Friday, February 07, 2020

If only there was a lane for taller vehicles...

Bamboo bikes made in Uganda

Ford just shot itself in the foot it seems... remember how excited people were that the Explorer and Ranger and Bronco were making a comeback? Well... what happened there? Somehow Tesla botched the bulletproof window, and took all the investors and publicity away

Since July 2014, Ford stock is down 53%.

Did they go to Wall Street, walk into the stock exchange, and commit some unspeakable sex crime against every trader there?

No?

They watched CEO Mulally leave, replaced him with Mark Fields, and now Jim Hackett.

Who? Exactly. No Henry Ford for god damn sure. Not even Edsel Ford. Shit, why dance around it, not even an Edsel.

Compare Tesla... to Ford.

Tesla shares are up 75% this year.

Tesla Stock is up 250% in the last 8 months

Tesla is up 2,519%  since 2012

Tesla is worth more than any car make not named Toyota.

No wonder Ford quit making cars. 

These guys seriously know how to take a good group expedition photo

Salvador Dali's 1972 Datsun 610 Wagon ad


that ad probably was done in exchange for this 180B wagon that Dali owned



This car now sits in the gardens of what is now the Castell Gala Museum in Pubol, but was once the home that Dali purchased in 1969 and gave to his wife Gala as a gift.

The Datsun was a rare vehicle in Spain and while Dali used it, it was primarily used by the staff to go shopping and run errands and was purchased because Dali did not want them to use his Cadillac.

If Dali and Datsun make no sense to you, then the Dali and Disney collaboration - Destino, will bewilder you. https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/awesome-people-hanging-out-together-had.html

On the other hand, if you're fascinated by the really weird and inscrutable, anything that Dali worked on will probably amuse you, like the Dali Atomicus (cats, water, and Dali himself all trampolined into the air at the same moment for a cool photo effect)


though not as famous as his melting watches (The Persistence of Memory) it's probably the 2nd most famous art work he did.



Face of Mae West Which Can Be Used as an Apartment (1974)

After all, how many artists have worked so hard to be so odd, to amuse themselves by causing the rest of us to ask what's going on with that?

Salvadore Dali was, in my opinion, unusually connected with vehicular stuff, and I'd already forgotten the Vespa he signed https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/01/this-is-vespa-salvador-dalis-fashion.html

because I was remembering the Harley he had brought up to the 10th floor of a Paris hotel https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/07/salvador-dali-on-10th-floor-with-harley.html

And I forgot his Graziella bike https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/11/salvador-dalis-graziella-folding-bike.html

and in his museum in Spain, the Cadillac which rains inside if you insert a quarter




In 1976 he wrote in the first issue of his "Empordà Artistic Weekly" about The Rainy Taxi:

"... the famous Cadillac, of which six exist, that Dalí gave Gala (his wife) as a present, and in which the couple drove from coast to coast during their stay in the United States.

One of them had belonged to President Roosevelt, another to Clark Gable, etc. This is the fourth reproduction of the famous Rainy Taxi, all destroyed by now.

(At a 1938 surrealist show in Paris, Salvador Dali shocked visitors with the "Rainy Taxi." It was raining inside the car; a mannequin sat dripping wet in the rear seat. Dozens of snails wandered inside the car. In 1939, Dali created another rainy taxi, a yellow cab this time around. Finally, a last one was made for his museum in Figueres, using his own Cadillac.)

The first was exhibited, with great success, at the surrealist exhibition in Paris, the second at the World Exhibition in New York, and the third at the surrealist retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The fourth is this one, on permanent exhibition at the Dalí TheatreMuseum."


Frankly, I find that Dali had a cool way of thinking about art, and made some intriguing stuff that shows he was thinking about stuff.... deeply.  (Have you seen the swans reflections that are elephants?)


The automobile was featured by Dali in several paintings, unlike most surrealists. It appears in very early works, such as the oil painting entitled Bather (1924), a portrait of his friend Joan Xirau; in a drawing from 1925, or Figueres Girl dating from 1926, in which the word "Ford" appears, a work seen by Picasso when Dalí visited the artist in Paris.





he uses the fossilised car which appears in Imperial Monument to the Woman-Girl (1929)


Paranoiac-Critical Solitude 1935


Apparition of the town of Delft 1936



In Dressed Automobiles (1941) he creates a further dissociation of ideas: he dresses the Cadillac up elegantly in clothing worthy of an haute couture boutique.


And again, the car appears in one of his last works Double Victory of Gaudí (1982).


But I didn't know that he'd got fed up with being famous, and broke, and finally said to hell with it all, and painted dozens of portraits in the '50s, then sold out to advertise anything and everything. Chocolate, Datsuns, Alka Seltzer, Braniff Airlines, Old Angus Whiskey, Johnson Paint, and Bryan's Hosiery and Chupa Chups.... but hell, inflation caused everything to get more expensive in his old age... consider - he melting watches was painted in 1931. 2 decades later he did portraits, then a decade later, advertising.

Plus, he made a self documentary, narrated by Orson Welles, of course.

And seemed to have a thing for the train station too,



In August of 1963, Dali stepped off the train, and, in complete ecstasy, declared its station “the centre of the universe”. “The Railway Station at Perpignan"

One thing is for sure, after looking through all the paintings of Dali, you'll see what Von Dutch was either inspired by, or channeling, and probably Michael Parkes too

He predated the QR code with "Cybernetic Odalisque" in 1978, and was painting stereoscopes for Pete's sake

https://www.messynessychic.com/2019/01/31/can-we-talk-about-salvador-dali-was-an-amazing-our-favourite-art-scene-sell-out-can-we-talk-about-dalis-amazing-sell-out-era/
https://www.logodesignlove.com/chupa-chups-logo
https://cartype.com/pages/4173/dalis_datsun
https://www.travelingwithsweeney.com/featured-museum-a-dalinian-experience/
https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/04/18/four-grisly-murders-one-salvador-dali/
http://galerija.metropolitan.ac.rs/index.php/GD2014-2015/AD108-Istorija-dizajna-2014-2015/Salvador-Dali/Dali-Atomicus-photo-by-Philippe-Halsman-1948_
http://galerija.metropolitan.ac.rs/index.php/GD2014-2015/AD108-Istorija-dizajna-2014-2015/Salvador-Dali/
https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/artwork/catalogue-raisonne-paintings/obres/

Whole lotta aero going on

New York Judges are finally getting fed up with, and calling bullshit on, New York cops claiming to smell marijuana emanating from a vehicle in order to search it. (thanks Maurice!)

In 2016, a federal judge in Rochester concluded that the rule (smelling marijuana justifying a search) in New York was unconstitutional and that New York judges had been wrong to allow such searches.


Police officers can often justify a search with six words: “I smelled an odor of marijuana.”

At the height of the stop-and-frisk era, nearly a decade ago, the police were arresting some 50,000 New Yorkers a year for low-level marijuana offenses, more than 85 percent of whom were black or Hispanic. The arrests have since plummeted, but the presence of a marijuana odor — real or purported — still serves as a justification to detain people and search them

Courts in New York have long ruled if a car smells like marijuana smoke, the police can search it — and, according to some judges, even the occupants — without a warrant. But in late July, a judge in the Bronx said in a scathing opinion that officers claim to smell marijuana so often that it strains credulity, and she called on judges across the state to stop letting police officers get away with lying about it.

“The time has come to reject the canard of marijuana emanating from nearly every vehicle subject to a traffic stop,” Judge April Newbauer wrote in a decision in a case involving a gun the police discovered in car they had searched after claiming to have smelled marijuana.

She added, “So ubiquitous has police testimony about odors from cars become that it should be subject to a heightened level of scrutiny if it is to supply the grounds for a search.”

It is exceedingly rare for a New York City judge to accuse police officers of routinely lying to cover up illegal searches, but Judge Newbauer’s decision does exactly that.

Several officers said in interviews that they had doubts their colleagues consistently told the truth about what they had smelled. “Certain cops will say there is odor of marijuana, and when I get to the scene, I immediately don’t smell anything,” one Bronx officer, Pedro Serrano, said in a 2018 article in The New York Times. “I can’t tell you what you smelled, but it’s obvious to me there is no smell of marijuana.”


A Manhattan detective, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the department, said it would be very difficult to prove what an officer did or did not smell.

But the detective said he had come to believe that some officers, particularly in plainclothes units, lied about having smelled marijuana because of how frequently he heard it used as justification for a search.

In recent years, at least five other judges have concluded in individual cases that officers likely lied about smelling marijuana to justify searches that turned up an unlicensed firearm, according to court documents. These judges came to doubt the police testimony for a range of reasons, such as discrepancies within an officer’s account or among officers, according to a review of the five decisions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/nyregion/police-searches-smelling-marijuana.html
Via https://www.metafilter.com/185475/The-Automotive-Police-State

Brian Murphy, a Chicago area delivery driver set a goal in 2007 to put a million miles on his Nissan Frontier pickup truck. He accomplished that


a two-wheel-drive, 4-cylinder, 5-speed manual 2007 Frontier King Cab

Purchased new in June 2007, the original clutch lasted 801,000 miles, the timing chain was replaced as preventative at 700,000 miles, and the radiator and alternator lasted about 450,000 miles each. Even the driver’s seat lasted a half-million miles before being replaced.

Friends, I seriously doubt any car I've ever driven is able to achieve a million miles, nor would any engine I've ever driven get a million miles, no clutch I've ever used would last 800,000 miles.

I don't know how softly he drives this truck, but it's amazing.

https://www.powernationtv.com/post/man-drives-nissan-frontier-pickup-over-1-million-miles
https://www.thedrive.com/news/32085/delivery-man-racks-up-one-million-miles-on-2007-nissan-frontier

The Denver Boot

was invented in 1944 and patented in 1958 by Frank Marugg, a pattern maker, and violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, and a friend of many Denver politicians and police department officials.

https://www.metafilter.com/185475/The-Automotive-Police-State

Thursday, February 06, 2020

Coffee and donuts video (if you put it on 2x speed) of an aircompressor restoration





1955 Ford Mystere concept car

the Renault I saw at SEMA finally shows up online!

well, there's something new all the time when you look around at the vastness of history. All types of things to learn for the first time, that happened 50 some years ago, and no one has mentioned since

Watkins Glen, 1948, and a couple interesting cars in front, #32 Stutz Black Hawk Boattail Speedster (now in the Revs Institute), driven by Dud C. Wilson, and #30, a Lagonda Rapide, but right behind that the 1929 Mercedes of the cartoonist, Charles Addams

this was one of the funniest things the guys at Top Gear ever did

I wonder if comic book artists find it easier tio draw modern cars that 70 years aho drawing such a complicated variety

Retromobile 2020 Monster Apocryphal at pur sang Argentina with an Isotta Fraschini 14.7 liter engine

and here's something I'd never had a reason to think of being possible

Fully restored 1929 Evinrude Elto boat motor and case. It's just pretty