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David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 30

Yesterday was the US interstate highway system, today we bid a happy 71st birthday to the Chevrolet Corvette, the first of which rolled off the production line June 30, 1953 in Flint Michigan.

Only 300 were made in that model year, largely hand built. Available in any color you wanted, as long as it was white (with red upholstery). Kind of a hasty introduction, prompted by the overwhelming buzz the prototype / dream car prompted when it first appeared in NYC in January, and the subsequent traveling GM Motorama show across the country. Over 1 million people saw it during that tour and demand was palpable.

The project itself was prompted by the post WW2 sports car craze. Returning GIs imported more than a few of the nimble little sports cars they saw while stationed in Britain, an alien sight to Americans used to big bulbous sedans from Detroit.

By the early 50s Jags, MGs, Triumphs, Austin Healeys, etc., were a not-uncommon sight in the USA. This sparked sports car road racing at places like Lime Rock CT, Laguna Seca CA, and Elkhart Lake WI. The threat/opportunity for Chevy was obvious and they jumped on it.

Those first 300 Vettes are highly coveted, but in all honesty not that much of car. Fit and finish was spotty due to the vagarities of early fiberglass. They hopped up the reliable old Stovebolt 6 (born in 1929) with triple carbs to squeeze 150 HP from it, but otherwise its antiquated suspension left it more a fashion statement than a competitive sports car.

That sort of "poser" image haunted the Corvette for decades, as the ultimate midlife crisis buy. But it did improve greatly over time. In 1957 Zora Arkus-Duntov took it from a driveway ornament to real racing success with the "Airbox" 300+ hp fuelie version. Its legitimacy of as a real race car was further cemented by Briggs Cunningham's 1960 Le Mans entry, the 1963 Grand Sport, and the unapologetically American bicentennial Greenwood Corvette.

So now when in "Dead Man's Curve" Jan & Dean sang "all the Jag could see were my 6 tail lights," it had the ring of truth.

Personally I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Corvettes. I salute their racing heritage, and I have visited the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green KY, but there's a sort of cringe of seeing an older gent dusting his brand new Vette at a car show.

But let's face it: dollar for dollar, the Corvette remains the best performance car on the planet, especially with the long overdue mid engine model introduce in 2020.

My all time favorite Vette (as you might expect) is a hot rod: Big John Mazmanian's blown gasser '61. Lest we forget, James Gardner's '68 AIR L-88, and of course Mark Hamill and Annie Potts's wacky C-3 custom in Corvette Summer.

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David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 29

A very happy 68th birthday from #DavesCarIDService to the United States Interstate Highway System, created June 29, 1956 when Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act.

1. breaking ground on the first stretch of 1-44 in Missouri
2. Retired Ike in 1961 driving his 1958 Plymouth station wagon in Palm Springs

Now the Eisenhower Instate System, it remains the largest public works project in the history of the world. Its original plan called for 41,000 miles of unimpeded multilane roads crisscrossing the country, and took 2 decades to complete.

Cold war national defense was a big component in selling it to voters, as a way to move military equipment and personnel in case of a national emergency and to quickly evacuate cities in case of a nuclear attack. As the Big Kahuna of the Allied WW2 campaign in Europe, Ike knew the importance of logistics.

But its main selling point was "speedy, safe transcontinental travel," increased safety, reduced traffic jams, and those annoy stop sign slowdowns in every town along your route to Disneyland or the Rocky Mountains, like the folks in the 1956 Plymouth wagon.

It wasn't the first divide limited access freeway in the US (that title belongs to LA's Pasadena Freeway or the Pennsylvania Turnpike [2], depending on how you define it), but nothing of this scale had ever been attempted.

#4: Bonus pic of Ike in 1938 in Denver, behind the wheel of a 1915 Rausch-Lang electric.

Of course the Interstate System was not without its drawbacks; it ghosted many small towns that relied on old style highway stops, divided neighborhoods in cities, and like all public works likely had a component of pocket-lining and political corruption. But it's now a critical part of America's economy.

Its promised reduction of traffic jams is today highly debatable, but I think "speedy transcontinental travel" goals have been achieved. I am a former highly unsuccessful participant in the clandestine Cannonball Run, which goes from the Red Ball garage at 38th & 3rd in NYC to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach CA. Here is current all time record holder Arne Toman & crew, celebrating after completing that trip in 25 hours and 39 minutes, an average speed of 110 mph with stops. The car, a 2016 Audi A6 disguised to look like a cop car.

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David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 28

Write me in, motherfuckers

Qualifications:

-Natural born US citizen over the age of 35
-GED from Woodbury County Youth Correctional
-No felony convictions upheld on appeal
-knows/aware of/remembers things

Platform:

-Will work at home from Zoom, White House now a tourist trap & gift shop
-No photo ops, in fact you will never know what I look like
-No Executive Orders ever
-Will veto every fucking bill that Congress sends me, get a 2/3 majority assholes
-Will cheerfully leave office after 4 years

Read 10 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 22

In today's #DavesCarIDService we ponder the question: is there a car model named for where you live?

1. 1957 Dodge Texan
2. 1964 Chrysler New Yorker
3. 1961 Pontiac Ventura
4. 1958 Chevy Delray

It's still pretty common these days for vehicle models to be named for a place, mostly SUVs with a frisson of frontier mountain ruggedness: Denali, Yukon, Telluride, Sedona, Montana, etc., and mostly seen at Costco.

But naming car models at all was a rarity pre-WW2, and generally would stop at "Deluxe" or "Special." But after the war, and moving into the 1950s, the boys in the Detroit ad departments began christening car models that were evocative of places around the USA (and abroad).

One of the first of these was Plymouth, which in 1951-52 had the Concord and Cambridge - both Massachusetts towns that dovetail with their brand name and Mayflower hood ornament. Sorry Concord, Cambridge was the deluxe model.

The best known place related model naming convention was Chevy's, starting with "Bel Air" in 1950 for its deluxe-est version to evoke SoCal ritzy-ness. That lasted until 1958, when it was demoted to #2 behind "Impala." Their poverty versions (previously just the "150" and "210") were renamed "Delray" and "Biscayne," which is kind of a diss to Florida I guess.

Pontiac also focused on a California theme with the base model Ventura and mid-range Catalina; the top shelf version was the Bonneville, more of a nod to Utah salt flats speed than snooty coastal beach lifestyle.

Over at Chrysler, the focus was more on snooty old money New England positioning; besides the New Yorker, there was the Windsor (for Windsor CT) and the Newport (for Newport RI).

I would add that the Dodge Texan emblem seen at top was only available at Texas dealers, but the upscale Dodge Dart Phoenix was available nationwide.

1. 1957 Bel Air
2. 1962 Biscayne
3. 1961 Catalina
4. 1962 Phoenix

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David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 18

Justin Timberlake story: in 2005 I had dinner at Raoul's in NYC with some friends and they sat us down right next to him, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore.

Nothing happened, and there's no point to this story other than I recall they were all considered celebrities at the time

I probably have the world's worst collection of celebrity stories

One time Paul "Pee Wee" Herman told me he liked my glasses, and I guess that's probably my top one. And one time I went bowling with Adam "Animal Mother" Baldwin

Read 14 tweets

David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Jun 16

Welcome to Part II of the #DavesCarIDService Fathers Day Weekend ID Extravaganza, with a tribute to the two patron Big Daddies of car culture: Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and Big Daddy Don Garlits.

1: EBDR with his 1960 "Outlaw" show rod (aka "Excalibur") and the Revelle model kit of same

2: BDDG with his original Swamp Rat I dragster, the car that completely revolutionized drag racing in 1957

I've been privileged to meet both of these fellas, and written extensively about Roth, whom I consider to be the finest artist of the 20th century (no, I'm not kidding). I'm not the first, either; Ed Roth was central to Tom Wolfe's breakthrough Esquire article / book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby.

Starting as a wacky car painter-customizer-monster t shirt painter in SoCal, he near single handedly established the idea of outsider surrealist pop art; a Warhol / Rosenquist for the masses of monster car drawing grade school kids.

His contribution to car culture, and wider American culture, is hard to overstate. No Ed Roth, no underground comics, no Wacky Packages, no Juxtapose Magazine. Mazooma!

Where Roth was (RIP BDR) all about show, Don Garlits is all about GO. In the late '50s, the undisputed global Mecca of drag racing was Southern California, and racers there began hearing of ludicrous sounding speeds and times claimed by some rando from the distant podunk outpost of Tampa, FL. Skeptical, they invited this "Don Garlits" out to SoCal to see if he could back it up against the Cali big boys.

And back it up he did; in 1959 he kicked their collective asses with his Hemi-powered Swamp Rat at the Bakersfield Fuel & Gas championship. After nearly dying in a transmission explosion in 1970 with Swamp Rat XIII, he revolutionized drag racing again with a rear engine car.

Milestones? First man to pass 170, 180, 200, 240, 250 and 270 mph on the drag strip. The absolute Babe Ruth of the quarter mile. And after a 70 year career in drag racing he's still doing it at age 92, though mainly in electric dragsters.

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