Showing posts with label Icon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Icon. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
the famous classic car chassis designer Art Morrison, was Army infantry in Vietnam! His tour ended in January 1968, less than a week before the Tet Offensive
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
someone finally pulled the Uncertain-T out of decades of storage and it's going to be unveiled at the Grand National Roadster Show, and is now part of the Galpin Collection
in late 2023, the car's owner made contact with Boeckmann, and expressed a desire to see the T restored and ensconced in the Galpin collection.
Friday, October 13, 2023
Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the Austrian Army and became a tanker in 1965.
Before he moved to the US to enjoy massive success as a bodybuilder, movie star and politician, the future Governator had to perform military service back home. In 1965, an 18-year-old Schwarzenegger began his national service in the Austrian military, where he opted to train as a tank driver.
Looking back, Schwarzenegger reflects, “I was an 18-year-old kid, still really not ripe enough I would say, to take on the responsibility of a 50-ton tank. But there I was, I was going through tank driving school, I passed easily, I was very very excited and enthusiastic, studied everything about the tank. Then I had my own tank, I started driving the tank, it was wonderful.”
After retiring from bodybuilding, Schwarzenegger moved into acting and wound up becoming one of the biggest box office stars of the 80s. By the 90s, he made his first side-step into politics, enlisted by President George HW Bush to chair a Presidential committee on fitness – and during this time, nostalgic for his army days, Schwarzenegger had a fanciful idea.
Reflecting on his love for his old M47 tank, “I said to myself, ‘well, now they don’t need it anymore… they’ve become obsolete.’ So I asked the Austrian army if I can have it back.”
Looking back, Schwarzenegger reflects, “I was an 18-year-old kid, still really not ripe enough I would say, to take on the responsibility of a 50-ton tank. But there I was, I was going through tank driving school, I passed easily, I was very very excited and enthusiastic, studied everything about the tank. Then I had my own tank, I started driving the tank, it was wonderful.”
After retiring from bodybuilding, Schwarzenegger moved into acting and wound up becoming one of the biggest box office stars of the 80s. By the 90s, he made his first side-step into politics, enlisted by President George HW Bush to chair a Presidential committee on fitness – and during this time, nostalgic for his army days, Schwarzenegger had a fanciful idea.
Reflecting on his love for his old M47 tank, “I said to myself, ‘well, now they don’t need it anymore… they’ve become obsolete.’ So I asked the Austrian army if I can have it back.”
To receive his tank, he had to obtain permission from the Austrian government, the Pentagon, and the US military.
With the help of high-ranking White House figures Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, Schwarzenegger was indeed able to get the very tank he had driven all those years earlier, paying $20,000 to transport it to his US home.
Understanding that the spectacle of a tank’s destructive power is a novelty to most people, Schwarzenegger starting putting his tank to good use at charitable events, including a 2014 fundraiser in which one lucky raffle winner got to head out to LA to run things over in Schwarzenegger’s tank. (This is the vehicle’s only destructive power, as its gun has been disabled.)
Understanding that the spectacle of a tank’s destructive power is a novelty to most people, Schwarzenegger starting putting his tank to good use at charitable events, including a 2014 fundraiser in which one lucky raffle winner got to head out to LA to run things over in Schwarzenegger’s tank. (This is the vehicle’s only destructive power, as its gun has been disabled.)
As Schwarzenegger explained “I’m very passionate about after-school programs, which I’ve been doing nationwide for the last twenty-some years. And we always need money so we can enroll more kids in after-school programs. Here we found a way of having people participate and pay, and we raised through this fundraiser over a million dollars.”
Schwarzenegger continues to use the tank’s pulling power to get kids to participate in the after-school program. “I bring kids out here from the after-school programs. When they stay in school their reward is to come out here and drive tanks with me,”
Schwarzenegger’s association with tanks endures. 2021 saw a petition launched on Reddit to make Schwarzenegger part of video game World of Tanks. In response, Schwarzenegger did indeed collaborate with the makers of the game on a special event.
Monday, May 15, 2023
Chuck Berry burst onto the music scene with rockabilly-style "Maybellene," in 1955. But just a couple years before he made became the legendary rocker, he was working at the Fisher Body Plant in St Louis, that would be in 1953, when that plant was assembling Corvettes
St. Louis Truck Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory that built GMC and Chevrolet trucks, GM "B" body passenger cars, and the 1954–1981 Corvette models in St. Louis. Opened in the 1920s as a Fisher body plant and Chevrolet chassis plant, it expanded facilities to manufacture trucks on a separate line. During World War II, the plant produced the DUKW amphibious vehicles for the military. Another expansion was added for the Corvette line in 1953.
The song reached No. 1 on Billboard's R & B chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.
1955 was an amazing year for music:
Rock and Roll's first #1 hit Bill Haley "Rock Around The Clock".
Bo Diddley debuts on national television on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.
Elvis Presley is signed to major label RCA Records
For the song to get airplay in New York on the influential Alan Freed radio show in WINS, Alan Freed traded the airtime, it was played for 2 straight hours, for the song's copyright, and song writing credit.
That's one aspect of what Payola was, you pay the radio people, and they play your record.
If it's a really good song, they would pull a stunt like adding themselves to the writing credits, for a perpetual income, from the work of songwriters and singers that hadn't made any deal at all.
In April 1953, at the height of his Cleveland popularity, Freed drove his car into a tree after a late broadcast. His face required 260 stitches and 12,000 dollars’ worth of plastic surgery, but five weeks later he resumed his broadcasts from a hospital bed.
That same year, he plugged the Orioles’ record, ‘Crying In The Chapel’, the first R&B record to make the pop Top Twenty. The day after Freed’s repeated spins, the disc sold 30,000 copies in Cleveland; that so many copies were readily available appears evidence of some prior agreement. Dubious financial arrangements seemed confirmed when, years later, it was revealed that Jerry Blaine, owner of the Orioles’ Jubilee label, held the mortgage on Freed’s house.
Freed also worked at WABC in 1958 but was fired from that station on in 1959, after refusing to sign a statement for the FCC that he had never accepted payola bribes (at the time, the lid blew off the tv quiz show racket, and Freed was a presenter on one of those shows)
Ugly, ain't it.
In the early 1960s, Freed's career was destroyed by the payola scandal that hit the broadcasting industry, as well as by allegations of taking credit for songs he did not write.
In 1964 Freed was indicted by a federal grand jury for tax evasion and ordered to pay $38,000 in taxes on income he had allegedly not reported. Most of that income was said to be from payola sources
(lets say that the word taxes implies that the 38k was 20 percent of the payola... that would mean he had been paid 190k in cash, and blew it all on booze and lawyers to keep him out of jail for inciting a riot in Boston. That's nearly 200k, in what the govt THOUGHT he'd been paid, the real number was likely a lot more. That's 200k, in 1960 money. More than 2wice what the president of the USA made.)
Alan Freed died in 1965, alcoholism. Soupy Sales, once remarked: ‘In fact, Freed was always drunk but it was alright … he could handle it.’
He wasn't all bad, he certainly was antiracist in the era of segregation.
In 1986, more than 30 years after he wrote "Maybellene," Chuck Berry was finally credited as the song's sole composer.
I love the song Johnny B Goode. Might be my favorite 50s rock song
I set out a couple hours ago to dive into what Chuck Berry did at the Fisher Body Plant in St Louis before he launched his music career, but diving into a story is like trying to find a sentence in the internet, rarely does it show up, but everything related to it comes up first
Chuck Berry was the first person selected for the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. He WAS the 1ST selected, but only among the first inducted, maybe that was alphabetical, I don't know.
NASA, the scientists, and Carl Sagan picked 'Johnny B. Goode' as the representation of music from the United States to send into space. Then, when he got the Kennedy Centre honour
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Happy Birthday Willie Nelson, and Dale Sr
my favorite Willie Nelson song was introduced to me by my paternal grand mother
I posted about Merle in 2016, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/04/merle-haggard-was-legend-in-his-own.html
but I don't remember posting about Willie before
Monday, April 11, 2022
Thursday, April 07, 2022
Leo Burnett, absolute legend in the advertising and marketing world. He was a client’s dream, and purchased 100 shares of stock in every new client.
Leo entered university in 1910 and graduated four years later with a degree in journalism. (He paid for his education working as a night editor of a small newspaper, and by lettering show cards for a department store.(he was a legit signpainter!))
He was hire to edit a house magazine for the Cadillac Motor Car Company
During World War I, Burnett joined the Navy for six months. His service was mostly at Great Lakes building a breakwater, a fact he later told his children "caused a great deal of agitation among the German High Command and was probably responsible for the loss of Verdun."
After the USN, Burnett returned to Cadillac. A few employees at Cadillac formed the LaFayette Motors Company – getting Burnett to move to Indianapolis to work for the new firm as advertising manager
In 1955, the year the Marlboro Man campaign debuted, sales of Malboro hit $5 billion -- a 3,241% increase over 1954's sales.
https://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/leo-burnett-chicago-goes-through-a-round-of-layoffs-as-philip-morris-pivots-away-from-cigarettes/153856/
He started his own advertising agency at age 42, in 1935, at the depths of the Depression, by selling his home. He nurtured it, loved it and saw it grow into the fourth largest agency in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world.
After the shock of Pearl Harbor, Leo plunged into work for The War Advertising Council. One of his first acts was volunteering the agency’s time in the crusade to collect scrap metal for the war effort.
Philip Morris USA, and its signature brand Marlboro, was one of the agency’s oldest and most historic clients, with Leo Burnett since 1954, when PM wanted to shift it's image away from it's decades as a woman's smoke
Burnett created The Marlboro Man to help sell a more masculine image for the first cigarette brand with a filter, and a Marlboro Man starred in nearly every major campaign for approximately 50 years
Burnett firmly believed in the superiority of images over words and in the power of visuals in creating brand identity and his great imagination led him to the creation of fantastic characters who are still recognized and associated with the brand they represent today. Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man - just a couple examples
When Burnett retired, he also left his agency teams with a speech to top all speeches. In the speech, Burnett specifically calls for his name to be removed from the premises, if/when the place no longer cherishes ideas and the people who have them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Happy 100th birthday to Alex Xydias on March 22nd. Now you have a couple days to figure out how to get birthday wishes to him
there are only a few of the original hot rodders still around.... Isky, Ivo, and Gene Winfield are the only others I can think of.
Alex graduated from jr high with Judy Garland and Jason Robards. He went to Fairfax High School with Mickey Rooney and Ricardo Montalbán.
While riding his bicycle around Hollywood running errands for his mom, he was sent to a market on La Brea to buy a sack of potatoes. Coincidentally he happened on a gas station and repair shop at La Brea and Oakwood that had Midget race cars in the back shop and Alex was fascinated watching the Midget cars being maintained. Years later he would learn that the Brea Wood Garage was operated by Vic Edelbrock.
Alex Xydias is a WWII vet, as radio operator, top turret gunner, and engineer on a B-17, worked on P-40s and B-25s as a mechanic, was the founder of the So Cal Speed shop in 1946, El Mirage and Bonneville racer (and record setter) in a personally-built roadster, P 51 belly tanker, coupe, and streamliner... one secret to his success was a mixture of 40 percent nitromethane.
And he was at the first Bonneville meet in 49
And was the Car Craft publisher.
And he or his cars made the cover of Hot Rod magazine 4 times in the 50s
And as a director, he helped launch an industry trade show that would eventually grow become the annual SEMA Show.
And he partnered with Mickey Thompson and launched the SCORE Off-Road Equipment trade show.
Saturday, September 25, 2021
I came to car fascination, and so Cal, too late to learn about Earl Scheib 1st hand
Earl A. Scheib, whose commitment to painting cars at rock-bottom prices led to a chain of more than 200 shops in about 40 states and whose television commercials made him an icon of Southern California’s car culture, died Saturday. He died at age 85, in 1992
He spent his retirement in Baverly Hills with a thoroughbred horse racing stable of 45v acres in Chino
Scheib and his company, headquartered in Beverly Hills, were continually hounded by county district attorneys and the Federal Trade Commission, who doubted the veracity of his claims. Only a few colors were available for the special price, they said, and the price was not special because it was the everyday cost, not a markdown from anything higher.
“It is my sincere opinion,” Scheib wrote The Times after one debacle with the FTC in 1963, “that $29.95 is a special price as we have not raised our price in 27 years, still giving the public their choice of any color.”
He changed a word here or there as various authorities cracked down on his popular advertisements. But he said the minor changes would not affect his sales, and they did not.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-01-me-5781-story.html
Earl Scheib Paint & Body is the world's largest company-owned and operated auto-painting and body repair service, painting more than 15,000 cars and trucks every year. Made famous in the early years by Earl's slogan, 'I'll paint any car, any color for $29.95. No Ups! No Extras,' the company has painted more than 10 million cars over its 62 years in business, and continues to adhere to Earl's original commitment of offering the best price in town on auto painting. A commitment they guarantee.
Earl A. Scheib's association with automobiles began in the automobile mecca of southern California in the 1920s. After graduating from Los Angeles High School in the late 1920s, Scheib secured a job as a gas station attendant rather than pursuing college. Through numerous oil and tire changes completed for the General Petroleum Co., Scheib gained valuable experience. Soon Scheib branched off onto his own, purchasing his own service station in Los Angeles. Scheib fell into auto painting rather by accident. Customers frequently asked Scheib about auto painting shops, so Scheib decided to paint a few cars in the station's garage during the evening hours when the station was closed. What began as a small, after-hours endeavor soon blossomed, and Scheib could not keep up with demand. He thus sold his gas station and in 1937 opened Earl Scheib Paint and Body on a Los Angeles street corner near Beverly Hills.
Scheib was the first to introduce production painting of automobiles in the United States. Touting low prices of $29.95 for sedans and $24.95 for coupes, Scheib seriously undercut competitors' prices, which generally ran a few hundred dollars to paint an automobile. Because of the rock-bottom prices, customers rushed to Scheib's shop, reportedly causing traffic snarls that required assistance from the police. Open daily, Scheib and his ten employees painted between 150 and 210 cars per week during the early years.
Earl Scheib hit a snag in the 1940s with the advent of World War II. The war generated a great demand for paint, and paint supplies in the United States grew thin. Scheib was forced to lease a gas station to make ends meet, and he fought to keep his business open. In 1946, however, paint rationing ended, and the auto painting business experienced tremendous growth and popularity. Scheib opened additional stores in the San Fernando Valley, located just outside of Los Angeles, to accommodate the demand.
Scheib, credited as being the first spokesperson for his own company, handled all advertising and developed and wrote his own television commercials. Scheib believed viewers would find his ads more convincing and genuine if he spoke directly to the viewers about the company's offerings. ( I wonder if this influenced Cal Worthington?)
Car owners were choosing to keep their cars longer, and this trend was reflected in Scheib's sales; in the early 1980s the company's sales increased an average of 17.6 percent per year, and between 1982 and 1985 the firm's stock quadrupled. By 1985 there were 275 Earl Scheib stores, ranging from Hawaii to New York.
After reaching record sales of $69 million in 1987, Earl Scheib entered a period of decline. The company's 'redo rate' was 22 percent in 1995
https://www.company-histories.com/Earl-Scheib-Inc-Company-History.html
(photographed by the famous John Margolies)
In 2010, Earl Scheib, Inc. announced it ceased its operations nationwide. The company, as expected, was dumped by management now that no descendant of Earl still remained in the company, and it was was purchased by investment firm in 2009 for $8 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, who, as expected, auctioned off all assets for a profit. The shops are now independently owned and operated, voiding all customer warranties.
https://www.bodyshopbusiness.com/earl-scheib-inc-ceases-operations/
Monday, March 08, 2021
Sunday, February 14, 2021
Dean Batchelor
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, probably the international premiere collector-car competition, has a hot rod class-winning trophy named after Dean Batchelor.
An active hot rodder before World War II, Arthur Dean Batchelor served in a B-17 in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a radio man and gunner, was shot down over Munich in 1944 and they crash landed, and he became a POW for a year.
https://b17flyingfortress.de/en/b17/42-38025-flak-happy/42-38025/
Dean Batchelor joined the Army Air Corp in 1942 and became one of the ten needed to outfit a B-17 Flying Fortress. Once in England, Batchelor (at age 22) became a gunner & radio man in the 92nd Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force. The B-17 they had been assigned had already taken its prior crew on 25 missions. The plane, named Flak Happy, performed better than any B-17 they had flown in training and Dean had always said that it was because their flight mechanic was a “Hop Up” guy.
The Flak Happy completed 12 missions with Dean on board and never saw a German aircraft. However, the Germans were excellent with their anti-aircraft guns and upon return to friendly territory, Dean would inevitably find holes all over the aircraft. In fact, the crew’s navigator ( I believe this was Kevork Ghourdjian) was replaced for a mission scheduled on July 16, 1944 after being injured by flak. (remember that D Day was June 6th 1944)
Here he is, confirmed as the top row, 1st on the left.
Their mission was to knock out a BMW plant and stop its aircraft making business.
The crew approached the target at 25,000 feet. Flak hit from seemingly every direction – both engine #1 and #2 were severely damaged. The pilot was able to feather the #1 engine, but the #2 engine was unresponsive to any commands. They dropped their bombs and headed for an emergency landing in Switzerland. The Flak Happy wouldn’t make it.
The crew ended up crash landing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Upon approach, both wings were torn off by sturdy trees. As they slammed against the ground, the fuselage broken into two. It was as violent as you can imagine, but amazingly the entire crew survived without injury. However, the Flak Happy was not quite out of the woods yet.
Surrounded by germans, the crew found themselves on a 9 hour flight to Munich.
The Russians were moving in fast to liberate, but the Germans decided to put their prisoners of war in motion. They marched 10,000 men a total of 487 miles over 80 days. Dean kept a log of the entire journey. They stayed in barns and open fields during the winter months of Europe.
He had diarrhea for 28 days in a row. He lost 30 pounds. As other men got sick, they were marched off and never seen again. Finally, the group reached U.S. troops and the nightmare was over. Dean and crew survived.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=6813
https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/wanting-to-find-photos-of-a-ww2-b-17-42-38025.14422/
After the war was over, he bought a 32 roadster (I wonder if someone has that in their garage right now?) into which he installed a 1947 Mercury flathead V-8 with Navarro heads, an Edelbrock intake manifold and Clay Smith camshaft.
During the week--as he attended industrial design classes at the Chouinard Institute in Los Angeles and worked at Lockheed assembling planes
With a degree in industrial design, Batchelor designed the innovative, record-setting So-Cal Streamliner (with Alex Xydias, founder of the So-Cal Speed Shop) and survived a terrible 150-mph crash when it flipped at high speed.
Batchelor even became a member of the Road Runners, that famous SCTA club that included such pioneers as Wally Parks, Ak Miller and Vic Edelbrock.
He also made his mark designing the winning Hill-Davis and Shadoff Special Streamliners. These cars, which set FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) records, were hand-built by backyard California hot rodders and were faster than the vaunted pre-war land-speed-record cars built by Germany’s Auto Union.
In 1952, he became the editor of Hop Up, which led to a two-year stint at Motor Life and then on to Road & Track
His post-racing career included work as a mechanic, as a historian at the National Automobile Museum in Reno.
Later he wrote critically acclaimed books on Ferrari, Porsche and racing pioneer Briggs Cunningham, along with the definitive history, The American Hot Rod, completed the night before he died.
I didn't know until now that the Motor Press Guild gives awards annually but it seems they only do so to their own members, and one is the Dean Batchelor Award for Excellence in Journalism.
There are a few other MPG awards, awarded at the Motor Press Guild’s annual Dean Batchelor Awards dinner, the MPG Best of the Year Feature Article, Book, Video Review, and Feature Video
There is also the Bob D’Olivo Award for Photography
https://www.history.com/news/8-hot-rod-heroes-burke-batchelor-muldowney-roth-coddington
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/dean-batchelor
B-17 #42-38025 / Flak Happy
Delivered Cheyenne 17/11/43; Gr Island 8/12/43; Presque Is 12/12/43;Assigned 327BS/92BG [UX-Q] Podington 4/1/44
Missing in Action Munich 16/7/44
with Pilot Earl Johnson,
Co-pilot: Harold Peters,
Navigator: Henry Harrison,
Bombardier: Dick Driscoll,
Flight engineer/top turret gunner: Gordon Zimmermann,
Radio Operator: Art Bachelor,
Ball turret gunner: Willie Cole,
Waist gunner: George Males,
Tail gunner: Frank Tersigni
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Thursday, August 27, 2020
oddly, there is no Wikipedia entry for George Hurst (Thanks Steve!)
the one guy that added more fun to hot rodding than probably any other, (with only an 8th grade formal education)
The Hurst Armed Forces Club!
the GTO races,
the Hairy Olds,
the shifters!
The Jaws of Life!
The Hurst Hemi Under Glass 'Cuda,
the Hurst SC/Rambler,
the Hurst Baja Boot,
the Gasser Passer
the Hurst Shawnee Scout
the Hurst Jeepster,
the Shifty Doc Watson traveling performance clinic,
and Hurst Super Stock AMXs, Darts, Barracudas,
the Hurst Olds,
and Hurst Airheart brakes - who compares to all this?
There is a wikipedia entry for Hurst Performance... it's not very good
George Hurst worked with more car companies than maybe anyone I know of. Jeep, Pontiac, Dodge, Oldsmobile, International Harvester, and AMC.
For a good look through some cool stuff that the Hurst performance company made: https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cool-hurst-stuff-coming-to-auction-from.html
Born in New York City in 1927, died in 1986, Redlands California, in his garage. Suicide by carbon monoxide.
George's mom, Antoinette, was a naturalized citizen from Kutai Hora Czechoslovakia
His dad was a WW1 Army vet who worked for the National Biscuit Co in New York City
And his paternal great grandfather William Jackson Hurst was born in Ireland, 1818, and came to the USA before the Civil War, and enlisted in the 198th Infantry in Aug 1864, and mustered out a year later in May of 65. Lived in Pennsylvania
And there you have the most thorough info on his life before going into car parts business that the rest of the world is already familiar with. How about that... WW2 air craft carrier duty. I've never heard that before (thanks Steve!) Correction, I forgot, I had posted that he was an Navy Aircraft Machinist https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-frantic-fish.html
After the Navy, 1943-1954, he resettled in eastern Pennsylvania in 1954 and became very active in the local drag racing scene.
His marriage didn't work out and no one even mentions the name of his wife. It was Lila, and they divorced in 1984
When he made Almquist's acquaintance, Hurst and Campbell were working out of a garage outside Philadelphia in Abington, with engine mounts as their lead product, when two problems occurred. First, a California firm began producing copies of their engine mounts. Next, Hurst became separated from his wife.
In the mid-fifties, he and his friend Bill Campbell started a garage in Abington, Pennsylvania, where they built aftermarket engine mounts for performance cars. Although Hurst’s formal mechanical training was limited, he had an intuitive knack for automotive engineering and, more importantly, was a natural showman with a flair for clever promotions.
Hurst Performance was originally named Hurst-Campbell. The company was established in 1958 as an auto repair shop when George Hurst and Bill Campbell were both young men. An older man named Lawrence Greenwald (who is credited, among other things, as one of the inventors of stretch nylon hosiery), took certain cars from his collection to Hurst's shop for repair. Greenwald saw promise in Hurst and Campbell and decided to finance them in a venture to manufacture large aftermarket bumpers for VW buses, which were becoming increasingly popular.
When Volkswagen began manufacturing its own large bumpers for the buses, Hurst-Campbell branched out into the piston-driven gearshift business.
After some early setbacks, Hurst and Campbell formed a partnership with Jonas Anchel and Ed Almquist, founders of the speed shop Anco Industries. Together, they developed and launched several new products, including a revised engine mount design called Adjusta-Torque and a floor-mounted shift linkage for three-speed manual transmissions.
An agreement between Almquist and Hurst, in which the two decided to focus on aftermarket retailing and component development, respectively, endured for the rest of Hurst's life.
At that point, a new employee of the equally new Hurst Performance Inc., Jack "Doc" Watson, described by Almquist as then a gofer, made a personal connection that would set the company's role in history. Through his mother, Watson made a contact with Pontiac, which ended up selecting a four-speed version of the Hurst shifter as standard equipment for its 1961 Catalina powered by the 421-cu.in. Super Duty engine.
Since Almquist and Anchel were neither willing nor able to put up the substantial amount of capital needed to market the new linkage, Hurst and Campbell obtained a $20,000 loan and established their own company, Hurst-Campbell, Inc., in Warminster, Pennsylvania. It opened for business in 1959.
The hot-rodding and drag racing scene was booming in the late fifties and early sixties and Hurst-Campbell found a ready market for their shifters and shift linkages. Whatever Hurst’s mechanical abilities, his greatest talent was concocting stunts and gimmicks to market Hurst-Campbell products. Hurst sponsored drag racers; offered new cars as prizes for race winners who used Hurst products; and hired a buxom beauty queen named Linda Vaughn as “Miss Hurst Golden Shifter,” paying her to attend racing events in her gold bikini, suggestively caressing giant replicas of Hurst’s signature product. Some of Hurst’s promotional stunts were undeniably effective.
By the mid-sixties, Hurst-Campbell revenues were more than $20 million a year and Hurst shifters had become almost de rigueur among serious enthusiasts.
He was the co-founder of the Hurst Performance Product Co. and was associated with high-performance vehicles and automotive advances, particularly in the area of car transmissions. His Hurst Shifter, a floor-mounted gear shift for performance cars, made him a wealthy man.
Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have an idea how effing rare it is that anyone gives a shit about employees, much less hires anyone with any disability? Damn, this is incredible info, and I've never heard about it either. This seriously sheds light on why Linda has said so many good things about George. She never mentioned this though. Wow... sending a guy work, at his home, so he can keep a job? That's incredible!
The company has since been sold several times, said Chuck Lamerel of American Bristol Co., seller of the jaws of life. The jaws of life tool was originally developed by Hurst in the 1960s to rescue drivers in crashes at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and then adopted by rescue agencies throughout the country, Lamerel said.
George Hurst wrote a self help book that was published in 1984, "The Perfect You", there are maybe 5 copies for sale online, all for 75 to 125
In March 1984 Popular Mechanics did a paragraph about the transmission George was working out problems with... the problem was that the damn thing wouldn't work yet. Doubtless, it was about a whisker off from being the next must have for racers, like, a Lenco. Keep in mind, the Hurst Lightning Rod shifters... Hurst knew transmissions!
Tragic as his rise and fall are, as far from normal as either gets, he's getting hero status from me for the Jaws of Life invention. That's fair. No less should anyone expect, no more should anyone ask
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-05-19-me-5971-story.html
https://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/hurst-olds-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurst_Performance
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/george-hurst
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/hurst-performance-shifters-marketing/
https://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/hurst-olds-history/
https://bangshift.com/general-news/gearhead-guys-you-should-know/
Sunday, June 28, 2020
up for auction, the McMullen roadster
it set a speed record at Mirage, and the flames were painted on by Ed Roth.
https://mecumgallery.com/ford-mcmullen-roadster
Monday, June 22, 2020
Glenn Curtiss
Curtiss began his career as a Western Union bicycle messenger, a bicycle racer, and bicycle-shop owner.
In 1902, Curtiss began manufacturing motorcycles with his own single-cylinder engines. His first motorcycle's carburetor was adapted from a tomato soup can containing a gauze screen to pull the gasoline up by capillary action.
In 1903, he set a motorcycle land speed record at 64 miles per hour for one mile. When E.H. Corson of the Hendee Mfg Co (manufacturers of Indian motorcycles) visited Hammondsport in July 1904, he was amazed that the entire Curtiss motorcycle enterprise was located in the back room of the modest "shop". Corson's motorcycles had just been trounced the week before by "Hell Rider" Curtiss in an endurance race from New York to Cambridge, Maryland.
On January 24, 1907, Curtiss set an unofficial world record of 136.36 miles per hour, on a 40 horsepower 269 cu in (4,410 cc) V-8-powered motorcycle of his own design and construction in Ormond Beach, Florida. The air-cooled F-head engine was intended for use in aircraft.
He remained "the fastest man in the world", the title the newspapers gave him, until 1911, and his motorcycle record was not broken until 1930. This motorcycle is now in the Smithsonian Institution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss
In 1902, Curtiss began manufacturing motorcycles with his own single-cylinder engines. His first motorcycle's carburetor was adapted from a tomato soup can containing a gauze screen to pull the gasoline up by capillary action.
In 1903, he set a motorcycle land speed record at 64 miles per hour for one mile. When E.H. Corson of the Hendee Mfg Co (manufacturers of Indian motorcycles) visited Hammondsport in July 1904, he was amazed that the entire Curtiss motorcycle enterprise was located in the back room of the modest "shop". Corson's motorcycles had just been trounced the week before by "Hell Rider" Curtiss in an endurance race from New York to Cambridge, Maryland.
On January 24, 1907, Curtiss set an unofficial world record of 136.36 miles per hour, on a 40 horsepower 269 cu in (4,410 cc) V-8-powered motorcycle of his own design and construction in Ormond Beach, Florida. The air-cooled F-head engine was intended for use in aircraft.
He remained "the fastest man in the world", the title the newspapers gave him, until 1911, and his motorcycle record was not broken until 1930. This motorcycle is now in the Smithsonian Institution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss
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