Category: Automotive

The Packard
“The Packard,” Midsummer 1921, depicted its distinguished clientele with a Twin Six runabout at a polo match.
“The Packard”: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs (2)

“The Packard”: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs (2)

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Today its old yellowed pages are an infinitesimal microcosm of what was a great company at the height of success, more valuable than the sterile if luxurious sales brochures. The last page of the last issue showed a majestic Deluxe Eight, pictured front-on, a testimonial to Packard integrity. Beneath it was a two-line statement that summarized the work of those who had created the finest automotive house organ in history: “This magazine reaches you as another evidence of our interest in your Packard ownership.’’

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The Packard
“Hello Packard!” Centerspread drawing by H.A. “Hy” Thiede for “The Packard” Number 24, November 1911.
“The Packard”: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs (1)

“The Packard”: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs (1)

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The Q&A column ended with a confessional: "After this severe mental strain the Query Editor is working on the higher mathematics and differential calculus as a mild form of relaxation." And that was the whole idea, wasn't it? The Packard was a celebration—of all that was best in a young, dynamic company.  The grand marque couldn't have had a better champion.

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Harrington
A fanciful Sunbeam brochure shows the 1962 Harrington as raced at Le Mans that year.
Harrington Le Mans: Sunbeam’s Lovely Gran Turismo

Harrington Le Mans: Sunbeam’s Lovely Gran Turismo

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"At nine the next morning, with three hours to go, a French organizer told us that if we souped up our car a little, we'd beat Porsche for the Efficiency Index. Great delight! We ran up a sign that said '+500 REVS TO BEAT X.' Sure enough, up came 500 rpm. Peter, of course, was very disciplined. The car just kept going round and round. We couldn't believe it! It gave us no trouble at all." —Lewis Garrad

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O'Kane
“BRAAMM! came the sound from the street. Officer Robert Ormsbee Wolfe jumped up and went for the door. There was Grendel, Nick at the wheel, Stanley standing up in the seat. ‘Hey, B.O.!’ Stanley shouted. And with that he turned around, dropped his drawers, and violated Sec. 16, Art. 548, ‘Mooning an Officer of the Law.'” (Illustration by Stan Mott, Automobile Quarterly, 1970, by kind permission of the artist)
Old Jags & Allards: The Whimsy and Fun of Dick O’Kane

Old Jags & Allards: The Whimsy and Fun of Dick O’Kane

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O'Kane called the Mark IV owners manual a "Monument to the Quaint Assumption.... It assumed you had all sorts of peculiar doodads lying around." The section on brake adjustment begins: "Obtain a steel disc having a circumference of 6.749 inches and being .388 inches in thickness, with a .435-inch square opening offset one-half inch from the centre of the disc..."

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Studebaker
1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner, designed by Bob Bourke for Raymond Loewy Associates, owned by the author, 2013-17. (Photo by RML)
Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

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Why did Stude­bak­er go out of busi­ness? I have your book Stude­bak­er 1946-1966, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as Stude­bak­er: The Post­war Years. I worked for the old com­pa­ny at the end in Hamil­ton, Ontario. Your book brought back mem­o­ries of many old Stude­bak­er hands. Styl­ists Bob Doehler and Bob Andrews were good friends about my age.

I am look­ing for­ward to the last chap­ter dis­cussing how Stude­bak­er went wrong, espe­cial­ly since I also have the­o­ries. It would fun to com­pare notes. I often quote from your book: “For many years, Ray­mond Loewy Asso­ciates would be the only thing stand­ing between Stude­bak­er and dull mediocrity.”…

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Alex Tremulis
Alex Tremulis (left) and Romeyn Hammond with their radio-controlled Ford La Tosca, 1955. (Ford Motor Co.)
The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 3: Streamlining and Speed

The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 3: Streamlining and Speed

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Con­clud­ed from Part 2. My Tremulis piece was pub­lished in full in The Auto­mo­bile, March 2020. 

Alex Tremulis in the 1950s

When Kaiser left Wil­low Run, Alex Tremulis decid­ed it was time to work for a com­pa­ny with a future. In Dear­born, Ford Chief of Design George Walk­er hired him with an unchanged job descrip­tion: chief of advanced styling. There he joined Bob Thomas, who wrote warm­ly of him in 2008. “Alex thought he was back in the Army Air Corps, turn­ing out scores of 3/8th scale mod­els of futur­is­tic things like fly­ing cars and nuclear-pow­ered vehi­cles.…

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Alex
Alex Tremulis as Chief of Advanced Design at Kaiser-Frazer, 1951-53. (Author’s collection)
The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer

The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer

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Con­tin­ued from Part 1. My Alex Tremulis piece was pub­lished in full in The Auto­mo­bile, March 2020. 

Alex and Tucker

Like Bob Bourke’s famous 1953 Stude­bak­er “Loewy coupe,” the 1948 Tuck­er was almost entire­ly the work of one design­er. Of course many helped, and both Bourke and Tremulis gave them cred­it. But as near as one comes to design­ing a car by one­self, they did.

Alex set to work in a stu­dio at Tucker’s large, ex-Dodge plant in Chica­go. As chief design­er he had to inject prac­ti­cal­i­ty into Pre­ston Tuck­er’s enthu­si­asm. First con­cepts includ­ed a car with cycle fend­ers that turned with the wheels, a periscope rearview scan­ner, and vast expans­es of com­pound-curved glass.…

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Tremulis
The Greatness of Alex Tremulis: A Car Designer from Another Era (1)

The Greatness of Alex Tremulis: A Car Designer from Another Era (1)

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My Tremulis piece was pub­lished in full in The Auto­mo­bile, March 2020. 

“That was a dif­fer­ent time,” Alex Tremulis told me, recall­ing his hey­day in car design. “The For­ties through the Sev­en­ties. Back then a sin­gle per­son could often influ­ence the shape of a car. Some­times the whole car. Of course, lots of our ideas were sheer rub­bish. But now and then, by luck or force of per­son­al­i­ty, we put some­thing good into production.”

Many famous auto­mo­tive designs did have whim­si­cal begin­nings. Bill Boy­er put port­holes on the rear roof quar­ters of the 1956 Ford Thun­der­bird to recall “the coach­work her­itage.”…

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Porter
1934 Brewster-bodied Ford V-8 (Photo by John Lloyd, Creative Commons)
Cole Porter and a Vanished Culture: Brewster and Mussolini

Cole Porter and a Vanished Culture: Brewster and Mussolini

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"You're the top! You're a Ritz hot toddy. You 're the top! You're a Brewster body. You're the boats that glide on the sleepy Zuider Zee, You 're a Nathan Panning, You're Bishop Manning, You're broccoli!" Brewster and Company lasted 127 years, felled by the Great Depression in 1937. They were, as Cole Porter said, the top of the line. The finest craftsmanship combined with the best materials. A Brewster body meant the owner had arrived. If you were really loaded you'd order two Brewster bodies for your Packard or Rolls-Royce chassis: a classy open number for the summer, a snug town car or limousine for the winter.

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Vorderman
Remember Kodachrome? I panned three dozen photos of Don driving the Mercer. Most of them were all over the place, but one was just perfect. Enlarged 1000%, you could still read the name on the hubs. (Photo by the author)
Don Vorderman 1930-2018: The Best Editor I Ever Had

Don Vorderman 1930-2018: The Best Editor I Ever Had

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Editors exist to make writers better, and Don was the best editor one could have. He fired me once (I deserved it), but reconsidered when he liked my next piece, on Triumph. In it I’d written that the Luftwaffe "did its number" on Coventry. He blue-lined that and substituted "wrought terrible destruction"—sensitive and precise.

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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