Within the factory walls, its codename was K-9, after Dr. Who's famous robotic dog. But since Alan Curtis, the Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda liked to spend his free time by flying a Scottish Aviation Bulldog, by the time the car was first shown to the public on March 27, 1980 at the Bell Hotel at Aston Clinton, it got the Bulldog name tag as well.

The town of Newport Pagnell wanted to show the world that they could build a modern mid-engined supercar for the eighties just as well as certain Italian automakers in Maranello or Sant'Agata Bolognese. The Bulldog's wedge-shaped body was designed by William Towns, who you might know for giving us the futuristic (and failed) Lagonda sedan. While he came up with the idea of the five hidden headlamps and the massive gullwing doors that were operated by a motorized version of the Volante's hood mechanism, the engineering work landed on chief engineer Mike Loasby's table. But since he left AML to work for DeLorean in 1979, the development had to be finished by Keith Martin, who kept refining the prototype for another three years.

The heart of the Bulldog was the usual 5.3 litre V8 Aston put into everything those days, but with the help of Bosch's latest fuel injection technology and two Garrett turbochargers, the performance figure climbed well above 650 horsepower. With a 43 inch high body that was shaped like a blade, the Bulldog achieved 191 mph at the MIRA test track. For a bit of extra publicity, Aston Martin claimed a theoretical top speed of 237 mph.

Pirelli P7s (225/50 in the front, 345/35 in the rear) helped to keep the power under control, while the brakes got better cooling thanks to Compomotive split-rim alloys which had integrated air blades just like the ones on Group C race cars.

The interior was a mixture of old-fashioned British luxury and modern technology. Dead cow's skin intermingled with high-tech LED technology and plenty of touch sensors. It also got a proper ZF manual instead of the Chrysler 3-speed automatic transmission that was an option for the V8. Since the Bulldog was a fully funcional prototype, Aston Martin was considering a limited-production run of 15-25 cars. Unfortunately, Victor Gauntlett become the chairman of the company in 1981, and decided that Aston Martin had bigger problems than bringing an impossibly complicated supercar to market.

For that reason, the Bulldog remained a unique prototype. It was sold to the highest bidder, a prince from the Middle East for £130,000 with a silver over light gray exterior and brown interior. He fitted it with rear view mirrors as well as a rearview camera linked to a screen in the dash. The man liked redundancy. The gold plating trim also feels like an upgrade from the East.

After getting sandy, the Bulldog went to a collector in America, only to resurface again in the UK in 1997, by which point it got a new two-tone green paint job, the interior was refitted with lighter colors, and the Bosch injection system had been replaced with four Weber carburetors.

It remains the only road legal mid-engined Aston Martin to this day.

Photo credit: Aston Martin Lagonda and Edvvc

Last Sunday was the 132th birthday of József Galamb, the Hungarian engineer who became the chief designer of the first mass produced car in the world, the Ford Model T. My mom sent a message that I should write about him, but I told her I was sure everybody knew his story already.

Then I searched his name here, only to get zero hits. It's time to change that.

We like to brag about how Hungarians invented everything that matters, and while that isn't necessarily true, Hungary's genius/population ratio is still better than a dragster's power-to-weight figure. To name just a few, Hungarians gave the world the discovery of vitamin C, the ballpoint pen, electric motor, safety matches, the transformer, electron microscopes, Holography, nuclear chain reaction and the hydrogen bomb, cathode ray tubes, and this is just the tip of the Rubik's Cube.

But while we have every right to be proud of these fellow Hungarians, let's not forget that most of the time, it was America's welcoming hug and support that made it possible for them to reach their full potential. And so it was the case with József Galamb and Jenő Farkas, two engineers working for Henry Ford on his most influential model of them all, and many more.

Galamb was born in Makó, a small town famous for its high quality onions. But he wasn't interested in agriculture, and got lucky as his brother was a lawyer, so the family could afford his education. After receiving his diploma in mechanical engineering at the Budapest Industrial Technology Engineering Course, he practiced locksmithing, well-drilling and metal casting. His first job was at the Steel Works in Diósgyőr (just like many of my ancestor's), where he worked as a draftsman. After his military service in the navy, Galamb won a postgraduate scholarship to Germany, where he ended up at Adler assembling engines.

When he learned of the 1904 American Auto World Fair in St. Louis, he used all of his savings to travel to America, where he found a job at Westinghouse Electric after spending two month looking for one in New York. His English was getting better, and he wanted to get into the car industry, so he joined the Stearns Automobile Company in Cleveland making another Hungarian invention, carburetors for the stationary engine. A visit to a friend in Detroit went so well that he decided to settle down there. He applied for a job at Cadillac and Ford, while a colleague from Germany offered him one at his factory. Cadillac called him in for a practical test in order to get an $18 job, but by that time, Henry Ford got him for $20. And so he had arrived.

In 1905, Ford got most of his parts from the Dodge Brothers. József Galamb started by redesigning the cooling system of the Model N, which impressed Henry Ford so much that he made him the chief engineer of the Ford Motor Company, working together with C. Harold Wills, one of Ford's first employees and shareholders, and creator of the blue oval logo.

In 1906, another Hungarian engineer landed on American shores, but for Jenő Farkas, it took another seven years to end up at Ford. From 1913, progress speeded up at the factory. It's almost impossible to say who designed which part of the Model T. Hungarians claim most innovations for Galamb, while American sources tell us it was Wills.

Since Jenő Farkas and Henry Ford were also at the same shop, I guess giving 25% of the credit to each of them would be a pretty fair guess. What's important is that the concept of the assembly line started to work in practice at the Highland Park Plant, which reduced chassis assembly time from 12 1⁄2 hours to 1 hour 33 minutes, and boosted annual output to 202,667 units that year. After a Ford ad promised profit-sharing if sales hit 300,000 between August 1914 and August 1915, sales in 1914 reached 308,162, and 501,462 in 1915. By 1920, production exceeded one million cars per year.

József Galamb become an American citizen in 1917. After the Model T, the two Hungarians focused on designing the Fordson tractor, which was meant to be operated by women. While Farkas helped with the Model A and the Ford V8 in the following years, Galamb set up a Ford dealership and garage in Hungary, and founded an engineering scholarship for talented but underprivileged students in his hometown.

During the early forties, both of them helped the war effort. Farkas was working on the B-24 (which were also made by Ford in huge numbers) and a tank engine with 600 horsepower, while Galamb helped with submarine-radars and trucks for the Red Cross, as well as six-cylinder Fords for the public. After a heart attack, he retired from active work in 1944 on doctor's orders, but was still paid around as much as the President of the United States. Ford valued his staff.

Since the political situation was getting worse in Hungary, the two engineers had to stop coming back to see their relatives after a while. József Galamb died in 1955 in Detroit, while Jenő Farkas could enjoy retirement a bit longer by some fishing in Laguna Beach after 1947. He died in 1963, and was buried in Detroit's Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Their Fords are still with us.

Photo credits: Getty Images and Wikipedia

This year marks the 50th birthday of the most iconic sports car of them all, the Porsche 911. Now you can go the Jeremy Clarkson way and start bitching about how the whole idea of putting the engine in the rear was stupid, or start an argument about how it is only a tuned up Volkswagen, but no matter what you think, the 911 is here to stay. And we are glad for that.

911s are very special cars, even if they sold over 820,000 of them in the last half a century, which makes it more likely for your lawyer or dentist to have one. Yes, it's the Volkswagen of the sports car world, but that's what makes it so refined and keeps it being relatively obtainable. Every petrolhead should have respect for that, just like they respect a good two thirds of Porsche's 30,000 race victories to date, which were notched up by some sort of a 911.

So let's see how Stuttgart went from the 1963 "901" with 130 horsepower to the 2013 991 4S with 400 horsepower, with each generation remaining true to the 911 badge all along. It was quite a journey...

Butzi's dream

Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche started playing around with the idea of a successor for the 356 in 1959. The new car remained a 2+2 instead of a proper four-seater, but the air-cooled 1.6-litre four-cylinder got replaced by a 2-litre flat-six producing 130 hp in its early tune. Porsche's second car made its public debut at the 1963 Frankfurt Motor Show as the 901, but since Peugeot had the rights to car names formed by three numbers with a zero in the middle, it went on sale the next year as the 911. The 356 remained in production until 1965, but since there was still demand for a four-cylinder car, Porsche introduced the 912, the 356 with the 911's body. In 1966 came the 911S with Fuchs wheels and 160 horsepower. The next year, the 912 was replaced by the 911T with a detuned six-cylinder, and the Targa was introduced, since Porsche was afraid that the NHTSA would outlaw fully open convertibles at some point. The B-Series coming in 1969 increased the wheelbase from 87.0 to 89.3 inches, in order to improve the car's handling at the limit.

Carrera Rennsport

From 1969 to 1973, the 911 ran from C to all the way to the F-Series, with the engine growing to 2.4-liters. Mechanical fuel injection and K-Jetronic was introduced from Bosch, while the entry-level 911T remained carbureted in Europe. A stronger transmission from the 908 racecar was put into the 911s as well, while Porsche tried to make the car less deadly by relocating the oil tank. But since that meant putting the oil filler door on the right rear quarter panel, gas station attendants were putting gas in the oil tank by mistake, so it went back to it's original place after just one year.

The RS was introduced in 1972 so that Porsche could go racing. The engine was enlarged to 2.7-litres developing 210 horsepower, while the car had bigger brakes, stiffer suspension, wider rear wheels and rear wings, and the legendary ducktail rear spoiler. In RS Touring form it weighed 2370 lb, but the Sport Lightweight cut 220 lb from that as well by its panels being made out of thin-gauge steel, and using thinner glass all around. 1580 were made, and for many, the 2.7 RS is the ultimate 911. The Carrera RS 3.0 of 1974 improved on that with 230 horses, while one of the very limited Carrera RSR Turbos (powered by a 2.1 turbo engine because of the 1.4x equivalency formula) came second at the 1974 24 Hours of Le Mans, wearing the Martini Racing Team's livery.

Impact bumpers with love from America

What worked at the race track was good for the road as well, so the second generation 911 Carrera (G-Series) introduced in 1973 got the 2.7 engine and wider rear wings straight from the RS, giving the cleverly integrated impact bumpers the job of saving you from the effects of 210 tricky horses. To help with that, three-point safety belts and integrated headrests now came as standard. The G-Series remained in production until 1989, and gave us one of the most important premieres in the company's history: the first 911 Turbo.

Blown away

The Porsche 930 was introduced in 1975 with a three-litre 260 hp engine and enormous rear spoiler. Development on a turbocharged 911 started in '72 for racing purposes, but when homologation regulations changed, new chairman Ernst Fuhrmann kept going to create a top of the line model. The revised suspension, larger brakes, wider track and stronger gearbox were all used to make the car more stable, although the four-speed box was not popular as a five-speed was available for the cheaper Carrera.

The turbo went on sale in the US in 1976, only to result in product liability lawsuits against Porsche from customers who couldn't deal with the oversteer. Two years later, they raised the power to 300 horses by enlarging the engine to 3.3 litres and adding an air-to-air intercooler. It also got brakes similar to the 917 Le Mans car. For a bit of extra cash, performance could go up to 330 hp with a new 4-pipe exhaust system and an extra oil-cooler. Starting in 1981, the hand crafted "slantnose" could be ordered. 1982 gave us the first 911 Cabriolet, while in 1989, it was all about the new Speedster. For the last model year, the 930 also got the G50 5-speed transmission, which improved its 0-62 figure to 4.9 seconds.

Tiptronic and all-wheel drive

Porsche claimed that 85 percent of the 964 was brand new. In the 1988 911 Carrera 4, the engine was a 3.6 with 250 horses, while the car came with ABS, Tiptronic, power steering, airbags, and rode on a completely redesigned chassis with light alloy control arms and coil springs instead of the previous torsion-bar suspension. In 1990 came the new turbo, first with the old 3.3 boxer, then from '92 with the 3.6 and 360 horsepower. For Europe, a new Carrera RS was developed with magnesium wheels and thinner everything to make it 345 pounds lighter than the US spec Carrera 2.

The Carrera RS was not sold in the USA because Porsche Cars North America felt the car's aggressive tuning was not suited to the American market. However, 45 almost RS-spec cars with airbags, electric windows , American lighting, American bumpers, aluminum wheels, and standard seats were imported to participate in the Carrera Cup series, which was cancelled before it began. These were sold with a dash plaque saying "Carrera Cup USA Edition", but not through normal Porsche channels, since by that time, the RS America went on sale as well. That was only 77 pounds lighter than the normal car, because while it came with a whale tail spoiler, a partially stripped interior, sports seats and firm suspension, it also retained the standard brakes, engine and gearbox of the US Carrera 2.

One last breath

The last air-cooled Porsche was designed by an Englishman and a Dutchman named Tony Hatter and Harm Lagaay. Compared to the previous 911, it had an all-alloy multi-arm rear suspension attached to an all-alloy subframe, which made the rear wheel arches even wider than before. It came with a six-speed manual as standard, or the new Tiptronic S four-speed automatic, which was now capable of recognizing climbs and descent.

The all-wheel drive system was improved (and lightened) as well, with the center differential being replaced by a viscous coupling unit, just like in the 959 supercar. Targa, Cabrio and Speedster body styles were available, while the Turbo got twin-charged with all-wheel drive. In 1997, the Turbo S model reached 62 mph in 3.7 seconds while going all the way up to 188 mph. For racing, the GT2 was introduced with turbocharged performance in a rear-wheel drive chassis. Its most recognizable feature was that the fenders of the Turbo have been cut back and replaced with bolt-on plastic pieces in order to accommodate large racing tires and to help ease the repairs of damage on the track. A limited number of street GT2s were created for homologation purposes, first with 430 hp, then with 450 after twin-ignition was introduced. These are highly collectable today.

Wasser

With the 996, the performance of the cars reached a level where the efficiency of a air-cooled engine was no longer enough. Therefore the whole car got redesigned around a brand new water-cooled, 24-valve 3.4-litre unit with integrated dry sump oiling and 300 horsepower. After the usual coupe or cabriolet versions with rear or all-wheel drive, Porsche introduced the new Turbo in 2000 with a 3.6 litre, twin turbocharged and intercooled flat-six producing 420 bhp and a 0-60 time of 4.2 seconds. The Turbo S came five years later with 450 bhp and carbon brakes as standard. From 1999, the naturally aspirated GT3 was also available next to the batshit crazy 462 hp GT2. The GT3 was based on the Carrera, but was stripped, featured stiffer, adjustable suspension and upgraded brakes, a six-speed manual and used the bodyshell of the four-wheel-drive version, which incorporated additional front-end stiffening. Mark 1 GT3s had 360 bhp, while later cars came with 380. These street legal racecars produced 1.03 g on the skidpad.

An instant classic

The ugly headlamps were replaced by proper oval ones for the 997, and that wasn't the only improvement Porsche had up its sleeve for 2005. The Carrera got 325 horsepower from the 3.6, while the Carrera S got bored to 3.8-litres to get 355 hp. Active suspension came as standard, while the Turbo was the first gasoline-powered production car using twin variable-geometry BorgWarner turbochargers. That was good for 480 horsepower and a top speed of 200 mph. Once again, the Targa got a glass roof and hatch. The GT3 came with a new variable intake system and 415 horsepower. In 2008, the Mark 2 997 got a dual clutch transmission, while the new GT2 was equipped with Porsche's launch control system to help with its 530 horsepower. After 2010's 450 hp GT3 RS, 600 special 4.0-litre GT3 RSs were made, producing 500 horsepower at 8250 rpm. The 997 was also a very successful racer, both as a works car and in the hands of private teams.

The new kid

Here we are in 2013, with the 991 being with us for almost two years now. This car was built on an entirely new platform from the ground up, and it feels it. Its engine was positioned in a way that the car acts almost like if it had a mid-engined layout. The 991 is 2.2 inches longer than the 997 was, with its wheelbase enlarged by 3.9 inches, and its front track widened by 2 inches. Its hybrid steel/aluminium construction makes it lighter, while even the entry-level 3.4-litre engine makes 5 horsepower more than the 997 Carrera did. It's got the world's first seven-gear manual transmission, while with the PDK gearbox and the optional sports chrono package, the 400 horsepower Carrera S can do 0-62 in 3.9 seconds. You can imagine what it will do after it get's the usual twin-turbo/stripping treatment. This year, the four-wheel drive versions went on sale, which are distinguishable by wider tires, wider rear body-work and a red-reflector strip that sits in between the tail-lights. When you see one on the street, think about how nice evolution looks in the flesh...

Photo credit: Porsche AG

"The Csepel Car Factory, the MOGÜRT Export Company and the Swedish AB Volvo founded a joint venture in Hungary. The new agreement states that using Swedish-made components, the Type L-3314 Laplander all-wheel drive vehicles will be assembled at the Csepel Car Factory.

The Laplander is capable of satisfying commercial and public needs, and can also be used as a heavy duty truck depending on the setup, ranging from street-cleaning to technical support or agricultural usuage." 

This article was published in Autó-Motor Magazin in 1974. You see, Hungary was not allowed to have a car industry under the communist oppression. We were on truck duty thanks to Moscow, so that's why we gave the world its best selling bus ever, the Ikarus 200 Series. We sold that to literally everybody, including the USA, Iraq, Nigeria and Cuba, not to mention the rest of the gang behind the Iron Curtain. But while buses were made by Ikarus, trucks (and bicycles) were rolling out of the Csepel factory.

And so did the Volvo Laplanders, powered by a mighty 82 (or 68, or 75, depending on the source) horsepower B18 engine. But the VOLCOM partnership didn't last long. Volvo pulled the plug in 1980 after just a few more than a thousand Laplanders were made in Budapest. Volvo claimed that there was no demand for the relatively expensive all-wheel drive model in the markets they expected to sell well.

One of the Hungarian Volvos ended up in this guy's garage. Meet János Kádár, the communist leader of Hungary between 1956 and 1988. People associate him with the introduction of "Goulash Communism," a much softer version of the mass murdering dictatorship of the fifties with an improved standard of living. But make no mistake: he was responsible for the death and misery of thousands as well. He was also a keen hunter, which meant the Laplander have seen a lot of action during his last years in power.

János Kádár died of cancer on 6 July 1989 at age 77, the same day when the High Court rehabilitated Imre Nagy and the other heroes of the Revolution of 1956. In October, the Communist Party convened its last congress, and the parliament adopted legislation providing for multi-party parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. Almost two decades later, Kádár's Laplander went on sale for around $4000.

In 2010, Volvo was bought up by the Chinese for $2 billion, after Ford (and capitalism) finally gave up on it.

Photo credit: csepel-sziget.hu, Wikipedia and Fortepan.

Our very own Wolverine, Nino Karotta tried to teach you some Hungarian with his review of the bonkers Renault Avantime or the two-faced BMW M5, but when it came to the roadtrip with a Scion FR-S from Barcelona to Budapest, the team took the time to shoot everything twice so you could enjoy the video in English as well. For the Citroën DS, we're back to subtitles, but it's all worth it.

The Goddess got the movie she deserved. So enjoy, and feel free to wonder about the time when driving around was encouraged, not tolerated.

Photo credit: Five Starr Photos

After DTM had folded in 1996, Mercedes-AMG entered the 1997 FIA GT Championship season with their CLK GTRs less than half a year after the first sketches were drawn. In order to speed up development, they bought the best car to get technology from: a McLaren F1 GTR.

You might think that since McLaren and Mercedes have been buddies since 1995, they could get a GTR after just a phone call. That was hardly the case. In 1996, the Formula-1 alliance was just starting to work, and the SLR supercar was yet to be seen. So Mercedes-AMG had to buy a car from a private team, Larbre Compétition. Chassis #11R was wearing a Franck Muller Watch livery, previously driven by Fabien Giroix, Jean-Denis Délétraz and Didier Cottaz in the FIA GT Championship.

After the car got to Mercedes, they stripped its body panels and put on a weird new one similar to the "long tail" F1 GTR's. Of course it had nothing to do with McLaren's '97 body style  Instead, it was shaped like that so Mercedes could test the as of yet non-existent CLK GTR's aerodynamic qualities. They also swapped BMW's V12 to their own LS600 6.0-litre AMG engine. This secret prototype was taken to Jarama, where it set record times before starting to suffer from cooling problems. Bernd Schneider fixed that by crashing the car.

For Mercedes and the CLK GTR, it took three races to finally be able the beat McLaren in the '97 GT season. #11R reappeared in 2000, when it was auctioned by Sotheby's in Monaco. By that time, it was wearing its original body and colors, powered by the factory BMW V12 in the middle. Today, it resides in the UK, painted Papaya Orange and wearing a number plate. Because race car road car.

Photo credit and a massive hat tip to Peloton25!

There seems to be an unavoidable connection between being a producer of cars and being a producer of atrocities. It's not that suddenly being around cars sends you on a muderous rampage, it just seems that if you your country has gotten to the point in its development where it can produce automobiles, it's also probably dabbled in colonialism, genocide, war, and persecution. So, if your primary goal in buying a car was to only buy from a company/country as free from atrocities against their fellow man as possible, which car should you buy?

Growing up Jewish meant I had, like almost every Jew I know, relatives lost in the Holocaust. Even at my childhood synagogue in North Carolina we had a few older members of the congregation with numbers tattooed on their arms. Being a little car-obsessed kid, I vividly remember that some of these survivors would refuse to ride in a Mercedes, BMW, or any other German car. And who could blame them?

The people that took issue with my dad's Bug (which I'm pretty sure was built without any Nazis involved in 1968) were from a family that drove a Subaru. Which always made me wonder if they bothered to think about just who that other half of the Axis was back in those dark times. Others who refused to sit in German iron were Ford drivers. And I think we know how Ford's love of Jews was only rivaled by his love of gonorrhea.

So when I saw a '68 semi-auto Bug like my dad had in a supermarket parking lot the other day, all this came back in a flood of memory, and made me ask myself a question: if your primary goal in buying a car was to only buy from a company/country as free from atrocities against their fellow man as possible, which car should you buy?

This is actually a pretty tricky question, and I bet it's one that's been influencing car purchases consciously or unconsciously for years. In order to try and figure this out, we better set up some ground rules:

• The car's nationality will be decided by the nationality of the parent company, not where it was built. So that would mean a VW is German, not Mexican, and a GM is American, not Canadian, and so on. Otherwise, with so many companies building cars in so many countries, this could get out of control way too fast. And besides, the parent company is what defines the character of the car more so than the particular factory it was put together in.

• What counts as an atrocity? Oh boy that's a loaded question. But, since this is a car website and not philosophy class, we'll keep it simple. Anything that causes the death or severe unhappiness of a large group of people will count. That can take the form of outright murder, loss of freedoms, subjugations, slaveries, exploitative economic practices, etc. Soldier-to-soldier deaths in wars don't necessarily count, but the behavior of military to civilian populations will.

• What kind of scale and timeframe are we talking about? Good question, me. There are levels of how awful man can be to man, and if something happened in Neolithic times, should a modern country be punished the same as something that happened in the 1970s? Probably not. So, we'll weight the timeframe so that 20th century and up atrocities will be the main criteria, but earlier misdeeds will be factored in as well, with somewhat lower impact.

As far as scale goes, well, bigger is worse, obviously, though the destruction of an entire given population, even a small one, is plenty horrific. So these will be case-by case.

To summarize all the factors, we can take a page from the EPA with their Green Vehicle Guides and all that. We'll have a single number to give an at-a-glance level of inhumanity of a given car's company or country. We'll call it the Red Car Index, or, more dramatically, the Blood Index. Let's say it's a number from 1-100 to keep it easy. 1 is the guy who takes God to the airport and helps him move without asking for anything at all, and 100 is Hitler's asshole big brother who gave Hitler all his awful ideas in the first place.

Make sense? Let's try this out, and see if we can find what country makes the Most Innocent Car you can buy today. Oh, and we'll just do companies currently in business, and I'll try and stick to the larger-volume car-producing countries unless I get really stuck.

I didn't include some potentially good options because the production volumes were just too small. For example, if you're rich enough, you should be able to buy a new Monte Carlo, made in the principality of Monaco. During WWII, Monaco's police helped fleeing Jews stay out of Nazi hands. But it's just too expensive and obscure to be a factor for most of the car-buying population.

All the major car-producing countries can be checked for Blood Index ranking by clicking on the annotation numbers on the map. Think my estimates are way out of line? Divorced from reality? The rantings of a sick, sick man? Tell us!

The 1968 Keracolor goggle was the first perfectly spherical television made from fiberglass. It was the brainchild of an Englishman called Arthur Bracegirdle, and cost as much as a a family car. But it was still cheaper than a Lotus Europa...

Wealthy fans of Space Age design could get their funky televisions from outlets like Harrods of Knightsbridge. But when it came to advertising, Bracegirdle made no mistakes. Before he switched to Polycarbonate from fiberglass in order to save on production costs and make his sets lighter, he even produced some spoilers for Colin Chapman's Lotus Cars.

In 1970, they made a deal so that three yellow Europas could be used for promotional proposes around the country. The Lotuses worked well at grabbing the public's attention, but Arthur Bracegirdle's enterprise started to fade. After introducing woodgrain and a new rectangular lineup, the swinging sixties were long over, and Keracolor was pretty much done for. On the other hand, Chapman kept going with the Europa for another four years.

 Hit tip to Timebox Vintage!

This is Stuart Lewis-Evans and Tony Harris in September 1953, lowering their Cooper 500 Formula 3 racing car from the roof of a Land Rover at the Crystal Palace race circuit. Awesome doesn't even describe it.

Lewis-Evans was a friend of young Stirling Moss, and was managed by Bernie Ecclestone himself from 1957. The following year, his Vanwall crashed at the season-ending Moroccan Grand Prix. He died of his burns in the hospital six days after. Team boss Tony Vandervell never got over his death, and the Vanwall team was shut down in 1959.

Photo credit: Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images

The government would love to keep you from knowing any of this. If they had it their way, Jalopnik would be shut down and I'd be thrown into one of the secret gulags the Department of  the Treasury operates inside Roosevelt's nostrils on Mt.Rushmore. But I won't keep quiet anymore. I'm gonna blow the lid off this thing once and for all, and tell you all the dark, disgusting, and filthy secrets behind the only car ever to appear on US money. It's on the back of the ten-dollar bill. 

In fact, the Shadow Government of the US wants this information hidden so badly that the current version of the ten-dollar bill, released in 2006, gets rid of the cars entirely. I know, right? What are they hiding? Those four (that's right, four) cars have been on there since 1928.

So, in case something happens to me, I want to get this information out there so the black helicopters can't surpress it any more. Let's get started.

First of all, let's talk about the bill that these only cars ever to be on greenbacks reside in. The ten is one of only two bills to have a non-president on them (Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury, and the other non-presidential freeloader is Franklin), the absolutely only bill to have the offspring of a prostitute on it, and that offspring is the only person on US paper money not to be born on the continental US landmass (Alexander Hamilton was born on the Island of Nevis to a whore, you see). It's an unusual bill, comprising only 6% of total bills (2009 numbers).

And, of course, it was the first and only bill to have a car on it. Sure, since very recently we've had, say, Indiana's state quarter with an Indy car on it, but let's face it, those state quarters are one step away from having Arby's ads on them. When it comes to cars on paper money in America, these old 1928-2006 tens are it.

There's a lot of misinformation about the cars. Let's focus on the most visible of the cars. Wikipedia says it's a 1926 Hupmobile. Other sources claim it's a Model T, and Papermoneyguide says of the cars

There are four cars represented on the reverse of the ten-dollar bill. None of these automobiles are of any specific year, make, or model, but rather a composite representation of the style of automobiles manufactured in the early 1920s.

These are all lies. Filthy, filthy lies. That main car is based on a specific model, but the government has intimidated everyone to not come out and identify it. But that ends today:

The largest car represented on the 1928-2006 ten-dollar bill reverse is based directly on a 1927 (1928 model year)-1931 four-door Ford Model A. 

There. I said it. Look at this picture for proof. 

Look at the pattern of the windows on the side, the visor over the windshield, the twin-bar bumper, the arched headlight support bar, the sidelights below the windshield, the curve of the fenders, and yes, most tellingly, the trademark 'widow's peak' pattern of the radiator shell. There's no doubt about it. This is a Model A.

So why would the government go to such lengths to surpress this misinformation? My theory is that that particular car was owned by the real  assassin of William McKinley, and he was by chance passing by the treasury when the engraver quickly knocked out the engraving. The Shadow Government didn't realize what had happened until they happened to see the driver of the car under a microscope, still wearing the McKinley blood-stained jacket that he kept as a souvenir from all those years ago.

Unable to change the bill and unwilling to draw attention by recalling it, they started their decades-long campaign of misinformation. A campaign that ends today.

So, dear readers, if you don't hear from me, you'll know what happened. I GOT TOO CLOSE.

After announcing the street legal Nismo GT-R, Nissan has released some videos that should keep us excitied about the opening of the new Nismo production facility and headquarters near Yokohama.

Above is a film about the Japanese tuning brand's history, and here's how they built their new HQ:

Are you ready for some Nismo action?

Once you realize that pretty much everything around you, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant, has a story behind it, the world becomes much more interesting. Your car is packed full of parts with good stories behind them (the tragic tale of Sir Nathan Airfilter comes to mind) but the one I'd like to talk about today is for the humble spark plug. Though we now employ them, slave-like, to ignite our fuel hundreds of times a minute, their ancestors were once used to make Victorian-era lecture-goers crap their pantaloons.

The spark plug is one of those car parts that you can pretty much guess its function just from its name. It sparks, and it does indeed plug a hole in most engines. A quick primer for those of you who have been so enmeshed in the plugless world of Diesels that you may have forgotten: the spark plug is a small, usually ceramic-insulated device that screws into a hole in the top of an engine's cylinder and creates the electrical spark that explodes the compressed air-and-fuel mixture, which sends the piston flying down, rotating the crankshaft which, though the transaxle system drives the wheels, which lets you do your burnouts in front of the Dairy Queen and from there gets you laid or to work or whatever. It's the money shot-maker of the Otto-cycle engine.

So, as the thing that actually makes the explosion happen, the spark plug was absolutely crucial to the development of the internal-combustion engine. And it was born from work that Alessandro Volta was doing in the infancy of man's harnessing of electricity.

Volta, whom, you may have guessed, the electrical unit volt is named for, was also the inventor of the voltaic pile, a very early form of battery. The voltaic piles (which aren't his hemorrhoids -- those are just Volta's piles) gave him access to electrical current to experiment with, and one of the used he put this current to was the Eudiometer, which was a device that ignited a mixture of hydrogen and air to determine the "goodness" of the air. By "goodness" he meant oxygen quantity, which I think we can all agree does make for some pretty good air.

These experiments prompted him to describe building a sort of air gun, where a spark would ignite a flammable mixture. Our on-the-ball readers will note that that sounds a hell of a lot like what a spark plug does.

By the 1800s, scientific lecturers were building what they called "Volta's Pistol" -- a pistol (or cannon, or bulb) - shaped device that had a cork on one end, was filled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen in the middle, and an early spark plug progenitor on the other. The proud owner would connect the plug's wires to some form of current -- a voltaic pile, Leyden jar, or other early battery -- and the plug would spark, exploding the gaseous mixture and launching the cork from the bottle with a huge BANG, which would then wake up all the students or society people nodding off in the auditorium.

So, this goofy and likely dangerous little scientific toy had all the elements of the modern spark plug in it. Pressurized cylinder full of explosive gas, with a little inset pair of electrodes to create a spark that jumps across a tiny gap, blowing everything up and causing the force to react against something. In the gun's case, it was the launched cork, in a car engine it's the piston, but the principle is the same.

It was a long road from the pistol to the engine, of course, though. But not that long. By 1860, Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir was the first to employ a more real-seeming spark plug (ceramic insulator and everything) in an internal-combustion engine. While we here in the US were nervously circling Civil War, this Belgian was making spark plugs, and we haven't looked back since.

So, today, as your plugs fire about 500 times every minute, give a thought to the startled lecture-snoozers that made it all possible.

As Google's doodle reminded me, today is International Women's Day. It's kind of alarming how much I rely on something called a "Google Doodle" to know what's going on. So, in honor of women, I'd like to talk about one woman who's been a hero of mine for many years: Bertha Benz, the first person to take a real road trip in a private, petroleum-powered car.

There's been automobiles and automobile trips long before this point, but those were mostly steam vehicles, and most of the extended trips were multi-passenger bus-service types of trips. The idea of a private car, especially a petroleum car, used to take a private road trip in 1888 was basically how we'd think of taking a teleporter trip today.

But that didn't stop Mrs.Benz. As you may have guessed by the name, Bertha was married to Karl Benz, the engineer who developed his Patent Motorwagen in 1886, which many people feel to be the most direct ancestor of modern gasoline cars. Bertha was very involved in the whole process, and had a keen engineering mind as well. She also had two things Karl lacked: money and freedom from depression and overwhelming perfectionism.

Bertha's family helped provide the funding for Karl's work, research and his building of the three original prototypes. Karl was also prone to bouts of self-doubt and depression, and would endlessly tinker with his cars, not wanting to promote them until they were absolutely perfect, which is, of course, impossible for anything, let alone automobiles in the late 1800s.

Bertha was a wife, but also an investor, and a shrewd marketer. She understood that in order for this to be a success, people had to actually see the cars run and drive, and she knew her husband would never attempt anything more than the short test runs he'd been driving. Bertha knew something more dramatic was needed.

And so, one of history's greatest "fuck it, I'm doing this" moments was born.

Bertha took the three-wheeler to see her mom. This doesn't sound like a big deal now, but then it was like saying "I'm gonna go visit my mom who lives on an orbiting platform, and to get there I'm going to take this experimental anti-gravity pod that runs on niobium, which I'll just figure out how to find along the way. See ya!"

Her mom lived over 60 miles away, in Pforzheim, and Bertha had to plan her route around apothecary shops in villages where she could buy ligroin, which was a petroleum distillate occasionally used as a solvent and cleaner, and also what Benz' car ran on. She went with her two teen sons, Eugen and Richard, and, best of all, she did it without Karl knowing about it.

She knew Karl would never let her do it in the machine he was endlessly tinkering with, and she had much more confidence and faith in it than he did. So she and her sons pushed it out of the driveway so they could start it without waking him, and took off.

She did leave a note, though. I'd kill to know what it said. Here's what I imagine:

Morning Honey!

Hope you slept well. I took the kids to go visit Nana Ringer -- they're so excited. We'll be back in a couple days! There's long strings of sausages hanging all over the house because, you know, we're German, so help yourself!

much love,

Bertie

P.S. Oh, by the way, to get there we took one of your three priceless experimental motorwagen prototypes that you or anyone else in the world has ever driven more than a kilometer or so for the trip. I'm pretty sure I can get fuel, but as you know there's no parts and you're the only person in the world who knows how these things work in case anything on these hand-built highly experimental machines breaks. Also, everyone's gonna look at me like I'm some kind of witch from the future.

Okay! See you soon!

The woman had guts. The trip wasn't easy, as you'd imagine. There weren't road maps as we know them, so she had to find her own winding route through the little towns in between Mannheim and Pforzheim. And she did have breakdowns, but that didn't stop her. Some repairs she had help with, like when a blacksmith repaired a drive chain, or she had a shoemaker add leather to the braking blocks, which means that she invented brake pads on the trip as well. Other repairs she did on her own, with incredible resourcefulness and details that are so woman-of-the-era charming it hurts: she fixed a clogged fuel line with a long hat pin, and she improvised new insulation for a wire (must have been spark plug wire-- what other wires did that thing have?) with her garter.

She did it. Grandma was visited, and car was driven, and the result of which was that all of a sudden everyone was talking about the incredible Benz Patent Motorwagen. It was a huge success as a marketing stunt, and the trip was useful as a test drive as well, prompting Karl to add in a low-range gear so the 2/3 HP car could make it up the hills that Bertha found herself stuck on, as well as adding Bertha's improvement on the braking system.

Is this woman awesome, or what? Every gearhead owes a huge debt to this ballsy/ovaries-y lady. Without her, Karl Benz would have spent the rest of his life obsessively trying to get that motor up from 2/3 HP to a massive 7/8 HP. Thanks, Bertha.

(sources: Wikipedia, University of Houston, research relating to this project)

The pre-history of automobiles is really pretty murky. As much as Mercedes-Benz likes to claim the invention of the motor car, the truth is much more complicated, with many different inventors adding parts to what eventually became the car. Most people would point to Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot's 1769/1771 artillery tractor as the first real self-propelled vehicle. The truth, however, seems to be that nearly a century before that, a Jesuit missionary in China actually built the first self-propelled vehicle. Though, to be fair, it was a toy.

That missionary was named Ferdinand Verbiest, and aside from having the verb-iest last name ever, Ferdinand was a very accomplished astronomer and scientist. He worked in the court of the Kangxi Emperor, a job he got by winning an astronomy contest against a Chinese astronomer. Winner got the job, loser was to be cut into pieces while still alive. Luckily for the loser, the sentence was commuted to exile, and Verbiest and the Emperor eventually became close friends, and I imagine would throw back some wine and laugh about the time the Emperor almost had old Ferdie diced.

In addition to fixing calendars and designing astronomical instruments and cannon, Verbiest seems to have used his resources of some of the best fabricators in China (and likely the world) to build an interesting little diversion for the Emperor all the way back in 1672: a smallish (about 2 ft long) five-wheeled cart-like machine that had the then wildly-unique ability of self-motility.

The cart used a very simple sort of steam turbine, a mild evolution of such other early steam turbines as Hero's aeliopile steam engine (I've speculated about its use in a car a while ago). The turbine in Verbiest's car was an open turbine, which is essentially a waterwheel for steam. A water-filled vessel with a nozzle pointing at the bladed wheel is heated over a small brazier, and the steam shoots from the nozzle to the wheel's vanes, causing it to rotate, and, in the case of a horizontal wheel, that rotational motion is translated 90° through a differential-like gear system, and then on to the wheels.

This is a pretty crude, inefficient system, but there's no reason why it wouldn't have worked to propel a small, toy-like car. Verbiest describes it in his book, Astronomia Europea, and since the guy basically had the Orient's best metal shop at his disposal, I think it's pretty safe to assume the little car was actually built.

If it was built, it would very likely be the first self-propelled machine ever constructed by man, and that's a big deal, even if it was a bit too small to sit in. Or even on, really.

Verbiest's car is usually mentioned as a footnote or a sideline, but I don't really think that's fair. Even though the scale was small, the car had all the key components needed to qualify it as a motor vehicle: specifically, a motor and a vehicle. Plus, it wasn't a modification or retrofit of an existing wagon or carriage. This was designed to be a car from the beginning. I'm not exactly sure about the strange single fifth steering wheel setup, but it at least had something. Based on the car's purpose, I imagine the wheel could be set to allow the car to drive in circles of varying sizes.

If scaled up, I have my doubts about how well it would perform, and the danger of the open blasts of scalding steam probably would make an unmodified scaling-up unadvisable. Still, a fairly simple modification involving enclosing the turbine wheel in a sheet metal enclosure would both help to direct and maximize the energy of the steam jet and protect riders and passers-by from brutal face-scaldings.

I'm sure the Emperor found the car fascinating, and a big hit at Emperor-parties. Based on the circumstances of the car's use, the surrounding society, and the cheap and easy availability of horse-based horsepower available, it's not surprising the car remained just a novel toy.

Now, if there had been a colossal horse-plague or some similar horse, donkey, and oxen genocide, there may have been reason to pursue Verbiest's toy, and we'd all now be lusting after the new 2014 Verbiest Firedragon, with quad steam-turbine power. I had a poster of a 1980s Verbiest Firedragon in my room as a kid!

It's almost reassuring to know that since the absolute earliest days of human motorized travel, there have been people writing about cars, and people calling bullshit on what's written about cars. These exchanges should seem incredibly familiar to most of our readers even if they happened nearly 200 years ago. The characters are even the same: the company, touting a new model with a largely faked image of the car, and the clever and snarky commenters who spot the manufacturer's bullshit and call it out.

We've certainly seen this before, but this example may be the very first ever. The company in question is Dr. Church's Burmingham Steam Carriage Company, the car is their impossibly ornate steam coach, the bullshit is all over the delightful engraving of the coach driving with a full load of passengers, and the bullshit caller is the witty and observant Junius Redivivius.

The backstory is this: Dr.Church (who seems to have that title from a former job as a physician) had, along with a number of other investors, started a company to provided steam motorized bus service between London and Birmingham in 1832. The steam coach the company built was said to be able to take "a weight of fifteen tons fifteen miles an hour," which are pretty lofty goals for the time. Not impossible, but certainly not easy to do given the conditions of both the technology and roads at the time.

Newspaper articles breathlessly touted the capabilities of the new steam carriage, even though very scant evidence was available that it actually ran at all. The only evidence of anything at all were these drawings, the one published in the Mechanic's Magazine being the trigger for our proto-internet-forum-bullshit-caller's screed.

I'm enclosing the entire letter here (it's long, but worth it) but let's just highlight some of the good bits here:

If that drawing be a correct representation of the vehicle constructed by Dr.Church, it is in itself conclusive evidence of his utter unfitness for the purpose of promoting steam locomotion... the thing looks like a car of Juggernaut, intended to be moved only under the influence of a strong internal excitement, rather than a vehicle intended for the purposes of everyday utility. It looks like a mountain, and a mountain scarcely to be moved. If there is one form of carriage more liable to overset than another, it is that of three wheels in a triangle...

All of this makes the mystery of the Reliant Robin even greater, since you'd think 130 years of evidence would be enough to dissuade companies from that tricycle design. But back to the smackdown. Check out this great assessment of the scale of the drawing:

In the drawing all the wheels are of one size, and "Impartial" states them to be eight feet in diameter. Thus, the heads of the outside passengers, who are so comfortably and leisurely seated on stick chairs or benches on the roof, must be some four-and-twenty feet from the roadway... I fear the pedestrians would outstrip them in speed... and ask, as they pass 'what the temperature may be at that height?'

Zing! His more technical descriptions of the suspension setup are great as well:

... the huge splashing board, which stands on a pair of double elliptic springs, apparently of the size fitting for a child's chaise; and a third single elliptic spring, carefully fixed at both ends, effectually to prevent its action.

At one point, our letter writer asks "how much money has been spent on this enormous erection?" but I think that's more funny to our modern filthy minds than it was back then.

Steam Smackdown by Jason Torchinsky

The thing is, our intrepid letter-writer was absolutely right; Church's lumbering steam-beast did not, in fact, run as planned, and later reports suggest it only made one trial run, in 1835, for three miles before becoming damaged while making a turn. For all its mass and bulk, it was far too fragile for conditions of the time, and certainly for the lavish claims its owners were making about it tearing down gravel roads with a full complement of heavy-ass passengers.

The letter does go on to point out other inventors and companies who were, in fact, producing functioning steam automobiles, most notably Goldsworthy Gurney.

Sure, our cars work incredibly well now, and our technology would be unfathomable to the people of 1830s, but I can't help but feel that, fundamentally, the readers of Mechanic's Magazine and our current crop of Jalops really aren't that different at all.

(Sources: JSBlog, Wikipedia, Zumann)

Tech note: We're testing out a new feature called text annotation on this post. Text annotation allows you to discuss a specific paragraph or section. The feature is in beta and we're still ironing out some bugs and the general functionality. Let us know what you think!

Water, an Amphicar and women. That was the recipe for fun in Britain in the sixties. Actually, it still is.

Ernest Marples started a promising career when Winston Churchill appointed him a junior minister in the Conservative Government in 1951. After becoming the Postmaster General in 1957, it only took him two years to jump into the Transport Minister's chair. In this picture, he is driving a Triumph-powered German Amphicar at Little Venice, a peaceful part of London's Ragent's Canal on April 22, 1964. Half a year later, the Conservative Party lost the elections.

As a former Londoner, I would say cruising in Little Venice with two ladies on board is the least I would expect from a politician who loved prostitues and later had to move to Monaco to escape various legal and taxation difficulties.

Still, the real hero was the artist John Wesley two years later. The River Thames is not a tiny little canal, so taking a 2,315 pound car with 43 horsepower into it is a ballsy move.

Photo credit: Les Lee/Hulton Archives/Fox Photos

Yesterday night, General Motors made sure to keep everybody as excited about the new Corvette Stingray as the people involved in the project were. The countdown on Youtube looked like we were about to send somebody to Mars, but it worked: even I stayed up here in Budapest (what's 7:00 pm for you is 1:00 am for me) to watch the car being unveiled.

(Warning: it gets NSFW Below)

What I saw was a few blokes standing next to a rather attractive red car:

What I would expect from the premier of a V8 powered plastic car looks more like this:

It was in October 1971 when TVR decided (again) to shake things up a bit. They arrived at the British Motor Show with a V8 Tuscan, a Tasmin 280i powered by a Cologne V6 (which you might get as it was the last TVR that made it to the States), and a good old Vixen with its Kent four banger. They also brought two naked glamour models.

Helen Jones (36-24-36) made it to the cover of Parade Magazine after this performance, while Susan Shaw (35-24-35) reportedly was a bit terrified by all those people surrounding them while posing at Earls Court. Later on, she forgot about her shyness to become the cover girl of Penthouse and Girl Illustrated under the fake name of Karen McCook. She also met F1 Champion James Hunt for a brief advertising (and who knows what else) session.

Blackpool: 1, Detroit: 0.

(Hat tip to Lost In The Seventies. We're a bit lost in it ourselves.)

What's the craziest thing you've ever done on a bet? Shaved your head? Snuck into a party when you weren't on the guest list? Played Russian Roulette with some enforcers from a Mexican drug cartel? (I would advise against the last one, personally. Things tend to go south a lot faster than you might expect.)

Whatever you've done on a bet, it's not as awesome as what Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson did 110 years ago. On a whim and the desire to win $50, Jackson wagered that he could drive from one coast to another in an automobile, a feat that had never been done before and was largely considered impossible by many.

With the help of a 20 horsepower Winton touring car, a mechanic friend and a bulldog in racing goggles, Jackson made the impossible possible. Here's how he did it.

Before we get into Jackson's journey, let's talk about what America was like in 1903. Teddy Roosevelt was president, the first transatlantic radio broadcast had just been made, and the "horseless carriage" was still in its infancy. This was five years before Henry Ford's Model T brought motoring to the American masses, so cars were essentially still just playthings for the very wealthy. At the time of Jackson's trip, very few Americans had ever even seen an automobile before. (Motorsports were also in their infancy; that same year, the Paris-Madrid Race was held, killing eight people in the process.)

So the odds were definitely against Jackson, a wealthy gentleman and physician from Vermont who made this money the good old fashioned American way. No, not suing people! The other one — he married rich.

But Jackson was our kind of people, make no mistake about it. If Jalopnik had existed in the early 1900s, he probably would have been a contributor. He had this extremely optimistic, can-do attitude about everything and was more than willing to face the hardships involved with driving across the country.

As PBS tells it, Jackson was 31 at the time of the drive, and while he gave up practicing medicine in 1900 after a bout of tuberculosis, he wasn't hurting for money as his wife Bertha was their heiress to a cure-all tonic empire. The beverage, if you're curious, was called "Payne's Celery Compound" and it was 20 percent grain alcohol. (Regardless of what ailed you, I have no doubt that "compound" would make you feel a lot better.)

The story goes that Jackson undertook his journey after making a bet with a group of men in a San Francisco bar. History says that the other men argued that the automobile was a passing fad, and that it would be impossible to travel in one from there to New York in less than 90 days. Jackson said he could pull it off, and then someone bet him $50 he couldn't.

With the modern equivalent of about ONE MILLION DOLLARS $1,250 on the line, Jackson set out to prove them wrong. But while he was already an automotive enthusiast, he needed a special kind of car to get the job done.

His mechanic (and later co-driver) Sewall K. Crocker suggested a Winton. Back then, Cleveland's Winton Motor Carriage Company made cars that had a reputation for being tough and reliable. They bought a slightly used Winton Touring Car for $3,000 from a local Wells Fargo executive with a two-cylinder, 20 horsepower engine. (PBS says that Winton made 850 of them in 1903, bringing the nation's total registered cars to just 33,000.) Their rig included sleeping bags, rain coats, tools, a shotgun and a rifle, and a small camera to record the trip.

And with that, on May 23, Jackson and Crocker were off. They went north from San Francisco into Oregon and then east through the northern United States, passing through Wyoming, Nebraska, and Chicago along the way. Keep in mind that a journey like this one was was made even harder because roads were essentially nonexistent compared to what they're like today.

The encountered floods. They ran out of cash. They fixed or replaced nearly every part on the Winton. Local blacksmiths helped them weld on new parts. They crashed the car at least once, but thankfully, it wasn't serious.

The National Museum of American History says the two men used a block and tackle pulley system to extract the car when it got stuck in the mud. When it broke down, they wrote or telegraphed the factory asking for more parts and waited for them to be delivered by train.

Along the way, they acquired Bud, a bulldog who became their racing goggles-wearing companion and possibly the first dog to experience the joys of car travel — at least, in America, maybe.

As they traveled Jackson and Crocker found themselves making headlines in newspapers and magazines, not to mention generating a massive amount of publicity for Winton. No one had ever done what they were doing before, and many people along their route came out to get their first look at an actual automobile. Sometimes, other early automobile owners would come out and join them for a spell along their route.

In addition, Packard and Oldsmobile also dispatched their own teams to try and complete the trip as well, although they left after Jackson and Crocker did.

After a journey that was long and extremely arduous, and caused Jackson to lose 20 pounds along the way, the duo (and canine) made it into New York in the early morning hours of July 26. I'll let that article from PBS take it here:

It was 4:30 in the morning on Sunday, July 26th, when Jackson, Crocker and Bud crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan, drove down the city's deserted streets, and finally honked their horn to awaken the night porter at the Holland House hotel on 30th Street and 5th Avenue.

Jackson had made it from San Francisco in 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes - well within his wager of 90 days. And having become the first to drive a car across the nation, within hours of their entrance into New York, he and Crocker and Bud were the toast of the town.

In total, Jackson spent about $8,000 on the trip, which is close to $200,000 today. He never collected his winnings from the guys at the bar in San Francisco.

As cars became more common in the 1910s and 1920s, Winton had a lot of trouble keeping up with the competition. They eventually ceased production and became a subsidiary of General Motors, where they made engines for boats.

As for Jackson, his life of derring-do continued well after the drive ended. He retired to Vermont with Bud and his wife for a time. Then he enlisted in the Army when World War I broke out and came back a decorated hero, despite being well into his 40s when he entered the service. He donated his Winton to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and would regale anyone who would listen about the drive that made history, according to PBS. (Bud's racing goggles are on display there too.)

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jackson and Crocker's drive, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns directed the film Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip for PBS in 2003. Much of what you read here comes from PBS' fantastic website about the drive, which goes into far more detail than I can. I'd encourage you to watch the film next time it's on as well.

Also, antique auto owners repeated this feat in 2003. Maybe we'll see some people do it again this year on the 110th anniversary.

One last thing about Jackson. He died in 1955 at the age of 82, and the world had changed tremendously in his lifetime. By then cars had transformed from a novelty into a global industry. Once, they were slow-moving horseless carriages; now, they were sleek and colorful rocket-shaped rides that represented all the optimism that postwar America had to offer. And they would only continue to get faster as the decades went on. In 2006, Alex Roy did it in just 32 hours.

I have a feeling that if Jackson were still alive, he'd be the first to try and beat that.

Photos credit Getty Images, AP, Public Domain

Hat tip to reader "I'd walk for my car," whose comment on the "Tell Us Something We Don't Know" story inspired this feature!

You know Vauxhall today as Britain's Opel with the steering wheel on the right, but back at the beginning of the motoring era, they made cars that were faster than Bentleys. The OE-type 30-98 was one of those.

In 1913, Vauxhall presented the C10 "Prince Henry's" successor at the Waddington Fell hillclimb. The 30-98 was developed in just 71 days, and the first cars had a 4,525cc side-valve four cylinder engine, producing 90 horsepower. Ten years later, they introduced the OE-type with a more modern overhead valve engine producing 112 hp.

Being almost 900 pounds lighter than a Bentley 3.0-Litre and having a high axle ratio, the OE-type was fast from the beginning, but when Major L. Ropner wrote a letter to The Autocar about how he was fed up with the lack of 100 mph cars on the market, Vauxhall responded by producing a two-seater 30-98 for him in polished aluminium and a full set of road equipment.

On March 28, 1923 factory test driver Matt Park took the car to Brooklands and achieved a flying lap at 100.7mph, before delivering the car to Ropner, who used it extensively for competition, continental touring and commuting to London from his home in Yorkshire.

To celebrate the centenary, Vauxhall Motors will bring their own 1926 OE-Type (OE268) to join around 50 other 30-98s in Lancashire to celebrate the model’s competition debut at Waddington Fell. Sounds like a party!

Photo credit: Vauxhall

In 1980, a tiny French team's boss sat into the car he designed himself and pushed the pedal to the floor as long as he could so his co-driver could finish the 24 Hours Of Le Mans two laps ahead of Porsche's turbocharged 908/80 with Jacky Ickx and Reinhold Joest behind its wheel. Ickx (first) announced his retirement not long after the champagne wasting.

Jean Rondeau built his first car for the 1976 season. Powered by the 3.0-liter Cosworth V8 from F1 instead of the French PRV and badged as Inaltera thanks to the sponsor money coming from the producer of colored papers, the prototype finished 40 laps ahead of the next car in the Grand Touring Prototype category, a Lancia Stratos. They finished first in class and fourth overall the next year as well, before the team and the cars were sold off to Heini Mader. But Rondeau kept his drawings so he could build new cars.

The Rondeau M378 was ready by 1978, and used a steel tubular space frame with aluminium sheet reinforcement as the chassis. The Cosworth DFV V8 remained, and produced over 450 horsepower in endurance trim. Compared to the Inaltera design, the new Rondeau's fiberglass body had a longer tail and partly covered rear wheels. After struggling to find enough sponsor money, Rondeau had to wait two more years for the ultimate win.

In 1980, Porsche again sent no works Group 6 cars in order not to compete against their many customers in their 935 Group 5 cars. The only Group 6 Porsche sponsored by Martini Racing was entered by Reinhold Joest himself and Jacky Ickx. It was christened the Porsche 908/80 by the team, but looked much like the 1977 car. Outsiders believed it to be a hack on a 908 until it was discovered that it was in fact built on a real 936 replacement chassis, the 936-004. Porsche used a 908 chassis number as they didn't intend to sell 936s to customers.

Porsche's 2.1-liter turbo flat-6 had enough power, and Joest found himself in the lead. But when Ickx jumped in, the fuel injection pump belt gave up. Because racecar, Joest was prepared and there was a set of tools and a spare belt in the cabin, but the team lost 14 minutes and the lead. Ickx got it back at night, but instead of pushing even harder, they played it save as they didn't expect the Cosworth to last long enough. But it did. When the Porsche got some gearbox problems, the French got ahead. For the final half an hour, it started to rain at Le Mans. The Germans were faster, but while Ickx pitted for wet tyres, Jaussaud kept the slicks. In the last lap, he lost control of the car, but didn't hit anything.

The Rondeau M378 won, with their second car being third overall and first in GPT. The Porsche 936 stuck between the French made Jacky Ickx so disappointed that he announced his retirement, only to change his mind four month later after Porsche promised him a unicorn.

Photo credit and hat tip to Ultimatecarpage!