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David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Mar 7

Time for an old fashioned Dave's Car ID Service meandering car history lesson! This time about the world's most disturbing, and long-serving, tire company mascot and restaurant critic, The Michelin Man.

That's what we here in the States call him anyway, elsewhere he's called 'Bib.' And how he came to be is a bit of a stemwinder, but one that you can use to amaze and/or bore to death fellow cocktail party guests.

Let's start with the Brothers Michelin, Edouard and Andre, who owned a farm implement business in the southern city of Clermont-Ferrand. One day circa 1887 a bicyclist showed up at their door with a pneumatic tire in need of repair. That was a real bitch at the time, a couple hours of work, because tires were fixed to the wheel rim. That inspired them to design and create the first removable pneumatic tire, for which they received a patent in 1891. Voila, les freres Michelin struck it rich almost overnight, what with the huge bicycle craze, followed by cars, trucks, and motorcycles.

This was also the high age of French advertising poster design, and you had to go big to attract attention on the poster-covered walls of Paris and Lyon. Enter "O'Galop," the pen name of French cartoonist Marius Rossillon. For the Michelins he designed a chimera tire-pile humanoid that that debuted at the Lyon exhibition in 1894.

The 1898 poster below, by O'Galop, show how 'Bib' got his name:

'Nunc est bibibendum!!' - a Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace, meaning 'Now is the time for drinking!!'

The rest is in French, which translates as "that's to say: to your health, Michelin tires drink up the obstacles!"

Thus Bib is short for Bibendum, which is Latin for 'Drinkin' Time.' And look at ol' Bib, still poundin' down another glass of jagged rocks and broken glass while his competitors like 'Pneu X' are near dead.

So why, as a pile of tires, is Bib white and not black? Because the process of carbonized rubber had not been invented in the 1890s, and rubber tires were off-white, the natural color of raw latex.

Sometime after the fin du siecle, Michelin decide to bring Bib out of two dimensional poster world into 3D Meatspace, and the effect at first was somewhere on the border between hilarious and terrifying.

In #1, coming to the rescue of a stranded 1925-27 Ford Model T C-cab candy delivery, like some sort of horrifying magical tire fairy.

#2: Some sort of final Tire Monster Boss Battle, in what looks like WW1 war ruins.

#3: To ensure the continuation of the Mutant French Tire Being species, Bib was given a mate sometime in the 1920s; note her open toed shoes.

#4: Michelin Tire People Bizarro World even had its own dance band. I have searched in vain for surviving recordings.

So how did a drunk rubbery monster become a feared food critic? Leaving aside that most feared food critics are drunk rubbery monsters?

Because as a courtesy to travelers, Michelin also began distributing an annual guide in which restaurants were rated on a 3-star scale: 1=very good, 2=excellent, 3=exceptional and worthy of a special trip in and of itself. The difference between unmentioned 0 star and a single star became a matter of life and death.

#1 below is the very first Michelin Guide, from 1900, which only covered France. Over the years new editions for other countries were released; in #2 Bib touts the guide to Britain for 1911. In #3, Bib touts a whole host of travel guides for France in the 1950s; finally in #4, a group of California restaurateur celebrate their star-knighthood by Bib in 2023. Only later will they discover each star is actually a curse that will haunt their nightmares with fears of star-loss. Bib giveth, and Bib taketh away.

Read 19 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Feb 20

https://twitter.com/aflashbak/status/2024798585305420213

Liberace was paranoid, and hired the Hells Angels as stage security for this fateful show at Altamont. Seconds later a group of grandmas rushed the stage. The bikers began savagely beating them, and Liberace's dancers.

The zeitgeist shift was clear: Groovy was Dead.

https://twitter.com/aflashbak/status/2024798585305420213

By the way it's "Hells Angels," not "Hell's Angels." Feel free to correct them, like countless other previous grammar nazis buried in shallow graves around Oakland

https://x.com/mikeobs/status/2024833390214582683

They literally beat Hunter S Thompson senseless after his book came out because he, or some Ivy League Random House copy editor, added an apostrophe in the title. He only survived because he owed Sonny $500 that would come from the book royalties

https://x.com/mikeobs/status/2024833390214582683

Read 6 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Feb 15

On the occasion of the 68th running of the Daytona 500, Dave's Car ID Service takes a deep short dive into the cultural roots of that annual event. Starting with George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-1794.

The fledgling nation of the United States was in deep need of tax revenues to satisfy debts incurred during the Revolution. Tariffs were already high, hampering trade, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton promoted a domestic excise tax on the production of distilled spirits. The "Whiskey Act" was passed in 1791.

This did not sit well in those hard-drinking times, especially among the Scots-Irish settlers of Appalachian Pennsylvania who had a long tradition of distilling and selling whiskey. Revenue collectors were sent to collect the excise tax and, well, a rebellion ensued. Resulting in literal tarring & feathering, along with being run out of town on a rail, like the unfortunate tax collector depicted below.

That rebellion raged in and around Fort Pitt (later Pittsburgh) for the next 3 years. Newly elected president George Washington dispatched negotiators, and later militias, to quell the rebellion. It collapsed in 1794, resulting in 24 organizers being charged with treason. The Whiskey Tax would continue, and be a major source of federal revenue for the next 125 years.

What does that have to do with stock car racing? Hold your horses, I'm getting to that.

By the early 1900s, 30% of US federal revenue was generated by taxes on alcohol. But by enacting Prohibition with 18th Amendment in 1919, that source of revenue dried up and the federal government began relying more on the newly enacted income tax.

That of course led to all hell breaking loose in the now-contraband alcoholic beverage industry. Law or not, America's demand for hooch remained, and there were still go-getting distillers willing to supply it. Many of whom were from those same Appalachian Scots-Irishmen who rebelled against the Whiskey Tax more than a century prior. Particularly in the remote Southern Appalachians.

It was a golden opportunity for those entrepreneurial hillfolk, and a critical link in the supply chain was transporting freshly distilled corn liquor, a/k/a white lightning, a/k/a moonshine. It took a ballsy youngster who knew his way around cars, willing to risk his neck and jail time by outracing cops on moonlit winding backroads. With a trunk full of contraband flammable liquid.

Thus was distilled the spirit of stock car racing, which still exists. Triple pun intended, I guess. In photo 1, a capture Tennessee still circa 1922; in photo 2, a very early moonshine runner with a 1923-25 Chevy flatbed.

Even after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, moonshining continued. The alcohol excise tax kicked back in, and most of the South remained "dry counties" where Prohibition was, for all intents and purposes, still in effect.

Those mountain boys could still make nice money by transporting untaxed homemade from the backwoods to Atlanta, and Greensboro, and Winston-Salem. What's more, they had a new weapon in their arsenal: the Ford V8. No pursuing revenuer in a heavy government fleet car had a prayer of catching one, especially if it was hopped up, balanced & blueprinted, with shaved heads with triple carburetors.

The apotheosis of the moonshiner car was the 1940 Ford coupe: easily hopped up motor and suspension, huge trunk to contain gallons of hooch, and stealthy enough not to attract attention. A "stock car" if you will.

For recreation, local moonshiner runners around the South would compete against one another to prove their mettle as hopup artists and fearless drivers at local oval tracks. Most all in 1937-40 Ford coupes at the beginning.

Some of those early outlaws became legends, like Junior Johnson, the subject of Tom Wolfe's "The Last American Hero." In #1, adjusting a Stromberg carb on a 1939-40.

Less well known, but still a legend to your legends, was the late Willie Clay Call of Wilkes County North Carolina. Known to the ATF as "The Uncatchable." He not only made moonshine, but drove it himself. Behind him in #2 is his personal fleet of 1940 Fords, all of which he drove to transport the moonshine he made in those barrels. His legacy lives on in the now-legal Clay Family Distillery.

Read 14 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Feb 3

https://twitter.com/CforCatholics/status/2018486543917421023

I haven't been a practicing Catholic since I was 18 but this Jerry Falwell-style shit is the most un-Catholic thing I've ever seen

https://twitter.com/CforCatholics/status/2018486543917421023

It feels like some kind of Evangelical holy roller pretend-Catholic cosplay going on here. As far as I remember there's a set list of prayers, Hail Mary, Our Father, Bless Us O Lord, Apostle's Creed, and one had to ask a priest to ask a Saint to pass it up to Celestial HQ

That's the thing, Catholics have prayer protocols and a strict prayer processing system to send it a regimented organized hierarchy, from priest to bishop to pope to saints and so on. This kind of tent revival politics stuff is totally an alien concept

Read 6 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jan 31

It may not be grilling weather, but it's Grilling Day at Dave's Car ID Service as I take a look at some of my favorite grillework. Starting with Isotta-Fraschini: all these are various I-F Tipo 8As of 1928-32 vintage. While not technically "grilles," these amazing Art Deco grille-protecting stone guards were offered as factory options during that era. They were created by IF's coachbuilder Carrozzeria Castagna in Milan, giving the cars a chic Empire State / Chrysler Building vibe.

https://x.com/TurnbullMartin/status/2013620201523167652

*a while back several of you tagged me on this post from Mr. Turnbull, featuring Bogey and a circa 1930 I-F Tipo 8A. You also may remember Norma Desmond's I-F limo in SUNSET BOULEVARD. A visual cue to Tinseltown excess of the late 1920s.

https://x.com/TurnbullMartin/status/2013620201523167652

Post-1929 stock market crash, flamboyant automotive excess was a bit passe - if not outright dangerous. If you were an uptown swell, best not be cruising past a breadline in your chauffeur-driven Isotta-Fraschini.

Enter the 1934-36 Ford Town Car by Brewster. Brewster was a New York coachbuilder that made its nut by building bespoke high dollar car bodies for the Park Avenue set; after Black Tuesday their fortunes plummeted like a ruined Wall Street trader. As a compromise, they offered a special bodied town car based on a humble everyman Ford. Featuring this lovely heart shaped "sweetheart grille," a nice Valentine's gift for that special Broadway showgirl.

Now if you were accosted by a mob of enraged Wobblies, you could just roll down the window and explain "it's OK fellas, it's only a Ford!"

Read 23 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jan 16

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/2011990680068112858

I'm not sure if you could possibly come up with a better example of an own-goal tweet

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/2011990680068112858

We you're having fun dunking on Trump's second-hand Nobel and this mf decides to join in

For everybody who's over the age of 12, behold the most undeserved Nobel Peace Prize of all time
bbc.com/news/world-eur…

Read 5 tweets

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