Good morning, car mystery fans! Today's Dave's Car ID Service topic is... Hail Marys. Swan songs. Curtain calls.

In the epic grand opera that is US automotive history, there are countless characters. Roughly 3000 different makes have entered the stage since 1890, and all but a handful have been knocked off at some point. Even Shakespeare didn't write that kind of mortality rate.

It wasn't all tragedy for those unfortunate doomed companies, though. Rather than dying with a wimper, a noble few stared into the eyes of the fiscal Grim Reaper and went out in a blaze of glory.

Exhibit A: the 1963-64 Studebaker Avanti. Struggling Studebaker was in its death throes in the early 1960s, and brought in Raymond Loewy & Associates to design a new personal luxury coupe to help boost moribund sales. The resulting Avanti was a stunner - clean, sophisticated, uniquely modern.

It wasn't enough to save Studebaker from the grave, but the Avanti became a design icon with a life of its own. In 1965 a group founded the Avanti car company (sans "Studebaker" in the name) to make continuations from remaining production bodies. In 1967 the Avanti II became powered by Chevy small block. The Avanti II remained in production until 2006 (although by then it was a Chevy Camaro with a stylized front end).

For an automotive design, that's staying power. Unfortunately for Studebaker the patient died, but hey, the operation was a success. Studebaker wasn't the first dying patient to get an emergency design surgery from Dr. Loewy. In 1934 struggling Hupmobile commissioned him to jazz up their image with one of those sleek streamline designs he was famous for. Thus the 1934-37 Hupmobile 518 Aero-Dynamic was born.

Those moulded in headlights were far ahead of their time, especially for a modest price car. I would surely dig having a Hupmobile Aero-Dynamic coupe. But "Hupmobile Aero-Dynamic" almost sounds like an oxymoron, an old-timey horseless carriage make with a futuristic model name.

This will be the most complicated Amazon order return ever

https://twitter.com/JinWooIQ/status/2031765428608086230

This is why I buy all my Chinese missiles at Harbor Freight, if they're duds they'll give you a store credit

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/2031413910352302082

https://x.com/iowahawkblog/status/1827424207925317702

Greetings, car mystery fans! In yesterday's thread I examined the strange story of Bib, Michelin's long running humanoid tire stack mascot. To further enhance public appreciation for the tire advertising arts, today's Dave's Car ID will delve deeper into a few bangers from the early days of tire promotion - starting with this 1933 illustration for General Tires.

Behold the insouciant Gatsbyesque power couple returning from the Copa, or somesuch swank uptown nightclub for millionaire swells, to his Streamline Deco penthouse apartment. Lithe curvaceous Daisy is already eager to get into something more comfortable, perhaps because of the champagne, or perhaps because of the soft cushioned ride there provided *SPOTLIGHT* the General Deluxe Dual Balloon tires on Jay's powerful coupe. The doorman knows what's up, and offers a salute and wink.

Buy General Dual Balloons. Making tires - let's face it, the filthiest part of the car - glamorous and sexy is not the easiest job on Madison Avenue. But as a former tire shop monkey at Ben Fish & Son, I do appreciate the effort. General had a whole campaign in the early 1930s to glamorize and sex-up their new Dual Balloon (a/k/a General Jumbos).

I guess it was kind of the Pre-Hayes Code era of advertising, and the imagery is fantastic. Incidentally, General Jumbo tall sidewall tires and their associated special small diameter wheels are still quite a collector item amongst those of us in the hot rod & custom world.

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.

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

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.

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

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. *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

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

Man this sounds awesome, do the Jews have an 800 number

https://twitter.com/LucasGageX/status/2010816048375701751

brb, I'm downloading the Jewber app on my phone

Happy Spindletop Day to all who celebrate from Dave's Car ID Service! 125 years ago today, the first major oil discover in the United States happened at the Spindletop oilfield outside Beaumont Texas, when the 200 foot high Lucas Gusher heralded a brave new world.

That bounty of dino juice created generations of brash new money Texas oil barons, paved the way for Exxon and Texaco, and largely ended the debate of gasoline powered vehicles vs steam vs electric. For better or for worse, the 20th century would be internally combusted. Apologies for the slow start to my car identifyting rounds today, thus this thread intro will be short. But I will note that one of the coolest things that resulted from the Spindletop Big Bang was the rise of petroleum advertising signage. A few examples of which I shall now share, without elaborate explanation. Neon!

Are you crying? THERE'S NO CRYING IN BOLSHEVIKBALL

https://twitter.com/assliken/status/2008923263217565857

All these pampered overrated 5 star suburban recruits from the Seven Sisters Conference turn out to be complete busts in the Professional Commie League

Ma'am "1984" was dystopian speculative fiction, not an instruction manual

https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/2003818915483517175

Censorship is Speech

Stagnation is Vibrancy

I Won't Come In You Mouth

Fretting out a last minute gift for that car lover who has everything? Worry no more, today's Dave's Car ID Service has you covered with our annual Christmas Gift Guide!

Watch Dad's eyes light up when he rips open that box containing ginchy goodies to doll up his beloved 1936 Chevrolet! My favorites are the fender skirts, super deluxe hot water heater, and rear view mirror with clock. Don't let Dad down - demand Genuine Chevrolet Accessories! But why only dads? Let's not be chauvinists here. Plenty of gearhead moms and other special gals who might appreciate an automotive gift under the tree. Why schlep to the mall for a mindless diamond trinket, negligee, or vaccuum cleaner when you could give her the gift of Fordite?

Yes, you read that right, "Fordite," a/k/a "Detroit Agate." Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but Fordite is the thinking woman's diamond. Imagine all the other gals at the holiday cocktail bash going green with envy when she shows up sporting earring, pendants, and bracelets made out of these unique-as-a-diamond babies. Little do those jealous Janes realize they're made out of the polished hardened slag from old Detroit car factory paint booths!

"Today is a day that will live in infamy."

In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 84 years ago today, America's car production went into mothballs and makers retooled for the war effort. Today's #DavesCarIDService looks back on how Detroit (and Toledo, and South Bend, and Kenosha) became the Arsenal of Democracy during WW2.

Starting with the most famous vehicle of that era, the beloved Willys MB Jeep. That nimble little bat-out-of-hell with its 4 cylinder Go-Devil engine proved itself the American GI's best buddy. And established a brand equity that still lives on today.

Made by the Willys-Overland Corporation of Toledo, Ohio, which until then was mainly known for low end economy cars for mild mannered spinsters. Meanwhile up in Detroit, Ford was making their own version of the government-spec Jeep, the GPW. They were virtually identical to the Willys MB, except a script Ford stamping on the gate instead of the block Willys logo. And a few bolt heads stamped "F" vs "W."

But Ford's best known contribution to the war effort were the B-24 bombers it produced at its Willow Run plant, along with making Pratt & Whitney engines.

Iowa FB also trails USC badly in throat-slashing double murderers and international drug dealers / money launders for foreign narcoterrorists

https://twitter.com/TrojanFBx/status/1988314083888972265

🎵Fight On for ol' SC, our men fight on to cop a plea🎵

I grew up in a small rural community, and I distinctly remember back in '73 how shocked all the grownups were to turn on PBS and learn about World War II for the first time

https://twitter.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1987566236478181454

If you actually believe there is some vast Amazon lost tribe of Hick People out there in Flyover Country whose only connection to civilization is PBS and NPR, then I'm afraid you're the one living in an information desert

It's Lincoln Day at #DavesCarIDService, where we commemorate the reelection of Abraham Lincoln on November 8, 1864, the car brand named in his honor, and the rivalry story that connects them.

I am quite fond of both Honest Abe and Lincoln automobiles. My great-great-grandfather was a farmer who fought with the 8th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment 1864-65, and my daily driver is a Lincoln MKZ. Plus I own a 1932 Ford hot rod coupe, copper colored like a Lincoln penny, with a 1932 Lincoln penny imbedded in the shift knob. Not a Lincoln motor in it, but hey, it's still my hot rod Lincoln.

And I'm also very fond of meandering stories about the automobile industry, and the Lincoln story I'm about to recount is one of my favorites.
The rivalry I alluded to regarding Lincoln was between two of the true titans of the car industry: Henry Leland and Henry Ford. It's a rivalry that still exists today, nearly 125 years later.

Henry Leland was a Vermonter who was a 21 year old machinist and engineer at Colt firearms in 1864, and enthusiastically cast his first vote for Abe Lincoln in that election. When he founded Lincoln Motor Company in 1917 he explained this as the inspiration for the brand naming.

But in between, Henry Leland also founded Cadillac Motors in 1903, which he sold to the fledgling General Motors in 1909. He remained head honcho at Cadillac 1909-1917, working with Charles Kettering to develop the first electric starter in 1913.

But here's where the rivalry comes in: Cadillac was formed from the ashes of the Henry Ford Company. It was Henry Ford's second failed startup car company, and Leland was one of the appraisers brought in by Ford's creditors for its liquidation sale. Long story short, Leland ended up with much of Ford's machinery and tooling, which were used to make the first Cadillacs.

After those first two strikeouts, in 1903 Henry Ford hit a towering home run with the Ford Motor Company. It made him the richest man in the world, but that 1902 liquidation sale, and the success of Cadillac, really stuck in his craw, by cracky.

https://twitter.com/KevinRobertsTX/status/1983958755613262324

"no enemies on the right" promises to be the same boffo ballot box winner for the GOP that "no enemies on the left" was for the Dems

I don't understand why anybody would spend one second minimizing or defending somebody else's murder fantasy texts or chatroom Nazi shtick. I'm lazy and that shit seems like it'd be totally exhausting Sure, it's easy and "fun" to merciless drag some unfortunate obese unattractivee professional political staffer after their career is ruined by a chat room leak. And this is my entire point, it's easy AND extremely fun