Tag: Automobile Quarterly

AQ
“The drone of the engine went on as a background of gigantic sound….The song of the car bayed over wide spaces of country, was bruised and battered between the walls of startled village streets, was flung back in echoes from the walls of hills.” —Leslie Charteris, from an AQ tribute to “The Saint’s” fabulous, fictional Hirondel. (Painting by Ted Lodigensky, author’s collection)
Automobile Quarterly: The Memories (AQ Vol. 10, No. 1, 1972)

Automobile Quarterly: The Memories (AQ Vol. 10, No. 1, 1972)

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A friend and fel­low fan of Leslie Char­teris and “The Saint” sent me the image above. “Is this yours?” he asked. Yes, it hangs in my home. My friend has now acquired AQ —Auto­mo­bile Quar­terly— First Quar­ter, 1972. It con­tains a port­fo­lio of The Saint’s 1930 sports car, the Hiron­del, con­jured up by five great artists.  This paint­ing was pre­sent­ed to me by its cre­ator, Ted Lodi­gen­sky. “It has no val­ue,” he declared. “It’s a car that nev­er was.”

Maybe so, but not to devo­tees of “The Saint,” aka Simon Tem­plar. “He was an Eng­lish­man, and a gen­tle­man,” explained AQ edi­tor Don Vor­der­man—”though one must admit a pret­ty rak­ish one.…

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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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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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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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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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