This Month in Automotive History

June 1

1917 Liberty Leland
Henry Leland, the founder of the Cadillac Motor Car Company, resigned as company president on this day. Ever since William Durant had arranged for General Motors to purchase Cadillac, Leland and Durant had endured a strained relationship, but Leland’s electric starter had made Cadillac so successful early on that Durant had avoided meddling with the autonomy of his company. Leland’s next great achievement at Cadillac was his supervision of his son’s proposal that Cadillac should introduce a V-8 engine. Previously, Cadillac, and most other American companies, had only offered four-cylinder engines. The in-line six- and eight-cylinder engines experimented with by other companies had proven troublesome and required constant maintenance. Henry’s son, Wilfred Leland, suggested that Cadillac oppose two four-cylinder engines in a V-shaped formation. The idea was not unheard of, as the French automaker DeDion-Bouton had already used such a configuration. But Cadillac aimed to create a more powerful, higher quality V-8 engine. In order to keep the project secret Leland contracted the parts for his new engine to over half a dozen New England firms in such a way that the companies had no idea what the parts were for. They were then delivered to a dummy manufacturing firm called Ideal Manufacturing Company. The new Cadillac car with its V-8 was put on the market in 1914. It was received with a good deal of skepticism, as some people thought that such a complicated engine would create problems for drivers. Nonetheless, the engine proved a great success and was standard in Cadillacs until 1927. The success was followed, however, by the outbreak of war in Europe. Leland had visited the continent a few years earlier as a part of a contingent of engineers. He had returned to America convinced that war in Europe was inevitable and that it would decide the fate of Western Civilization. He was adamant that the United States would become involved sooner or later, and at the outbreak of the war he urged Durant to let Cadillac convert its facilities to the manufacture of aircraft engines, specifically the Liberty engine. The two stubborn men butted heads. Durant refused to respond to Leland’s urgings, and Leland resigned. Durant’s assistant Charles Mott suggested that Leland had not resigned but was fired for other reasons. Whatever the circumstances, Leland left and started the Lincoln Motor Car Company. In 1917 he won the first contract to manufacture Liberty engines for the war effort. Leland worked closely with British, French, and American engineers to design a high-production, high-powered twelve-cylinder airplane engine for the war effort. By the war’s end, Lincoln had manufactured more Liberty engines than any other single company. GM marques Cadillac and Buick also manufactured Liberty engines.

June 2

1970 McLaren Killed
Car racer, designer, and manufacturer Bruce McLaren was killed on this day in 1970 when his McLaren M8D lost its back end and collided with an earthen embankment at the Goodwood race track in England. Born the son of a truck driver in Auckland, New Zealand, McLaren contracted a childhood hip disease that kept him in hospitals for three years of his early life. By the age of fourteen he had recovered fully. His father, a part-time mechanic with an interest in racing, helped Bruce build his first car. Bruce entered his first competitive event, a hill climb, at the age of fifteen. At the age of nineteen he was picked by his mentor, successful Kiwi Grand Prix driver Jack Brabham, to serve as New Zealand’s representative in the Driver in Europe Program. McLaren took quick advantage of the exposure, winning the Formula Two section in his first race at the trying Nurburgring track in Germany. The following year he became the youngest man ever to win a Formula One Grand Prix event, a record that he still holds today. In 1961 he finished a close second in the World Championship race to his team leader at Cooper, Jack Brabham. But Bruce McLaren didn’t make his greatest impact on the track. By 1964 he was building his own racecars and aiding Ford’s design team in its highly successful GT program. McLaren exhibited a gift for car design. In 1966 he won the 24 Hours of LeMans for Ford. In 1965 McLaren started his own Grand Prix racing team. He and close friend and fellow driver Denny Hulme won three races in 1968 in McLaren-Fords. Then McLaren turnd his attention to the sport car racing of the Can-AM Series. As the Can-Am Series grew, so too did the McLaren teams’ domination of the event. After four impressive years at the top of the series, in 1969 the McLaren team posted a clean sheet, winning eleven of eleven races. By competing his car in F-1, Can-Am, and Indy car events all in the same year, McLaren established his team as a success in diverse classes of racing. McLaren was regarded by his peers as a perfectionist. He summed up his attitude toward the dangers of car racing eloquently, "To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone." In 1970, testing his newest Can-Am car, the M8D, McLaren lost his life pushing the limits of his abilities; the racing team that bears his name survives him as the one of Formula One’s dominant forces.

June 3

1864 Ransom Olds Born
Ransom Eli Olds was born to Pliny and Sarah Olds in the northeastern Ohio town of Geneva. The Olds family moved to Lansing, Michigan, when Ransom was sixteen so that Pliny Olds could start his own business. He opened a machine shop called Pliny Olds & Son. The son wasn’t Ransom but his older brother Wallace. Ransom, though, worked in the shop part time, after school and on weekends. He took business courses at the Lansing Business College, but his attention remained in his father’s machine shop. When Ransom turned twenty-one, he bought his older brother’s share of the business. Ransom worked tirelessly. Not long after becoming his son’s partner, Pliny realized Ransom was more capable of taking their family business to another level, and by 1890 Ransom Olds was serving as general manager of the family company. Ransom guessed that the demand for the steam engine would increase through the 1890s and he turned the company’s attention to manufacturing the engines. His guess bore fruit, and it also led Olds to experiment with steam engines as a means for propelling water and road vehicles. It’s not clear when exactly he began working on road carriages—possibly in 1886—and his first vehicles were crude, displaying little outside of existing steam engine technology. His father disapproved of his son’s obsession with road vehicles: "Ranse thinks he can put an engine in a buggy and make the contraption carry him over the roads. If he doesn’t get killed at his fool undertaking, I will be satisfied." Ransom continued his experiments with steam engines, enduring much ridicule, until he decided the steam engine was not the future of the self-propelled vehicle. Nevertheless one of his last steam engines, a 1,200-pound vehicle ostensibly capable of pushing 15 mph, provided the road was flat, gained Olds the attention of Scientific American magazine. Then in 1893 Ransom’s vision took shape when he saw demonstrations of gasoline engines at the Chicago World’s Fair. By 1895 his company had already applied for a patent on its own design of a gasoline engine. Production of the gas-burning engine brought record profits to the Olds’s business. Ransom began experimenting with gas-burning horseless carriages. In June of 1896 he completed a prototype. It wasn’t the first such vehicle—among others, the Duryea’s had already built gas-burning cars—but Olds’s car generated unprecedented interest due, at least in part, to the successful manufacturing company that lay behind it. Olds then raised money to go into production on his car. He incorporated the Olds Motor Vehicle Works separately from P.F. Olds & Son. The venture was largely speculative, fueled by the money of already-rich Lansing businessmen who were willing to part with a small sum in hopes of getting a great return. As it turned out the money wasn’t enough for Olds to go into production. In searching for more capital Olds merged his family business with the Olds Motor Works and sold new shares of their combined stock to raise the money he needed. On March 8, 1899, the Olds Motor Works, the actual grandfather to today’s Oldsmobile, was formed.

June 4

1896 Ford's Quadricycle
At approximately 1:30 A.M. on this day in 1896, Henry Ford test drove his Quadricycle, the first automobile he ever designed or drove. Ford was working at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit at the time that he began building the Quadricycle. He had reportedly seen an article on the gasoline engine in the American Machinist while in the company of friend and fellow engineer Charles King. In King's recollection, Ford claimed: "I want to build one of these." Ford employed the help of his friends in the Detroit engineering community to build an internal combustion engine on his kitchen table. It is important to note to what extent Ford was a visionary and an organizer. He was an engineer, of course, but he didn't, by any means, accomplish his engineering feats alone. Men like King, along with a slew of other engineers, volunteered their time to Ford's projects. King provided Ford with a whole crew of workers who labored in the makeshift machine shop Ford had constructed in his garage behind his Bagley Avenue residence in Detroit. Ford even convinced his neighbor, Felix Julian, to donate his half of the shed to the cause. King was building his own vehicle at the time and actually preempted Ford in testing the horseless carriage in March of 1896. Ford followed King's carriage's test-run on his bicycle. Ford did make one major innovation in building his first vehicle: his decision not to attach an engine to an existing carriage but rather to construct a four-wheel body based on the principles of bicycle manufacturing. Ford completed his Quadricycle early in the morning on this day in 1896. He couldn't wait to test the invention. Only one of his associates, Jim Bishop, was present at the time of the vehicle's completion. In all of his enthusiasm in getting the car together Ford failed to consider that his contraption was wider than the doors of the shed in which he built it. He and Bishop set upon the door and adjacent walls with axes in order to hack an entrance sufficient for the Quadricycle. The 500-pound, two-cylinder vehicle came to life in the alley behind Ford's house. Ford drove it down Bagley Avenue to Grand River Avenue, to Washington Boulevard, where the Quadricycle stopped. Bishop and Ford pushed the automobile to the Edison plant where they replaced a nut and spring that had come loose. The next month Henry drove his vehicle to his father's farm to show it off. His father apparently walked around it cautiously. Later he expressed his doubts to one of his neighbors: "John and William [Henry's brothers] are alright, but Henry worries me. He doesn't seem to be settled down and I don't know what's going to become of him." Little did his father know that his son Henry would do just fine for himself!

June 5

1951 Tee Top Designer
Gordon M. Buehrig was issued a U.S. patent for his "vehicle top with removable panels," an invention that would eventually appear as a "T-top" on the 1968 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.

June 6

1932 Gas Tax
The first gasoline tax levied by Congress was enacted on this day as a part of the Revenue Act of 1932. The act mandated a series of excise taxes on a wide variety of consumer goods. Congress placed a tax of one cent per gallon of gasoline and other motor fuel sold.

June 7

1954 Edsel Team Formed
The Ford Motor Company formed a styling team to take on the project of designing an entirely new car that would later be named the Edsel. The decision came as Ford enjoyed its greatest historical success in the 1950s. The 1954 Thunderbird had outsold its Chevy counterpart, the Corvette, and the consumer demand for automobiles, in all price brackets, was steadily increasing. In exuberant Ford plants signs that had once read "Beat Chevrolet" were changed to a more ambitious tune: "Beat GM." The Ford Motor Company consisted of four brand names: Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, and Continental, listed from lowest to highest in price range. Ford executives believed that there was a gap in the marketplace between the Mercury and the Lincoln, where a new car would compete against GM’s Oldsmobile and Buick lines. In the middle of the 1950s Americans seemed to have an insatiable hunger for high horse-powered, heavily styled cars, with lots of chrome and many accessories. So Ford planned to fill the public’s appetite with a suitable answer. The company spared no expense in the development of its new car, even going so far as to employ famous American poet Marianne Moore to supply possibilities for its name. After an extensive name search and no satisfactory result, somebody suggested that the car be named after Henry Ford II’s father, Edsel. Ford balked at the suggestion initially but later relented on the grounds that his father deserved a tribute, and he urged the car’s designers to live up to his father’s name. Edsel had always had a knack for design, even if his business sense hadn’t always lived up to his father’s expectations. The Edsel project was launched with great fanfare and vigorous advertising. During the years between the car’s conception and its production, the American economy took a downturn. By the time the Edsel was released in 1957, the high end of the car market had once again contracted. Public reaction to the car’s exaggerated styling was tepid at best, with particular objections aimed at the Edsel’s awkward looking "horse collar" grill. Sales for the car started slowly and foundered. Newly appointed company vice-president Robert McNamara was charged with the task of salvaging the operation. Had McNamara held the position years earlier, historians point out, the Edsel project may never have been taken on as McNamara strongly believed Ford should concentrate on the economy car market. McNamara attempted to improve the car’s construction and appearance, but when the attempt failed he was forced to halt production of the car at a disastrous loss of $250 million. To this day the Edsel remains the biggest failure in American car history, "a monumental disaster created for tomorrow’s markets created by yesterday’s statistical inputs." However, history has treated the Edsel more kindly, and its looks are now considered to be an attractive example of 1950s flair.

June 8

1986 Tim Richmond
On this day in 1986 racecar driver Tim Richmond won the first of his seven Winston Cup Series races, a total that would vault him to third place in the Series point race and ultimately solidify his reputation as one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers. Richmond and fellow driver Dale Earnhardt were named co-drivers of the year by NASCAR. Born in Ohio, Richmond started out racing USAC sprint cars and Indy cars, named Rookie of the Year in his first year on each circuit. He turned to NASCAR for the first time while rehabilitating from an injury he suffered in an Indy race, and immediately fell in love with stock car racing. He won his first superspeedway event in 1983, at Pocono International. In late 1985, Richmond got his break with a powerful team when team owner Rick Hendrick selected Richmond to drive his Folger Coffee car. The 1986 season proved to be Richmond’s breakthrough as he and Earnhardt captivated the stock car world with their aggressive driving styles and their contrasting looks off the track: While Earnhardt was the prototypical NASCAR racer, wearing boots and a cowboy hat and he drinking beer on the weekends, Richmond was a true child of the 80s. He wore Armani suits, dated beautiful women, and rubbed elbows with a variety of jetsetters off the track, including actors and rock stars. On the track, Earnhardt and Richmond were both flat out, all the time. Recently asked about Richmond, Earnhardt responded, "I miss him. Period." NASCAR’s executives were less accepting of Richmond’s flamboyance, but they could do little to prevent their newest star from expressing his opinions. The fans, for the most part, loved him, and his teammates and co-competitors respected him. Richmond fell sick during the winter of 1986-87, diagnosed initially with pneumonia. As Richmond struggled to get himself ready for the 1987 season, his condition worsened. When he was diagnosed with AIDS, Richmond’s friends and family were caught off-guard. His team leader and mentor, Rick Hendrick, explained, "It was like my first time … I didn’t know what it actually meant—what the prognosis was. The more you found out … it just killed you." AIDS and the HIV virus were still a mystery to most at that time. Richmond missed the 1987 Daytona 500, ill with double pneumonia, and rumors slowly leaked about Richmond’s condition. The Miller 500 at the Pocono Speedway was Richmond’s first race back. Earnhardt approached him before the race and asked, "You ready to get it on?" Richmond won the race. Fellow drivers Earnhardt, Kyle Petty, and Bill Elliott drove alongside Richmond to offer congratulations, and Richmond burst into tears on victory lane. It was his last victory. In September, 1987, Richmond resigned from Hendrick’s team. Although he attempted to arrange a comeback at Daytona in 1988, NASCAR did everything they could to keep him off the track, falsely accusing Richmond with failing a drug test to continue to keep him off the track. Richmond sued, but later withdrew his case on the grounds that he wanted to keep his condition private. Richmond died in the winter of 1988. Richmond has virtually disappeared in the NASCAR history books. "It all boils down to AIDS," said his friend Kyle Petty. "I don’t care what anybody tells you. Nobody knows how to handle AIDS, especially in a sport as backward-thinking on so many things as this sport is." Undeniably, Tim Richmond was one of the most talented to ever race a stock car.

June 9

1916 Whiz Kid
Robert Strange McNamara was born in San Francisco, California on this day. McNamara received a degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School. At the age of twenty-four, following a brief stint at the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse (now Price Waterhouse Cooper), McNamara returned to Harvard Business School as an accounting instructor. Rejected from the army due to poor eyesight at the outbreak of World War II, McNamara volunteered as an instructor for a Harvard program teaching Army Air Corps officers the principles of systematic management, especially the allocation of personnel, materials, and money. McNamara’s excellence in this field eventually earned him a commission as a Captain in the Army Air Corps, where he was one of the first members of a special unit, the Office of Statistical Control (OSC). Led by Col. Charles Thornton, the OSC was charged with assembling and analyzing data to provide logistical support for American bombers. After the war, Thornton marketed his team’s management skills to private companies. Enter Ford Motor Corporation. Reigning atop a messy, outdated family company registering heavy losses, Henry Ford II was smart enough to recognize that the system he had inherited form his grandfather was in need of an overhaul. He hired Thornton’s group, en masse, to begin work in February 1946. The members of the group, labeled the "Whiz Kids," ranged in age from 26 to 34, signaling a major change in Ford’s stodgy hierarchy. The Whiz Kids instituted a modern economic approach to Ford’s business administration, implementing organizational changes to make planning and production processes more systematic. Six of them eventually became vice-presidents, and two, McNamara and fellow Whiz Kid Arjay Miller, rose to the position of company president. At Col. Thornton’s departure from Ford, McNamara became the de facto leader of the Whiz Kids. He instituted the systematic sampling of public opinion, known now as "market research"; he hired Ford president Lee Iacocca; and he conceived the Ford Falcon, Ford’s most successful car until the release of the Mustang in 1964. A registered republican, McNamara was offered a cabinet position by John F. Kennedy after the 1960 presidential election, and given the choice of becoming Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Treasury, he chose the Defense Department. McNamara remained Secretary of Defense until 1968, when his changing attitude toward the war in Vietnam led him to resign.

June 10

1947 Saab: From the Air to the Open Road
On this day in 1947, Saab introduced its first car, the model 92 prototype. Saab had been primarily a supplier of military aircraft before and during World War II, but with the end of the war, company executives realized the need to diversify the company’s production capabilities. After an exhaustive planning campaign that at one point led to the suggestion that Saab manufacture toasters, company executives decided to start building motor cars. Saab director Sven Otterbeck placed aircraft engineer Gunnar Ljungstrom in charge of creating the company’s first car. Ljungstrom sketched his ideas for an aerodynamic, light-framed, and safe automobile, and then enlisted the skills of noted industrial designer Sixten Sason to translate the sketches into an automobile ready for production. In search of a name for their new car, Saab executives elected to stay with their existing numbering system: Model numbers 1 through 89 were taken up by military aviation projects, and 90 and 91 by commercial aircraft projects, so the first Saab automobile became the "Model 92." The numbering system wasn’t the only idea Saab executives held on to: All Model 92s came in Saab’s standard color, aircraft green. While the prototype Model 92s ran with German-engineered DKW engines, the Saab engine was ready in the summer of 1947. The car received rave reviews from the Swedish press after its unveiling, although the first 92s didn’t hit Swedish showrooms until December of 1949. The Model 92 came equipped with a two-cylinder, two-stroke, twenty-five horsepower engine that propelled the Saab at a top speed of sixty-two miles per hour. After only a month of production Saab began its distinguished history of rally-car racing, entering the 92 in the Monte Carlo Rally. Saab’s durability, handling, and mid-range acceleration lent themselves to the arduous, off-road nature of rally racing, and Saab cars proved to be a force in the world of rally car racing between 1950 and 1980, and again in 1996, after a sixteen-year hiatus from the circuit.

June 11

1939 The Flying Scotsman
Racer Jackie Stewart was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, on this day in 1939. Stewart grew up around cars first with the family business, a successful Jaguar garage, and later when Stewart’s older brother became a well-known racer, first in local events and eventually in the 1953 British Grand Prix and Le Mans. His brother’s injuries at Le Mans lead Stewart’s family to discourage him from racing. He took up shooting instead, and narrowly missed selection to the 1960 Olympic games as a marksman. Stewart’s first racing break came when a family customer asked him to test some of his cars on the Oulten Park track, where Stewart impressed those in attendance with the speed of his trial laps. The track manager offered Stewart a tryout. Stewart went down to the track, hopped in Bruce McLaren’s Cooper F3 car and proceeded to turn laps faster than those that McLaren had posted. Peeved, McLaren returned to the track to eliminate doubt of his professionalism, but again, Stewart put in faster times. Present at the track that day was Ken Tyrrell, the man who would eventually team up with Stewart for Ford’s Formula 1 racing team. At that time, however, Tyrrell didn’t compete in Formula 1, and Stewart first joined fellow Scot and world champion Graham Hill to race at BRM. Stewart won a race his first year on the circuit in 1965 and very nearly won the 1966 Indy 500, where a mechanical failure put him out late in the race. Later that year Stewart’s career was put in jeopardy by a crash at a rain-slicked course at Spa Francorchamps, Belgium. Stewart’s car spun off the track into a ditch, where he was pinned in by the car’s steering wheel and its pinched-in wall. A fuel line had ruptured and Stewart was covered in gasoline. He remained trapped for twenty-five minutes before his teammate Graham Hill managed to get him out, by removing the steering wheel with a spanner Hill had borrowed from a spectator. Stewart explains, "Eventually an ambulance took me to a first aid spot near the control tower and I was left on a stretcher on the floor surrounded by cigarette ends." The ambulance later got lost on the way to the hospital. Stewart was told at the track that he may have suffered spinal injuries, although he later learned that his injuries were not serious. Still, the experience shook him, "I realized that if this was the best we had, there was something sadly wrong: things wrong with the racetrack, the cars, the medical side, the fire-fighting, and the emergency crews. There were also grass banks that [acted as] launch pads, things you went straight into [if you crashed], trees that were unprotected and so on." Stewart began a safety campaign that would continue throughout his entire career. Stewart was known as a precise racer capable of posting consistent results. He won his first World Championship with Ken Tyrrell in 1969, and again in 1971 and 1973. Stewart’s record of 27 Grand Prix wins would stand for twenty years, until it was broken by current record-holder Alain Prost.

June 12

1952 The First American Sports Car
On this day in 1952, Maurice Olley, Chevrolet’s Chief Engineer, completed his chassis, code-named "Opel," which would eventually become the chassis for the 1953 Corvette. The Opel project had been initiated after Harley Earls’ General Motors (GM) design division created models and drawings for a new GM sports car. During testing, a prototype fiberglass car accidentally rolled during testing, with the car’s fiberglass roof remaining structurally intact, leading GM engineers to consider for the first time building an all fiberglass body for one of their cars. As project Opel moved forward, the new sports car took shape as a rear-engined, all fiberglass sportscar, the first in America. In July of 1952, the Corvette got its name after an extensive search through an English dictionary: A corvette was a small-sized, speedy warship of the British Royal Navy. In January of 1953 the Corvette was exhibited as a "dreamcar" at the Motorama Car Show in New York City. The first Corvette, a white convertible with red interior, drove off the assembly line on June 30, 1953. That year the car was produced in limited numbers, but full-scale production began the following year following Ford’s release of the T-Bird at the New York Auto Show in February. The small-car competition from Ford prompted Chevrolet officials to continue Corvette production, in spite of some misgivings due to lagging sales. In 1954 the Corvette was a failure, with some 3,500 cars sold and another 1,200 left unsold at year’s end. Chevy engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, initially brought on to develop the Corvette’s performance, urged his superiors not to admit defeat on the project and to instead create a separate department to oversee the development of the car. From this point forward Arkus-Duntov made turning the Corvette into a legitimate sports car his a personal challenge. He overhauled the engine and drive-shaft, and over the next two years minor adjustments were made to the car’s body and styling. By 1955, the Corvette, equipped with new suspension and a 195 horsepower engine, was tested in disguise at the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb, where it shattered the stock car record with Arkus-Duntov behind the wheel. In February of 1956 Arkus-Duntov drove a modified Corvette V-8 to a two-way stock car record of 150 miles per hour at the Daytona Raceway. While the Corvette would not surpass the T-Bird in sales during the 1950s, it would fulfill GM’s initial expectation in becoming the first American sports car.

June 13

1978 Break-Up
Ford Motor Company Chairman, Henry Ford II, fired Lee Iaccoca from the position of president, ending a bitter personal struggle between the two men. Since his grand emergence into the spotlight with the release of the Ford Mustang in 1964, Lee Iacocca had risen precipitously through the ranks at Ford, ascending to the position of company president in 1970. As president of Ford, Iacocca-- previously known exclusively as a sales and marketing expert--set into motion a rigorous cost-cutting policy that would increase Ford's stagnating annual profit margin. Within four years, he recalls, his policies had earned him "the respect of the one group that had always been suspicious of me: the bean counters." Over the course of the 1970s, Iacocca instituted quarterly reviews of Ford staffers by their superiors. Known as an authoritarian, Iacocca would not take excuses from his employees, and he held each employee personally responsible for their output. His policies proved successful, but as Iacocca became more and more obsessed with making Ford profitable, he neglected to maintain the approval of the family business's volatile boss. Personal relations between the two men turned from distant to ugly. The rift is often explained by Ford's notion of Iacocca as a lower-class hired gun, a gifted immigrant salesman good for business and little else. One Ford public relations spokesperson explained, "Mr. Ford always regarded Mr. Iacocca as a rather vulgar Italian." And all the while, Iacocca believed that his future in the automotive industry rested wholly on his balance sheets. Iacocca admits to becoming blinded by his hefty salary, and to ignoring Ford's poor treatment of him. He claims, though, that "in 1975, Henry Ford started his month-by-month campaign to destroy me." Ford launched company investigations into travel expenses of leading executives. He targeted many of Iacocca's proteges. Iacocca was repeatedly asked, at the risk of losing his job, to fire close friends of his. Iacocca wouldn't resign because he had spent his whole professional career at Ford and, as he puts it, "I wanted that $1 million [salary] so much that I wouldn't face reality." Ford installed a series of new positions to decrease Iacocca's power as company president; finally, in 1978, he called Iacocca into his office to inform him his services were no longer needed. Iacocca stated that Ford gave him no reason for the firing. "It's personal. Sometimes you just don't like somebody," Ford had said. So Lee Iacocca, arguably the automotive industry's most successful executive, was left without a job. He would later agree to run Chrysler.

June 14

1928 Miller Special
Leon Duray drove his Miller 91 Packard Cable Special to a world close-coursed speed record, recording an astonishing top speed of 148.173 mph, at the Packard Proving Ground in Utica, Michigan. Two weeks earlier, Duray had posted a record lap of 124 mph at the Indy 500, a record that stood for ten years until the track was banked. From a mere 91 cubic inches or 1500cc, the Miller's supercharged engine produced 230 hp while weighing in at a svelte 290 pounds. The front-wheel-drive Miller Special never won an Indy 500, but its 1928-1929 results there prompted track officials to ban supercharged engines from the contest for over a decade. The 91 was engineer Harry Miller's crowning achievement. Today, one of Miller's masterpieces sits in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. After the 91s were forced out of Indy, owner Leon Duray took his two Miller cars to Europe and proceeded to set international speed records for cars of similar engine displacement. He drove the 91 at 143 mph over one kilometer and 139 mph over five kilometers. Ettore Bugatti was so impressed with both the Miller's front-wheel drive and its engine design that he bought the cars form Duray in order to study them. Bugatti's later engines borrowed heavily from Miller's innovations to the designs of the combustion-chamber, port, valve, and head. Miller built only eleven of his front-wheel-drive superchargers, and today they are prized antiques. The two cars that Bugatti purchased were discovered, dusty but intact, by a Danish diplomat in a Bugatti warehouse in France in 1954. Auto historian Griffith Borgeson bought the two cars in 1959 and had them shipped to his home in Los Angeles, the city in which the cars had been built. One of those cars sits in the museum at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Harry Miller was, simply put, a legendary genius in the history of American racing. The technology he pioneered with his Miller 91's is still in use today. Miller went bankrupt in 1929 and all of his assets, including his drawings and designs, were sold at auction. One of his associates, Fred Offenhauser, struggled to purchase enough of the drawings and patent rights to carry on what Miller started. From 1922 to 1965, Miller and Offenhauser engines won all but six Indy 500s.

June 15

1986 A Royal Milestone
Richard Petty made his 1000th NASCAR start at the Miller American 400 in Brooklyn, Michigan. Petty’s records of success and longevity will likely never be broken. "The King" is first all-time in wins (200), races started (1,184), top-five finishes (555), top-ten finishes (712), pole positions (126), laps completed (307,836), laps led (52,194), races led (599), and consecutive races won (10). His statistical domination of NASCAR racing is unparalleled in the sports world. Richard, of course, grew up on the NASCAR circuit watching his father, hall-of-famer Lee Petty. Richard started his first race on July 10, 1958, just after his twenty-first birthday. During the early part of his career he normally had to beat his dad to earn victories, and Lee wouldn’t let him have anything for free. Richard explained his accident in his first Grand National race, "Daddy bumped me in the rear and my car went right into the wall." By the late sixties Petty was the dominant figure in stock car racing, with an astounding record of ten consecutive victories in 1967, a year in which he won twenty-seven of forty-eight races. During the late sixties and early seventies, Petty dueled spectacularly with fellow Ford driver David Pearson. Petty’s star power was in large part responsible for keeping NASCAR alive in the lean years of the 1970s. Winston began sponsoring the circuit in 1972, and in that year Petty’s car was the only one to run with factory sponsorship. STP car care products offered "The King" lifetime sponsorship, and for the rest of his thirty-five-year driving career, and long into his career as a team owner, Petty cars have carried the STP red oval. Petty won his last of seven Daytona 500s in 1981. Victories began to dry up over the next few years but Richard’s enthusiasm for racing and his fans kept him running. In 1984, with President Ronald Reagan there to watch, Petty won the Pepsi Firecracker 400 at Daytona raceway to capture his 200th win. The second winningest driver in circuit history, Dave Pearson, won only 105 times. From 1984 to 1992 Petty didn’t win a race, but his name recognition was important to the sport. Not knowing what else to do with himself, The King stayed on the circuit to watch NASCAR become one of America’s most popular spectator sports.

June 16

1917 The Golden Submarine
On this day in 1917, Harry Miller completed the "Golden Submarine," the first of his expensive custom-made racecars that would change the shape of things to come in American auto racing. The Golden Submarine, which carried a then-unimaginable ticket price of $15,000 at its completion, got its gold color as the result of a combination of lacquer and bronze dust. Built for Barney Oldfield, America’s brashest racecar driver, the Golden Submarine had an enclosed cockpit. Oldfield, who helped design the car, thought the closed cockpit would make the car safer if it rolled; he’d lost his close friend Bob Burman in a crash the year before. The Golden Submarine was the first American racecar to possess a steel chassis that was all-electrically welded. Also unique to the Sub was the liberal use of aluminum in engine and body components. The engine—the component that would later define Miller’s career—contained four cylinders and a single overhead cam. It put out 130 horsepower at 290 cubic inches of piston displacement, and, most remarkable for its time, it only weighed 410 pounds. Consider that the car’s competition carried engines that produced around 300 horsepower at over 400 cubic inches of piston displacement, and it becomes clear how forward-thinking Miller was. Prior to Miller’s designs, engines had been getting bigger and bigger. With the use of alloys and revolutionary engineering techniques, he began introducing light cars that handled well but still provided enough power to push them down racing straightaways at speeds comparable to those cars carrying the massive aircraft-type engines. Miller’s engineering and Oldfield’s daring were put on public display in late June of 1917 when Oldfield, in the Golden Submarine, raced arch-rival Ralph DePalma, who drove a conventional Packard with a twelve-cylinder aircraft engine. To start the twenty-five-mile race, DePalma barreled past Oldfield in the first straightaway. After the first turn, however, it became clear that the lighter Golden Submarine was better suited to the track, and Oldfield won by an overwhelming half-minute margin. The Golden Submarine never won the Indy 500—though it ran in 1919, pulling out with engine trouble—but its designs foreshadowed the future of American racing. Miller’s racecar design would go on to dominate Indy for over thirty years.

June 17

1923 Ferrari and the Horse
Enrico Ferrari won his first race, a 166-mile event at the Circuito del Savio in Ravenna, Italy. Ferrari would go on to have an historic career as a driver for Alpha Romeo before being put in charge of their racing division. On this day in Ravenna, Ferrari met for the first time the Count Enrico Baracca and his wife, the Countess Paolina, who would later suggest to Ferrari that he use the prancing horse emblem of the Count and Countess’ son: "Ferrari," remarked the Countess, "why don’t you put my son’s prancing horse on your cars; it will bring you luck." The Countess’ son, Francesco, had been Italy’s premier flying ace in World War I before he was shot down and killed at Mount Montello. On his plane he carried a white shield bearing a prancing black stallion. Ferrari would adopt the emblem, changing the field of the shield to canary yellow in honor of his hometown of Modena.

June 18

1923 Checkers Makes a Play
The first Checker cab was produced by the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company on this day in 1923. Checker Cab has its origins as Chicago-based cab company that in 1920 began buying cars manufactured by the Commonwealth Motor Company. The car bodies for the Commonwealths were in turn manufactured by the Markin Autobody Company of Joliet, Illinois. In 1921 Morris Markin absorbed the Commonwealth Motor Company into his own enterprise, and subsequently discontinued all passenger car manufacturing. Markin moved the new company, which he named Checker Cab Manufacturing Company, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he was able to take over factories previously used by the Handley-Knight and Dort automobile companies. By 1925 Checker, with a production of over one thousand cabs per year, was the largest exclusive cab maker in the country. Their competition, John D. Hertz’s Yellow Cab companies, continued to manufacture passenger cars. In 1933 Checker briefly became a part of businessman E.L. Cord’s empire, until 1937 when the Securities and Exchange Commission charged E.L. Cord and Morris Markin with manipulating the stock of Checker, Parmalee Motors, and Chicago Yellow Cab. Both men denied the charges but agreed to abide by a court order forbidding them to engage in any trading that was violation of securities laws. The same day the court order was issued, Cord disposed of his shares in his far-flung automotive enterprises. Markin retained control of Checker, the only company that had been one of Cord’s holdings to survive the liquidation. In 1958 Checker released the Aerobus, a twelve-passenger stretch cab intended for use as a ferry for air travelers. The following year Checker returned to passenger car production with the introduction of the Marathon, a car similar to the company’s A8 taxi, introduced in 1956. Production of the Marathon never exceeded a few thousand units per year, and sales were limited to a handful of large cities, such as New York, and to the scattered few who liked the idea of owning a car that emphasized interior roominess and durability. Checker was one of the few automotive manufacturing companies that could boast a continuous run of production from the 1920s to the 1980s. In the early eighties, however, production fell to three thousand units per year and the company was losing money. Ironically, Checker had never enjoyed success in the replacement market because one of its earliest advertising claims—that "no Checker Cab has ever worn out"—was largely true. Economic conditions also saw the taxicab companies convert to smaller, more fuel-efficient standard Detroit cars: The 4,000-pound Checker had become a dinosaur.

June 19

1949 Grand Nationals Debut
On this day in 1949, NASCAR staged its first Grand National event at the Charlotte, North Carolina Fairgounds, marking the birth of NASCAR racing as we know it today. In 1946, race promoter Bill France began promoting the event in Charlotte. As he explains it, “I wanted to run a 100-mile national championship race at the fairgrounds, but [local sports editor] Wilton Garrison said I couldn’t call it a national championship race.” Garrison argued that France “might call it a North Carolina championship race, but you have to get some kind of a national organization to sanction it in order to call it a national championship race.” So began Bill France’s dream of creating a national sanctioning body for stock car racing, which would govern points standing as well as organize races in states across the country. During the 1946 stock car season France formed the National Championship Stock Car Circuit, withholding a purse for the point fund, keeping track of standings, attempting to enforce uniform rules, and paying the drivers on time. That year France expanded stock car racing’s range, arranging races all over the South. The 1947 season began with a 160-mile race at Daytona Beach. By the middle of the season France had incorporated more than a dozen tracks into his circuit; he offered a guaranteed purse of $2,000 at each event; and he created a slogan, “Where the fastest that run, run the fastest.” Unfortunately, at that point most of the racecars were modified stock pre-war Fords, and France and his governing body had a nearly impossible time enforcing regulations placed on modification of the car engines. The combination of his success with the NCSCC and his failure to enforce strict rules led him to call a meeting in December of 1947 at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona to discuss a more substantial governing body for stock car racing. What emerged from the meetings was the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR. The 1948 season was a more tightly governed version of the previous year. Nineteen forty-nine saw the sport’s final breakthrough, when France decided that product identification would greatly add to fan interest in stock car racing. As all of the major car companies had released postwar models, France created rules in the off-season that would allow for a Grand National division of NASCAR racing. Only late model, strictly stock cars would be allowed in the Grand National class. A crowd of 13,000 watched as Jim Roper won the inaugural event on the three-quarter mile dirt track at the Charlotte Fairgrounds. The Grand Nationals later became Winston Cup Series events.

June 20

1945 Birth of a Champion Rally Racer
Shekhar Mehta, the only five-time winner of the Safari Rally, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on this day in 1945. The most grueling rally race in the world, The Safari originated in 1953 at the behest of the Royal East African Automobile Association. East African racing clubs had maintained an interest in running an international rally event ever since the road from Nairobi to Johannesburg had become a popular route for endurance tests during the 1930s. Logistical problems prevented plotting a racecourse form Nairobi to Johannesburg, but in 1953, in an unstable Kenya, the Royal East African Auto Club organizers seized on the idea of a race that would remain entirely in East Africa. A racecourse starting and finishing in Nairobi and circumnavigating Lake Victoria was considered ideal. Racing enthusiasts gathered support for the plan by suggesting that the race be held in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s June 2 coronation. Colonial authorities approved the idea, and the race was on. Since that inaugural race the Safari has become one of the world’s premier rally races. Initially running through the east African nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, today the Safari is limited to Kenya for political sovereignty issues. The longest Safari Rally ever, Mehta’s debut race in 1971, covered 3,852 miles of unpaved paths and open country. The event covers land at altitudes ranging from sea level to 10,000 feet above sea level, and while 107 cars began the 1971 race, only thirty-two finished. Mehta won his first Safari Rally in 1973, becoming the second Kenyan to claim the title. He dominated the event in the late seventies and early eighties, winning four Safaris in a row with navigator Mike Doughty guiding their Nissan/Datsun.

June 21

1947 Starting Run of the Mille Miglia
The first post-war Mille Miglia began in Brescia, Italy, on this day in 1947, twenty years after creator Aymo Maggi first gained the approval of the Fascist government in Rome to run a road race from Brescia to Rome and back over Italian roads. The course was plotted for one thousand miles. Italian drivers, racing primarily for Alpha Romeo, dominated the early years of the Mille Miglia, with driver Tazio Nuvolari as the race’s first great champion. In 1929, Mercedes, haunted by racing accidents, chose not to field a team at the Mille Miglia. Their star driver, Rudolf Caracciola, was crestfallen at the prospect of a missing such an important race in his racing prime. Mercedes told him they would give him a car if he wanted to enter the race as a private entry. Caracciola, one of the greatest racers in the world, took them up on their offer and took a four-man crew to Italy. In contrast, the Alpha team employed over 90 mechanics for its Mille Miglia campaign. Nevertheless, the under-manned Caracciola took the victory in dramatic fashion, passing three Alpha cars near the finish line and proving the adage “he who leads at Rome is never first home.” World War II halted the Mille Miglia, and after the war a new generation of racers and teams took the forefront. Moss and Fangio replaced Taruffi and Caracciola, and Ferrari succeeded Alpha. The last Mille Miglia was run in 1958, discontinued after a horrible accident killed Alfonso de Portago and ten spectators. Enzo Ferrari best describes the importance of the Brescia to Rome classic: “The Mille Miglia was an epoch-making event, which told a wonderful lesson. The Mille Miglia created our cars and the Italian automobile industry. The Mille Miglia permitted the birth of GT cars, or grand touring cars, which are now sold all over the world… and proved that by racing over open roads for 1,000 miles, there were technical lessons to be learned by the petrol and oil companies, by the brake, clutch, transmission, and electrical and lighting component manufacturers.”

June 22

1934 Birth of the “People’s Car”
On this day in 1934, Ferdinand Porsche contracted with the Automobile Manufacturers Association of Germany (RDA) to build three prototype “people’s cars” over a ten-month period. The contract was a direct result of Hitler’s personal request to Porsche, and the result, of course, was the Volkswagen. But it would take years for Porsche to accomplish his dream of bringing a small, affordable car to the market. In 1899, at the age of twenty-four, Ferdinand Porsche became one of Europe’s most famous automotive engineers with the introduction of his Porsche-Lohner electric car. It was his first offering to the world, and it was characteristically ingenious. Ferdinand Porsche has been called the automotive world’s answer to “the Natural”; his designs have always been incomprehensibly ahead of their times. At a time when all automotive designers focused all their energies on mustering speed, Porsche’s car came with two separate brake systems, one mechanical and one electric, while still supplying competitive speed. For the next thirty-five years Porsche would strive, often under the auspices of the company then known as Daimler Motors, to produce the smallest, fastest cars in the world. So recognizable was Porsche’s genius that his quest was sadly hindered by outside interference. Consider that in 1932, while first working on the design for a “Volksauto” for Zundapp Motors in Germany, Porsche was approached by a group of Russian engineers with a remarkable offer. Having studied his work, the Russian engineers had deemed Porsche the greatest automotive engineer and as such offered to take him back to Russia to show him the state of their country’s industry. Porsche didn’t know what they wanted but, flattered by the invitation, he went along. He was received like royalty, an honored guest of the state. The Russians’ offer was inconceivable: they offered him the position of State Designer of Russia, a position in charge of all automobile, tank, and electric vehicle production. Every one of his designs would be realized by the country’s vast sources of material wealth. All he had to do was sign a contract. Porsche respectfully declined, but such was his prowess that only two years later Adolf Hitler approached Porsche with the project of designing a people’s car for the State of Germany. Because making a small, affordable car was Porsche’s dream, he jumped at the offer. The Volkswagen prototype was completed in 1936, but war in Europe erupted before production could begin. Porsche was asked to supply tank designs, which he did, creating the “Tiger,” “Ferdinand,” and “Mouse” tanks for the German army. Hitler moved Porsche from Stuttgart to the remote Austrian town of Gmund, to keep him away from Allied bombing. At the end of the war the U.S. Army captured Porsche, interrogated him, and released him to his villa in Gmund. French officials later arrested him for his participation in the war cause and Porsche served a two-year sentence at the Renault estate in France. He was finally released in 1947, and he returned to Gmund. There he undertook, with his son Ferry, the project of building a small performance car with his own name. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen had gone into mass production. The first Porsche, the 356, was a convertible sports car version of the Volkswagen with much improved suspension.

June 23

1996 Zanardi’s Resurgence
Alessandro Zanardi, former Formula One driver, won his first CART IndyCar race in Portland, Oregon, in his Reynard-Honda on this day in 1996. Zanardi made a name for himself in his native Italy by winning the Kart-racing championship in both 1985 and 1986, followed by a win at the European Karting Championship in 1987. His performance earned him a spot on the Alfa-Romeo Formula Three team. Zanardi performed well in Formula Three competition, finishing second to Christian Fittipaldi two consecutive seasons. His strong finishes attracted the attention of a handful of Formula One teams, but Alessandro’s successful run stalled during his three races with Formula One’s Minardi and failed to improve the following season in an underpowered Lotus car. His slow decline scared teams off from the driver many once thought to be the sport’s next superstar. Zanardi left European racing and instead took up IndyCar racing. His driving style immediately gelled with the high-speed ovals. Zanardi suffered a high number of crashes in his first two years on the CART circuit, but he had his fair share of spectacular results also, earning himself Rookie of the Year honors. After a successful campaign in 1997, Zanardi blew away the rest of the IndyCar field in 1998, winning seven races and taking the points championship. Having regained his confidence and eager to take on a new challenge, Zanardi returns to Formula One racing with the Williams team in 1999. Now a seasoned veteran, it will be interesting to see what Zanardi, once highly touted for his passing ability, will be able to accomplish for Williams.

June 24

1900 Locomobiles Lead to “Motorized” Parks
Oliver Lippincott became the first motorist in Yosemite National Park when he drove there in his Locomobile steamer. Lippincott would start a trend with his visit, as motorists increasingly chose to drive to National Parks, avoiding the more time consuming train and coach rides. By 1901 a number of other motorists had made the trip to Yosemite, mostly in Locomobiles. A personal account survives from motorist William A. Clark, of San Francisco, California, who, with his wife, manned the fifth car ever driven into the park. Clark eloquently expressed the miraculous feeling of climbing to the elevation of 7,500 on the Big Oak Flat Road: “Individually our souls were inspired; mentally, we were enchanted; personally, we could say nothing, for words fail when the Creator lays before us the sublime in the highest sense.” And then his arrival in the Yosemite Valley, Clark described a less sublime, but equally sympathetic, brand of satisfaction, “We ran our machine into the midst of a circle of Eastern tourists, seated around a large campfire. To say that the apparition of an automobile suddenly appearing among them called forth general applause and hearty congratulations but feebly expresses it.” The automobile is in large part responsible for creating the uniquely American culture of the National Park.

June 25

1956 Last “True” Packard Manufactured
The last 1956 Packard automobile was produced, marking the end of production at Packard’s Connor Avenue plant in Detroit, Michigan. Packard would continue to manufacture cars in South Bend, Indiana until 1958, but for those familiar with Packard, the last 1956 model is considered the last true Packard car. In 1902, a group of Detroit investors led by Henry Joy purchased Packard from its founder James Ward Packard and moved the company to Detroit. The following year Joy hired industrial designer Albert Kahn, the pioneer of reinforced concrete, to build a new production facility for the Packard Motor Company. The first Packard cars--including “Old Pacific,” the first car to travel across the United States--were affordable, durable single-cylinder vehicles. But Packard quickly moved up the pricing ladder, offering four-cylinder engines. By the 1916 release of the revolutionary V-12 Twin Six, Packard had established itself as the country’s leading luxury car manufacturer, renowned for its hand-finished attention to detail. The release of the Twin Six allowed Packard to quadruple output over a period of one year, and Packard quickly became the largest truck supplier to the Allied Forces during World War I. The 1920s were the company’s hey-day. Huge, sleek Packards were a perfect fit for the decadent U.S. market. Conversely, the Depression heavily damaged Packard’s part of the market. By the middle thirties Packard sales had dropped dramatically, leading Packard President Alvan Macauley to make the drastic decision to develop and produce a lower-priced car. Although the move would initially bolster Packard’s sales considerably, historians argue that producing lower quality cars heavily damaged the most valuable brand reputation in the automobile industry. World War II saw Packard convert to war production earlier than most companies. Packard’s Twin Six was adapted into the Liberty Aircraft engine, by far the most important single output of America’s war time “arsenal for democracy.” Though Packard was only the third largest producer of the engine, the Liberty enhanced Packard’s reputation considerably. After the war, Packard had a difficult time converting back to passenger car production. The post-war “seller’s market” kept Packard alive, but it soon became clear that the independent car companies without specialization were doomed by their relatively high production costs relative to the so-called “Big Three” of auto production (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler). Had Packard remained strictly a luxury car company, it may have been able to catch hold of a post-war niche, but instead, by 1954, Packard’s output had fallen to a dismal low. General Motors and Ford were engaged in a brief price war that took its toll on the independents. Packard merged with the much larger Studebaker Corporation with the hope of cutting its production costs. Together, Packard-Studebaker was the fourth largest manufacturer of cars. The merger failed to help the fate of either company, however, and in 1956 Packard-Studebaker President James Nance suspended Packard’s manufacturing operations in Detroit.

June 26

1906 First Grand Prix Takes Off
The first French Grand Prix--the first race of its kind to be held anywhere--was staged in Le Mans by the Automobile Club of France on this day in 1906. Hungarian driver Ferenc Szisz took first place in a ninety horsepower Renault. Szisz’s thirteen-liter Renault covered the 768 miles of rural dirt roads at an average speed of sixty-three miles per hour. While the Renault’s drive shaft was less advanced than others in the race, the car boasted the important innovation of removable tire-carrying rims. Tire changes with removable rims took around four minutes to change, as opposed to fifteen minutes required to change fixed rim tires. Szisz stopped his car nine times to replace tire punctures, but he was still able to finish thirty-two minutes ahead of second place driver Nazzaro’s Fiat. The French Grand Prix covered 1200km over two days, and was run under a new set of rules that would become a standard element of Grand Prix racing. The Automobile Club of France stipulated that all cars were to weigh no more than 2204 pounds; three cars could be entered by each manufacturer; and each car could be operated by a two-man crew. The rules regarding the weight of the cars encouraged the entry of lightweight cars with absurdly large engines. The Panhard entry, for example, had a four-cylinder engine with a displacement of 18,279cc and pistons the diameter of pie plates. While the leading cars were all hitting speeds close to 100 miles per hour, their nose-heavy weight distribution, lightweight chassis, and primitive tires made them nearly impossible to handle. By 1908 the Automobile Club of France had finally worked out a sensible set of rules to govern the car entries. The contestants of that year’s French Grand Prix had to drive cars with a minimum weight of 2425 pounds and a maximum engine displacement of thirteen liters. This guaranteed that all the cars had a modicum of structural integrity, and it imposed a limit of around 105 horsepower. Still, with cars hitting top speeds of 105 miles per hour, racing on rutted dirt and gravel roads with poor tires and two-wheel brakes, Grand Prix racing was a perilous venture. Grand Prix crowds added another element of risk, typically lined the roads and craned their necks to watch the drivers barrel down at them. Grand Prix racing was effectively banned between 1908 and 1912 due to the mounting number of fatalities incurred on both drivers and spectators.

June 27

1990 NASCAR’s Days of Thunder
Paramount Motion Pictures released Days of Thunder, a film created by the team that brought the world Top Gun, on this day in 1990. In Days of Thunder Tom Cruise stars as Cole Trickle, a brash young stock car racer with more skill than brains. He gets a ride from team owner Tim Daland (Randy Quaid) and sets out to take the NASCAR establishment by storm in his Mello Yello-sponsored car.

June 28

1964 Dan Gurney Wins French Grand Prix
Racecar driver Dan Gurney won the French Grand Prix in his Brabham BT7, on this day in 1964. This victory was Gurney’s second Grand Prix win, adding to his fifteen-year career total of over thirty Formula One racing victories. Gurney, who honed his driving skills slaloming through orange trees in Riverside, California, is widely renowned for his accomplishments in nearly every area of racing, including Grand Prix, Indy Car, NASCAR Stock cars, and Sports Car racing. The only driver besides Mario Andretti to win races in each of the major motorsports categories, Gurney has raced in twenty different countries, drove twenty-five different cars, and won forty-eight races. In 1965, Gurney started All-American Racers, a racecar manufacturing and design company, with partner Carroll Shelby. One of the original founders of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), Gurney also developed the “Gurney flap,” an Indy racecar part, and introduced the use of a full-face helmet to Indy and Grand Prix racing. In the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, Gurney took first place in a car he built himself--the last Formula One Championship race that he would take part in before retiring from racing in 1970.

June 29

1957 Racing Worlds Collide
Giuseppe Bacciagaluppi, managing director of the raceway Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, staged the first race at his newly remodeled track, bringing the two racing "worlds" together with a match race between the top ten Indy Car drivers and the top ten Formula One drivers in the world. The Monza, as it was called, enjoyed its reputation for being Europe's fastest racetrack. Driver Jimmy Bryan of the United States won the "Two Worlds Trophy" there, driving a Salih roadster and racing at 160 miles per hour. The race did little to settle the dispute as to where the world's best drivers reside--on the high speed ovals of the United States or on the curvy Grand Prix tracks of Europe? In those days many racers bridged the gap between the two worlds--driver Jim Clark is a case in point, winning at Indy in the same year that he captured the Formula One crown. Today it is widely held that the world's best drivers compete on the Formula One circuit, though the specialized cars of today make the two types of racing more difficult to compare.

June 30

1969 Midnight Rambler
On this day in 1969, the last of 4,204,925 Ramblers was produced, ringing in the final hour for the storied car line. The Nash Rambler had originally been developed by George Walter Mason, after World War II when Mason realized before anyone else that the post-war "seller's market" would evaporate once the market was again saturated with cars. Mason foresaw the difficulty that independent car companies would experience once they were faced with head to head competition with the Big Three's massive production capabilities. It was Mason's theory that to compete with the Big Three the independents needed to market a different product. He developed a number of smaller cars including the Rambler, the Nash-Healey (a collaboration with British Healey), and the Metropolitan. None of the cars managed to capture the American market. But years later, after Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson merged to become AMC, the Rambler finally caught on as a sub-compact car. George Romney, Mason's protégé, coined the term "gas-guzzling dinosaur" to describe the Big Three's products. Romney led a personal ad campaign promoting the AMC Rambler as an efficient, reliable car. His campaign was immensely successful, and the Rambler single-handedly kept AMC alive during impossible times for independents.