JC Whitney itself is sort of an amazing thing: they still sell car parts online to this day, and they started way back in 1915 as a scrap metal yard run by a Lithuanian immigrant named Israel Warshawsky. His son realized catalogs could be a big thing, and actually sold catalogs for a quarter starting in 1934, and then kept cranking out these massive newsprint tomes of car parts for decades and decades....
Yes, exactly, that Taylor-Dunn Bigfoot. The trucks that make up the very backbone of the shadow trucking industry that runs in parallel to the big, road-going prima donna trucks that hog all the attention. While those F-150s and Silverados are out there, showily hauling three bags of soft, well-packaged peat moss across paved roads smooth as pudding skin before retiring for the night in a heated garage, thousands of people are backing Taylor-Dunns up to loading docks and roll-up doors and piling them full of sharp, filthy whatevers that need to be hauled across a campus or warehouse or through the dark, labyrinthine corridors of a convention center or prison or refinery or research lab or any of the thousands of other places that swarms of diamond-plate-skinned Taylor-Dunns roam and work....
On July 3, Vincent Fraser took his 1967 Aero Commander 100 for a flight above the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, reports the Washington Post. Fraser, a fresh pilot with about 100 hours in his logbook, was taking his father-in-law for a ride above the mountains when every pilot’s nightmare became reality. At about 5,500 feet above ground level, the Aero Commander’s Lycoming O-320 flat four piston engine sputtered to a stop....
Oh, and I’m not kidding about the mattresses: — The Autopian (@the_autopian) November 25, 2022 More mattress content will have to wait, because it’s now time for you to experience this bonkers car, just as we did: It’s an interesting and, um, exuberant concept car, and the specs certainly are impressive: … I mean, if you believe concept car specs, which I never really do, because, come on, it’s not real....
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Cheap Cars Are Back In High Demand After nearly two years of unsustainable used car prices, it seems like we’ve reached a turning point in the marketplace. Between higher interest rates and inflation, Automotive News reports that used car shoppers are paying less and getting less....
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Automated Driving In Single-Serving Containers Considered By VW At the moment, all the currently-available semi-automated driving systems from Tesla, GM, Ford, VW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, whoever work like most car options currently work: you pay a bunch 0f money for them up front, or, in some cases like Tesla’s poorly-named FSD (Full Self-Driving, and it isn’t) you can subscribe to the service for $199 per month....
I’d like to reiterate at this point that in this hypothetical world I’m talking about, it’s not just glass, it’s any transparent material that doesn’t exist. I have to clarify this because the first thing David said when I mentioned this idea to him was “So what? We’d just use plexiglass,” and then he chugged a whole carton of chocolate milk and crashed his skateboard down a flight of stairs....
I closed out July by crossing an event off of my bucket list. EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2022 was a celebration of all things aviation, and I happily wore myself out walking mile after mile to see more planes. Before I even set foot into the incredible campground, one of my goals was to go up in one of the planes at the show. For years, AirVenture visitors could buy a ticket to a short, but unique flight aboard a Ford Tri-Motor....
As I’m sure you’ve figured out by the previous few sentences, the REST button has to do with your car’s cabin heater, so to start, let’s take a look at how a typical heater in a combustion-powered car works. Your car’s heater works by leveraging the liquid coolant used to keep your engine from overheating. A combustion reaction heats up your engine’s metals, which conduct heat into coolant flowing through the engine’s cooling passages....
Put simply, car manufacturers don’t normally pay as much for warranty work as a customer with an out-of-warranty car would pay for repairs, and Illinois attempted to put a stop to that with a piece of legislation called the Multiplier Act which came into effect in 2022. We’ll delve more into this later, but those are the basics. As a result of having to pay more money to dealerships because of this legislation, Volkswagen of America is suing several state officials with the goal of having the Multiplier Act declared unconstitutional....
Let’s start with a definition. A flying car is a vehicle that can fly and also be used like a car; you can take it any day to go to work or to the grocery store or on a road trip. It doesn’t really have to look like a car, it only has to have the same functionalities. Some people say a flying car should have wheels. That is nonsense (reminds me of those folks who said a car should have windshield wipers, until Hyundai proved them wrong)....
If the conversation at the dinner table this holiday season gets sideways, I have a sure way for you to change the subject. Ask the car people at the table about the best Chevy Corvette. You might witness a debate turning into an all-out war over which generation of America’s quintessential sports car is the best. And there might be good salvos back and forth, like how the mid-engine C8 offers supercar performance at a low price, or how the C2 looks like nothing else....
First, in case you’ve somehow recently walked into a whirling ceiling fan and forgotten what an International Harvester (IH) Scout is, let’s do a quick refresher. International Harvester, as the name suggests, started as a farm equipment company, but moved into building trucks pretty early in the 1900s. They expanded to passenger cars with the Travelall, and then in the late 1950s decided they needed a competitor to the Jeep, which was riding its WWII fame to become a staple of off-road civilian life....
[Cold Start is how we’re going to start our days, with an interesting automotive image, and a bit of text. Our way of saying good morning as we pull the choke and try to get started. –Ed] I picked this AMC lineup to start for kind of symbolic reasons: AMC was always sort of the underdog, which is how we’re starting out, but they were always clever and strange and fun and those are all qualities I hope we have, too....
Here, look how it looks in print: Apepoker, apepoker, apepoker. It is a cool little truck, a sort of convergent evolution example to Japan’s Kei-class trucks. Also, I once was driving through Italy for the Mille Miglia in a Jaguar F-Type and stopped in the middle of the Parmigano region and convinced a wonderful farming family to let me drive their Ape: I had to explain myself with Google translate and hand gestures, but somehow it all worked....
A wise choice, I think. A 3800-powered GM sedan usually a safe, if not always exciting, choice. This one’s extra horsepower should provide some amusement. Now: The concept of a “hero car” in a movie or TV show is an important one, because cars are important. (I assume that, since you’re reading this site, I don’t have to tell you why.) Certain cars get linked so firmly with certain characters that you can’t see one without thinking of the TV show – every gold second-generation Firebird is “Jim Rockford’s car,” for example....
This week, I’m letting my trip out to help host the Autopian Meetup And Car Show influence a few of my finds, and we have a few picks from the west coast! We have a little bit of everything from a big classic truck to forgotten cars and motorcycles. I’ll warn you right away, some of these may be downright stupid or crappy cars. Some of them are questionably modified....
As such, we’re looking forward to CES because new cars are always cool to hear about, and CES debuts play a sizeable role in shaping the future of the industry. You might not buy any of the cars unveiled—or even be able to—but you might eventually buy something with similar tech. Without further ado, here are the cars we’re most looking forward to at CES 2023. BMW Vision Concept What it is: A look at the next generation of Bavarian EVs....
Working my broken crayon nubs (I asked Torch for some new Crayolas, but Tracy spent all the budget on lawn ornaments Utes) over some scrap paper, I gave you a few “thumbnail” sketches of a new Austin Healey to mull over with your tea and crumpets. Normally, when a new model is released, the OEM might show some “design sketches’”– amazing images that look like a slightly stylized version of the actual car....
Henry Ford’s interest in aviation predates the 1926 launch of the famous Tri-Motor by nearly two decades. In 1908, the then 42-year-old Ford made history with the launch of the Model T. Ford achieved his goal of a car for the masses and a few years later, those cars would be built using a then novel moving assembly line. Ford wasn’t first to make an automobile assembly line–Ransom Olds beat him by over a decade–but it allowed the Ford Motor Company to crank out cars at an incredible rate....
