Today's Dave's Car ID Service pays homage to the wild body graphics of the Muscle Car Era, starting with the GOAT - the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Screaming Chicken.

Coincidentally enough, today is also the 60th birthday of the Firebird. In a way. On June 28, 1966, Chevy's Pete Estes held a press conference announcing a new car line to battle the Ford Mustang, code name XP-836, and its name would be "Camaro." Pontiac was the only other GM division that would get the platform, with slightly different styling and powered by a Pontiac engine, under the the Firebird name.

From 1967-68 the Firebird sort of languished in the shadow of its Camaro cousin, but it did have some success in Trans Am road racing by privateers. "Trans Am" is short for Trans America, a series for sub 5 liter (302 cubic inch) stock cars.

Anyhoo to mark that success Pontiac rolled out the Trans Am option package for Firebird in 1969. At first it was fairly restrained; Cunningham-style blue hood stripes over white. But designer Bill Porter, inspired by an abstract design on a Tiffany vase, sketched out what he thought would be a cool graphic cue for the next gen Firebird, which was honed by Norm Inouye.

Porter taped the graphic to the hood of the styling studio clay model to gauge the reaction of GM's head styling honcho Bill Mitchell. It did not go well, as Mitchell allegedly let loose with a string of profanities. But it did appear on the 1970-72 Trans Ams, albeit as a very small decal on the nose.

In 1971 a persistent GM designer named John Schinella decided to re-present the idea to Mitchell. He noted that Mitchell rode a custom Yamaha bike painted black and gold in graphics like the John Player Special F1 car. Schinella applied an enormous Screaming Chicken decal on a black Firebird, parked it next to Mitchell's custom Yamaha.

This time Mitchell relented, and the idea was approved. The first 3 "hood birds" are in top secret August 1971 photo (1). They were offered for sale in September 1972 with the rollout of the 1973 model year. Not all Trans Ams had them, it was optional graphics package code WW7. But the buying public clamored for them.

And why not? It's exactly the kind of statement that the kind of person who wanted a Trans Am wanted to make. Loud, brash, unapologetic, a 10 minute Free Bird guitar solo on wheels. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Pontiac wasn't unique, or first, in offering bold decal graphics. Chrysler built branding around the "Scat Pack" concept, like the 1968 Dodge Super Bee and little brother Dodge Dart Swinger. By 1970 the was an entire panoply of bold decal options for Dodges and Plymouths; AAR stripes (2), "billboard stripes" (3), and "hockey sticks" (4).

Today's #DavesCarIDService risks treason by sharing some of America's top secret roadside attractions with visiting soccer fans. But it seems the shock and awe of BBQ and Buc-ee's has resulted in their widespread surrender to American cultural might. Now that they seem friendly, I think it's finally safe for use to share the GOOD stuff. The roadside attraction equivalent of a secret cache of 85 year old Scotch. The kind of places we keep secret from strangers unless we have solid evidence that they're friendly.

First and foremost for me is the Loveless Cafe, just outside Nashville. One breakfast here and you will renounce your beloved Full English forever. And one biscuit (not a cookie, but the most sumptuous scone you've ever encountered) will make you slap yo' mama. I mean mum. While Buc-ee's is admittedly a mindblower, you may notice that it lacks one thing: trucks. Yep, big rigs are verbotten there. For the full American road trip experience one must make a pilgrimage to a truck stop, and the greatest of all is in my home state of Iowa. Mister this right here is Trucker Valhalla, complete with a barber shop, dentist and doctor offices, a 60 seat movie theater, and spectacular vintage truck museum. Not to mention endless rows of wolves-howling-at-moons t shirts and chrome dress up accessories for you big rig.

Oh, and bring an appetite. Not for the fast food joints, but for the acclaimed all you can eat diner buffet.

15% of Musk's wealth is $150 billion. The US Federal government spends more than 100% of Musk's wealth every single year on food, housing, and medical care for the poor, and we're only 4% of global population and 0.1% of global poverty. You ain't curing shit with his money

https://twitter.com/WolfgangRichtEU/status/2066089810687651905

If by "we" you mean I'm invited to the big Wolfgang's 11 heist you've apparently masterminded, I have some questions:

1. Where are the secret vaults where he stashes all of his ill-gotten loot?

Welcome to the Dave's Car ID Service countdown of the Definative Indisputable Top 10 List of the Greatest Car Movies of All Time!

(1935 Chrysler Airflow, 1933 Studebaker) Just joking, there's no arguing taste, especially when it comes to movies. But I've often been asked to name my fave car flix, and these are some that I'd recommend.

10. Grand Prix (1966). High style mid sixties melodrama set in the glamorous world of F1 racing. Directed by John Frankenheimer, starring James Garner and Eva Marie Saint. Plus Jessica Walter and Francoise Hardy rrrrowwwrrr. And hands down the greatest opening title sequence ever, by Saul Bass.

youtu.be/GkMOAoiGuGc

Dave's Car ID Service is keeping it clean today with a look back at a neglected topic in automotive history: the car wash. So sit back, put it in neutral, release your parking brake. And don't forget to roll up your windows!

(1959 Chevy Bel Air sedan) Of course people have been washing, or ordering their chauffeurs to wash, their cars as long as there have been cars. I'm specifically talking about a commercial enterprise devoted to car washing. The first would be the 'Automobile Laundry,' founded, appropriately, in Detroit Michigan 1914.

Like the automobile business, owners Frank McCormick and J.W. Hinkle designed it on the assembly line principle: drive your car in while workers would wet, soap, rinse, and dry in successive task stations.

The cost? A princely sum of $1.50, about $50 today.

Happy Indianapolis 500 Day to all who celebrate from Dave's Car ID Service! Today we pay homage to Indy's "Junk Formula" Era of 1930-37.

Why celebrate a formula for junk? Let me give you some context. At its inception Indy featured some cars that were pretty much stock. In that first 1911 race, the 5th place finisher was a stripped-down but otherwise complete stock Marmon 32 passenger car that was street-driven to the track. It was in the realm of possibility for a regular upper-middle class Joe with cojones and a dream to participate.

That all changed quickly, especially after WW1. By then it was strictly a rich man's sport, dominated by very exotic and expensive specialized racing machines, primarily Millers and Duesenbergs. Rules demanded smaller and smaller engine displacement. Until 1922 cars were limited to 3 liters (183 cubic inches), then from 1923-25 2 liters (122 ci) and starting in 1926, 1.5 liters (91 ci). The reduction in displacement was to curb speeds in an age where death on the track was common, but also to spark innovation.

Those rules worked almost too well. Geniuses like Harry Miller and the Duesenberg brothers figured out ways to coax ever more power out of ever smaller engines: overhead cams, integrated head-engine block casting, arrays of carburetors, exotic superchargers.

Those cars, to me, are the Sistine Chapel of American car racing. But they were incredibly expensive, and you had to have one if you wanted to be competitive at Indy. This all but closed off the field to anyone who didn't have cubic buttloads of cash.

That was okay for a while. During the Roaring Twenties there were plenty of high-living Gatsbys who wanted to sink some mad money into the exciting glamorous world of big time auto racing.

But then came October 29, 1929.

The Black Tuesday stock market crash wiped out a good number of those Indy-curious Gatsbys, kicking off what would soon become the Great Depression.

Enter Eddie Rickenbacker.

Best known as a World War I fighter ace, Rickenbacker was already famed as a successful racing driver for Duesenberg before the war. In 1927, the war hero had enough financial backing to buy Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Less then two years later he was faced with a grim reality: there were probably not going to be enough entries in the 1930 race to fill the 33-car grid. The economy's impact on ticket demand meant that the total prize purse for 1930 would be reduced from $98,000 to $54,000, and the winner's share from $50,000 to $18,000. Which made it even harder to attract entrants, etc. A vicious cycle that threatened to end the Indy 500 for good.

In response, Rickenbacker announced a new set of rules for 1930: displacement up to 6 liters (366 cubic inches) was allowed, supercharging was banned, there would be a return to Indy's mandatory ride-along mechanic rule 1911-22, and the field was expanded from 33 to 38.

This rule was derided by the high-dollar Miller and Duesenberg teams as the "Junk Formula," because it meant there'd be cars in the field with unsophisticated stock block engines. But that was sort of the point. It gave quasi-regular Joes and backyard mechanics a fighting chance to field a car at Indy, powered by a big modified Buick or Studebaker engine.

It didn't end the dominance of Miller & Duesenberg, who created their own bigass engines under the new rules, and no true "Junk Formula" car ever one. But helped keep Indy alive during 1930-37, amid the darkest days of the Great Depression.
The first Indy Junk Formula cars of 1930 were a bit ungainly compared to the supersleek Millers of the day, but had some success.

#1 here is Rollie Free piloting the Slade Special, powered by a Chrysler Model 70 engine. Free would go on to become a motorcycle legend, photographed in the 1950s planking in a Speedo on his Vincent Black Shadow across the Bonneville Salt Flats en route to a motorcycle land speed record.

#2, the Buick Fireball 8-powered Butcher Brothers Special. That's Harry Butcher behind the wheel with brother Jimmy as ride along mechanic. Just a couple of bros with a dream.

#3, The Romthe Special, driven by J.C. McDonald. Powered by a Studebaker engine, and you can see the stock Studebaker hood sides.

#4 Chester Miller behind the wheel of the Fronty Special. Believe it or not, the engine block is a stock Ford Model A 4-banger, but with a Frontenac (aka "Fronty") overhead cam conversion. Frontys were popular at lower classes of racing, and designed by the Chevrolet Brothers.

Today's Dave's Car ID Service pays homage to the General Motors Technical Center in Warren Michigan, which held its grand opening May 16, 1956. The absolute pinnacle of postwar Detroit style, confidence, and power, and a fitting showcase for a 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The shot of the Caddy was merely the lobby of the Design Center. The technical center itself is a huge 320 acre campus, built around an artificial lake, with office space originally designed for 5,000 workers - engineers, designers, researchers, GM's brain center. At the time of its opening 70 years ago it had a reported price tag of $100 million, about $1 billion in 2026 money.

Internal discussion of the project began in 1944, when GM car production was still shut down for war production. GM Chairman Alfred P Sloan and Research Director Charles Kettering (of Sloan Kettering cancer hospital fame) presented the proposal with early design layouts to the GM Board that December. It was approved, and the first 100 acres of farmland were purchased outside the then-tiny town of Warren, north of Detroit.

Neither Sloan nor Kettering really cared for architectural flourish, but GM's chief of styling Harley Earl argued that an architecturally distinct working environment would spur creativity and innovation. The earliest design by Finnish-American Eliel Saarinen were in a Streamline Moderne style, similar to the GM Pavilion building at the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1948 GM again hired Saarinen, Saarinen & Associates to revise the plans. It was assigned to Eero Saarinen, Eliel's son. It would be his first solo project as an architect. Saarinen's revised design was in the International Style, influenced by Mies van der Rohe's IIT campus in Chicago. The landscape architecture was handled by Thomas Church.

It took 8 years to complete, and the Finnished product (pun intended) is among the most stunningly beautiful examples of Midcentury Modern architecture ever built. Subsequent expansion of the campus to accommodate 20,000 workers, and $1 billion renovation/restoration completed in have adhered to that style. It was truly "Where Today Meets Tomorrow."

Right fucking now

https://twitter.com/colecubelic/status/2054569932898091142

Players earning money, out in the open, in a free market
Historically bad program winning a championship
Teams with gigantic spending failing terribly
10-15 programs with a legitimate chance at a title
End of the ESPN-SEC 1000 year reich

What's not to like?

I love Texas, but my god the Dallas skyline is an aesthetic abomination.

Worldwide skyline rankings:

1. Chicago
2. 4000-way tie of also-rans

https://twitter.com/GiancarloSopo/status/2053486035791724720

Say what you want about Chicago, but its skyline is a 140 year long group project masterpiece. Unequaled on Planet Earth, go talk to a wall

M is for her Mercury Marauder
O is for her Oldsmobile Jetfire
T is for the Triumph Grandpa got her
H is for her Hudson white wall tires

A very happy 150th birthday to the Otto Cycle internal combustion engine from Dave's Car ID service! Revealed May 9, 1876, it was the first practical example of a gasoline powered 4-stroke (a/k/a Otto Cycle). Or as we gearheads say, "suck squeeze bang blow."

German Nicolaus Otto invested 14 years of research, trial and error, and help from his employees Gottfried Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach into creating it, but reportedly had zero interest in transportation applications; his were all designed as huge stationary engines for industrial or agricultural jobs. When it debuted, it claimed the "day of steam was at end." Not a correct forecast as it turned out, but it carved out a niche in the light industrial market. I've seen a working Otto engine from the early 1880s.

In any event, the potential of Otto's engine for transportation didn't escape his employees Daimler & Maybach, who pioneered the earliest days of automobiling with scaled down, more efficient versions of Otto's 4-stroke. It wasn't the invention of the car, but it made the invention of the car possible. Technically the Otto engine was not the first internal combustion engine. Otto was inspired to create his design after seeing Jean Lenoir's IC engine in 1862. He built a replica but noted it was noisy, inefficient, and had an unfortunate tendency to BLOW THE HELL UP.

The key insight he derived was that compression mattered. Though it had a piston, Lenoir's design did not compress the fuel, it simply ignited and returned to TDC where it received the next fuel charge. It worked, but not for long due to the stress on the cylinder and piston. Otto's experiments proved fuel compression was more efficient and resulted in more power and durability.

Unlike Otto, Lenoir *was* interested in transportation. He powered a boat with one of his engines in 1861, and built his "Hippomobile" (2) in 1862. Petroleum powered, it made a 7 mile trip around Paris in 1863 at about 1.8 MPH. Arguably the first gasoline powered car, beating the Benz Patent-Motorwagen by over 20 years.

From my intrepid cousin, who has learned through the National Archives that our grandmother was forced to attend what was literally known as “Detention School” until she dropped out. I couldn’t be prouder or more delighted *I'm the result of crossbreeding a completely taciturn American Gothic Iowa farm family (Dad) and a family of insane dysfunctional Irish criminal alcoholics (Mom). This is my mom's mom

Honestly it's just Nebraska with a better PR agency

https://twitter.com/theepicmap/status/2052398833909584120

Fact: the most boring people from every Midwest high school go to Denver in the mistaken belief that this will make them more interesting

This is incorrect, per latest US Census estimates the largest US city without a big 4 sports team is Fort Worth

https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/2052435718589292868

Texans, set this guy straight

https://x.com/Pulse8943/status/2052488561463578685

Of all the Hot Dog Guying ever Hot Dog Guyed, this is the Hot Dog Guyest

https://twitter.com/nithyavraman/status/2051695252441112814

Honestly, I'm just not sure this Pratt fellow has the years of professional training and experience it takes to properly manage a free range herd of 30,000 violent drug addled incontinent zombies

@grok please convert these into NFL draft pics per million population and rerank

https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/2050274163613372831

Honestly if this were demographically adjusted Iowa would completely rout every other state

https://x.com/grok/status/2051628436204957862

https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps/status/2051033803448340557

Look, I realize that posts about the Midwest are engagement catnip, but I think you should have at least some vague familiarity with the Midwest before posting about it.

To me that map post comes off like an account based in Pakistan cosplaying as a tradwife thirst trap

Mornin', Dave's Car ID Service devotees! After a long overseas road trip, I'm back stateside and hankerin' to solve car mysteries and talk car history. As fate would have it, I returned on the 100th birthday of America's greatest road trip: Route 66, born April 30, 1926 in Springfield MO, which we celebrate with today's thread appetizer.

That 2,448 mile stretch from Buckingham Fountain in Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier played an important character in the American mythos. It was America's Main Street, the Mother Road, stretching from the big shoulders of Chicago through Midwestern cornfields, the vast Great Plains, the spectacular deserts and mountains of the Southwest, and finally to the palm-lined Promised Land of Hollywood. It portended liberation and exodus, deliverance and danger and discovery. It wasn't just a highway, it was a book in the American Bible.

66 was (and remains) a key to how we Americans view ourselves - and how others view us. I'm friends with several car folk around the planet who've made the pilgrimage here to retrace the route in vintage American cars. And in fact I recently met a few people in France and Italy planning their first Route 66 pilgrimage this year. For those in the know, that road trip is the best way to truly understand the soul of the United States of America.

I only use the past tense of in reference to Route 66 as a technical matter. It was officially decommissioned in 1985 after a long decline, having been largely supplanted by Interstates 55, 44, 40, and 10. But the idea of Route 66 is somewhat immortal.

Oh - and about this image: following the death of Will Rogers in a plane crash in 1935, the highway was renamed in his honor, with commemorative signs along the way. You can see some of those signs in John Ford's 1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.

If you're not familiar with Will Rogers, he was probably the biggest and most beloved celebrity in America at the time - writer, humorist, radio and film star, folksy stage performer, alway quick with a quip. And a native of Claremore Oklahoma, located right on 66. It's seems only fitting that America's most American road was named in honor of America's most American American. Of the countless Route 66 stories, one odd (and poignant) one is that it was the site of the first ultramarathon. To publicize its completion in 1928, wacky promoter C.C. "Cash & Carry" Pyle announce the Route 66 "Bunion Derby," a 3400 mile, 84 day foot race from Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles to Madison Square Garden, most all on 66.

First prize: $25,000. A king's ransom in 1928, and it attracted 199 entrants. What made it poignant was that the field was fully integrated, with 5 African Americans along with several Native Americans and Latinos. Black racers like Seattlite Eddie Gardner (seen in this photo) faced Jim Crow laws and spectator hatred along the route, forcing them to seek separate accomodations. Despite those privations, Gardner finished 8th in the race and took home $2500, and newspaper coverage of his story helped underscore the injustices of Jim Crow.

This is some lost isolated Amazon tribe shit right there

https://twitter.com/justalexoki/status/2048424815988498870

Americans order a new dryer online for afternoon delivery and installation because we’re not an economy that’s been careening downhill since 1939

https://twitter.com/spirckle/status/2048426899949465689

Spring has sprung, and a formerly young man's fancy turns to thoughts of... drive-ins. No meandering Dave's Car ID Service history dissertation today, just a meditation about the aesthetics of cars bathing in the nighttime glow of a drive-in restaurant sign, told through photos.

The most iconic for me is my late friend Norm Grabowski at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank in 1957, in the T-bucket he built that would later become the "Kookie T" of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip. The photo appeared on a LIFE magazine cover, and sorta perfectly encapsulates that aesthetic. Happily Bob's Big Boy Burbank is still thriving and I always make a cruise night pilgrimage there whenever I visit SoCal.
George Lucas's finest motion picture (in my option) American Grafitti leveraged that aesthetic to great effect; the glow of Mel's set the tone of the film from the opening shot. Cars, left to right, AC Cobra, 59 Olds, and Steve Bolander's (Ron Howard) 1958 Chevy Impala Sport Coupe.

It was a 1973 film nostalgic about 1962, a longing for a simpler optimistic time before the tumult of the 11 years to come. And Mel's was perfectly symbolic of it.

The Mel's restaurant chain still survives, but the original 1949 Mel's location where the movie was filmed - 140 South Van Ness, San Francisco - was demolished in 1976.

It's time to talk about the Elite Eight! And here at Dave's Car ID Service, that of course means elite 8-cylinder car engines. And as your host, I am going to set my Elite Eight of Elite Eights region by region.

In the Old Timers Region, I'm pitting the 1903 Ader V8 vs the 1905 Rolls-Royce 3.5 liter V8. Both have some claim to be the first V8 car engine; Clement Ader combined 4 V-twin engines on a single crankshaft to field a team of 3 V8 cars for the 1903 Paris-Madrid race. These were specially built for the race, and not a production model. The Rolls-Royce V8 was a production engine, although only briefly (1905-06) and in an unsuccessful model (the weirdly named Legal Limit). The next production Rolls-Royce V8 wouldn't appear until 1959.

I don't know about you, but it irks me that the USA doesn't have a claimant to first V8. But the 1915 Cadillac V8 (introduced in 1914) was the first highly successful production V8, considered globally an engineering masterpiece, and cemented the United States of America the Land of the V8 Motor. Even Rolls-Royce cribbed their 1959 design by studying the masters of Detroit.
But why does an 8 have to be in a V?

In the Freaks Region I've got the 1924 Ford X8 vs the 1904 Buffum Model G Greyhound racing engine.

As Henry Ford was looking ahead in the 1920s to build an 8 cylinder car, his engineers toyed with 60 different prototypes. The X8 design was reportedly one of his favorites, although the iconic flathead V8 won out. It actually ran in a car for a year for testing. Oddly enough the car was an Oldsmobile for engineering stealth reasons.

The H.H. Buffum Co. was a short lived (1901-07) car maker in Abdington MA. Oddly enough they also made machinery for shoe making. Anyhow Mr. Buffum made a flat eight-cylinder opposed by mating two of his production 4 banger engines for his Greyhound racing cars. The rationale was lower center of gravity. They also appeared in the 1907 Buffum production cars, but alas weren't able to stop the company from closure.