Saturday, January 12, 2019

Barbara Eden and her 1969 428 Cobra Jet Mach 1, at her home in LA, 1970. photo by Herm Lewis



https://www.facebook.com/groups/1655341931388663/permalink/2227221494200701/
https://www.thecoli.com/threads/this-was-the-most-beautiful-actress-of-all-time.280447/page-21
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/barbara-edens-life-no-paradise-20110704-1gybo.html

It probably looked like


by the way, she's still alive. She sold the car to a guy named Don Edwards, or the editor of Fabulous Mustangs Magazine, Jeff Tann. The Mustang was hers for 22 years, and had AC

https://www.428cobrajet.org/forum/index.php?topic=19560.15
http://www.boss302.com/smf/index.php?topic=61865.0

but I also ran across this:


and now I'm wondering about this car. 1968 Bonneville? 1969 Catalina? Pontiac was a big promoter of I Dream Of Jeannie, and the main characters, Jeannie and the astronaut had a couple of them, one was a 1968 Bonneville


Update Feb 2019, here is Barbara Eden painting the car!


https://www.svtperformance.com/threads/random-picture-thread.1159350/page-336#post-16126256

do you remember the 1989 Mustangs? And how the better looking GT 5.0 was slower than the LX 5.0?

In the back of an old shop—in a 100-plus-year-old boiler room—in urban Cleveland, hid a 1989 Mustang LX 5.0L that had been parked and covered there since 1999 or 2000.

“The paperwork that the Ford dealership gets when the order is placed revealed a peculiar option list” on this Mustang. “It didn’t just list not having options; it listed what options you couldn’t get due to this one particular code.”

It's code 41X. 

The mystery of 41X is that it programmed the assembly line to build the most stripped-down and lightweight ’89 Mustang in either coupe or hatchback, but not convertible. But salesmen on the showroom floor always want to sell options and accessories, making 41X a code Ford did not want widely circulated.

No air conditioner, no power door locks, no power windows, no premium sound systems, and no dual electric remote mirrors.

According to Kevin Marti, there were a total of 1,132 Mustangs produced with option code package 41X.

http://www.mustangandfords.com/features/1812-41x-lightest-most-stripped-down-1989-mustang-you-could-buy/

as you'd expect, the least expensive to maintain cars, are nearly all small Asian cars with no luxury or powerful motors.

Toyota, Scion, Lexus, Honda, Mitsubishi, Mini, Mazda, Nissan, VW, GMC, Hyundai, Subaru - the only surprises in least expensive car makes were that BMW Mini and GMC were in the top 12.

Probably because GMC doesn't make many cars or trucks. Mini is simply a BMW creation that only has 2 or 3 models, and statistically has less models to deal with than the competition

If these cars were all judged on price per 100,000 cars made, perhaps the results would be less manufacturer based, and more useful based on the models individually. Do you think any one cares how a McLaren would rate, or a Spyker? Nope. There arnen't enough of them around that it's an issue

https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expensive-cars-to-maintain-by-maddy-martin

The Shelby Mustang 1967 GT500 Super Snake, the one of a kind prototype Shelby had built for a Goodyear tire test, just sold for $2.2M, the most any car with a Mustang on it has ever sold for, in 2013 it sold for $1.3M



on the last known set of Goodyear Thunderbolt tires, which were found in a warehouse in Akron, Ohio, several years ago

7 3/4 inch wide white wall passenger tires. These were the skinniest tires ever mounted on a Shelby.
They were overinflated and filled with nitrogen instead of regular compressed atmosphere. This was done to prevent the tires from getting overheated on the long run.

Carroll Shelby figured he would be the first to find out if the tires would work, so he personally took the car out for a few laps on the track, He thought it was the best GT500 ever made, and loved every minute of it. Goodyear was able to film their Thunderbolt promotion after all the testing was done, which was a success story for all involved. The public loved the tires, and people started buying them for their own family cars. Ford noticed an uptick in new orders for Shelby Mustangs, which meant Shelby would be busy building new cars. Ford, Shelby, and Goodyear saw the profits from this effort quickly.

The Shelby Mustang Super Snake averaged 142 MPH for 500 miles, reaching 172 MPH in the straights. Even more amazing was the fact that these skinny little tires performed flawlessly, and retained 97 percent of their tread after the 500 mile run! The fact that he went 172 MPH on 7 1/2 inch wide Bias Ply tires was phenomenal. This was a fact that Goodyear promoted heavily, of course.


For an accurate restoration, it would need original Thunderbolt tires, but, as they hadn’t been made in over 30 years this was a problem. This SSS was purchased by collector Richard Ellis in 2008, and he was committed to an exhaustive nationwide search to find these tires took place. Finally, while looking through an old repair shop warehouse he found 10 of these Thunderbolt original tires, with the original stickers, in a tire rack in the back corner.

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/unique-1967-ford-mustang-shelby-gt500-super-snake-sold-at-auction-for-record-2-2-million
https://www.mecum.com/lots/FL0119-359599/1967-shelby-gt500-super-snake/
http://bryansworldofwheels.com/rarest-mustang-ever/
http://www.mustangandfords.com/events/1309-million-dollar-mustangs-at-mecums-spring-classic-auction/

Yellow Vest protesters have disabled over 60% of France's 3,200 speed cameras as part of their fight against rising fuel and commuting costs.


The public were already angry with speed limit sanctions that were imposed last year. In many parts of the country, the speed limit was reduced from 90km/h to 80km/h, which is 50mph.

The movement originally began over fuel tax increases and the rising cost of commuting for the working person, which has now resulted in protesters targeting toll roads and speed cameras. According to the Yellow Vests, many people feel that speed cameras are solely there to generate revenue from the poor.



The Yellow Vests, or Gilets Jaunes in French is a protest movement named after the high-visibility vests that every driver in the country must keep in their vehicle by law. On average, the French pay 46.2% of their income in tax.

https://drivetribe.com/p/yellow-vests-sabotage-60-of-frances-WayK_dG1T62xxsDh9do1eA

compliment of the day from Bruce, about the Gyo Fujikawa post

If you don't dig up these obscure fun stories who will? With your research, and some judicious bar bets, I can drink for free.

Thank you, Sir.

two 14-year-olds and two 16-year-olds ran amuck at a Houston Carmax, causing over 800,000 dollars in damage while trying to steal cars


Upon deputies arriving, the suspects fled on foot throughout the parking lot. A police perimeter was set and with the assistance of a Constable K9, all suspects were apprehended and identified as juveniles.

Further investigation revealed that the juveniles gained access to the dealership keys, broke into multiple vehicles and crashed them into over 20 vehicles, causing approximately $800,000.00 in damage.

"All four juveniles were arrested and booked into the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center, charged with 1st Degree Felony Criminal Mischief."




http://www.thedrive.com/news/25868/teens-break-into-houston-dealership-smash-up-challenger-corvette-mustang-among-800000-in-car-damage
https://www.facebook.com/Precinct4/posts/2328178767215023

loading a 1/4 million pounds of excavator onto a trailer, without breaking the trailer



notice that the bottom of the trailer is bouncing off the ground from the 2 minute to the 3 minute mark

the work of pioneering illustrator Gyo Fujikawa.




The Year Santa Went Modern, illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. Family Circle, December 1963.

Fujikawa, born in 1908, grew up in California, and studied at Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles. In 1932, her art studies took her to Japan for a year, after which she returned to California to teach at Chouinard, and then to work for Disney Studios on the theater program hand out for Fantasia, among other things. She even made one in Japanese https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/walt-disney-1940s-fantasia-program-50852331




Chouinard became CalArts, which was funded by Walt Disney and became a primary source of new Disney animators and artists. Since she taught at Chouinard, she was one of the big reasons CalArts became what it is today.

After several years at Disney, Fujikawa was lured away to New York as art director for William Douglas McAdams, a pharmaceutical company. (says one source, however, the New York Times says: Disney Studios sent her to its advertising department in New York, where she designed many 25-cent Disney books.)

Unlike her parents and younger brother, she escaped internment because she was living in New York; only Japanese residing on the West Coast were sent to the camps. But Fujikawa traveled frequently, and when people became suspicious of her, she often told them she was really Anna May Wong, the Chinese American actress. According to her nephew, Fujikawa took secret delight in this masquerade.


Another notable aspect of Fujikawa’s Å“uvre was her work designing U.S. postage stamps. In 1960, she designed a four-cent stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan trade agreement. The image, colored in pink and blue, featured a view of Washington, D.C., with the Washington Monument seen through the cherry blossom trees.

The stamp design gained extra publicity when it was featured at an official welcome ceremony for Crown Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan, who praised its “felicitous” design. Shortly after, Fujikawa was commissioned to design a cover for the Saturday Evening Post.


Her design, a picture of a parakeet in a cage pressed up against a window to see the snow outside, received widespread publicity when her original painting was stolen from a car in Washington, D.C. after the reproduction for the cover had been completed.  Saturday Evening Post, Jan 1962


She designed 6 stamps for the post office

She illustrated 5 books and wrote 45 https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Gyo+Fujikawa&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AGyo+Fujikawa&ajr=0

After the war, Fujikawa began work as a freelancer, doing commercial drawings and designing Christmas cards. One notable campaign she designed was for Beech-Nut baby food. Fujikawa put together drawings of Mother Goose characters that could be strung together to make a mini book.

Meanwhile, she became active in book design. In 1952, she produced a set of drawings of Disney characters for McCall’s Magazine, such as this appealing, exquisitely colored illustration of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs



(By the way, there is a blog that has 8 years of Snow White research, and nothing else - 


Newsweek, Feb. 16, 1953 (European edition). With front cover illustration, "Valentine...Peter Pan", tied to a review of Disney's just-released Peter Pan movie.

The Disney artwork in the above magazines attracted the attention of the children’s publishers Grosset and Dunlap, who hired her to do illustrations for a new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” published in 1953.

Its success led the publisher to commission further book illustrations. Her edition of Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” (1961) and her edition of “Mother Goose” (1968) became particular favorites. Not content with providing pictures for other authors’s work, in 1963 Fujikawa persuaded the publisher to put out two original children’s books she had written and illustrated, “Babies” and “Baby Animals.” The two books quickly became children’s best-sellers. Absorbed by the process of creation, Fujikawa gradually withdrew from commercial art and concentrated on writing and illustrating children’s books.

Magazine illustrations that were advertising, (quite a bit for Family Circle magazine)


and I may be wrong, but I believe this iconic Eskimo Pie kid to be her artwork:


which brings me to the connection with my recent unknown artist who invented the Eskimo Pie kid, Walter Oehrle

In her first two books, "Babies" and "Baby Animals," she proposed showing "an international set of babies--little black babies, Asian babies, all kinds of babies." But this was the early 1960s and a sales executive at Grosset and Dunlap told her to take the black babies out for fear they would kill sales in the South.

Fujikawa, a diminutive, elegant but feisty woman, refused. Today the books have sold more than 1.5 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages. She is often credited as the first children's author to depict a multiethnic cast of characters.


Fujikawa was the only daughter of an immigrant farmer and an aspiring social worker who started their family in Berkeley, later moving to the San Pedro area. Her father, hoping for a boy, named her after a Chinese emperor. When she was born instead, Fujikawa recalled in an autobiographical sketch, "he was so mad he stuck me with the name anyway."

When looking for information on Gyo Fujikawa, the word Nisei comes up, and so, I had to look that up to learn what it means....Nisei is a Japanese language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants. The Nisei are considered the second generation.

So does the word Nikkei, it means Japanese emigrants and their descendants who have taken up residence in other countries.

And then, because whoever wrote these articles was writing for the Japanese descendants, another word pops up, Issei - a Japanese immigrant to North America.

https://www.metafilter.com/140671/Gyo-Fujikawa-Godmother-of-WeNeedDiverseBooks
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/japanese-american-animation-artists-of-the-golden-age-9375.html
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/dec/13/news/mn-53751
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/01/favorite-window-applications/cover_9620106/
https://www.flickr.com/groups/973319@N25/
http://www.katedolamore.com/blog/2013/08/inspirational-artists-i-grew-up-on-gyo-fujikawa/
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/snow-white-painting-at-auction-53453.html
http://pikby.com/hashtag/gyo%20fujikawa%20family%20circle/
https://www.nichibei.org/2012/07/6834/
http://www.animationmagazine.net/streaming/abc-alternative-division-sets-ink-paint-docuseries-for-disney-ott/attachment/ink-and-paint-post2/
https://gyofujikawa.wordpress.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/07/arts/gyo-fujikawa-90-creator-of-children-s-books.html

there was even a one act play about Fujikawa and Disney https://www.jeffbiehl.net/disney-and-fujikawa-est-marathon/

Though it's not necessary, I'd like to point out that this post is here, instead of spending time on making a post about cars, trucks, etc, because I love art, celebrate artists, and history, and when I come across an artist that worked at Disney, that I haven't learned of before, it blows my mind. I also will go out of my way to post a fuck you to racists and those that supported the internment of citizens  who happened to be sacrifices to politics, during WW2.  https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/02/everyones-heard-of-hirohata-mercury.html

Holy shit news update, that 13 year old girl I just told you about? escaped her kidnapper that killed her parents!

Thirteen-year-old Jayme Closs escaped the man who killed her parents and held her against her will in a remote part of Wisconsin, then gave police a description of his car that enabled deputies to quickly take him into custody, authorities said at an emotional news conference Friday.

Jake Thomas Patterson, a 21-year-old from Gordon, Wisconsin, was arrested Thursday - the same day Jayme was discovered walking down a road roughly 60 miles north of where she disappeared, authorities said. Jayme had been missing for 88 days, since her parents were fatally shot at their home outside Barron, Wisconsin, in October.

A woman said she was walking her dog along a rural road at around 4 p.m. Thursday when a disheveled teenage girl called out to her for help, quickly grabbed her and told her she was lost. Then the girl revealed her name: Jayme Closs.

Jayme was skinny and dirty, wearing shoes too big for her feet, but appeared outwardly OK, the neighbors said.

Jayme went missing on Oct. 15 after police discovered someone had broken into the family's home outside Barron and fatally shot her parents, James and Denise Closs. Jayme was nowhere to be found, with the Barron County Sheriff's Department at the time describing her as likely abducted.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/jayme-closs-found-wisconsin-teen-missing-since-october-504206771.html

I had only learned of this on the 7th of January... https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-13-year-old-girl-missing-since-oct.html

Rat Rod Cozy Coupe


Not sure if this is finished, or will get more engine parts

illegal aliens driving, legally or not, happens to affect citizens driving legally

12 states have switched to allowing illegals the driving privilege.

by expanding driving privileges:
 In New Mexico, the rate of uninsured vehicles decreased by 24 percent and traffic fatalities fell 23 percent.
 In California, research linked its license law to a sharp decline in hit-and-run accidents.
 In Utah, the uninsured rate dropped 20 percent.

There are 466,000 unauthorized immigrants of driving age in New Jersey, according to NJ Policy Perspective, and no matter how you feel about it, they are going to drive. Most of them have jobs, families, and places to go.

But they also have no driver’s license, their car is probably unregistered, and since they have no insurance, your own policy probably won’t cover any damages if you’re struck by one of them.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/01/lets-hit-the-gas-on-drivers-licenses-for-undocumented-immigrants-editorial.html

Robert took his Medusa to a local car show, and used a go-pro to record the trip



when stopping to fill the gas tank, he took off without making sure his wife, in the other car, was aware he was heading off... so, they seemed to not have cell phones to contact each other, and he relied on the old fashioned method of going to where she'd expect to find him, and waiting for her there.

He sorta had to, she had the cash for the admission costs!

on the little counter that only tracks direct hits to this blog, it just rolled over 29 million



the counter that Google used to have on the G+ (google has their own version of Twitter) which they took down a couple years ago, and tracked all hits to the blog, and the G+ account side of the same content, which google auto posted to G+, was getting about 200,000 hits a day, by my numbers that I tracked from May 2014 to Jan 2015, and was at 4698139383 on Jan 19th, 2015

Just using that same trend, I estimate that the G+ numbers would be around 688 million hits right now. That's an impressive half a billion plus.

Things like that cause me to not be surprised when I come across a photo I took 10 years ago being the image some stranger is using as his facebook avatar.


notice the barrel of Nitro in the lower left corner?


I found it at the Mendenhall Museum of Petroliana, and took this photo in 2011 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/nitromethane-nitrofuel-concentrate-for.html

And today when I saw that Keith is using it as his avatar? I was pretty pleased to have put something out there on the internet that someone could appreciate, and use for their representation on facebook

1929 Packard limo was converted into a tow truck, and after storage in a garage, is now for sale on Craigslist for 20k


Originating on Long Island, this 1929 Packard 645 Super 8 Rollston or Holbrook custom bodied limousine was converted into a wrecker with manual crank Manley boom . Has been sitting dormant indoors for 50 years.



https://worcester.craigslist.org/cto/d/cherry-valley-1929-packard-645/6775956626.html

The personal 1968 Cobra Jet Torino GT of Bob Tasca Jr. has surfaced from under a tarp in a backyard in Chicopee, Massachusetts. It sat there for 35 years



Tasca made up decals reading "King of the Road," a set of which is still on this car. Apparently, Tasca was planning to sell a specialty model using this name, but Ford said no because Shelby already had dibs on the name for the G.T. 500, which became the G.T. 500KR in the spring of 1968.


When Doug Gaba died in 2015, Chris helped liquidate the estate. However, the sale of the Torino was "kind of up in the air," and instead he purchased an S-code 1967 Mustang fastback.

Chris says, "Then somebody decided not to buy the Torino, and a friend of mine, Jay Anderson, purchased the car." Two months later, he had the Torino in his shop and was helping his friend clean it up. "I got kind of sentimental because of my lifelong connection to the car, my father, and his friend Doug."

Chris got motivated to pick up the reins and put the car on the street to enjoy, and occasionally drag race, as well. "My buddy said to me, 'Give me what I have in it, and it's yours. '"

Chris was elated to purchase the car that was once owned by a friend so close to the family. He displayed the historic Tasca Torino at the 2018 Cobra Jet Reunion at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio.

https://www.hotrod.com/articles/rare-finds-bob-tasca-jr-1968-ford-torino-gt-cobra-jet-resurfaces-35-years/