Category: Automotive

driving
My kind of British road: Wrynose Pass, Lake District. Phil Rigby’s article is linked herein.
Driving in Britain Then & Now

Driving in Britain Then & Now

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Drive…if you dare

A friend head­ed for Eng­land who heard about their speed cam­eras asks how many he’ll encounter. Answer: a lot. Even out in the coun­try, they’ll snap away at you.

Since 1974 I’ve logged 80,000 UK road miles, from Land’s End to John O’Groats, islands from Jura in the Hebrides to Guernsey in the Chan­nel. For a long time it was a driver’s par­adise.  More recent­ly UK dri­ving turned from joy to drudgery. Of course a lot has to do with the huge growth of cars on cramped roads. The mod­ern depre­da­tions of the State are a result rather than a cause.…

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“The Vintage Triumph” and Triumphs in My Life

“The Vintage Triumph” and Triumphs in My Life

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All Tri­umphs All the Time: Issue 150 of The Vin­tage Tri­umph mag­a­zine, 2015 

Har­ry Barnes was to have been our first edi­tor, but quick­ly decid­ed he couldn’t do it. I was elect­ed, pro­duc­ing issues 1-18 from 1974 to 1977. Look­ing at those pro­duc­tions, I’m struck that while Tri­umphs haven’t changed much else has in half a lifetime.

Annu­al dues were $10—equal to $48 today, but didn’t buy as much. Imag­ine a world with­out com­put­ers! You print­ed off sheets of clean, “cam­era-ready” type. We couldn’t afford type­set­ting; those who didn’t have elec­tric type­writ­ers put a brand new rib­bon in their Rem­ing­tons and banged hard on the keys.…

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Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

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Time is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it: of cruising the Packard Proving Grounds at 140 in Bill’s E-type (ka-pow! went one of his Atlas Bucrons; we stopped to find a fist-sized hole in the tread), or in his retrofitted stick-overdrive Packard Caribbean; touring the bars and dives of the Florida panhandle, in search of some old automotive duffer; entertaining Austin Clark at the Dearborn Inn; Bill driving Brooks Stevens’ Excaliburs at Indy; meandering Hershey looking for Nash dealer signs….

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The Browning of Detroit

The Browning of Detroit

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Detroit, 2013— A cor­re­spon­dent sends “25 Facts about the Fall of Detroit That Will Leave You Shak­ing Your Head,” by Michael Sny­der of the Eco­nom­ic Col­lapse Blog:

Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teem­ing metrop­o­lis of 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple and it had the high­est per capi­ta income in the Unit­ed States.  Now it is a rot­ting, decay­ing hell­hole of about 700,000 peo­ple that the rest of the world makes jokes about.

When in July 2013 Detroit announced that it would  file for Chap­ter 9 bank­rupt­cy, the move was stopped at least tem­porar­i­ly by an Ing­ham Coun­ty judge:

She ruled that Detroit’s bank­rupt­cy fil­ing vio­lates the Michi­gan Con­sti­tu­tion because it would result in reduced pen­sion pay­ments for retired work­ers [and that] bank­rupt­cy fil­ing was “also not hon­or­ing the pres­i­dent, who took [Detroit’s auto com­pa­nies] out of bankruptcy”….How…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 3

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 3

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con­tin­ued from part 2…

 Jesse Jones, Franklin Roosevelt’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce, was a rugged Ten­nessean who was hard to meet and hard­er to know. Joseph Wash­ing­ton “Jeeps” Fraz­er was Pres­i­dent of Willys-Over­land, a scion of the Vir­ginia Wash­ing­tons and Nashville Fraz­ers; but this and more wouldn’t get him in to see Jesse Jones at Com­merce. See­ing Jones required more pow­er­ful strategy.

On an urgent mis­sion to Wash­ing­ton for his Jeep-build­ing com­pa­ny, Joe Fraz­er had arrived one morn­ing in 1943 and parked him­self in Jones’s out­er office, despite repeat­ed warn­ings that the Sec­re­tary wasn’t like­ly to arrive until evening—if at all.…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 2

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 2

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con­tin­ued from part 1…

See­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to run his own com­pa­ny, Fraz­er took con­trol of mori­bund Gra­ham-Paige in 1944, and two years lat­er merged its auto­mo­tive inter­ests with a new cor­po­ra­tion he and Hen­ry Kaiser had formed, leas­ing and then buy­ing the gigan­tic ex-bomber fac­to­ry at Wil­low Run, Michi­gan. Dur­ing Frazer’s 1946-48 pres­i­den­cy, Kaiser-Fraz­er was the fourth largest car pro­duc­er in the world, and ranked eighth in pro­duc­tion by make, ahead of all oth­er inde­pen­dents. He stepped down as an active offi­cer in 1949. The com­pa­ny nev­er again record­ed a profit.…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 1

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 1

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In 2011, Joseph Wash­ing­ton Fraz­er (1892-1971) was induct­ed, belat­ed­ly, into the Auto­mo­tive Hall of Fame, with his erst­while part­ner, Hen­ry J. Kaiser, co-founders of the world’s fourth-largest auto man­u­fac­tur­er dur­ing 1946-48. This arti­cle is updat­ed from the remem­brance I wrote of JWF, cre­ator of the Jeep. For more on Fraz­er, see my book, Kaiser-Fraz­er: Last Onslaught on Detroit.

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On August 7th, 1971,  the auto indus­try lost a cher­ished son. Joe Frazer—mechanic, instruc­tor, financier, sales­man, pres­i­dent and board chair­man in a half dozen com­pa­nies, one of the few remain­ing giants of the clas­sic era of Amer­i­can car-build­ing, passed away from can­cer at his home, “High Tide,” in New­port, Rhode Island, aged 79.…

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Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

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The sig­na­ture on a  fan­tas­tic auto­graphed pho­to of Win­ston Churchill at Chartwell, which a friend framed and kept on his wall and hid from the light, has fad­ed to noth­ing­ness. Even ambi­ent room light will fade ancient inks, and there is noth­ing to be done.

Back when I was senior edi­tor at Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly, I res­cued a won­der­ful big 3×2-foot pho­to of the great Grand Prix cham­pi­on René Drey­fus (the world’s last great French­man), and his Type 35 Bugat­ti, from the dust­bin and brought it over to Le Chante­clair, his won­der­ful French restau­rant on 49th Street, Man­hat­tan, for him to inscribe to me.…

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Kimes
Automobile Quarterly, Vol 11, No. 1, 1973.
“Correrai Ancor Piu Veloce…” Beverly Rae Kimes 1941-2008

“Correrai Ancor Piu Veloce…” Beverly Rae Kimes 1941-2008

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None who read it will ever forget "Man on Fire!": Beverly Kimes’s biography of Tazio Nuvolari. It was one of those signal experiences when you remember where you were. I read it in galleys on the "Broadway Limited" en route to Chicago: started in Newark and put it down somewhere west of Harrisburg. She wound up with the legend on the great racing driver's tombstone: Correrai ancor piu veloce per le vie del cielo. (You will travel faster still upon the highways of heaven.) "Ah Tazio," she ended: "Godspeed." And that's all that really matters in the end: thoughts of old and good times, which eventually blot out the last sad ones. Ah Bev...Godspeed.

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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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