JDaly

and I converted that narrative post into a video. It's here on Youtube and here on Substack Adds a little motion and sound, which livens it. JDaly

Thanks Vintage1, It really was a nice looking, nice handling and overall great car. I wish the underside had been stainless steel! John

They say your first car is your favorite car. For me that is true. I bought this 1967 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe used and loved it. But.... well, here's my substack post on the car. You might enjoy it. John Daly

Excellent point John and that (recording history) is at least part of the reason I am writing these. The cars intersect with big family events AND with pivotal auto industry directions and they tell a little behind the scenes history. e.g. My grandfather's insistence on a Packard Limousine at my mom and dads 1947 wedding and what happened to Packard. Why Kelvinator, an appliance company got affiliated with American Motors and how it provided cars for our family throughout the 50's and 60's and so much more. Thanks for the encouragement.

Thank you, John_S_in_Penna.

Yes , drove really well; and glad the plow spared YOU!!!

Very cool. I think I remember most of these. Wonderful that you collected the ACTUAL badges.

Kind of same with me. THe styling rocked. THe hard core car guys at least turned their heads.

Well, I just crossed everything out. Premise smashed. They say arbitrager George Soros always assumed he was wrong and was ever ready to take an opposite currency postion. I thought I learned that lesson. But I keep forgetting how wrong I am. Thanks to all of you. And in EmTee's video words... "Oh well that's VERY different... nevermind," Nice hanging around you Buick folks, as an interloper, for a while. I republished corrected / Chevy version here. Gratias.

Thanks for the corrections. Yikes. I am very sorry. A novice I am. So I will need to correct it to a 1940 Chevrolet Special Deluxe series KA? Just want to confirm. THanks, (also, can you pinpoint the 1940 price of that Chevrolet Special Deluxe Series KA?) (also, takes away my entire story line on the fam being upper middle class. But that's OK>) VERY obliged to Matt, Machine Gunn, Barney, Matthew and 1939_Buick Club. Thanks.

Yes indeed. You can submit your own. Chromeography has a "submit" capability here. Great additions! imho. He's got some dealers already in the archive... as here:

Vey interesting F.F. Not great reliablity. With my father's deal we kept these cars only 6 months to a year and then got another so we never saw the full life. I can believe you ran into that though. My GM devoted friends would scoff at the plastic -y dashboard and I do remember a rattle developing in the driver's side window. Looked great, drove well while new but... not durable. I have driven only Toyotas or Lexi for the last 22 years and some of these have gone close to 300k. Very different than the AMX experience. Thanks for filling us all in. John Daly

Thanks Larry for answering James question on Kelvinator. AMC had sold the brand to White company and my father stayed employed as regional sales manager working for the distributor Northeast Distributors in Cambridge MA. WHat I have heard is that they still hold good share in the commercial ice cream freezer market. No more Foodaramas though. And not many old Kelvinator appliances still left at the Daly's homes Thanks

Very sorry about that Jim. I have not encountered that before. It might have been Substack asking for subscription?? but usually one can x or cancel out of them. Here's a link to a pdf version of the post that will allow you to see it. I hope this works. Thanks so much for letting me know. John Daly

Stephen Coles wrote the book The Anatomy of Type and was a creative director at FontShop. He also developed a body of under-appreciated auto-art work called Chromeography - an online archive of chrome lettering affixed to vintage automobiles and electric appliances. He saw that the various emblems and chrome lettering on older cars — the “bright work” — as not just the label and name for a car but also a main source of its personality -- especially mid - twentieth century cars (50’s and 60’s). He felt that no-one seemed to be archiving, cataloguing, saving them. That set him on a project to photograph, label, tag and publish them. Stephen talked about his Chromeography project, at CreativeMornings Berlin, May 2012. I keynoted some highlights from his talk and posted them in a Substack Post Here. I think you'll enjoy it and its links to Stephen's work.

...and Happy New Year to you as well NTX5467 Willis You walked us through a very interesting and rich-with-insight story about the evolving "alternatives" to Internal Combustion Engine propelled vehicles, Very intereting. I feel the problem is not the individual cars but the entire transportation system. Just as the country was reaching the tipping point to going all in for cars (vs. trains or other mass transit options) in the 1920's Will Rogers said, "Good luck, Mr. Ford. It will take a hundred years to tell whether you have helped us or hurt us, but you certainly didn't leave us like you found us." It's now 100 years later and like the Yin Yang symbol ☯ its helped and hurt. Some pundits have pointed out that auto companies see electric vehicles as a way to save the auto industry and EV's do not fundamentally improve our transport system. Traffic, parking, energy per mile, etc. (note that Disney World directs families to leave their cars far away as they monorail you into a car-free joyscape) Problems with they system will persist. For example, once we reduce the carbon emissions to stop adding to the green house cover that's heating us, we still have the problem of millions of cars spewing fine particle dust that's harming those living near roads and highways. As pictured here , from here. We are where we are and we'll need to keep satisficing and marginalizing. But it would be nice to get a do-over on the whole car / interstate system. John Daly

We loved our 1968 Javelin. And it turned out that little success allowed American Motors to continue operating.... at least a few more years. Here's my post on it. Which you may be interested in. John Daly

The Javelin just looked good, with a beautiful grill, large sloping windshield, long ‘semi’ fastback, flush mounted door handles and a lot of room. It looked much sleeker than a Mustang or Camaro or the other “cool” cars of the day. But how did we get here? How did American Motors the company offering economical and practical innovative alternatives to the Big Three’s dinosaurs suddenly come up with this gem at the head of the youth car class? Check out my substack post to find out You may find it interesting. John Daly And here's a hint (image).

Ben Bruce, Well done keeping the 92 Buick moving fine. and you are so right on the Klic and Klac quote. Always less expensive to keep and repair it. (Except when the frame finally rusts out... which happened to my 1978 Olds Custom Cruiser!) John Daly

Larry, Amazing amount of earth moving requiring tons of emitted carbon. GOT to put that into equation for full life cycle carbon foot print. As they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Larry Schramm, Thanks for your point. Yes the grid is fragile and the electricity sources do come from some fuel source. I guess folks are looking at the year to year increase in "% of generated electricity from renewable sources" (like solar) as a reason to prefer electric over fossil fuel. Another "shot" at the "everybody by electric cars now" fever dream involves the COSTS - as in carbon emissions to actually produce the cars... mining, steel creation, bending, grinding, shipping etc. -- which often go uncounted in lifecycle carbon emissions analysis. According to the reasoning of this Guardian Article, we are better off, typically, milking as many more miles as we can out of our current rides as possible. That is the tack I am taking with our two 2009 Prius (Prii?) Thanks, john

DSailer. Thanks for your comments and insight. Well marked. Re "ceteris paribus" your point is well taken. So many variables get "in the way" in a real world system measure. We must take this data with appropriate grains of salt as you point out., Re the jump from 2011 to 2012. Yes. Suspicious. I could not find an excel error in my sources. Here is the EPA site I retrieved the data from. And here is the downloaded data in Excel Pivot Table that I used. I used the 'estimated real world MPG' values. I reviewed but could not find the anomaly. I welcome any corrections. re Obama era legislation. Yes, the Morning Consult Graph calls it out (yellow highlight below) but as it involved no change and just a continuation of the existing planned legislation I did not call it out. You have put your finger on a lot of good points. Thanks, john Daly

Thanks Ed. Yes to that great looking Ambassador. Nice. We had one just like that only in station wagon form. a 1967. And it rode and handled beautifully. I attached a picture of it seen vaguely behind my brothers back yard hockey game. The Marlins were very unique indeed and quite the collectors car. BUt actually so is this unique Ambassador with the stacked headlights.... carried over to Jeeps when AMC bought them. John

THanks James. YES Ramblers' visual on unibody works extremely well... kudos to the market comms people at American Motors to convey it so clearly. Chrysler Airflow could have used that. And I agree on the Javelin, steep sloped windshield way ahead of its time and very cool styling. I drove the 6 cyl javelin regularly but was blown away when we got to try the AMX 289 and the AMX 360 with sticks. Incredibly fast and good handling. But the styling was way ahead and I felt the Camaros and Firebirds much inferior not to mention mustangs. John

Among my family's cars was this beautiful 1939 Buick Century 4 door. It was not till I dug into it a bit that I found out my grandfather was driving the banker's hot rod, in some circles called the world's first muscle car. Here's my substack post on the story. You may enjoy it. John Daly