Throroughly clean your quarter window before affixing: today's #DavesCarIDService pays homage to the art of the hot rod window decal!
No longwinded history lecture today, this is more an aesthetic appreciation of fine graphic design applied to selling speed equipment in a competitive market space.
The decals below are from the 1960s-80s high school muscle car era, and many of the logos are still in use today. If you are of that era, you will be be familiar with every product that the logos represent.
If not, the idea was like this: you bought a second hand car, went to a local speed shop, and dropped your hard earned cash for items to hop it up or gussy it up. Then you would display all the decals of the products contained in your heap (usually in its rear quarter windows) as a brag, and warning to anyone who might challenge you to a street race.
Kind of a brilliant ad strategy for the speed equipment biz, and in my opinion some of the best logos ever created. I even sent away $1 for a Hurst sticker to display on my first motorized vehicle, a 4.5 horsepower B&S go-kart, even though it had no shifter at all.
Well okay maybe a little longwinded history. As I've aged, the more I've become enamored with the early days of hot rodding, 1930s-50s, when those speed equipment stickers and decals first started appearing. Less clean design-wise, but have a certain vintage oomph. Some of my favorites from that era:
Some of those speed equipment decals are pretty out there: masked executioners, demented racing Albert Einsteins, oil-selling espionage agents, clutch-selling cavemen. What they might lack in sleek design they make up for in pure moxie.
That hot rod sticker/decal aesthetic lives on today in the music scene, and the skate/surf scene. Can't really go to any live music club restroom in Austin without seeing the wall covered in stickers for various bands. In some sense, that whole tradition was actually born in hot rodding.
Today's Iowa-Iowa State #DavesCarIDService pregame show pays homage to that most Iowan of vehicles, the tractor. And its inventor, John Froelich of Clayton County Iowa.
That requires a little definition of terms; Froelich was the inventor of the gasoline tractor. When 42 year old Froelich rolled it out of his grain elevator in 1892, steam threshers had been around for a while. But those ginormous, locomotive-sized device were incredibly expensive, required a coal source, were dangerous on hill sides, and useful for the most part only at harvest time.
What also had been around for a few years were stationary gasoline engines: big single slug pop-pop-pop engines with a large flywheel, used to power devices but with no wheels. Froelich might've had one in his grain elevator. Whatever the case, he figured out how to mount one on a frame with drive wheels, steering, and forward and reverse gears. Thus the first modern concept of "tractor" was born (seen in #2).
It was light, nimble, and could potential be equipped with implements for plowing, planting, cultivating, etc. And with a potential price point making it affordable to the average Joe Farmer. In some respect John Froelich fed the world.
Froelich only sold a few copies of his invention, but in 1895 sold his company to John Miller of Waterloo, Iowa, who established the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company. Oddly Miller was more interested in making Froelich's engine than in making tractors; but in 1911 WGE rolled out the Waterloo Boy Tractor, which would become the Model T of agriculture.
WGE and the Waterloo Boy was sold to John Deere in 1918. Prior to that Deere was only an implement company, selling plows, planters, etc., and thus the Waterloo Boy became the very first John Deere tractor and is beloved of fanatical John Deere collectors. Waterloo, Iowa remains Deere's primary tractor building location.
Waterloo became sort of the Detroit of tractors; cross-town rivals Interstate Tractor Company produced the red Plow Boy to rival the green Waterloo Boy. By 1920, 1/5 of all tractors in the world were made in Waterloo.
What's my favorite tractor? I grew up on a McCormick-Deering/ International Harvester/ Farmall / Case-IH farm, and it would be a calumny to my ancestors to pick a model from any other brand. So I'm going with the Farmall M.
Just a damn pretty tractor, with a streamline design by Raymond Loewy who also designed all those pretty Studebakers of the early 50s. First thing my grandpa bought after WW2, and we still had it on the farm when I was a boy.
But man, the 1948-52 Oliver 60 is the absolute shiznit when it comes to streamline deco. Sadly the designer of the Oliver 60 is unknown, somebody at their in-house engineering department in Charles City Iowa. And its grille makes a dandy front end for a hot rod.
Don't sleep on the 1938 Minneapolis-Moline UDLX though. The high concept here is that you could take it into the field during the day, and Saturday night put it in highway gear to take Maw to town. Very few were made, and among the most expensive vintage collector tractors today.
And being a Ford car guy, gotta also cite the 1939-52 Ford N series (9N, 2N, 8N). Just a swell little jalopy with the "Ferguson System" 3-point hitch.
I'm not saying you have to be an alumnus of a school to be a "real" fan. You could be a family member of an alumni or student, a donor or benefactor, etc. Otherwise you should probably STFU about dragging other schools or demanding coach firings because of your $45 hoodie
A very happy week 1 college football Saturday from #DavesCarIDService! Today we pay tribute to those old timey, pep-talkin', vim & vinegar campus legends with a look at Coaches and Their Coaches.
First up: the GOAT of pep talks, Notre Dame's immortal Knute Rockne. Who also had an entire car brand named for him - behold the 1932 Rockne Model 65. Rockne was a product of Studebaker, also located in South Bend IN, and a quite handsome vehicle.
The Rockne brand only lasted 1932-33; Knute Rockne died in 1931 and was never photographed with one. But in #2 he's seen with a 1931 Studebaker and an unidentified member of the 1931 Irish squad.
Another legend of the era was Amos Alonzo Stagg, coach of the mighty Maroons of the University of Chicago 1892-1932, here stiff-arming a 1919 Milburn Electric coupe wearing 1922 Illinois plates.
The car was a gift from U of C alumni. Stagg had suffered a back injury and it was difficult for him to walk, and he coached the 1919 team from the seat of the car on the sidelines.
Chicago was a member of the Big Ten at the time (and still is, sorta-kinda) and somewhat of a gridiron powerhouse. The first Heisman Trophy in 1935 was won by Chicago's Jay Berwanger. But in 1939 it abolished its football team, never to return to Division I competition.
Stagg Field at U of Chicago remains an important world historical site as site of the world's first controlled nuclear reaction. And the University still owns Stagg's 1919 Milburn.
When it came to old timey powerhouses, it didn't get more powerhousey than the Michigan Wolverine squads of Fielding "Hurry Up" Yost - seen here outside the Big House with his 1927 Packard sedan, another gift from grateful alumni.
Between 1901-23 and 25-26, Yost compiled a 165-29 record at Michigan with 6 mythical national championships. Four straight from 1901-1904, where his "point a minute" offense terrorized every opponent they faced. In the 1901 season, they outscored their 11 foes by a mindboggling 550-0. In 1902, they ran roughshod again, 11-0, outscoring opponents 644-12, including a 107-0 cakewalk over my beloved Hawkeyes.
It was bloodbath after bloodbath, year after year, until 1905 when Yost suffered his first defeat: a 2-0 shutout loss versus Stagg's Chicago Maroons.
Coming soon: 6 month waiting list for reservations at the Cracker Barrels on Rodeo Drive, Bond Street, and the Champs Elysees
I had as much fun as anybody dragging the Jaguar ad, but the funniest thing about l'affaire Cracker Barrel Logo are the people absolutely losing their minds over it