Just A Car Guy
Cool things with wheels since 2006
Monday, March 24, 2025
Saul Leiter, New York City streets in color
Sunday, March 23, 2025
A-26 is getting closer to wrapping up a restoration. It was made at the end of WW2, then put into storage and didn't get flown until years later when Standard Oil bought it for company VIPs
https://www.fox13now.com/news/uniquely-utah/labor-of-love-aims-to-return-historic-wwii-aircraft-to-skies-over-utah#google_vignette
thanks to Volksrob! Here's the story of Peter Mounsey, 96, with his '49 Velocette, the he hit 97 mph with! His goal was one mpg per year of age!
An Australian yachting legend who sailed around the world with his wife in the 1950s
https://www.facebook.com/DryLakesRacersAustralia/
Six years ago on Lake Gairdner, Lionel West flipped the original Bronze Aussie at over 250mph. Now it's rebuilt and looking to break 300 mph, but only achieved 291
Saturday, March 22, 2025
A group of U.S. Marines rescued a wounded civilian stranded without food and water in the middle of the California desert, waving a green flag from a boulder below, last month
“He had been out there for almost two days, completely out of water and food,” said Young. “When we reached him, he was conscious but clearly exhausted and in pain. He told us he had been hoping someone would see him before it was too late.”
the collector car market continues to slump, and sellers have finally lowered their expectations
'02 Saleen Mustang that hit everything but the lottery!
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=9841453742534112&set=pcb.9841458002533686
road side attractions are getting more eye catching! Here's a helo on a fuel station in Europe, that rotates the blades if you put change in the machine! (Thank you Shas!) Orlen is Polish company, heli is Mi-2 designed by Mikhail Mil built on license in Poland and this gas station is in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia.
the BYD Seagull is one specific model that the CEO of Ford has admitted he’s worried about from a competitive standpoint. It sells for $9,700 in China, and is already slated to be sold in Europe, and a cheaper variant is set to launch in the UK this year, too.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Retired Amtrak conductor Brad Swartzwelter is making headlines for his proposal to use trains to reduce commercial vehicle crashes and congestion along the I-70 mountain corridor in Colorado.
Since 2015, Nissan has issued three safety recalls for the 2013-2018 Altima hood latch, after finding, "...the hood could unexpectedly open while driving, increasing the risk of a vehicle crash."
A fire at an electrical substation knocked out power to Heathrow Airport for most of Friday, forcing Europe’s busiest hub, and the world's fifth-busiest airport, to shut down for roughly 18 hours
Residents in west London described hearing a large explosion, followed by a fireball and clouds of smoke, when the blaze ripped through the substation.
The industry is now facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds, and a likely fight over who should pay.
"You would think they would have significant back-up power," one top executive from a European airline told Reuters.
Heathrow's rep said back-up systems and procedures had worked as they should.
"It is a wake-up call," he told Reuters. "There is no way that Heathrow should be taken out completely because of a failure in one power substation."
Willie Walsh, the head of the global airlines body IATA and a former head of British Airways, said Heathrow had once again let passengers down.
Heathrow said it had diesel generators and uninterruptible power supplies in place to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely. Those systems all operated as expected. But with the airport consuming as much energy as a small city, it said it could not run all its operations safely on back-up systems.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Space Patrol lead actor Ed Kemmer's 1950s series spawned more than 1000 episodes and introduced a generation of Saturday morning TV viewers (and often their parents) to the wonders of science fiction.
The show also inspired a NASA engineer who when meeting Kemmer, told him that the show had ignited his passion for space.
Kemmer was a war hero having served as a P 51 Mustang pilot, and was shot down on his 47th mission, in June of 1944, just a few days after D-Day, and was imprisoned at Stalag Luft 3 and spent 11 months as a POW. He briefly escaped from the camp for two weeks before being recaptured when rhe Russians got close in January, 1945 and they were marched out to a camp near Nuremberg.
A few weeks later General Patton got too close and they were marched out again and headed for Moosberg. He escaped on that march hoping to reach Switzerland .... Two weeks later he was recaptured and sent to the camp at Moosberg. Only there a few days .... Liberated by Patton's tanks on April 29th.
The camp was the same one from which a breakout occurred that was the inspiration for the Steve McQueen film The Great Escape (1963)
After Space Patrol, Kemmer was a guest star in various prime-time television series, including the classic Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", in which former space hero Kemmer co-starred with future space hero William Shatner.
He also had roles in episodes of Perry Mason, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, All My Children, and As the World Turns and acted out the role of "Prince Phillip" in live action footage that was given to the animators to study for Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959).
HA! How quickly the worm turns
a young Sparta Tennessee teen couple disappeared in 2000 when their car missed a corner, went into a river and they died... their car (98 Grand Am) and remains were finally located in 2021, when YouTube diver Jeremy Beau Sides discovered their car
There was no guard rail when the teens went off the road
https://www.facebook.com/jeremybechtelanderinfoster
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2022/07/20/erin-foster-jeremy-bechtel-buried-after-youtube-star-finds-car/10068664002/