This Month in Automotive History
April 1
1970 The Gremlin Debuts
AMC, the company that first introduced the compact car in the 1950s, introduced the Gremlin, America's first sub-compact car. AMC was the only major independent car company to survive into the 1970s. AMC's success relied heavily on the vision of the company's first president, George Romney, who strongly believed that to compete with the Big Three automakers his company must offer smaller, more fuel-efficient alternatives to their cars. The AMC Rambler, a compact car, accounted for nearly all of AMC's profits through the 1950s, the era during which the company enjoyed its most substantial success. AMC's fortune faded rapidly after Romney left the company in 1962, and by the end of the '60s, the company's output had dropped to a dismal 250,000 sales per year. The release of the Gremlin in 1970 marked the company's return to Romney's vision. Designed to compete with the imported Volkswagens and Japanese sub-compacts, the Gremlin was essentially the AMC Hornet with its back end cut off. AMC President Roy Chapin attempted to re-create the vigorous personal campaign that Romney had used successfully to market the Rambler in the '50s. He appeared before the American public in advertisements to extol the virtues of the "first sub-compact" car. Unfortunately for AMC, the Gremlin was out on the market for only a short time before the Big Three released their own sub-compact models. The Gremlin, created to save AMC, floundered.
April 2
1987 More Alive at 65?
The United States government allowed individual states to increase the speed limit on rural roads from 55 mph to 65 mph. The move opened the forum for legislation that would, over the next decade, dramatically increase the speed limits observed on our country's roads. Since 1973, when Richard Nixon set a federal maximum speed limit of 55 mph, no cars were allowed to exceed this speed. After 1987, many states raised maximum speed limits to 75 mph. Nevada and Montana observe a policy of "reasonable speed," wherein drivers are urged to use speed prudently but are not held to a numerical speed limit. The debate over the safety of increased speed limits rages on. Many hold that increased speed limits translate directly into increased numbers of highway fatalities. Other advocacy groups claim that higher speed limits actually diminish the rate of accidents by thinning out traffic. Both groups use well-presented statistics to bolster their causes. New cars are certainly capable of handling higher speeds on today's roads, but are their drivers?
April 3
1885 Daimler's First Engine
Gottlieb Daimler was granted a German patent for his one-cylinder, water-cooled engine design. Daimler's invention was the breakthrough that other engine builders had been waiting for. Previously no one had been able to efficiently solve the problem posed by the tremendous heat produced by internal combustion engines. In Daimler's engine, cool water circulated around the engine block, preventing the engine from overheating. Today's engines still employ Daimler's basic idea. Before the water-cooled engine, cars were practical impossibilities, as the parts on which the engine was mounted could not sustain the heat generated by the engine itself. Daimler built his first whole automobile in the fall of 1896, and in doing so took the first step in his self-named company's storied car-building history.
April 4
1996 A New Jag
Jaguar introduced its new SK8 convertible at the New York International Auto Show. The SK was the sports car version of the XK car released a few months before. The two models were Jaguar's first entirely new designs since the company became a Ford subsidiary in 1989. Powered by the advanced Jaguar V-8 coupled with a five-speed automatic gearbox, the SK lives up to Jaguar's historic line of powerful sports cars. However, Jaguar purists argue that the lines of the car body itself are not Jaguar lines. Ford executives claim that they have not meddled with the integrity of the distinctive Jaguar look, and so any lines that don't appear to have come from Jaguar designs still came from Jaguar designers. Judge for yourself: would Sir William Lyons have approved of Jaguar's new look?
April 5
1923 Balloon Ride
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, began balloon tire production. The company had previously experimented with large-section, thin-walled tires with small bead diameters for special purposes, but none had been put on the commercial market. Firestone had become the country's largest producer of tires when it received the contract to supply Henry Ford's Model T's with tires. The company remained on top of the tire industry, challenged for supremacy only by Goodyear. Balloon tires provided better handling and a smoother ride for car drivers. In balloon tires, an inner tube is fitted inside the tire and inflated. Firestone's innovation also ushered in the era of the flat tire. People may have had problems with their cars before 1923, but none had yet enjoyed the pleasure of standing by the roadside watching their hissing tire deflate-along with their hopes of arriving on time.
April 6
1934 Whitewalls
The Ford Motor Company announced white sidewall tires as an option on its new vehicles at a cost of $11.25 per set. Whitewalls soon became associated with style and money. By the 1950s, whitewalls were standard on many cars, and it would be hard to imagine a '55 Corvette without a corresponding set of whitewall treads. The popularity of whitewalls continued well into the 1960s. Car companies offered different width white bands in a race to make their whitewalls whiter. In the James Bond filmDr. No, Agent 007 drives a Sunbeam with wire wheels and special-ordered five-inch white-walled tires. Henry Ford was never known as a fashion revolutionary, but he was on to something big with whitewalls.
April 7
1922 Sig Speeds
Racer Sig Haugdahl drove the Wisconsin Special over 180 MPH on a one-way run at the Daytona Beach racing oval. Haugdahl's speed was a remarkable 24 mph faster than the previous world land-speed record. A Norwegian immigrant who settled in Minnesota, Sig Haugdahl began his racing career in 1918. He became the IMCA champion, but was considered an outsider by the more influential USAC governing body. Eager to prove he could outrace anybody, Haugdahl built his own car with the specific aim of unseating then USAC champion Tommy Milton. The fruit of Haugdahl's endeavor was the Wisconsin Special, so named because of its massive 836 cubic-inch Wisconsin Airplane engine. Antique car restorer Paul Freehill explained the mechanics of the Wisconsin Special's engine, "It's World War I technology that's left over. There wasn't a clutch or anything; the engine was hooked directly to the rear axle." But however primitive the propulsion system may have been, Haugdahl had to be an innovator to make the car stay on the ground. He tapered the exposed parts of his car to cut drag. Where structural tapering was impossible, he wrapped parts in tape to cut drag. Haugdahl was also the first man to balance the wheels and tires on his racecar. It was essential that Haugdahl pay attention to the smallest details, as the size of his engine left little room for error. The Wisconsin Special was only twenty inches wide. Even the five-foot-three-inch Haugdahl had to squeeze to fit in. Imagine the thrill of racing at 180 mph on a sand course with the Wisconsin Special roaring a few feet from your back. Haugdahl was the first man to travel three miles in a minute, but his record was never observed by the USAC governing body; none of its members were present to witness the event. Those who were present witnessed a veritable miracle. Haugdahl's unofficial record would go untouched for over a decade.
April 8
1910 The Boards
The Los Angeles Motordome, the first speedway with a board track, opened near Playa Del Rey, California, under the direction of Fred Moskovics and Jack Prince. The track was made of wood and ran a circumference of 5,281 feet. Board tracks used the same engineering technology as the smaller wood velodromes used in France for bicycle racing. The tracks were paved with two-by-fours and were steeply banked at angles as high as forty-five degrees. On such a track, a car-racing daredevil could reach speeds up to 100 mph with his hands off the steering wheel. The L.A. Motordome, affectionately known as "The Boards," was a huge success. By 1915 nearly a half-dozen board tracks had popped up around the country. By 1931 there were twenty-four board tracks in operation, including tracks in Beverly Hills, California; Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn; and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Incidentally, the Beverly Hills track stood approximately where the primetime shopping blocks of Rodeo Drive are located now. No tracks have ever approximated the speeds allowed on the heavily banked boards. Board tracks began to fade from existence during the Depression. The lifetime for two-by-fours exposed to racing tires is approximately five years after which deadly splinters and potholes begin to dot the track's smooth surface. During the Depression, the board tracks' expensive upkeep made them impractical. The last decade of board racing was a sight to behold. Cars tore down straightaways at 120 mph, while carpenters patched the tracks from beneath.
April 9
1905 Airtime
The first aerial car ferry was put in operation over the ship canal from Lake Avenue, Duluth, Minnesota, to Minnesota Point, Minnesota. The car was suspended in the air from a super structure that loomed 135 feet clear of Lake Superior. The truss in the center of the structure was fifty-one feet high, placing the highest point of the superstructure 186 feet off of the surface of Lake Superior. The aerial ferry spanned 393 feet in length, while its car platform measured thirty-four feet by fifty feet. The ferry could accommodate six cars and two glassed-in passenger cabins with a carrying capacity of 125,000 pounds. The platform itself hung twelve feet above the water line. A round trip on the aerial car ferry from Duluth to Minnesota Point lasted ten minutes.
April 10
1944 Henry the Second
Henry Ford II was named executive vice president of the Ford Motor Company. His promotion confirmed his bid to become the heir to his grandfather's throne at Ford. Henry II despised his grandfather for tormenting his father, Edsel Ford. Nevertheless, Henry II went on to display many of the leadership skills of his grandfather en route to becoming the head of the Ford empire. After an unsatisfactory academic career at Yale University-where Henry spent four years without receiving a diploma-he returned to work at the River Rouge plant. There he familiarized himself with the operation of the company, and he witnessed the bitter struggle for the succession of Henry Ford's title as president of the company. After his father Edsel Ford's death--the result of "stomach cancer, undulant fever and a broken heart"--Ford lieutenants Harry Bennett and Charles Sorensen fought a silent battle for the Ford throne. Henry Ford Sr. had reassumed the title of president, although it was clear he was too old to stay in that position for long. The irritable Henry I wasn't dead yet, though, and he intervened on behalf of the violent Bennet, who had gained power at Ford for his suppression of organized labor. Passed up for the vice-president position, Sorensen left the company after over forty years of service. Many attributed Ford's poor treatment of Sorensen to personal jealousy. Henry the Elder was reportedly even jealous of his grandson's presence at the Rouge Plant. At the outbreak of World War II, Henry the Second left Ford for military service, which he carried out in Salt Lake City, Utah, until his father died on May 26, 1943. At that time he returned to Ford to take the reigns of the company at the urging of the U.S government. His grandfather was finally too old to run the company and if he didn't name a successor, the company would fall out of the family's control for the first time in its existence. Realizing that Henry's presence would make his own accession to the company's presidency impossible, strongman Bennett attempted to bring Henry the Second under his influence. His efforts were of no avail, though, as Henry Ford II refused to be influenced by his tyrannical grandfather's toady. His accession to the executive vice-presidency made him the inevitable successor to the presidency of the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford II went on to lead his family's company back to greatness from its dubious position behind both GM and Chrysler after the war.
April 11
1913 Bugatti’s Royal Ride
Ettore Bugatti first proposed designing the super car that would eventually emerge as the Bugatti Type 41 Royale. Eventually called the "car of kings," Bugattis were huge hand-crafted luxury cars that were affordable only for Europe’s elite.
April 12
1977 GM Stops Wankel
General Motors announced it had dropped plans to produce a Wankel rotary engine. The rotary engine is an old engineering principle originally pioneered by Elwood Haynes in 1893. Felix Wankel is credited with inventing the modern design in 1955. The Wankel rotary engine dispenses with separate pistons, cylinders, valves, and crankshafts, and its construction allows it to apply power directly to the transmission. The miracle of the rotary design is that a rotary engine can produce the same power as a conventional engine of twice its size comprised of four times as many parts. There is a tradeoff however: The Wankel rotary engine burns up to twice as much gasoline as a conventional engine, making it, among other things, a heavy polluter. Proponents of the engine argue that its smaller size would allow carmakers to install anti-pollution devices where they wouldn’t fit in a car carrying an ordinary engine. The basic unit of the rotary engine is a large combustion chamber in the form of a "pinched oval" or epitrochoid. Within the chamber all four engine functions take place in the three pockets formed by the rotor and the walls of the combustion chamber. In the same way that the addition of cylinders increases power in a conventional engine, the addition of pockets increases power in a rotary engine. GM, after having considered the production of a rotary engine for a decade, finally decided against the innovation on the grounds that its poor fuel economy would be prohibitive to sales.
April 13
1925 Elwood Haynes Dies
Elwood Haynes died in Kokomo, Indiana, on this day in 1925, at the age of sixty-seven. Haynes, the founder of the Haynes Automobile Company, led a remarkable life that began in Portland, Indiana. The son of pioneer farmers Judge Jacob and Hillinda Haynes, Elwood thirsted for education at an early age. He eventually received degrees in engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and from Johns Hopkins. He returned to Portland to become a high school teacher in his subjects. His career and life turned around as the result of the discovery of vast natural gas deposits near Portland. Forever curious, Haynes familiarized himself with natural gas containment and piping methods. He became the architect for the Indiana Natural Gas Company's pipe network, which provided most of Chicago with natural gas. Haynes was the first man to suggest that natural gas should be dehydrated before it was piped, a principle still in use today. From his laboratory at the Indiana Natural Gas Company, Haynes began tinkering with internal combustion engines. He completed his first car in 1894, one year after Charles Duryea is credited with having built the first American car. Such was the dissemination of information at the time that Haynes, even until his death, was credited with building the first American car. After creating his prototype, Haynes started his own car company, which he ran for nearly three decades. He is credited with a number of automotive innovations, including the rotary engine. But Haynes' greatest achievements came as a metallurgist. He was the first American to pioneer the oxidization of steel and the use of chromium to retard nature's oxidization process. He eventually received a U.S. patent for "stainless steel," although the invention first surfaced in England under the name "rustless iron." Haynes biographer Ralph Gray described the man succinctly: "Neither exceptionally bright nor a fast learner, Haynes had the capacity to absorb completely that which he had learned... He had an uncanny ability to be at the forefront of the most exciting new industrial and technological breakthroughs in his state during his lifetime." In our age of specialization, it is hard to imagine one man making such an impact in such diverse fields of exploration.
April 14
1927 First Volvo Rolls off Assembly Line
The first regular production Volvo, nicknamed "Jakob," left the assembly line on April 14, 1927, in Goteborg, Sweden. Volvo was the result of a collaboration between Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson. Gabrielsson was an economist and a businessman who began his career at SKF Manufacturing in Goteborg. As head of SKF's subsidiary in France, he discovered that, due to the comparative labor costs, it was possible to sell Swedish ball-bearings in France more cheaply than American ones. The realization planted the seed that it was also possible to supply cars to continental Europe at a lower cost than American car companies could. Enter Gustaf Larson, engineer and designer. He had been a trainee at White & Poppe in Coventry, England, where he had helped design engines for Morris. The two men met in 1923 and by the next year they already had plans to build cars. Larson gathered a team of engineers and began work on a car design in his spare time. By July of 1926 the chassis drawings were complete. Meanwhile, Gabrielsson had aroused the interest of SKF in his project, and he obtained guarantees and credit from the parent company to build 1,000 vehicles, 500 open and 500 covered. SKF provided the name, AB Volvo. Volvo is Latin for "I Roll." It wasn't until the 1930s that Volvo made a mark on the international automotive world. Volvo purchased its engine supplier, Pentaverken, and began production on a variety of car models, including the PV651, which enjoyed great success in the taxicab market. After weathering the lean years of the early '30s, Volvo released its first "streamlined car," the PV36, or "Carioca," a car heavily influenced by American designs, in 1936. Also in line with American marketing strategies was Volvo's decision to release new car models in the fall, a tradition it began in 1938. Volvo's fortunes would mirror those of the American car companies after the war. Because of Sweden's neutrality during the war, Volvo's production facilities were left undamaged, allowing the company to meet the postwar demand for cars in Sweden and Europe.
April 15
1924 First Road Atlas Published
Rand McNally released its first comprehensive road atlas on this date in 1924. Today, Rand McNally is the world's largest maker of atlases in print and electronic media. The company celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary this year-seventy-five years of North American navigation. One can imagine how spare the road map of our country must have looked in 1924.
April 16
1946 The Tragic Tale of The Brothers Chevrolet
Arthur Chevrolet, brother of Chevrolet namesake Louis Chevrolet, committed suicide at age sixty in Slidell, Louisiana, on this date. Louis and Arthur made their names as car racers in the first decade of the century. Known for their fearless driving styles, both brothers raced against American racing legend Barney Oldfield. The brothers came into contact with General Motors founder William Durant when Durant-impressed by their racing talents-invited the pair to audition for the job of chauffeur. He reportedly took them to a track and raced them. Louis won the race, but Durant gave Arthur the chauffeur job. He offered Louis a position on GM's elite Buick Racing Team. Chevrolet raced and designed for Buick during the years of Durant's GM Presidency. When Durant stepped down, new GM President Charles Nash took the money away from the Buick Racing Team. Durant asked Louis and Arthur to start a new venture. As Louis put it, Durant asked him to build a car, "So I built one." Born racers, Louis and Arthur designed a performance car that became the first Chevrolet. Durant wanted something to compete with GM's lower-priced models. Disappointed with Durant's demands for an economy car, Louis and Arthur eventually left Chevrolet to pursue their own racing and design endeavors. The brothers worked closely together for their entire careers. They designed aircraft engines, car engines, and continued to race. In spite of designing many successful engines, the Brothers Chevrolet had little gift for finance, and they often were pushed out of their endeavors before they could reap the rewards due to them. By 1933, both men were broke and their racing careers were over. Louis returned to Detroit to work as a mechanic in GM's Chevrolet division. In the late 1930s he suffered a series of strokes which incapacitated him and finally killed him. With his brother dead and no fortune to speak of, Arthur, a broken man, took his own life.
April 17
1911 Self-Starter, Save Carter
Charles F. Kettering applied for a U.S. patent in 1911 for the self-starting mechanism he had designed for the Cadillac Car Company. The vision for the self-starter is said to have been the result of the peculiar death of Cadillac founder Henry Leland's close friend, Byron Carter. In 1910, Carter, the manufacturer of the Cartercar, suffered a broken jaw and arm when he stopped to help a woman with the crank-starter on her car. The crank, linked directly to the car's drive shaft, was capable of bucking out of the hands of its "cranker," and Carter suffered for it. His injuries grew complicated and, combined with a case of pneumonia, killed him. Distraught by the event, Leland determined to solve the problem of the crank-starter. He hired Kettering, then famous for creating an electric engine small enough for the electric cash register. Kettering believed he could create an engine capable of starting the motor of a car that was light enough and small enough not to hinder the car's ability to run. The engineering problem took him no time at all. He offered Leland a prototype in December of 1910. Kettering's system relied on a storage battery that supplied a 24-volt charge to the starter to ignite the engine. The battery then switched to 6 volts to feed back into the battery and recharge it. His first operating model was delivered to Cadillac on February 17. Leland ordered twelve thousand units to be installed in the 1912 Cadillac. The self-starter gave women access to cars for the first time. Without the arduous task of cranking the engine to deter them, women could drive cars on their own. Since there were almost as many rich women as rich men, the self-starter drastically broadened the market for the automobile.
April 18
1906 Sun Sets on Sunset
A fire caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the production facilities of the fledgling Sunset Automobile Company in San Francisco, California. Production of the Sunset never resumed and the firm was legally dissolved in 1909. Throughout the history of American automobile production no company has ever succeeded on the West Coast, a fact that supports the theory that car production was originally an extension of Manifest Destiny and the thirst for Westward expansion.
April 19
1892 Duryea's First Claim
Charles Duryea claimed that he first drove the first gas-powered U.S.-built automobile in a rented loft space in Springfield, Massachusetts, on this day. Duryea's brother Frank, who witnessed Charles's first drive, later set the date at September 20, 1893. Frank's claim was supported by newspaper accounts of the day. Charles's selective memory may have been the result of the competition to claim the title of America's first car builder. Embittered by the country's failure to acknowledge his breakthrough achievement, Duryea wrote an article entitled "It Doesn't Pay to Pioneer," in which he claimed to have "designed and built the first gasoline automobile to actually run in America, sold the first car on this side, did the first automobile advertising, and won the first two American races." None of these claims is absolutely true, but Duryea's influence as an automotive pioneer is indisputable. He in fact never received credit for having been the first American to design and run a gas-powered vehicle until after his death. It was the falsehood of his claims, and the contradiction of his brother, that damaged his credibility during his lifetime and led automotive historians to credit Elwood Haynes with having made America's first car.
April 20
1931 Woman on Board
Matilda Dodge Wilson, the widow of John Dodge, was named to the board of the Graham-Paige Motors Corporation on this day in 1931. She became the first woman to sit on the board of a major American auto manufacturer. Graham-Paige was founded by the Graham brothers, whose initial car-making endeavor, Graham Brothers Truck Company, had been purchased by Dodge in 1926.
April 21
1985 Senna Center Stage
The late Ayrton Senna won his first of forty-one Formula One Championship victories driving a Lotus-Renault at the Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril. Senna's uncompromising driving style made him a hero to many--and a villain to almost as many. Throughout his eight-year career he established himself as the sport's greatest qualifying racer, winning sixty-five pole positions. Qualifying is a measure of how far a driver can push himself without competition, and this quality was one of Senna's trademarks. "Sometimes I try to beat other people's achievements, but on many occasions I find it's better to beat my own achievements," he related. "That can give me more satisfaction. I don't feel happy if I am comfortable." It was his drive for perfection that made Senna such a great racer. But that same drive often threatened the lives of his fellow racers. And his unapologetic off-track demeanor was often seen by his detractors as inflammatory. Just before his death in 1994, Senna appeared to be softening to the public. Still competitive, he assumed a calmer, less antagonistic persona on the Grand Prix circuit. Always a pleasure for the press, Senna often delivered more thoughtful responses to questions than did his fellow drivers. In one of his most spiritual quotes, Senna explained the relationship of the racer to his public: "In many ways we are a dream for people, not a reality. That counts in your mind. It shows how much you can touch people, and as much as you can try to give to those people, somehow it is nothing compared to what they live in their own mind, in their dreams, for you." The tragic accident that cut short Senna's career remains an object of mystery and the investigation is not yet closed. Those close to Senna indicate that the Catholic driver had a premonition of his impending death. A haunting comment from the year before his accident reads, "If I ever happen to have an accident that eventually costs me my life, I hope it is in one go." It is, arguably, the danger of F1 racing that makes its leading personalities such captivating figures. Like boxers, they exist closer to death than do ordinary citizens and thereby achieve a stature that is larger than life. It is only fair to mention, however, that Senna's death was just the second such fatality in F1 racing since the late 1970s.
April 22
1970 Earth Day Debuts
The first Earth Day celebration was held in communities across the country twenty-nine years ago today. Earth Day was the creation of Senator Gaylord Nelson. As he described it, a number of senators were concerned about the state of the country's environment in the early 1960s. In a move intended to bring national visibility to the issue of environmental deterioration, the senators persuaded President John F. Kennedy to take on a nationwide conservation tour, "spelling out in dramatic language the serious and deteriorating condition of our environment." The tour was a failure. Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Joe Clark, and Nelson himself accompanied Kennedy on the first leg of his trip to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Though the tour failed to rouse interest of any significant level in the environment as a political issue, Nelson credits the mission with being the seed from which Earth Day would eventually flower. The idea for a grassroots effort gestated in Nelson's head until July of 1969, when, according to Nelson, the anti-war teach-ins of the Vietnam Era inspired him to conceive of a nationwide environmental "teach-in." Nelson returned to Washington and began to raise funds for the event. In addition, he and his staff sent letters to fifty governors, and to the mayors of major cities, requesting them to make Earth Day Proclamations. In a speech in Seattle in September of 1969, Nelson formally announced that a nationwide environmental teach-in would take place in the spring of the coming year. All of the major wire services ran the story, and the response was dramatic. From that point on, says Nelson, Earth Day was the product of the populace. By December, the number of inquiries had so overwhelmed Nelson's Senate office that an Earth Day Clearing House was set up in Washington to plan for the event. In the end, an estimated twenty million people participated in Earth Day events of some kind. Ten thousand grade schools and high schools, two thousand colleges, and one thousand communities across the country held official events. Earth Day is responsible for establishing the efficacy of grassroots environmental advocacy. A by-product of Earth Day that directly effected the automobile industry was the public's heightened awareness of the environmental dangers of gasoline exhaust emissions.
April 23
1992 Miller's Museum
The Smithsonian Institution acquired a Miller 1500-cc race car with the intention of displaying it. Harry Miller was the first man to concentrate exclusively on building race cars for sale. While the Duesenberg name dominated American racing in the early 1920s, it was Harry Miller who carried racing design into its next era. Fred and Augie Duesenberg were responsible for many of the major technological breakthroughs that made high speeds possible: shell bearings that allowed higher engine turnover speed, centrifugal superchargers, and four-wheel hydraulic brakes. But the Duesenbergs were only concerned with building race cars to increase publicity for their road cars, and their race cars were certainly not for sale. By the late '20s, Miller was designing and building precision-tuned race cars and selling them for exorbitant price tags--approximately $20,000 a piece. He pioneered countless breakthroughs, including aluminum pistons and engine blocks, off-beat carburetors, inter-cooled super-chargers, and practical front-wheel drive. Miller's price tags may have been exorbitant, but not so extraordinary that the market couldn't bear them. The earnings of the car drivers and the deep pockets of the racing team sponsors made buying Miller's cars possible. Consider that in the late '20s the average working man earned around $1,500 per year and the average baseball player $7,000 per year. Babe Ruth earned $70,000 per year from 1927 to 1930. The prize for the winner of the Indy 500, provided he led a reasonable number of laps, could exceed $40,000. So it was logical for Miller to assume people would pay for his race cars, and pay they did. For almost a decade, Miller cars filled up nearly the entire block at Indy. The Miller 122, front-wheel-driven and supercharged, was the most masterful race car of its era and it belongs in the hall of engineering breakthroughs at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.
April 24
1995 King of the Hill
The last Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 was produced on this day in 1995, although the ceremony celebrating the car came four days later. Nicknamed "The King of the Hill," the ZR-1 was built from 1990 to 1995; a total of 6,939 ZR-1s were produced over the six-year period. GM's intention with the car was to build the ultimate sports car in terms of both price and performance. With its top speed of 180 mph, the ZR-1 was the fastest production Corvette ever built. The heart of this Chevy's beast was its LT5 engine, an all-aluminum, dual-overhead cam engine, whose thirty-two valves were capable of pushing 405 hp in the car's last years.
April 25
1901 New York Tags
New York became the first state to require license plates by law in 1901. Owners of automobiles were obliged to register their names and addresses, along with a description of their vehicle, with the office of the secretary of state. The state sent each owner a small license plate, at least three inches high, which bore the owner's initials. The fee to register an automobile one dollar. In 1901, the state received $954 in registration fees.
April 26
1906 Birdcages to Bankruptcy
The George N. Pierce Company purchased a sixteen-acre plot of land that had been the site of the 1901 Pan American Exposition, with the intention of making the site its new production facility. In 1872, George Pierce of Heintz, Pierce, and Munschauer, a housewares manufacturing firm whose products included birdcages, bought out his two partners and reorganized the company as the George N. Pierce Company. By the mid-1890s, the company had begun manufacturing bicycles. When car production began in the late 1890s, company executive Charles Clifton began investigating the possibility of entering the industry. The summer of 1900 saw the company's first car produced, a steamer that turned out to be a dismal failure. Clifton traveled to Europe and returned insisting that Pierce purchase DeDion gasoline engines for car production. Pierce's first production car was the Motorette. The car enjoyed great success in reliability trials and it established Pierce as a dependable brand in the early car market. In 1904, Pierce took a giant leap forward when the firm produced its first Great Arrow. The four-cylinder Great Arrow sold for $4,000, making it a luxury car. Pierce rode the success of the Great Arrow for the rest of the decade, and in 1909 the company changed its name to Pierce-Arrow. Pierce-Arrow established itself as the only car company to exclusively produce luxury automobiles, and for the next few decades it would battle Packard in that marketplace. The company is credited with being the first car manufacturer to bring aesthetics to the forefront of the marketing race. Pierce-Arrow employed major working artists, including N.C. Wyeth and J.C. Leyendecker, to render their cars on advertisements that were literally works of art. By 1915, Pierce-Arrow had established itself at the highest echelon of the luxury car market. Along with their fine aesthetics, the cars sported a 6-cylinder, 824.8 cubic-inch engine, America's biggest production engine ever. Pierce-Arrow remained a profitable name through the 1920s, although sales fell steadily due to the company's unwillingness to modernize its 6-cylinder engine. The Depression buried Pierce-Arrow, and thus Time magazine titled its piece on the company, "From Birdcages to Bankruptcy." Still, Pierce-Arrow enjoys a prominent place in car history as America's first great luxury name.
April 27
1936 UAW's Independence Day
The UAW, or United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, gained autonomy from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) on this day in 1936. In doing so, the UAW became the first democratic, independent labor union concerned with the rights of unskilled and semi-skilled laborers. The AFL was seen as America's most powerful labor organization, but it was essentially an institution concerned with guaranteeing the rights of skilled workers, and as such it fought for salary stratification on the basis of skill. The AFL's skilled laborers cared little for the plight of the many thousands of unskilled workers who worked in Detroit's automotive industry. Organized labor in general had been made possible through legislation resulting from the New Deal. In 1935 Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act--also called the Wagner Act after New York Senator Robert Wagner--which guaranteed the rights of laborers to bargain collectively with their employers, and which created the National Labor Relations Board to act as a quasi-judicial tribunal that could argue its decisions in federal court. These rights, however, were impossible to implement for unskilled laborers as large companies continued to discriminate heavily against union sympathizers on the grounds that they were Communists. Nevertheless, the constitutional guarantee of rights was a crucial step that emboldened the AFL to expand its activities. The AFL's craft structure provided no means by which unskilled laborers could obtain bargaining leverage with their employers. UAW members campaigned for autonomy from the overbearing and exclusionary AFL, a right they were provisionally granted in August of 1935. The AFL allowed the autoworkers a national union charter. Unfortunately, AFL president William Green caved in to the demands of national craft union leaders, and the charter he granted the UAW did not even allow the autoworkers to elect their own leaders. Disgruntled auto unionists, angered at the election of an AFL loyalist who knew little about cars, convened in South Bend, Indiana, on this day in 1936 and voted to cast off their AFL affiliation. The newly independent UAW instead affiliated itself with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Considered a renegade institution by the AFL, John Lewis's CIO had been created to foster organization of industrial workers in mass-production industries. The UAW was officially free and democratically controlled, but the strain caused by its difficult birth had left the organization with only thirty thousand loyal members. The union's greatest challenge was yet to come in increasing its membership and organizing to the degree that it could exert force as a collective bargaining entity. Under the lead of Wyndham Mortimer, a Cleveland auto worker who was considered a Communist agitator, the UAW began to organize a drive in Flint, Michigan aimed at securing rights for GM workers. On New Year's Eve of 1936, the famed sit-down strike at GM's Fisher body plant became the center stage for all unskilled labor struggles. GM moved to legally block the strike and evict the workers from its facilities, but unlike strikes of the previous era, the state government, under the direction of Governor Frank Murphy, protected the rights of the workers to bargain collectively. The governor's attention may have been accountable to concurrent Senate hearings on the abusive tactics used by GM on its laborers. The workers invoked the Wagner Act and GM was forced to settle with the UAW, recognizing the union and signing a contract. The event was the first victory by unskilled laborers in America's largest industry.
April 28
1939 Crosley's Miniature
Powell Crosley produced America's first miniature or "bantam" car in 1939. Crosley led a remarkably scattered life which included, in his own words, fifty jobs in fifty years. A born entrepreneur blessed with family money, Crosley engaged in everything from selling novelties to owning the Cincinnati Reds. His greatest love was automobile- making, however, and he considered the production of the Crosley Miniature his greatest achievement. Mass production of the car was stalled until after World War II, but in 1948 he produced twenty-eight thousand cars. The Crosley was a foot shorter and one hundred pounds lighter than the prewar Volkswagen Bug, and far smaller than anything offered by American manufacturers. Unfortunately, Crosley was never able to lower the price of his cars to his intended sticker of $500. His $800 price tag wasn't low enough to convince consumers to purchase a miniature car when they could buy a full-size car for a few hundred dollars more. The Crosley Car Company failed badly and even the injection of Powell Crosley's personal money could not save it. Crosley sold out of his endeavor and retired to dote on his beloved Cincinnati Reds.
April 29
1951 The Intimidator
Dale Earnhardt was born forty-eight years ago today in Kannapolis, North Carolina. The son of a car mechanic who raced late-model stock cars, Dale Earnhardt always wanted to be a racer: "I wanted to race, that's all I ever wanted to do. I didn't care about work or school or anything, all I wanted to do was to work on race cars and then drive race cars." Growing up, Dale followed his father around from event to event, soaking in the atmosphere. Like Richard "The King" Petty, the only man with career credits comparable to Earnhardt's, Dale was born into racing. He dropped out of school when he was sixteen to pursue racing but he didn't make it onto the big scene until he was twenty-eight. Since then he has racked up seventy-one NASCAR Winston Cup victories on the way to a record-tying seven Winston Cup Series Championships. He was the only man to win Rookie of the Year honors and follow up the accolade with a Series Championship. Driving the black No. 3 GM Goodwrench Service Plus Monte Carlo, perhaps the most recognizable stock car of all time, Earnhardt gained his hard-earned nickname, the Intimidator, for his uncompromising driving style. The debate over whether Petty or Earnhardt is the best driver of all time still rages on. Until 1988, Earnhardt had a serious blemish on his record: he had not won at Daytona, the series' biggest race. Earnhardt won that year, but his failure to dominate at Daytona is the most convincing argument that Earnhardt shouldn't be considered the sport's ultimate champion. He continues to race in spite of a horrifying experience at the Darlington Raceway last fall, when he blacked out at the wheel during the pace lap there. His car crashed, leaving him uninjured. Doctors at first linked the blackout to his family's history of heart trouble, which claimed his father, Ralph's, life in 1973. Medical opinions have since established that the blackout was unrelated to heart trouble. Dale's son, Dale Junior, is now racing for his father in the Busch Series, he hopes to live up to his family's fortunes on the track.
(note: Earnhardt died at Daytona Speedway in February 2001)
April 30
1925 Dodge Sold
The Dodge heirs sold Dodge Brothers Inc. to the New York City banking firm of Dillon, Read & Company for $146 million plus $50 million for charity. At the time the sale was reported to be the largest single cash sale in U.S. history. The sale of Dodge was not the result of a downturn in the company's fortune, as Dodge still enjoyed a firm position in the marketplace due to its reputation for quality and reliability. Dodge cars contained more heavy steel by percentage than their competitors; they were prized by doctors and traveling salesmen, who couldn't afford a breakdown during the long trips that were often called of them. Rather, the company's sale resulted from the Dodge Brothers' offspring's unwillingness to manage the firm's affairs. Both Horace and John Dodge died in 1920. During their lifetimes they had run the company personally, explicitly excluding their family members from participation in the company's management. After the brothers' deaths a brief depression in the stock market in 1921 scared the family members into "cashing out" of the company's affairs.
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