Tag: Automobile Quarterly

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

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

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

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

continuing the caption above…

Shriek­ing with hilar­i­ty and wheel­spin, they left—Fast. B.O. sprint­ed puff­ing to his cruis­er, leapt in and hit the starter, siren and red light all at once. With a wild squeal of rub­ber, the cruis­er shot off after the Allard. That’s when I noticed the chain coiled up under the police car. One end was wrapped secure­ly around a fire plug. The oth­er end seemed to be attached to some­thing under­neath the cruis­er. There was, oh, maybe 100 feet of it. We watched fas­ci­nat­ed as the cruis­er picked up speed and the coil grew smaller…and small­er…  —Dick O’Kane

The O’Kane ouevre

Read­er Mark Jones writes of my trib­ute to Don Vor­der­man and Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly: “You men­tion a sto­ry by Dick O’Kane and an Allard J2X named ‘Gren­del.’…

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

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

About­My remem­brance of Don Vor­der­man was pub­lished in short­er form in The Auto­mo­bile, Decem­ber 2019.

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“His­to­ry with its flick­er­ing lamp stum­bles along the trail of the past, try­ing to recon­struct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kin­dle with pale gleams the pas­sion of for­mer days.”  —Win­ston S. Churchill, 12 Novem­ber 1940

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Writ­ers rarely talk about writ­ing among each oth­er. It’s a very per­son­al thing, and it’s almost always hard to do well, none of which is too con­ducive to cheery cock­tail chitchat. Most of us would rather vis­it a den­tist than face up to the task of begin­ning the next piece, though it’s not quite so awful once the com­mit­ment is made and the thing is under way.…

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