inches) and fit NASCAR developed heads to create the <i>Cobra Jet.</i>. Chrysler found itself in an odd position: while the Hemi was undeniably the top-dog, even in "street tune" it was totally impractical as a daily driver. Chrysler needed a cheaper alternative to keep up with Ford and Chevy's attempts to keep up with their Hemi; they would develop the 440 inch version of their big big-block engine - with 3 two-barrel carbs - until it was <i>almost</i> a match for the street Hemi (although too big to run in NASCAR).<br />
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Whew! For all of that, I've only made it up to 1966 and I've left out half the story... Let me catch my breath and take another pass through the first half of the 1960s.<br />
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1960 had seen all of the Big 3 auto makers launch compact cars. In addition to the innovative GM compacts, Ford and Chrysler would launch fairly conventional small cars: the Ford <i>Falcon</i>, Plymouth <i>Valiant</i> and Dodge <i>Lancer</i> (soon to be renamed the <i>Dart</i>). All 3 would use unit-body construction and were initially powered by fairly tame inline 6 cylinder engines. But of course that wouldn't last...<br />
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In the early 1960s Ford was selling lots of Falcon's, but they were all fairly low end cars for the simple reason that there weren't many options available. When Lee Iaccoca took over as General Manager of Ford in late 1960 squeezing more profit from the Falcon was one of his top priorities. While that would eventually result in the new <i>Mustang</i> (a sporty body wrapped around Falcon mechanicals), in 1963 Ford would drop their new 260 inch small V8 into the Falcon. While the 260 was a big step up from the tiny inline 6 the Falcon had been born with, it was still far from a performance car - but the wheels were set in motion.<br />
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In 1962 Chevy had released the <i>Chevy II</i>, a fairly conventional compact car very similar to Ford's Falcon. Naturally soon after Ford offered their small V8 in the Falcon, Chevy would offer their 283 inch small block in the Chevy II. While Ford's 260 V8 was a fairly low performance engine that added just a bit of spice to the Falcon, the 283 Chevy small-block was a very capable engine with lots of performance parts available - in a Chevy II it was stiff competition for the early mid-size big-block muscle cars.<br />
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When the Mustang launched in the spring of 1964, Ford would offer a 289 inch high-performance version of their small-block in both the Mustang and the Falcon. Not to be left out, Chrysler had been developing their own small V8 (the LA engine family) and would offer the smallest 273 inch version in the '64 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Barracuda. A few months later Chevy would up the ante by dropping their 327 V8 into the Chevy II, giving it true GTO levels of performance. Just one year after the first GTO rolled off the assembly line, the <i><b>junior</b></i> muscle-car was born.<br />
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By 1967 muscle car engines had gotten about as big as was remotely practical (there would eventually be even bigger engines, but that would be later). NASCAR and other racing series had settled on 7 liters - 427 cubic inches - as the upper limit on displacement. GM had softened on their racing phobia enough to stretch the production version of the new Chevy big-block to 427 inches, joining the 7-liter club and restoring the competitive balance to NASCAR. But that didn't mean there was nothing new to come...<br />
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Along with the displacement limit, there were other big changes in NASCAR that would impact production vehicles. With everyone packing 7 liter engines, the simplest way to go faster was to wrap that big engine with a smaller car. The private Chevy racers had been doing well with the mid-size Chevelle and Plymouth with their Belvedere; Ford really wanted to race their Fairlane, but its unit-body front suspension made a big-block V8 and wide speedway tires a tight fit.<br />
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Near the end of the 1966 season Ford (who was still boycotting NASCAR) had the <i>Holman and Moody</i> racing shop graft the front-half of a full-size Galaxie frame onto the Fairlane's unit-body and drop in their standard 427 NASCAR engine, and then convinced Bill France to make this hybrid legal. Bill wanted Ford back on the tracks and probably felt like he owed them a break after allowing Chrysler's Hemi back into the series, and moreover the half-frame car actually made sense for the other teams: they could develop a standard front frame and suspension and re-use the design and parts season after season. Racing shops like <i>Holman and Moody</i> and <i>Banjo Mathews</i> developed a standard NASCAR chassis around the Fairlane setup and sold it to everyone, a basic design that would last until roughly 2007.<br />
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In the early 60s the automotive styling pendulum had swung away from the wretched excess of fins and lots of chrome mouldings and taillights that looked like rocket exhausts, towards boxy slab-sided cars, until by 1966 cars were looking kind of plain and boring. This was doubly true for the first generation of mid-size cars, which the manufacturers saw more as a "transportation appliance" for the bargain minded buyer than something "car guys" would lust over. But the mid-size cars were now running in NASCAR and aerodynamics were important, and after the Buck-Rogers period of the 1950s it finally <i>was</i> the space-age! Detroit styling was about to get swoopy again.<br />
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Ford would add a long steep fastback to the Fairlane to create the new <i>Torino</i> model that would quickly appear on NASCAR tracks; Chrysler would redesign the Coronet and Belvedere with subtly flared front and rear fenders and a heavily raked rear window. Dodge would go even further, taking a cue from Ford by lowering the roof and adding a fastback to the Coronet to create the new <i>Charger</i> model. And at GM, the 1968 mid-size A-body for the Chevelle, Tempest/GTO, Cutlass/442 and Skylark/GranSport was like something out of the Jetsons: the cars were all sweeping compound curves with a tail-high stance that gave the impression of a big cat about to pounce.<br />
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There was one more twist to the muscle car that would play a big part in cementing its place in automotive history. For the first few years when muscle cars had been new and in demand the dealerships typically slathered on options in the way of sport wheels, tape stripes, deluxe upholstery and AM/FM radios to add a little extra profit. But with everyone building muscle cars (even stuffy Buick would drop a 401 inch V8 into their mid-size Skylark to create the <i>Gran Sport</i>) competition would kick in. The gearhead crowd realized they could buy a slightly used, plain-jane mid-size with the every-day V8 and then bolt on performance parts or swap in a bigger engine and have a car just as mean and nasty as the factory was building. Something we tend to forget is that in the 1960s the reliable life of a car was about 5 years, so 3 year old cars could be had at a steep discount.<br />
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As the old saw goes, "if you can't beat them, join them". In 1968 Plymouth would raid their parts bins and put together a 383 inch "small" big-block engine with the big-valve heads and hotter camshaft of its 440 inch big-brother, an engine soon known on the street as the 383 <i>Magnum</i> (that was actually Dodge's name, the official Plymouth name was the <i>Super Commando, </i>but you have to admit the <i>Magnum</i> name was just so much catchier). Plymouth dropped this hot-rodded V8 into a stripped down version of their Belvedere/GTX (even carpet was optional), named it the <i>Road Runner, </i>added a horn with a beep-beep sound straight from Warner Brothers, and gave it a bargain-basement price.<br />
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The 383 Magnum was an engine that punched way above its weight: seat of the pants impressions and drag-strip times suggested it was just a tick slower than Chrysler's big 440 V8. With nothing more than headers and slicks (and an experienced driver) the Road Runner was capable of high 13 second quarter mile times.<br />
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The <i>Road Runner</i> sold like the proverbial hot-cakes, and quickly inspired other automakers to offer their own budget-muscle-cars. Dodge would create the <i>Super Bee</i> (basically a twin of the <i>Road Runner</i>), Oldsmobile would offer the <i>Ralley 350 Cutlass </i>to complement their top end <i>442</i>, and Pontiac would offer the <i>Judge</i> version of the <i>GTO</i>. Ford and Chevy already had lower priced compact-based muscle cars available in the form of the <i>Chevy II</i> and <i>Falcon, </i>and they were selling <i>Camaros</i> and <i>Mustangs</i> as fast as the factories could stamp them out,<i> </i>so they made less of an effort; Ford would slap some left-over <i>Cobra</i> emblems on the Fairlane, and Chevy would simply offer their most powerful engines in base model Chevelles. The Baby Boomers were finally reaching <i>new car buying age</i>, and they snapped these budget musclecars up like free pizza. This would put enough of these cars into circulation to fuel several more generations of high school gear-heads.<br />
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About those Mustangs and Camaros... The Mustang was originally conceived more as a <i><b>sporty</b> car</i> than a <i><b>sports</b> car.</i><i> </i>To be sure, Ford wanted the pony car to compete with the Triumphs and MGs and Porsches that were becoming popular with college kids, but those low-end sports cars were relatively under-powered by American standards - in the lightweight Mustang a small V8 was more than enough to do battle with the Europeans. Ford's high-performance 289, somewhat optimistically rated at 271 horsepower, would carry the flag for the first 2 model years.<br />
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But the Mustang was just too successful and too easily copied for Ford to have all the fun, and GM and Chrysler were coming loaded for bear with pony-cars of their own with engine bays designed to hold their biggest big-blocks. When the '67 <i>Camaros</i> and <i>Firebirds</i> and <i>Barracudas</i> debuted the Mustang was ready with a big-block option of its own, although its aging 390 V8 was somewhat out matched and would be quickly upgraded with its 428 inch sibling. While purists don't consider the pony cars true <i><b>muscle cars</b></i> (saving that term for mid-size performance cars), these second generation pony cars are at least first cousins.<br />
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Truth be told, a big-block pony car puts too much weight over the front axle and too much power to the lightly loaded rear tires, and in the 60s the tires were hard skinny things. Despite being shorter and lower (and having unusably small backseats), the pony cars weren't all that much lighter than a mid-size, so the real drag racers stayed away, but when it came to smoky burnouts and sexy-looks, the big-block pony-cars were <i>The Bomb.</i><br />
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Of course as soon as there was more than one brand of pony car there would be a racing series designed just for them: the SCCA would create the Trans Am for the sporty little coupes - a professional racing series with a prestigious Manufacturers Championship. Trans Am had a displacement limit of 5 liters - 305 cubic inches - and a fairly strict rule requiring stock based engines that would lead to the closest thing to race cars to ever to leave a dealership: the Boss 302 Mustang, Z28 Camaro, and TA 'Cuda and Challenger, but that is another story...<br />
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1969 was basically a rewind of 1968, except for another NASCAR inspired wrinkle known as the <i>aero-car. </i>While NASCAR had already taken its first big steps away from racing truly stock cars, it still required stock body panels. With everyone limited to the same size engines and running the same size cars, Ford would look to gain an advantage in aerodynamics. Ford would take its fastback Torino, stretch the nose and rework the grille to reduce lift and drag, and then build a limited number of these cars to meet the NASCAR definition of a production vehicle. The <i>Torino Talladega</i> was named after the NASCAR super-speedway in Alabama, making its intentions clear: the new less-than-pretty body work was all about speed.<br />
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Dodge would answer with aero-modifications for its Charger, creating the <i>Charger 500 </i>(probably named for the 500 copies built to meet the NASCAR rules), and when that wasn't enough they would add a massive wing and nose-cone to create the swoopiest of the aero-cars, the <i>Charger Daytona</i> (the winged Plymouth <i>Superbird</i> was essentially a twin of the Charger). While it was amazing that the aero cars were sold to the public, on the street they weren't any faster than the more mundane models they were based on and a lot of them sat around in dealer showrooms. NASCAR would quickly draft new rules effectively outlawing the aero-cars, and the experiment would end after just 1 year.<br />
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Which brings us to 1970, the last gasp for the muscle car era, but of course no one knew that then. Developing new cars and engines typically takes years, so the plans for 1970 had been set in 1966 at a time when cars were still getting bigger, Chrysler had just launched the ridiculous 426 Hemi and CanAm racing (with unlimited displacement) was challenging NASCAR in popularity.<br />
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Ford had been developing two completely new high-performance capable engine lines: the 351 "Cleveland" small-block and 429/460 inch big-block (the new engine lines had no sexy names, officially they were referred to as the <i>335</i> and <i>385</i> engine families). All of the GM divisions would stretch their existing big-blocks to 7.5 liters (454 or 455 inches). Chevy would tweak the heads and camshaft on their small-block, already up to 350 cubic inches, to produce the fabled LT1 engine to better compete with Ford's new Cleveland motor. Chrysler continued on with their massive 440 big-block and street Hemi, but they would release a high-performance version of their 340 small-block for use in their new Cuda and Challenger pony cars, an engine that was the equal of the new Ford and Chevy small-blocks.<br />
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Strangely, Ford would drop a high-performance version of its new 429 into a limited version of the <i>Mustang</i> to classify it as a production engine for NASCAR purposes, creating the <i>429 Boss Mustang. </i>On paper the <i>Boss</i> big-block's special semi-hemi heads made it more than a match for the Chrysler Hemi and 427 Chevy, but from the factory the street version was in a fairly mild state of tune and with so few available it never got the development work needed to realize its horsepower potential.<br />
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On the sheet metal front, the <i>Torino</i> would get still swoopier lines and become a bit more Chevelle-like. GM would update the <i>Camaro</i> and <i>Firebird</i> with a restyle similar to their curvy A-bodies but more so; in 1970 these cars literally looked like space-ships. And of course Chrysler would roll out its new pony-car twins. Under their aggressive skins, the <i>Cuda</i> and <i>Challenger</i> were essentially shortened mid-size cars with lots of room under the hood. You have to wonder what Chrysler had planned as a follow up to their Hemi (Chrysler had once dabbled with the idea of a 4-valve per cylinder, DOHC version of the Hemi).<br />
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Whew. For all of that, I've still left lots of stuff out. I've pretty much ignored drag racing and street racing. I haven't mentioned AMC or Mercury's forays with muscle cars and pony cars, and I've glossed over lots of niche subjects. It is amazing how much happened in those few years, but hopefully I've given you a taste for the times.<br />
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The rest of the story will have to wait for part 3...<br />
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Full disclosure: I was born in 1960, so I only remember the later half of the 1960s, and a lot of that revolved around the goings on at Third Ward Elementary school. My Dad was a mechanic at a Ford dealership, and I have fond memories of handing Dad wrenches and asking him non-stop questions about how engines worked when he was working on our car in the driveway. For practical purposes the 1970s weren't all that different than the 1960s - especially in the small town I grew up in - so I count myself lucky to have been there for at least part of the Muscle Car Era.<br />
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Again, if I've got something wrong, drop me a line.<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-20788194562651646372015-01-14T00:11:00.001-05:002015-09-06T15:45:25.429-04:00A (not so) Brief History of the Muscle Car - Part 1When I got my drivers license in 1976, the only cars I (and most other working-class teenagers) could afford were well worn 1960s muscle cars. With plain-jane 1960s Mustangs and Chevelles and such selling for north of $20K today that probably seems a little unbelievable, but in 1976 we had just weathered the first OPEC engineered oil crisis. Leaving the politics and economics involved for another day, in the fall of 1973 the price of gasoline at the pump had gone up from less than $0.50 per gallon to more than $0.70 a gallon (remember minimum wage then was just $2.30/hour). Worse than the price hike, for several months there was a <i>shortage</i> of gas combined with panic buying that caused gas stations to literally <b><i>run out</i></b> - which at the time seemed akin to the sun not rising.<br />
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Suddenly all anyone cared about was fuel efficiency. Everyone wanted 6 cylinder Dodge Darts and Ford Mavericks; big-block muscle cars filled the classified ads at give-away prices. Since high school kids don't drive all that much or have families to support, we were the only ones who could afford to drive 10mpg cars (just not very far). I bought my '69 Road Runner, with 70K miles on the clock and one dented quarter panel - for a whopping $500! As a result my high school parking lot looked like a scene out of <i>American Graffiti.</i><br />
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As I now approach curmudgeon-dom (hold on a second while I chase some kids off the lawn :) - I'm often amazed at the confused and generally rose-colored view that today's car buffs have of those halcyon days. Like most (all?) 1960s American cars, muscle cars had the aerodynamics of a brick, the handling of a well worn pickup truck, and they rusted faster than a 16 year old kid could sling Bondo. The only things they did really well was go like stink and attract attention like Miley Cyrus at an awards show - and being part of that sure was fun!<br />
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I wanted to tell the <i><b>real</b></i> story of the muscle car era, but I couldn't decide where to begin - so I pretty much started at the beginning and spent way more time than I ever planned on this subject. So sit back and read along, and by all means let me know what I got wrong!<br />
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From the earliest days of the automobile, there have been performance cars. While the very first cars were largely curiosities that were less capable than a good horse, by the 1920s high end car makers such as Bentley, Cadillac, Duesenberg, and others were offering models with top speeds approaching 100 mph (if you could find a road straight and smooth enough to drive that fast). Today these would be considered sports cars or GT cars or maybe <i><b>exotics</b></i>, as they also cost quite a bit more than the Ford Model <i>T</i>s and <i>A</i>s and Chevrolet <i>490</i>s that everyday people were driving then.<br />
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Throughout the 1920s mass market cars were getting by with 4 cylinder engines more like something designed for a tractor than the hi-tech 4 cylinder engines you'll find in a modern Ford or Honda. The Model <i>T</i> - which sold a whopping 15 million cars - had a 2.9L flathead 4 with all of 20 horsepower and a top speed around 40mph. It could also run on kerosene or alchohol or most anything semi-flammable you might have to pour in the tank!<br />
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Ford's Model <i>T </i>had gone into production in 1908; by the early 1920s it was looking a little dated, and many were simply worn out after hard lives on farms and such (if you lived in a city with good streets and streetcars or commuter trains, you probably had little use for a car). As the number and quality of roads increased, people were looking for a car that could comfortably travel longer distances, which would make them appealing to a much larger number of buyers. General Motors saw this as an opportunity to overtake Ford's dominance in the lucrative low-price but extremely high volume part of the market; they targeted the newly acquired Chevrolet division to go head to head with Ford.<br />
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By 1925 Chevy had evolved their model <i>490</i> from a Model-T clone into a reasonably modern car with a steel body, fully enclosed passenger compartment (optional) and smooth running steel wheels (also optional), but still powered by a low-tech 4 cylinder engine. In 1927 Ford would introduce the new Model <i>A</i>, a much improved replacement for the <i>T</i>, powered by a new and improved 4 cylinder engine now producing 40hp and capable of 60mph. Chevy would one-up Ford in 1929 with a new inline 6 cylinder engine. The 6 produced little more power than Ford's new 4-cylinder, but many prestigious cars of the time had 6 or 8 cylinder engines; the 6 gave Chevy a bit of prestige and bragging rights, and helped them steal business away from rival Ford.<br />
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For 1932, Ford would return the favor when they introduced an all new car with the first volume production, reasonably priced V8 engine. Although officially named the<i> type 18</i>, the new car quickly became known simply as the <i><b>V8 Ford</b></i>. Just like Chevrolet's 6, Ford's flathead V8 was not especially sophisticated - cranking out just 65 horespower - but until that time only high end cars were packing more than 6 cylinders. Like a one-eyed man in the land of the blind, Ford's V8 was king of mass market automobiles.<br />
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Through out the 1930s Ford sold the <i>type 18s and </i>subsequent models<i> </i>as fast as they could build them. Thanks to the Great Depression and WWII, other car makers were hard pressed to catch up; Ford would ride the success of that first V8 into the post war period, when things started to get really interesting.<br />
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In 1929, Chrysler - one of the more prestigious car makers of the time - had created Plymouth - a brand of low-priced cars to compete directly with Ford and Chevy. Plymouths were priced about the same as the Fords and Chevys but generally offered slightly better technology; during the 1930s most Plymouths were powered by straight 6 cylinder engines that made as much power as the V8 Fords. Plymouth's strong value for money was perfect for the Depression; before Pearl Harbor rolled around it had become the number 3 brand in America and helped keep parent Chrysler afloat through the lean years of the Depression.<br />
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Moreover, the Plymouth strategy set the tone for that pre-war decade, with an emphasis on cost, reliability and efficiency ahead of flash and style. Those (not many) with a few extra dollars could splurge on a V8 Ford, but many buyers settled for the more practical and cheaper Chevy or Plymouth..<br />
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Following WWII, Americans were back to work and hungry for new cars. Detroit's factories had been building tanks and bombers and jeeps for 4 years, but by 1946 they were building cars again - although most had simply dusted off the tooling from 1941 and started cranking out the same cars they had been building 5 years earlier.<br />
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Chevy, Ford and Plymouth were all just parts of larger companies that built broad lineups of cars under various brands. Chevy was part of General Motors, which owned Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac (plus a few others that came and went). Ford owned Mercury and Lincoln, which paralleled the structure of GM on a slightly smaller scale; likewise Plymouth was part of Chrysler, which also owned the Dodge and De Soto brands. Between them, these 3 companies - known as the "Big 3" - accounted for about 80% of all new cars sold in the US.<br />
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Prior to WWII, the other brands owned by the Big 3 were building fairly high end cars compared to the Fords, Chevys and Plymouths. As automobiles became more indispensable to American life, automakers started to rethink this strategy. Competition and economies of scale were pushing up the quality of the low end cars so much that it was hard to build a high end car that justified a price 10 times more than a base-model Chevy. If the low-end products were generating so much profit, it made sense to shift some of those high end brands down a notch to appeal to buyers who wanted something nicer than an everyday Ford (or Chevy or Plymouth) but couldn't afford the big step up to a Mercury (or Oldsmobile or Dodge).<br />
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In addition to the Big 3, at the end of WWII there were still a few small independent auto makers fighting for a piece of the pie, most notably Packard, Studebaker, Hudson and Nash. Faced with the overwhelming sales volume of Ford and GM, these companies were desperately trying to duplicate the success that Chrysler had with Plymouth in breaking into the low-price part of the market. </div>
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Remember the Baby Boomers? In 1950, the oldest Boomers were still toddlers and their parents were buying houses in newly built suburbs where dad had to drive to work and mom had to drive the kids to little league and ballet lessons. Families would soon find they <i>needed</i> two cars, at least one of them capable of hauling a complete Cub Scout troop in the backseat. Detroit responded by making cars bigger and bigger, which created the need for more powerful engines.</div>
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Even though many automakers had developed sophisticated inline 6 and 8 cylinder engines during the 1930s and 40s, the success of Ford's V8 had raised the bar for buyers. Automakers knew they would need modern V8s to be competitive in the 1950s.<br />
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GM began developing modern overhead-valve V8s - different designs for each of its many brands - starting with a redesigned Cadillac V8 and the Oldsmobile Rocket V8 in 1949, followed by the Buick Nailhead V8 in 1953, and the Pontiac Strato-Streak and the legendary "small block Chevy" in 1954. Chrysler would introduce their "FirePower" hemi-head V8 in 1950 and develop similar but strangely different variants for DeSoto and Dodge; Plymouth would wait until 1955 for the cheaper non-hemi <i>polyspheric</i> variant of the Chrysler V8. Ford would revise their now dated "flathead" V8 for 1948 and use it until 1954 when they would launch their first modern overhead-valve "Y-block" V8.<br />
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Of the independents, Studebaker launched a (smallish) V8 in 1951. Packard would finally produce a V8 in 1955, a somewhat uninspired engine that cribbed from the latest Cadillac V8s. Hudson had entered the 50s with a very good 6 cylinder engine - as powerful as many of the V8s of the time - but car buyers <i>wanted</i> V8s ; Hudson would eventually license Packard's V8. Nash had concentrated on smaller cars and never needed or could afford to develop a V8; they would merge with Hudson in 1954 to form American Motors Corporation. AMC would finally develop its own new V8 in 1956.<br />
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Being first to the party gave Oldsmobile a golden opportunity: they would fit their new V8 to both their big <i>98</i> <i>and</i> their new <i>88</i>, a smaller, lighter car with modern (for 1949) styling. With 50 more horsepower than Ford's now hoary flathead V8, the <i>Rocket 88 </i>would dominate the newly created NASCAR race series (back when they actually raced <i>stock</i> cars), radically change Oldsmobile's stodgy image and give car buyers their first taste of high performance.<br />
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With all of these companies offering similar cars with similar engines and chasing the same buyers, getting customers to even consider a particular brand became a matter of <i><b>marketing</b></i>. Automakers soon learned that marketing went beyond billboards and magazine ads;. they would support various kinds of racing, give cars to celebrities, provide cars for movies and TV shows - anything to get their products noticed. Someone at tiny Hudson came up with the idea of the <i>halo car: </i>a special model or package that existed largely to catch the buyer's attention and get them into the showroom to at least <b><i>look</i></b>, even if they then bought a less flashy model.<br />
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The Hudson <i>Hornet was</i> introduced in 1951 to do battle with the new <i>Rocket 88 </i>Oldsmobiles. Hudson had long been an upmarket brand with a reputation for good engineering and quality, and the same stodgy image as Oldsmobile. Independent Hudson did not have the vast resources of General Motors, so developing a new V8 on short order was out of the question, but they had a big (308 cubic inch) modern inline 6, to which they added the Twin-H-Power option (higher compression and dual carburetors), producing an Oldsmobile beating 175hp. They also broke ground with the <i>Hornet</i> name, being one of the first cars with a name that sounded more like a fighter plane than some sort of kitchen appliance. The <i>Hornet</i> would rule NASCAR for the next 4 years, but never managed to overcome the stigma of its 6-cylinder engine; Hudson would eventually merge with Nash and soon after disappear as a brand.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1953 Packard Caribbean</td></tr>
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In 1953 Packard would go the halo route, creating the <i>Caribbean</i>, a somewhat glitzy (at least by Packard standards) convertible. Initially fitted with Packard's aging straight 8, in 1955 Packard would fit their new 275 horse V8 and offer the <i>Caribbean</i> in several striking two-tone paint treatments. The car was a modest success but too little, too late to save Packard; by 1958 Packard had merged with Studebaker and likewise disappeared.<br />
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1955 was a big year for halo cars. Chrysler had been quietly building their first generation hemi-head V8 since 1950, but the big displacement hemis were destined to drag around monstrous Chrysler Imperials and DeSotos. But Chrysler was tired of seeing Oldsmobile and Hudson get all the NASCAR publicity. In '55 they would launch the Chrysler <i>300</i>, named for its 300 horsepower 331 inch hemi engine - complete with solid lifters and dual 4-barrel carburetors - and win 18 NASCAR races.<br />
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1955 was also the year Chevy introduced their first V8, officially known as the Turbo-fire engine, but soon to be famous as the "mouse motor" or just the "small block Chevy". Being the last GM division to develop a V8 allowed Chevy to learn from the rest of GM; their engine was physically smaller and lighter than the Oldsmobile and Buick V8s, with an innovative cylinder head that would set the standard for the next 40 years. Being smaller and lighter meant Chevy could fit this engine to smaller and lighter cars, yielding some of the best power-to-weight ratios of <i><b>any</b></i> American car at the time. That first year, Chevy would fit the new engine to their new <i>BelAir </i>and the struggling <i>Corvette</i>. Displacing just 265 cubic inches and making as much as 195 hp set a new performance benchmark and gave the Corvette a new lease on life as Chevy's halo car.<br />
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After merging with Packard, Studebaker had access to Packard's V8; they would install it in their own <i>Golden Hawk</i> halo car. The big 352 inch Packard V8 in the mid-size Studebaker body made for surprising performance (when they ran out of Packard engines, Studebaker would use a super-charged version of their own 289 V8). The Golden Hawk was another example of too little, too late, Studebaker would straggle on for another few years before closing the doors for good in 1965.<br />
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Not to be left out of the halo club, Ford would introduce their two seater Thunderbird in 1955, powered by their new Y-block V8. The Y-block was a more old-school design than the new Chevy V8, with a deep skirted crankcase extending below the crankshaft center-line, but it actually out performed the Chevy in stock form. Ford would sell a lot of two seater Thunderbirds and more than anything that success kept the struggling Corvette alive through those early days.<br />
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1955 would also be fateful for two highly visible tragedies: in June at Le Mans a Mercedes 300SLR would go airborne into a spectator stand, killing 80+ people and injuring dozens of others. And in September, American movie actor James Dean would die while driving his new Porsche 550 to a race in Salinas CA. Fast cars were getting the wrong kind of attention, and American auto makers began to worry that the government would start writing safety regulations.<br />
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GM, with slightly more than 50% of the American market really wanted to keep a low profile lest too much attention got the feds start thinking about the M word (as in GM might be a <i style="font-weight: bold;">monopoly </i>in need of breaking up). So in 1957 American automakers would enter a gentleman's agreement banning support for auto racing. While they would still build sporty cars, they agreed not to sponsor racing teams or advertise performance numbers, and GM went so far as to set limits on engine size for their various models.<br />
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The new American Motors Company (a merger of Hudson and Nash) would produce a new kind of car in 1957: an intermediate size sedan - smaller than the full size Fords and Chevys - with AMCs new 327 inch V8. Named the <i>Rambler Rebel</i>, it showed little AMC daring to go outside the box to compete with the big boys. While the big-motor <i>Rebel </i>could match a Corvette in 0-60 times, it <i>looked</i> like a scaled-down Edsel; it didn't sell well and the next year the 327 engine option would be gone, with only AMC's smaller 250 V8 available.<br />
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As the 50s wore on the demand for ever bigger cars continued. The first round of V8s had displaced roughly 300-330 cubic inches, but it soon became clear that wasn't enough for the land-yachts Americans craved. For 1958 engineers would go back to their drawing boards, either stretching their original engine designs or penning entirely new "big blocks" to complement their existing "small block" engines. Chevy would debut their new "W" motor - a slightly reworked 348 cubic inch truck engine in their new full-size <i>Impala</i> and rival Ford would trot out its new FE V8, including a high performance 352 inch version known as the <i>Interceptor</i>, for the full size Ford.<br />
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1958 was also the first big glitch in the post-war US economy. After more than 10 years of rapid growth, inflation was starting to worry the Feds, so starting in 1955 they had slowed government spending just a <i>little</i> bit. However industry had forgotten how to slow down; they kept cranking out consumer goods until suddenly in the fall of 1957 there was way more stuff on store shelves than there was money to buy it. The bubble had burst: unemployment ticked up a few points, which scared those who still had jobs enough to slow spending on frivolous things like chrome-laden high-horsepower automobiles. The Recession of 1958 (also known as the Eisenhower Recession) would only last a few months, but it made Americans a little skittish about spending. Cars finally stopped getting bigger, and the seeds were sown for what would become intermediate and compact sized cars.<br />
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For the next few years the fall out of the recession and the racing ban put a damper on halo cars, at least those with an emphasis on performance. To be sure, all of the Big 3 cheated on the "ban", but they did it quietly: big engines could still be ordered from the factory, but they were referred to as "heavy duty" rather than "high performance". Racing parts destined for NASCAR teams, often with no official part numbers, were delivered through back-door channels.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1962 Studebaker Avanti</td></tr>
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Studebaker would take one last shot at a halo car, producing the <i>Avanti</i> in 1962: a sporty coupe with pony-car proportions and a supercharged 289 V8. Sadly the <i>Avanti</i> was the last gasp for Studebaker; less than 2 years later Studebaker would stop producing cars, having built as many Avanti's in that entire time as Ford would come to build 65 Mustangs in a week.<br />
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By the early 1960s, the first generation V8s from the 50s had made their way into hot-rods, giving young (and youthful) Americans a taste of the performance a big motor in a lightweight car could provide. At the same time European makes were making inroads into the US auto market: VW's Beetle was making a reputation as super-cheap basic transportation, while Porsches and Jaguars and Austin Healeys and such were getting attention from youthful buyers. Gas was cheap, unemployment was virtually non-existent and high performance was in the air.<br />
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At Ford and Pontiac two young and hungry executives - Lee Iacoca and John Delorean - recognized the value of performance as a way to market and promote cars. They would simply ignore the gentlemen's agreement and build the cars they knew would sell. Ford had a new compact car, the <i>Falcon</i>, and an all new small V8 displacing as much as 289 cubic inches; Ford would combine the two and add racy sheet metal to create the sporty <i>Mustang</i>. Over at Pontiac, Delorean would shoehorn their big 389 V8 into the mid-size <i>Tempest</i> to create the <i>GTO</i>. Both cars would hit the showrooms in 1964, and were an example of being in the right place at the right time: they would sell so well that other car makers couldn't ignore them.<br />
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Chrysler was in a somewhat odd position; for the 1962 model year they had downsized their full size Dodges and Plymouths (which were <i>really</i> big) to a size somewhere between the mid-size and full-size cars being offered by Ford and GM. That meant in 1964 Chrysler already had a (more-or-less) mid-size car available with big V8s, including a monstrous 413 with dual 4 barrel carbs. Depending on how you look at it, that made Chrysler either early or late to the muscle car party: while they were manufacturing what were essentially muscle cars as early as 1962, they didn't start marketing them as such until 1966 when they introduced the fast-back Dodge <i>Charger </i>intermediate.<br />
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In the immortal words of Mick Jagger, "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing". By the end of 1964 Oldsmobile would offer the <i>442 </i>with a hotted up 330 inch V8 and Chevy would add their hot 327 inch V8 to the new intermediate <i>Chevelle</i>. The real tipping point may have been the introduction of Chevy's new big-block "mystery motor". Developed largely to keep up with Ford's new FE big-block in NASCAR racing, the Chevy big-block (soon to be known as the "rat motor") made no pretense of being a station-wagon motor; it was a thoroughly modern hi-performance design that dominated NASCAR. And in 1965, Chevy was ready to stuff it under the hood of every car they built. The rat-motor would ignite the horsepower wars in a way no one could have imagined just two years earlier.<br />
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With cars flying out of the showroom the semi-fictional un-official racing ban would quietly fade from memory. By 1966 Ford, Mercury, Chevy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and even Buick and AMC would have a mid-size car with a 400 cubic inch engine and 300+ horsepower, 4 speed transmissions and racy sounding nameplates. And while the <i>Mustang</i> ruled the newly created pony-car niche (challenged only by the frumpy looking <i>Barracuda </i>and eccentric<i> Corvair</i>) GM and Chrysler had solid competitors (<i>Camaro</i>, <i>Firebird</i> and a greatly improved <i>Barracuda</i>) in the works for the '67 model year. The next three years were a free-for-all, with every automaker willing to stuff their biggest V8s into their smallest cars. The <i><b>muscle-car </b></i>era was in full-swing and would escalate every year for the rest of the decade; by 1969 every auto maker would have an engine flirting with (or outright breaking) the 400 horsepower mark stuffed into the smallest cars they offered.<br />
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What made these cars successful beyond their value as halo cars - in a way the <i>Rocket 88</i> or the <i>Golden Hawk</i> never managed? <br />
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For starters, the cars offered a combination of performance and flash in a very affordable and practical package. Unlike a two-seat sports car that was worthless as a family grocery-getter, a GTO or RoadRunner had a perfectly usable backseat and trunk; even the Mustang had a token backseat that a young father could rationalize would hold the kids - at least until they were six or seven years old! From a manufacturer's standpoint, it cost little more to build a big engine than a small one, and heavy-duty brakes and suspension parts were often "borrowed" from full size cars. In 1964, the GTO package added about $600 to the cost of a $3000 Tempest - not a small amount at the time, but not a lot when spread over 36 easy monthly payments!<br />
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Maybe more importantly was that the US economy was booming. The muscle-car is often thought of as a baby-boom phenomena, but in 1964 the oldest Boomers were just 18 years old; few of them were able to make a $100 per month new car payment. But thanks to the Depression, the generation preceding the boomers - the so called <i><b>Silent Generation</b></i> - was as unusually small as the <b><i>Boomer Generation</i></b> was unusually large. That translated to a labor shortage in the second half of the 1960s, when unemployment averaged a record low 4%. Everyone was working and post-war optimism was still very much alive; a big-block GTO with three carburetors seemed like a fairly small indulgence!<br />
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And then, after just 6 years - like the proverbial bolt from the blue - America's fling with high performance would be over. But that's a story for another day.<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-40914750611714883512014-06-10T23:27:00.000-04:002015-08-28T08:07:38.591-04:00Sneaking Through the Sound BarrierHumans - men in particular - have a fascination with speed that is so universal that it must be genetic (probably the same gene that makes dogs stick their heads out of car windows). Coming of age in the 1970s, it was a rite of passage among my gearhead high school crowd to take our cars to a lonely stretch of highway and try to peg the speedometer. This was foolish beyond the chance of losing your license; the cars we were driving had crumby bias ply tires, stone-age aerodynamics and 120 mph speedometers. North of 80 mph the front of the car would start to lift and the steering got a funny disconnected feel; pushing past that was more aiming than driving. The only reasons any of us survived this stupidity were optimistic speedometers and a willingness to lie about how fast we actually went before backing off.<br />
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In the fall of 1947 a much higher stakes version of this game was playing out at the Muroc Army Airfield (soon to be Edwards Air Force Base) in the California dessert. Two experimental aircraft, both supersonic capable, were being flight tested by two distinctly type-A pilots.<br />
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The Bell X-1 was an experimental rocket-plane, built for the sole purpose of generating scientific data on supersonic aerodynamics. It was the culmination of a 5 year joint effort between the Army Air Force and the <b><i>National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics</i></b> - the NACA - to be renamed NASA a few years later. Designed in 1942, the X-1 used rocket engines - the simplest and most reliable way at the time to make enough thrust to push the plane through the sound barrier. Rockets are not very efficient in terms of fuel consumption, but the whole idea was just to get an instrumented air-frame up to supersonic speeds; the X-1 was never intended to be a practical aircraft. To get the most possible supersonic flight time the X-1 was carried to altitude by a B-29 and given a 300 mph head start. Once released, the pilot would light the rocket engines for a few minute ride to Mach 1, then glide back to the desert floor for an unpowered landing.<br />
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By contrast, the North American Aviation XP-86 was the prototype for one of the first jet powered fighter planes. The XP-86<i> Sabre-jet</i> had benefited from aerodynamic data captured from the German aircraft industry at the end of WWII, from several years of jet engine research and development, and from the same top notch engineers that had designed the P-51 Mustang. As a result the XP-86 had a swept wing that improved stability at supersonic speeds, an engine with enough power for a conventional takeoff, and the range for extended test flights.<br />
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Of course the X-1 was flown by Chuck Yeager, while the XP-86 was being flown by more obscure NAA test pilot George Welch. Welch was a bit of a character, but there was no doubt he could fly. He had been an Army Air Force pilot in the Pacific during WWII; he was one of the few pilots to get a P-40 airborne at Pearl Harbor on December 7th. Welch and fellow pilot Ken Taylor had been at an all night party/card-game; they raced to the airfield in Taylor's Buick and literally took off with bombs falling around them. Welch is credited with 4 kills (3 Vals and a Zero) and Taylor 2 kills (both Vals); its likely they both scored a few more that couldn't be confirmed. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it is one of the many bits of history mangled by Disney in their version of the<b><i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_(film)" target="_blank">Pearl Harbor</a></i></b> story, with Welch being replaced by Ben Affleck playing the fictionalized character Rafe McCawley.<br />
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A brief diversion: Most of the historical articles on this blog are based on trivia I've picked up from an assortment of books, bull sessions, campfire stories, personal experiences - basically anything that catches my interest. Then I try to piece together a coherent story from diverse and often conflicting sources. In this case, much of the information is drawn from a single book called <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aces-Wild-The-Race-Mach/dp/0842027327/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1388619413&sr=8-3&keywords=aces+wild" target="_blank">Aces Wild: The Race for Mach 1</a></i></b>, written by former test pilot Al Blackburn. I found <b style="font-style: italic;">Aces Wild </b>under the Christmas tree this year. Its not especially well written; it is Mr. Blackburn's first and only book, and it wanders and repeats itself a bit too much. But Blackburn tells the story of George Welch and post war aviation that only he could tell, and it is worth reading for that alone - but consider checking it out of the library before you buy one for your collection.<br />
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Blackburn was a test pilot at North American Aviation (NAA) in the early 1950s; he knew Welch and many of his contemporaries, and he heard the stories first hand from the people who were there and had made an effort to leave no evidence. Now back to my story...<br />
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Welch had 16 kills in WWII, many while flying the less than outstanding P-39, before malaria put him out of the war in mid 1943. Strangely, all of Welch's reported kills were for <i><b>multiple</b></i> aircraft; some folks think he simply didn't bother to report single kills. While he was ambitious and competitive, he didn't have to keep score of his personal accomplishments.<br />
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One of the many stories circulating about Welch that gives you an idea of who he was: while stationed in New Guinea with the 36th Figther Group, he supposedly asked his commanding officer when his squadron would get the new P-38s that Dick Bong and others were using to shoot down Zeros with such great efficiency. He was told "when we run out of P-39s". Shortly after, Welch and his fellow pilots began to experience "engine trouble" just before they made it back to base, "forcing" them to bail out and send the P-39s into the Pacific.<br />
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But in the fall of 1947, Welch was just like <a href="http://twistedfromthesprue.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html" target="_blank">Chalmers Goodlin</a> : another ex-fighter pilot working as a test pilot for a big aircraft company that wanted to sell the Air Force lots of aircraft. Stuart Symnington, the newly appointed Secretary of the newly formed U.S. Air Force, badly wanted a bit of prestige for the new branch of the service. He let the executives at North American know that he expected the X-1, with a USAF pilot, to break the sound barrier first.<br />
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So on the first flight of the XP-86, on October 1st, Welch did what you would expect from a pilot willing to parachute into the Pacific in hopes of scoring a better plane: he took the Sabre to 35,000 feet, advanced the throttle to full and eased into a steep dive. Because he wasn't supposed to be doing any of that (he wasn't even supposed to retract the landing gear on that first flight), he didn't turn on the recording devices and cameras that would have created evidence to be used against him. So when he saw the air-speed indicator freeze even though the plane was still accelerating, then jump 50 knots to something in the neighborhood of Mach 1, there was only his oral report to the NAA engineers to verify what had happened.<br />
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On the ground - especially at Pancho Barnes's <b style="font-style: italic;">Happy Bottom Riding Club </b>which was fortuitously located just below his pull out - a number of people heard what they would soon recognize as a sonic boom. But while a number of people heard a boom, it isn't clear whether the YP-86 actually went supersonic or just got very close. Goodlin had managed to make a tiny boom - actually more of a "crack" - in the X-1 at less than Mach 1 by pulling up and then diving, a maneuver that caused airflow over the wings to go briefly supersonic. It was possible Welch had done something similar while pulling up from the dive. The YP-86 would not be tracked by accurate ground radar until several weeks later - <b><i>after</i></b> Yeager's historic flight - when it managed a best of Mach 1.04 in a similar dive. But that didn't stop Welch from repeating the trick the morning of October 14th, sending another boom across the Muroc air field just about the time legend has it that Chuck Yeager was using a broom handle to latch the door on the X-1 before taking off to make history.<br />
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Official or not hardly mattered to Welch or North American Aviation; they had let the Air Force know the F-86 was a pretty amazing airplane, and then scored additional points by cooperating to give the Air Force the big success they needed. Having Welch's name in the record books was not nearly as sweet as purchase orders for new F-86s.<br />
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Interestingly enough, while Yeager is generally credited with being the first pilot to go supersonic in <b><i>level</i></b> flight, I discovered that he does not hold an official record for breaking the sound barrier. The Swiss <i>Federation Aeronatique Internationale</i> (FAI) sets the rules for aviation records, and in 1947 the rules required the aircraft to takeoff under its own power and to set the record speed in level flight <b><i>at sea level.</i></b> The warm dense air at sea level means the speed of sound is 100 mph higher than at altitude, and also means the aerodynamic stresses are higher. Neither the X-1 or the XP-86 could manage mach 1 at sea-level (about 740 mph). The first plane to accomplish that feat was NAA's next generation fighter, the F-100 <i>Super Saber, </i>a plane that would take Welch's life during a test flight in October of 1954; if Welch had lived another 25 years Wolfe's the <b><i>Right Stuff</i></b> may have read quite a bit differently! <br />
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Normally I would throw in a few lines about building a model of Welch's YP-86, but strangely enough there are no readily available kits of the prototype (all of the kits out there are Korean era F-86s, with significant detail differences). If you're reading this, maybe you could drop a note to your favorite kit maker and tell them there are modelers out here who want one of these.<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-88122896489089113102013-12-21T01:53:00.000-05:002015-02-14T11:08:10.853-05:00A Car Modeler's BreakfastIts been a while since I wrote one of these articles about where to get breakfast in the 'burgh, but its a lot easier to knock one of these out than actually doing some modeling to write about. The <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Trolley+Barn+Eatery,+Library+Road,+Pittsburgh,+PA&hl=en&sll=41.117935,-77.604698&sspn=5.015043,9.876709&oq=trolleu+barm&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A" target="_blank">Trolley Barn Eatery </a>on Library Road is a classic breakfast dive; its a single storefront in a block building that holds a handful of other businesses (its too small to qualify as a strip-mall or shopping plaza). Inside are small tables with vinyl table cloths; you order and pay at a counter in the back, then pour your own coffee and wait for the food to be served to your table. This is breakfast at its simplest: every imaginable combination of eggs, sausage, bacon, home fries and pancakes - but the food is good and cheap.<br />
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What makes the Trolley Barn truly special is that 200 feet further down Library Road is the Castle Shannon Fire Hall, site of two big Pittsburgh model car shows: the <i><b>Three Rivers Automodelers</b></i> hold their show here in the fall, and in early spring the <i><b>South Hills Model & Toy Show</b></i> is held at the same spot. Both shows have an amazing turn out of model car vendors, and most have their stuff priced to sell - I almost always come home with something unusual. My last score was an Aurora Cobra Daytona kit - complete and unstarted - for $10!<br />
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I don't have dates for the 2014 shows yet, but I'll update this post when I do.<br />
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If you're going to one of these shows, leave a half hour early and stop at the Trolley Barn to carb-up for multiple laps around the vendor room!<br />
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Don<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-10339717661017183652013-11-18T22:26:00.003-05:002015-08-09T12:23:33.978-04:00Things that go bump in the night...There is something a little magical about fall in Pittsburgh. While evening comes early, the days are often sunny and warm and dry - a welcome change from the heat and humidity of summer. Many trees hold on to their leaves well into October, but the less hardy varieties add a splash of color and the wonderful smell of fallen leaves to the air. Its a great time to be outside.<br />
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Getting the final bits of yard work done - raking leaves, mowing the grass one last time, putting the grill and lawn chairs away - often keeps you outside well into dusk. The shadows and thinning foliage and clear skies change the familiar horizon into something just a little <i><b>spooky</b></i>; along with the inevitable wave of Halloween inspired TV shows and the assortment of UFO, Bigfoot and unsolved mystery shows running continuously on the cable channels its easy to imagine glowing eyes watching you from the shrubbery or a headless horseman riding across your backyard.<br />
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So it wasn't too surprising when on an October visit to my parents in Westmoreland county (two turnpike exits east of Pittsburgh) I saw neatly printed signs planted along the roadside announcing a UFO convention at the local community college. I grew up in the area and had heard all the stories about big hairy creatures killing big mean farm dogs and how the army hauled <b><i>something</i></b> out of a Kecksburg field in the middle of the night, but usually I heard those stories from my Dad and his friends on all night fishing trips, when I figured their goal was to scare the crap out of us kids so we didn't go wandering around the woods in the dark. In high school I had close friends who lived in Kecksburg that I spent a lot of time with, and while we discussed all the mysteries of life that are important to 17 year old boys, the subject of aliens never came up. As a teenager I drove the dark back roads of Kecksburg many times and can tell you its easy to imagine all sorts of things lurking in the shadows that 1960s sealed beam headlights couldn't penetrate, but I never saw anything big and hairy or thin and grey-skinned step out on the pavement.<br />
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But now we have the internet. I came home from my parents and typed "kecksburg ufo" into Google and spent a guilty evening reading alleged eyewitness accounts and conspiracy theories about something that happened in my own backyard. I have grave doubts any extraterrestrials dropped into Kecksburg, but it seems likely that <i><b>something</b></i> happened there in December of 1965.<br />
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Here is what we're reasonably sure of. About 4:45 pm on December 9th, 1965 - a Thursday evening just before sunset - a fireball blazed across the sky over Detroit and <b><i>appeared to</i></b> to head south over Lake Erie. More sightings came in from Ohio, from Cleveland to Columbus, including reports of grass fires started by flaming bits of something falling to the ground. I emphasize <b><i>appeared to</i></b> because depending on the object's trajectory it may well have dropped straight into Lake Erie, and still been visible far to the south. Natural meteors (rocks) can enter the atmosphere at a steep angle such as this.<br />
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If the fireball was actually a piece of space junk falling out of orbit (or a reentering spacecraft), it would have entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle, essentially following the earth's surface as it shed speed and eventually fell to the ground. If this was the case, the object would have been moving at 1000s of miles per hour in the general direction of Pittsburgh, passing over Cleveland and Akron on the way.<br />
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In Kecksburg - a tiny town (really just a few farms sharing a VFD) about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, some kids came inside to tell their Mom they had seen a "burning star" fall into the nearby woods; Mom looked and thought she saw a bright light in the woods. About 6:30pm - probably after the supper dishes were cleared - Mom called the story into local radio station WHJB (talk radio shows were the social networks of 1965). The radio station notified the state police. It was a dry, warm night with a full moon and the word was out: reporters, police, volunteer firemen and curiosity seekers descended on Kecksburg en masse.<br />
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And then it gets fuzzy. Those who got there early - including WHJB announcer John Murphy - claim to have seen a few PA state troopers walking around with flashlights and a bronze-colored, bell or acorn shaped metal object about 6 feet in diameter and 10 feet long half buried in the ground in a wooded lot. Those who arrived a little later saw armed soldiers guarding the site and warning onlookers they would be shot if they tried to go into the woods. Some witnesses reported there were men in hazmat suits with NASA logos walking around. Much later, after most of the civilians had left, the military types used a bulldozer (where did that come from?) to load the <i><b>something</b></i> on to a flatbed truck that drove off into the night. The official police report issued the next day was that nothing was found the night before.<br />
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Over the years more and more witnesses have come forward to tell their stories of that night. Members of the Kecksburg VFD have told about the massive military presence that rolled into town. A former Air Force officer claimed to have guarded the truck during a brief stay at Lockbourne AFB near Columbus Ohio, allegedly on its way to Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton (it seems a little odd that the truck would stop an hour short of its final destination). A contractor claims to have delivered a load of bricks to a Wright Patterson hangar where he caught a glimpse of a bell shaped object.<br />
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Today there is precious little proof of anything, including whether the Army was ever there. In 1965 cameras didn't fit in your pocket, and no photos seem to have been taken. Most of the details of the story came out in interviews done for a TV show in 1990, 25 years after the event; plenty of time for records to be lost and memories to fade and shift.<br />
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There may be no proof of a recovery because it never happened. There are lots of reserve and National Guard armories scattered around southwest PA, but they are primarily training centers for part-time soldiers; there aren't teams of men and equipment sitting there waiting to deploy on a moments notice. The nearest actual Army base that could have mounted a major deployment would have been in Letterkenny PA, 120 miles east of Kecksburg. Unless the military had advance warning (unlikely, unless whatever it was was one <i><b>ours</b></i>) it seems doubtful any of them could have assembled a detachment of men and equipment and got them to Kecksburg by late evening.<br />
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According to some websites there are documented reports - obtained under the Freedom of Information Act - indicating that the Air Force sent 3 men from the Oakdale PA radar station to recover whatever had fallen there. Oakdale is just south of the main Pittsburgh airport and about 50 miles west of Kecksburg; until 1969 the Air Force had an air defense radar there to guide fighter planes to Soviet bombers should the Cold War ever turn hot. You can find reports from the Oakdale site online suggesting that investigating stuff that <i>may</i> have fallen from the sky and answering queries from UFO buffs was a common and less than rewarding job for the unit. Oakdale was just an hour away from Kecksburg; that would have fit the time line. It seems likely that the 3 airmen from Oakdale (maybe they took a few extra men to help guard the site) were the only military there, and the stories of a large Army presence were exaggerated by time and imagination.<br />
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But <b><i>did</i></b> they find anything in those woods? Or did an Air Force truck roll out of Kecksburg loaded with nothing more than the search lights and shovels and winches they brought with them? And if it was a piece of space junk, why all the secrecy?<br />
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Remember that in the early 1960s both the US and USSR were launching lots of stuff into space. Mixed in with the scientific probes and commercial communication satellites were spy satellites, military communication and navigation satellites and probably a few missile component tests. But aside from manned spacecraft, the only things meant to come back from space were film canisters and <i>warheads</i>. Moreover, the Soviets had been hinting they had an ICBM with fractional orbit capability that could lob a nuke around the south pole into the US, undetected by the north facing early warning radars - a development that would have seriously derailed the "mutually assured destruction" doctrine that was seen as the only thing preventing WWIII. Against that backdrop, <b><i>anything</i></b> that reentered the atmosphere and made it to the ground in one piece would have been extremely interesting to the military and men in black suits, and unlikely to ever be declassified; you'll have to make up your own mind about what happened in Kecksburg.<br />
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Obligatory scale modeling reference: Are you a military vehicle modeler who is tired of the SciFi modelers having all the fun lighting up their models with LEDs? How about building a deuce-and-a-half with a tarp covered load that glows and pulses blue light? Put it on a base with some trees and a Kecksburg road sign. I'd love to see that diorama! Imagine the fun of convincing the judges it does <b><i>not</i></b> belong in the Sci-Fi category. And if someone tells you the details are wrong, ask him exactly how he <b><i>knows?</i></b><br />
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Don<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-9993893463073679652013-11-09T19:19:00.004-05:002015-02-15T00:15:03.818-05:00Racing PoniesNot too long ago I wrote the story of how the Ford Mustang came to be. In 1965 they were flying out of the showrooms as fast as Ford could build them. But the 60's were a time when change happened <b><i>fast</i></b>. The basic formula for the Mustang was simple: take a small sedan and re-skin it with racy sheet metal, drop in a small block V8 and add bucket seats. Ford had leaked enough teasers to build interest in the Mustang before the car went on sale that the competition at GM and Chrysler already had their own "pony" cars in development when the Mustang went on sale.<br />
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Ford knew that while most Mustangs would be used to commute to work or bring home the groceries, the appeal of the car was its sportiness. Even before the Mustang was on sale Ford was preparing to give the Mustang a racing pedigree. <a href="http://www.ponysite.de/alanmann.htm" target="_blank">Alan Mann Racing</a> in England was already campaigning the Falcon in European rally races; in early 1964 they received one of the first Mustangs off the production line for testing purposes, followed shortly after by 6 more cars to prepare for racing. Holmann&Moody shipped an equal number of race-prepared 289s across the pond. The Mustangs - red coupes - were prepared for rally racing and placed 1st and 2nd in the Touring Class of the 1964 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWTKt_S0eJM" target="_blank">Tour de France</a> (a series of French road races - <i>not</i> the bicycle race), beating the Jaguar MkIIs that had dominated the class for several years. Interestingly enough, Carroll Shelby was also there with his Cobra Daytonas, which lost this series to the Ferrari GTOs.<br />
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In the US Ford <i>really</i> wanted to beat rival Chevy's Corvette, but the only place the Corvette was being raced was in amateur Sports Car Club of America races - an organization that interpreted <i><b>Sports Car</b></i> to mean two seater and set the rules to allow only minimal modifications. But where there's a will there's a way:<br />
Ford would go to Carroll Shelby - already building Ford powered Cobras and working on the factory GT40 race cars - to turn the Mustang into an SCCA legal race car.<br />
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Shelby was king of the loopholes: by setting himself up as a manufacturer, he could make all sorts of changes to the Mustang that Ford would never want their name or warranty attached to. To handle that pesky two-seat rule Shelby simply unbolted the back seat and installed a fiber-glass package shelf, which was the perfect place to fit the spare tire after Shelby installed a bigger gas tank that filled up the trunk. The SCCA rules allowed modifications to either the suspension <i>or </i>the engine, but the Mustang really needed <b><i>both</i> </b>in order to be competitive with the fuel-injection and independent-rear-suspension of the 'Vette. Shelby first upgraded the Mustang's suspension, transmission, and rear end, and bolted headers and a bigger carburetor to the stock engine to create the <b><i>street</i> </b>GT350 and <b><i>then</i> </b>further tweaked the stock Ford 289 to create the GT350R <b><i>racing cars</i></b>. With every spare ounce stripped from the GT350R, and the tiny 289 pushed to 350hp, the <b><i>Shelby</i></b> Mustang handily beat the plastic Chevys, winning 5 of the 6 regional SCCA championships, with Shelby team driver Jerry Titus winning the overall SCCA B Production championship in 1965.<br />
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The Camaro and Firebird would appear in showrooms in 1966 as 1967 models. The first Plymouth Barracuda actually went on sale in 1964 a week <i>before </i>the Mustang, but its styling was so dated in comparison that no one paid it much attention; Chrysler gave the car a massive restyling that also appeared in the '67 model year. Both GM and Chrysler took the opportunity to design in lots of room under the hoods: all 3 cars had big-block options that would soon grow to include the biggest (7+ liter) engines available.<br />
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With all of these muscular little 4 seaters being built in Detroit, in 1966 the SCCA created a new racing series just for them: the <b style="font-style: italic;">Trans American Sedan Championship, </b>or just<b style="font-style: italic;"> TransAm</b> as the series quickly came to be known. To entice manufacturers (and big name drivers) to participate, the SCCA established a point system to award a manufacturer's championship. <b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>Now Ford had a another loophole to fill: obviously they wanted to compete with the GM and Chrysler cars in the new series, but Shelby had homologated the fastback Mustang as a two-seater, and TransAm demanded <i><b>four </b></i>seats. Rather than re-homologate the fastback cars the notch-back Mustang <i><b>coupes </b></i>were homologated (and of course many of those cars promptly received the same Shelby parts and suspension modifications developed for the fastback GT350Rs). Shelby built a few dozen TransAm ready '66 and '67 Mustangs - a few for the "factory" Shelby team and the others sold through Ford to independent racing teams.<br />
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With factory and Shelby support, the Mustang took the Trans Am manufacturers championship in both '66 and '67. Interestingly enough, one of the Shelby team cars was sponsored by Grady Davis, a Gulf Oil VP with a taste for racing whose office was in downtown Pittsburgh.<br />
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Now that the competition had arrived, it was clear that the '67 Mustang would have to be something <b><i>special </i></b>just to keep up. And in my opinion, Ford nailed it: the '67 Mustangs were just enough bigger to fit a big-block engine, and as a result Ford cleaned up much of the "stubbiness" that gave the first generation car a few unflattering angles. Based on the roaring success of the first few years, Ford cut a few less corners as well; there was a bit more chrome and trim available, without crossing the line into gaudiness. Under the hood, the top option for '67 was a 390 V8. Much like Ford's small-block, the big-block "FE" motor was not an especially high-performance design. In the "S-code" Mustangs, the 390 carried a 320 hp rating, although that was probably a little optimistic. The 390 was barely a match for the 327 Chevy small-block, let alone the 396 Chevy big-block that was available in the new Camaro. For the '68 model year Ford would up the ante with a hot-rod version of the 428 inch station wagon motor, using cylinder heads developed for Ford's 427 NASCAR engine to create "Cobra Jet" Mustangs that were on more or less equal footing with the best the competition had to offer (yes, there were a few big block GM and Chrysler engines available that could out-muscle a Cobra Jet, but their extra top-end power was largely overkill for the stoplight grand prix action most of these cars were limited to).<br />
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Still, sales of the '67 Mustang dropped about 20%, and dropped again for the '68 model. The Mustang would never regain the insane sales numbers of the first two years, but Ford had created a racing heritage for the car that would carry it through rough times ahead (when America fell out of love with fast cars during the oil embargoes of the 1970s).<br />
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But I'm getting ahead of myself - Ford racing would close out the '60s with a bang, or more accurately - a <i><b>Boss</b></i>. But this article has gone long enough; that's a story for another time...<br />
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Don<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-8462109778111958702013-07-05T14:04:00.000-04:002015-02-15T00:15:24.912-05:00Pittsburgh Vintage Grand PrixJust a quick note for old car buffs and modelers: the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is kicking off next weekend - July 12th through the 21st (the racing and cars shows<i><b> in</b></i><b><i> Schenley Park</i></b> are the last weekend - July 20th and 21st). Check out the details here: <a href="http://www.pvgp.org/">http://www.pvgp.org/</a><br />
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The<b> Ford Mustang</b> has been chosen as <b style="font-style: italic;">Marque of the Year, </b>and while the Schenley Park course is a little too tight for the big V8s, the Mustangs and other hairy chested cars will be racing the weekend before at the <b><i>Pittsburgh International Race Complex</i></b> (<a href="http://www.pittrace.com/">http://www.pittrace.com/</a>) - just north of the Beaver Falls exit of the Turnpike (<a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?q=201+PENNDALE+ROAD,+WAMPUM,+PENNSYLVANIA,+16157+&hl=en&ll=40.795618,-80.310059&spn=0.417415,0.959244&sll=41.117935,-77.604698&sspn=6.644543,15.3479&t=h&hnear=201+Penndale+Exd,+Wampum,+Pennsylvania+16157&z=11&iwloc=A" target="_blank">map</a>).<br />
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In addition to the racing, Saturday in Schenley (July 20th) is the day all the local car clubs organize car shows throughout the park; if you can't find something cool to look at there you just don't like cars... Both weekends are definitely worth a road trip - and make sure to clean out the memory card in your camera as there will be lots of cool stuff you just won't see at the local car cruise.Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-30137113971884470462013-06-21T00:12:00.001-04:002015-02-15T00:21:23.216-05:00The Mustang Turns 50!?!<br />
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The first Ford Mustangs appeared just about the time I started to notice cars were cool, and even at 4 years old I knew the Mustang was a lot cooler than Dad's Galaxie or the Impalas and Furys that my uncles drove. So it was with quite a shock that I happened across a web page showing an <a href="http://www.caranddriver.com/features/2015-ford-mustang-rendered-detailed-future-cars" target="_blank">artist's conception</a> of the all-new Mustang that will launch next spring to mark the pony car's 50th anniversary. Because if the Mustang is going to be 50, that means <i>I'm </i>going to be... well, you can do the math.<br />
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The roots of the Mustang go back to the early 1950s. Its hard to imagine, but in those post-war days Ford sold just 1 model of car. To be sure, it was available in different trim levels and body styles under various names (Mainline, Customline, Crestline, Crown Victoria, Fairlane, etc) but aside from the chrome, they were essentially the "same" car.<br />
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So when Ford introduced the two-seat Thunderbird in 1955, it was a big deal. While a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the Corvette, the Thunderbird was much more luxurious and well built (and less sporting) than Chevy's two-seater. The Thunderbird only made sense as a <b><i>second</i></b> car; it was first and foremost a car to be <i><b>seen</b></i> in. The automobile had become such an essential part of American life that families were beginning to consider a car for both Dad <i><b>and</b></i> Mom, and automakers were beginning to think in terms of a range of different models, each tailored in size, cost and features to a particular segment of the market.<br />
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Much like the early Corvette, the Thunderbird was a flop in the showroom. The T-bird certainly appealed to young men thinking it was the perfect car to drive their girl friends off unchaperoned, but the middle-aged doctors, lawyers and bankers who could actually afford one (it cost nearly twice the price of a new full-size Ford) didn't have girlfriends - or if they did, they didn't want to be seen driving them around with the roof down!<br />
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At Ford, number-cruncher Robert McNamara studied the demographics and decided the Thunderbird should be a 4-seat monster capable of carrying multiple sets of golf clubs to the country club and sealed the two seater's fate. He then turned his attention to every day transportation, and decided Ford should build a small, efficient 5 passenger sedan; a first car for young families or a second car for slightly older Moms to haul the kids to football practice and piano lessons. That perfectly practical (and perfectly boring) little sedan was the Ford Falcon, introduced in 1959, a car that would anchor the small end of Ford's model range for the next decade (and its spiritual descendants, the Maverick, Fairmont and Tempo for two decades after that).<br />
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But what does all this have to do with the Mustang? Enter Lido "Lee" Iacocca. Iacocca grew up in Lehigh Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants. Due to to a case of rheumatic fever as a child, he ended up 4F and spent the WWII years in college studying engineering. He joined Ford as an engineer in 1946, but quickly decided that sales and marketing were more to his liking. He was an ambitious man with his eye on a corner office type job, and as the cliche goes, he climbed quickly through the ranks; by 1957 he was McNamara's right hand man. Where McNamara understood logistics and manufacturing costs, Iacocca had worked with the salesmen at the dealerships and understood all the irrational reasons that people bought cars. Then came the fateful day in the fall of 1960 when JFK called to offer McNamara a job as Secretary of Defense. In the blink of an eye, 36 year old Lee Iacocca was vice-president of the Ford car and truck group.<br />
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The Falcon was actually selling in reasonable numbers, but it wasn't making Ford much money. The car was stealing sales away from the full-size Ford, and there were few high-markup options available for the salesmen to add on. With McNamara out of the way, Iacocca began changing the product line to offer cars people not only needed but <b><i>wanted, </i></b>and more importantly that would make profits for Ford.<br />
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Ford had invested many millions of dollars in the Falcon so Iacocca couldn't just scrap it, but he could add trim packages, bucket seats and bigger engines. But there was only so much you could do with the Falcon's bland shape. Iacocca did his own demographic studies and realized the oldest baby-boomers were just reaching driving age, and in a few more years would be buying cars of their own. College campuses were awash in MGs and bathtub Porsches and the like, brought home by servicemen cashing in on GI-Bill funded educations. At rival Chevrolet, the Corvette was slowly gaining a following and the Corvair Monza was being promoted as the "poor man's Porsche". If Ford wanted to stake a claim on youth buyers they needed a fun, sporty car at a price even high-school graduates could afford.<br />
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Iacocca assembled a team of executives known as the Fairlane Group, a sort of skunkworks team who met at the bar of the Fairlane Inn twice a month to discuss potential projects. The first result was a tiny two-seater show car with lightweight construction and a mid-engine V4 borrowed from a Ford of Europe small car, called the <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/1965-ford-mustang-prototypes1.htm" target="_blank">Mustang I</a>. While distinctly sporty, it lacked the broad appeal Iacocca was looking for: he realized that to avoid a repeat of the Thunderbird the new car had to seat 4 (although maybe 2 of those seats could be child-sized) and have enough trunk space to bring home a week's groceries.<br />
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Meeting the price target meant the new car would need to share Falcon mechanicals, but at least the styling had to hint at <i>Ferrari</i>. The final design came down to a contest among the various studios inside of Ford. Joe Oros lead the team in the Ford studio who brought in the winning design. Legend has it that it was the <i>Mustang</i> name that finally convinced Henry Ford II to take a chance on the car.<br />
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And, the rest, as they say, is history. The Mustang was an instant best seller. People lined up to put down deposits. In less than two years Ford had sold over 1 <i><b>million </b></i>Mustangs. Lido Iacocca was promoted to president of Ford. Except the story isn't nearly that simple (nothing at Ford is ever simple). The next 50 years would see the Mustang (and the world) go through a lot of changes, and if not for some amazing people and a lot of luck it might have gone the way of the original Thunderbird. But that's a story for another article, or maybe two.<br />
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Stay tuned!<br />
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<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-60721578255097519572013-02-07T00:47:00.002-05:002013-04-14T17:03:37.551-04:00Thinking Pink<br />
Therie is a natural tendency to think of American sports car racing as a west coast invention: if you’re racing cars that are at best “water resistant” it makes sense to do it in a sunny climate. But going racing is more about disposable income than the weather. Shortly after WWII the largest concentration of wealth in the US stretched from the financial centers of the north-east states through the manufacturing cities of the mid-west, a swath of geography dotted with storied racetracks from Limerock Connecticut to Elkhart Lake Wisconsin.<br />
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In Pittsburgh the steel industry created jobs for lots of engineers and technicians; the kind of guys who liked to go home and tinker in the garage. Well paid steel workers bought lots of new cars - making Pittsburgh auto dealerships some of the biggest in the country - and supported a vast network of mechanics, parts suppliers, and machine shops. While there was no race track in Pittsburgh, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) was holding races on make shift tracks - often laid out on the runways of small town airports (if you have photos or even memories of the races at Connellsville airport I would love to hear from you!). And just a few hours drive would put you at top-notch tracks like Mid-Ohio or Virginia International or Watkins Glen.<br />
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Conditions were perfect, and the spark that really got things rolling came (strangely enough) from the folks at Chevrolet. In 1954 the Corvette was a bit of a flop. Rushed into production after a show car caught the public's attention, the Corvette was powered by Chevy's hoary "stovebolt" straight 6 backed up by a 2 speed automatic "Powerglide" transmission - hardware that failed to live up to the car's sporting intentions in a major way. Both Chrysler and Ford were selling sedans with new V8s that had seriously raised the bar for straightline performance, while Corvettes were sitting around in dealerships unsold. And then, at the urging of newly hired engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, for the '55 model year Chevy installed their new 265 cubic inch small block V8 into the struggling Corvette, and the rest - as they say - is history. The V8 finally gave the Corvette the power to match its looks, and created the first sportscar that American's understood - the Corvette quickly became an automotive icon.<br />
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Just south of Pittsburgh was Yenko Chevrolet, where owner Frank Yenko was trying to prepare his son Don to take over the business. Don Yenko naturally drove a Corvette, and it didn't take much for him to get caught up in racing himself. But young Yenko proved to be more than a well-off good-time Charlie; he recognized that there was money to be made selling fast cars to speed hungry steel workers, and that the faster the car the more money there was to be made. Yenko would eventually become a "tuner" - modifying brand new Chevy's for high performance use and selling them in the Yenko showrooms.<br />
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But in 1959 Don Yenko was just another salesman with Corvettes to move. One day a youthful couple walked in looking to trade their '57 Corvette for one of the new fuel injected 'Vettes, which Chevy had just tweaked to a very healthy 290 hp. Mike and Donna Mae Mims left with a new '59, and an invitation from Don Yenko to attend a race he had entered in Akron. The Mims were living the "dual income - no kids" lifestyle 30 years before it would have a name, and it didn't take long for the racing bug to bite. Mike and Donna joined the Steel Cities SCCA and began racing their 'Vette at the local tracks. Donna proved to be the better driver, and she actually won a race or two. The picture below (which can be found in lots of places on the internet, so I don't feel bad stealing a copy) shows her after a win at the Cumberland, Maryland airport track in 1961.<br />
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<i>The kind of question only a modeler would ask: is the car in this picture white or... pink? Donna Mae painted most of her race cars bright pepto-bismol pink, but no one seems sure about this car. There are interviews with Donna that give conflicting reports (most of them from her later years - let me tell you your memory isn't as reliable as you think once you pass the 50 year mark). And if you look on the fender, you'll see the words "SQUIRREL CAGE", which was (and still is) the nickname of the Squirrel Hill Cafe, a Pittsburgh bar long favored by college students - I'm wondering if Donna was a regular there.</i></div>
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Donna was a "looker" - petite and blonde and hard to miss in her pink driving suit, and she took no prisoners on the race track. She quickly became a bit of a celebrity at local races. The SCCA club she and Mike had joined included members that would become racing legends in the next few years, including Don Yenko. Before long Donna was working as Yenko's executive secretary, tagging along on his racing trips, and meeting the people who would sponsor her racing. Sadly diving into racing did not help her marriage; she and Mike were divorced soon after - something she refused to talk about afterwards. In 1963 Donna bought a race-prepped 1959 Austin Healey Sprite and had it painted her trademark pink. By the end of the year she racked up enough points to become the first woman to win an SCCA national championship in the highly competitive H-production category.</div>
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A pink MG, TR3, and Stinger Corvair all followed, and while she had some success she never repeated a championship. She would be invited to drive in various races, including the Daytona Continental, in an assortment of cars including a Sunbeam Alpine and the weird Ferrari derived ASA. Maybe most famously, Donna was part of an all-woman team in the 1972 Cannonball Run; racing in a Cadillac stretch limo they went off the road in the middle of Texas when co-driver Peggy Niemcek nodded off - the car rolled, breaking Donna's collarbone and coating the inside of the car with green porta-potty fluid.<br />
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And then almost as suddenly as it started, the excitement of racing in the 60's ran headlong into the OPEC engineered oil shortages of the 70s. As gas prices climbed and gas stations literally ran out of gas, miles-per-gallon became much more important than horsepower and general interest in racing waned. Donna Mae retired from racing and pretty much disappeared from the public eye - rumor has it that she spent some time in Maui. And when cheap gas came back in the 80s and sports cars became cool again, Donna was back in Pittsburgh, volunteering at vintage races and hanging out with local car clubs and driving her pink '79 Corvette.<br />
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Sadly, Donna died in 2009 at the age of 82. Even in death she made national news by requesting her body be seated in her '79 Corvette for visitation; the folks at the Beinhauer funeral home somehow pulled it off - their doorway was reportedly just 2 inches wider than the car.<br />
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Obligatory modeling reference: I've been working on a model of Donna's championship winning Bugeye Sprite for some time, using the hard-to-find Gunze kit. I'll do another post about the project in the future, but this article has gone way too long already. And if you're looking for an interesting racing subject for your next build, there are lots of photos of Donna's cars on the web - Think Pink!<br />
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Don<br />
<br />Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4103296566866478348.post-63838219083266490912012-12-30T08:21:00.000-05:002015-02-14T11:04:30.760-05:00Madonna has Wrinkles!<div dir="ltr">
The latest IPMS Journal - the National Convention issue - just arrived in my mailbox. </div>
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If you haven't seen a copy of the <i><b>Journal</b> </i>lately, it is probably a lot nicer than you remember. A few years ago a new team took over producing the magazine and brought in a new printer; its now a slick full-color publication (you can see some sample articles <a href="http://web.ipmsusa3.org/journal" target="_blank">here</a>). The Nationals issue has pictures of <i>every </i>model that won a trophy at the show, and the photography is awfully good for an all volunteer effort. Above are a scan of the cover and just one of about 50 pages of show results.</div>
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This is awesome, except for one thing... all the models in the magazine appear to be <b style="font-style: italic;">perfect</b>. Since I judged a few of these models and ogled many of the others, I know that while they are all very good models, only a very few had none of the tell-tale signs of being built by humans; almost every model there had something wrong visible if you put your eyeball about 3 inches away and looked long and hard enough.<br />
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Of course the reason they look perfect is pretty obvious: the tiny building and finishing errors that judges look for are pretty much invisible in a 2 inch x 2 inch photo.<br />
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While there isn't any conspiracy involved, this is a little like the fashion magazines that Photoshop pictures of celebrities and super-models to appear prison-camp thin - with glowing, blemish-free complexions - and so make young women think they have to be malnourished to be attractive. Modelers looking at just pictures in magazines may be telling themselves "I could never build that good", when in fact they already do. </div>
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So by all means look at the model magazines for inspiration and ideas, just don't give yourself an inferiority complex!<br />
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P.S. I was going to put an un-retouched photo of Madonna here but I chickened out; if you want to see the inspiration for this post try typing "retouched celebrities" into your favorite search engine.<br />
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Don<br />
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Donhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03091305369208078413noreply@blogger.com0