If you follow the sport of mixed martial arts, then you no doubt know who Josh “The Warmaster” Barnett is. He won the UFC Heavyweight Championship in 2002, was the LPW Heavyweight World Catch Wrestling Champion in 2018, and aside from that, he also created his own series with Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport, where MMA meets pro-wrestling. What many folks don’t know however, is that professional athlete aside, Barnett is also a rabid automobile enthusiast who owns, wrenches and mentors his students not only in the athletic arena, but under the hood as well. On this episode of the Hemmings Hot Rod BBQ podcast, we sit down to talk muscle cars, automotive technology, and Bourbon, because yes, The Warmaster does that to.
Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
It looked like a charmingly shrunken first-generation Corvair with jet-style air scoops on its flanks. The gleaming red ZAZ 968 was a fascinating curiosity, one whose clattery, air-cooled engine I could imagine hearing run in my head even as I encountered the car silently parked. This 1976 model was nearly 20 years the senior of its new owner, who’d recently acquired it, originally from the country of both its and his birth, Ukraine. The ZAZ 968 had joined a restored VAZ 2103 (Lada 1500), an original Moskvich 412, and a low-mile, late Volvo 240 wagon in the fleet of Roman Grudinin.
Roman stands between his 1982 VAZ 2103 (Lada 1500) and 1976 ZAZ 968; both will star in future Hemmings feature stories.Photo by Mark J. McCourt
I spent quite some time conversing with Roman when we met last summer. This young enthusiast—professionally, a Business Coordination Project Manager at Volvo Car USA—impressed me with his deep knowledge about, and passion for, the Soviet cars that represented his family’s culture. I arranged to visit him at his New Jersey home a few months later to photograph the Lada that he’d personally restored, as well as the ZAZ, and both will star in forthcoming feature stories in Hemmings publications. The 27-year-old, who’s lived in the U.S. since before his second birthday, shared that his transportation interests were broader: along with hosting a Soviet-transportation-focused YouTube channel, he’s driven buses and trains, flown airplanes and helicopters, and has an internationally respected collection of historic LAZ bus memorabilia. Roman offered to discuss what fostered his fascination with mechanical things from that part of the world, all built in an era that ended before he was born.
The Sound of Petrol Power
“My passion for the LAZ brand started when I was very young, close to three years old. I was in Odesa, Ukraine, with my grandparents at the time. While they had a car, they—like many people owning cars—preferred to use public transport in the city. Because of convenience, this was a much quicker and easier way to get around. A lot of people didn’t park their personal cars close to their house because there was no ability to do that: you would park it in a garage in an outlying area, then you’d have to get to and from that garage, so people didn’t drive their cars daily. Buses are a big part of life for people in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. We used buses and trolley buses a lot, and there was one type of bus that stuck out for me more than others. The reason was its sound and smell.
“The Soviet Union and Hungary once had an agreement for joint economic development. In Hungary, there was a large bus manufacturer called Ikarus. They made super-high-quality buses starting in the 1930s, and their 200-series bus became extremely popular. In all honesty, their quality was better than LAZ’s buses at the time, and there were quite a few of them around, but LAZ buses were still in more volume. When I was a kid, for one reason or another, the Ikarus bus didn’t really fascinate me because, A) it looked like a box on wheels and, B) it ran on diesel.
“The gasoline engine on LAZ buses had a specific sound because the engine is in the back and the exhaust is short in length. It sounds almost like a glasspack exhaust system on a Chevy big-block. It was very, very distinctive. As a kid, I was fascinated with the bubbling sound. I always wanted to ride on a LAZ bus, and if one didn’t come, I would ask my grandma to wait for the next. The three-year-old me didn’t understand what they were, why their sound was different… it was just interesting.
“By the time I was seven, I was aware that there were multiple different types of buses, and the ones I liked wore a circle with an upside-down V. I don’t know why, but I was too young to really question it. When as I got a little older, I started to ask, ‘What is that? Why is there an upside-down ‘V’? My grandma laughed and said, ‘That’s not an upside-down V, that’s a Cyrillic L. The L stands for Lviv, that’s a city in Ukraine. I wanted to know why it was on the buses. She said, ‘These buses are called LAZ [ЛАЗ]. They’re made in Lviv, and in Ukrainian, LAZ stands for L’vivs’ky Avtobusnyi Zavod, which translates literally as ‘Lviv Bus Factory.’ I asked where the city of Lviv is, and she told me it’s in Northwest Ukraine, 12 hours away.”
Learning to Love the LAZ Buses
Because your writer wasn’t familiar with this company and its products, Roman brought me up to speed. LAZ was founded after World War II, in April 1945, and its focus wasn’t initially buses: it manufactured industrial equipment like small trailers and cranes on truck chassis. The first LAZ bus was an advanced experimental unit built in 1956, with mass production beginning the following year. This vehicle contained many ideas new to the Soviet industry including a unit-body, many glass windows, and a rear-mounted engine. The success of the engineers led to them being split off from LAZ to form an all-Soviet bus institute: most Soviet buses and trolley buses, from that point on, would be developed or approved by this organization. Even experimental buses that weren’t mass-produced wore the LAZ logo, so LAZ became a brand every Soviet person knew and could relate to.
“Imagine finding someone who doesn’t know what a Chevy is? Just like every American knows Chevy, every person living in the USSR knew LAZ.”
He continues: “Over the course of some years, I spent time at local bus garages in Odesa. They had LAZ buses, and I was able to familiarize myself mechanically with them at a really high level as a kid. I knew multiple drivers in those garages with grandkids my age who had limited interest in buses, so they enjoyed talking to me, teaching me, and showing me the ropes a bit. The first vehicle I ever drove was a LAZ-695, and that bus was quite large for a first drive!
“When I was 11, I told my grandparents I would really love to go and visit the LAZ plant to see how the buses are made. In concept it seems crazy, but believe it or not, my grandmother and I just got on a train and went to Lviv.
Close Encounters of the LAZ Kind
“It was a 12-hour train ride, overnight. We walked out of the train station, and I told the cab driver, ‘Take us to the bus factory.’ My grandmother said, ‘He doesn’t know what that is. You’ve got to tell him…” and the driver cut her off mid-sentence, saying, ‘Of course I know what that is, there’s only one bus factory!’ That was kind of funny, I remember it well. When we arrived, we learned the plant didn’t do tours, especially for kids; you had to be 18 or older to walk around the facility because it was considered dangerous. There were places you could trip and fall, or something could hit you—it was a big operation. I was sad, but I didn’t give up. I started talking to the security guards, telling them about my interests around the buses.
“As I was talking to the guards about my experiences at the garages, they realized I wasn’t just a passerby- we’d come all the way from Odesa, and that they really had to show this kid around. They were probably thinking they needed to get permission, so they asked for our information and my grandmother’s cellphone number. We exchanged contacts and left to walk around the city, and then we got a call. They said, ‘Can you come back to the plant?’
Youthful Brand Ambassador
“I was so excited. We went back and they gave us a tour, after hours. There were no people working, but there were a lot of buses that I saw in mid-production. Not only did I see how they were constructed, I saw a lot of new-model buses I’d never seen before, because the latest models were being made for the capital city, Kyiv, and they hadn’t yet reached Odesa. It was really cool: at that point, I’d connected the circle from a kid being interested in the sound – to someone who would hang around bus garages and would see how they were operated—to someone who, at a young age, was able to see the plant. So we left Lviv with a successful tour of the bus factory,” Roman says with a smile.
He paused in his recounting, offering this aside before resuming his story: “It’s important to note that while I was passionate about this brand, my interest was really all things mechanical.
“After we got back to Odesa, people at the bus plant contacted us via the phone number we’d given and said, ‘Management of the plant found out you were so interested, and got excited about this because they realized not a lot of kids are.’ They asked us to come back, and three days later we were on a train back to Lviv. When got there, I was essentially treated like royalty: they asked me to meet this person and talk to that person and walk around in this area, and then do the same in a different area. They were enthusiastic to show us a lot more than I’d seen on my brief, off-the-books tour three days before. I asked a lot of questions, and it was a much slower pace, so I got to see more.
“They realized, ‘This kid’s different in the sense that he really understands this stuff.’ And they asked my family if they’d leave me there for a week. They would give me a driver and car, and someone would take care of me for the week so that I could hang around with the children of the management of the plant; they wanted my excitement to rub off on those kids, who didn’t really have any interest. I did it—I stayed. And I was having too much fun to leave, so I asked if I could extend it. That turned into a two-week stay. The following year they said, ‘We would love to invest our energy in you. Come back and stay for as long as you want.’ I stayed for a month. And then as I got older, I did this a couple of times over a couple of summers; that turned into me interning and working there.”
The LAZ experiences proved a gateway, Roman reveals: “My visits to Ukraine saw me exploring seven different automotive factories, hopping from one train to another, and as a kid, sneaking into places just to see the vehicles there while pretending I’m supposed to be there.
“It became a part of all our lives. Let me put it this way: I began to work at the plant, and at the headquarters of the holding company, for some time both in-person during summers, and virtually when in the U.S. Amazingly enough, my interest led to my family investing time, money, and energy into the plant, and it became more than just an interest.”
Hobbyist Turns Historian
The unusually throaty sound of a particular type of bus had ultimately made a dedicated historian of the bus’s manufacturer, as Roman absorbed model information from long-term LAZ employees during his plant visits. He sought articles of memorabilia commemorating decades of the company’s products, most of which were already long gone in history by the time he was born. He’d return home to the U.S. after summer stays in Lviv with newly acquired collectibles.
“I had a hobby that turned into a collection unknowingly, without a goal,” he muses. “People in the plant would say, ‘This book has been in our office for 30 years. We don’t really need it and you might find it interesting. Here, take it.’ It might be a model or a brochure from the 1960s or ’70s. I’d find other little artifacts around the plant.
“After I had accumulated a certain number of things, I started bucketing them in categories: I had scale models. I had books. I had brochures. And when you have two or three of something, you wonder what other ones are out there. When I would walk around the city with my friends, I’d sometimes stumble on a flea market and someone would be selling books. Because the flea market was close to a bus garage, there might be a book on LAZ buses, and I’d buy it. Around this time, Google was becoming popular; I started using it to look at what other people were posting and to see what else is out there. Obviously, my friends weren’t into this stuff so it was a pastime on the side—it didn’t take up more than an hour here and an hour there.”
Roman now displays a small portion of his collection in his tidy home office. While the historical buses and their manufacturer make up the majority of what’s being spotlighted, there are books, models, and other items celebrating Soviet-era mechanical transport in car, train, and plane forms to peruse.
Touring the Collection
Stepping into the office, you’ll encounter a multi-shelf display dedicated to LAZ buses through the years. Another shelf, topped by an impressive large airplane cutaway, contains a variety of books, manuals, and pamphlets, as well as model nameplates off various buses. A glass curio cabinet displays different types of vintage 1960s metal children’s toy buses (LAZ-badged, naturally), employee ID cards to show their design evolution over the years, and more. There’s a shadowbox containing a variety of Soviet-government-designed LAZ pins and postage stamps. The walls are decorated with framed brochures and advertisements, as well as historic photographs taken inside the LAZ plant that are the only ones of their kind in existence. There’s even a poster of the crane that was one of this company’s original products. Much like with Roman’s collection of scale models, as your gaze moves across the wall, you can follow that company’s factory output from its earliest to its last days. Speaking of the factory’s earliest days, he shows me a delicate photo album that he discovered in an abandoned building on the plant property, was subsequently gifted, and is most certainly unique: it contains illustrations, plans, and photographs documenting the plant’s original postwar construction and layout.
The Homemade Models: Wheels and Wings
Atop the first shelf are two large-scale buses, one of which Roman himself built primarily from wood at the age of 10: he also hand-made some of the smaller bus models on the three shelves below. “I was trying to get a full model lineup together to show the evolution—both production and experimental,” he explains. “I’d acquired some books around certain types, and I didn’t have them in scale-model form. You go online, you can’t find any. You search on forums. While people know of the experimental bus from photos, they don’t know of any scale models of it ever having been produced. There’s this specific bus that was that existed in the 1970s: I want it in my lineup, so I have to make it. On occasion when I had free time after school, I’d look at photos and blueprints and schematics and whatever I could get my hands on. I would start with a certain material and try to figure out how to make certain pieces; it wouldn’t work, and I would try again. Through trial and error, and by going to various craft stores, I was able to acquire materials that worked for this, and was able to make models that filled the gaps of the lineup. It’s not that I like making models—I really don’t—I just wanted to get those specific buses in the model lineup.”
With a hint of assertion, he adds, “I don’t like collecting things with no purpose, and I absolutely hate clutter. That is why I am meticulous about what I add to the collection. Since I fell into this hobby, I feel obligated to preserve the history.”
Equally impressive is Roman’s cutaway airplane model representing an important Soviet jet, the Ilyushin IL-62. This was a COVID-lockdown project: he hand-made this display using household materials while referencing some photos and rough dimensions he found online. It underlines his fascination with all types of mechanical things, particularly those originating from that era and part of the world.
Keeper of the Flame
Thanks to his videos and online presence, Roman has an international network of followers and acquaintances who turn to him for information and expertise when researching or restoring Soviet cars and buses. He’s glad to share his passion with like-minded enthusiasts. And in the LAZ-history world, he’s the information source. His interests took him to places all over the world where he’s met people he befriended and continues to remain close to, years on.
“For me, it’s as much about hunting for the rare pieces related to the brand, as it is about the buses and mechanical things themselves. I was a kid who had an interest in big vehicles, which then grew into other mechanical-related things. But the buses were something I could relate to—they were tangible, I could see them on the streets and ride in them. I could go to the garages and hang out, as a kid. I couldn’t do that at an airport, I couldn’t do that at military base. It was the bus garage. The buses I saw as a kid led me down the path of learning about the history and they helped expand my horizons. I don’t have an interest in modern American buses that you see every day because they are too common. My interest was always in Soviet tech. You know what I mean? It’s much more than just LAZ buses and Soviet cars, it’s tech that you can’t see on the street in the U.S. I guess you can say that I like vintage mechanical stuff.”
“Given what I know, I almost take it as a duty to consolidate it in a tangible way so the history is preserved. And believe me, I’m not the only one. There are thousands of people who are interested in this brand. It’s just that I had unique access, like no others did, to materials and information and the actual facility where they were made—at the time, in the biggest bus factory in the world.”
Date: circa 1980s
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Source: Dick Garrett, via Grandview Heights Public Library
What do you see here?
1. As we discussed last November, factory-backed EV conversions are nearly here, but not quite ready. That changed this week when Renault announced that it will partner with an aftermarket company to offer electric retrofit kits for the Renault 4, Renault 5, and Renault Twingo. For French customers, at least.
The three retrofitted models will be on show at the Renault stand at the annual classic auto show, Rétromobile. The electric retrofit kit for the Renault 4 will also be on sale online on 1 February from €11,900. The Renault 5 electric retrofit kit will go on sale in France in September 2023 while the kit for the Twingo will be made available at a later date. Having passed the various certification tests at UTAC (the French car, motorcycle, and bicycle technical union), this conversion offers a level of safety that meets market standards.
Photo courtesy Bonhams.
2. When we first saw Chase Young’s Volkswagen Type 2 Mid-Cab project, we tried to come up with any production vehicles we knew of that positioned the pickup bed in front of the cab. As it turns out, German tractor manufacturers tried out that configuration in the Fifties and Sixties, as we see from two tractors from the Peter and Ulrike Bühner collection headed to auction: a 1954 Lanz Alldog Geräteträger and a circa 1962 Fendt F22GT Geräteträger.
3. While it might seem counterintuitive to place a Ford flathead V-8 into a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro—shouldn’t old cars get new engines, not older ones?—it made perfect sense for Clarence Everett, a flathead specialist who just wanted a newer car to wrap around his built flathead, as Mac’s Motor City Garage tells the tale.
It’s said that Clarence Everett of Oregon was a wizard with the ’32-’53 Ford flathead V8 and a racing legend in the Pacific Northwest. He held records at Bonneville with his flathead-powered Ford roadster and ruled the streets with a souped-up ’50 Ford coupe. But in 1968, he was looking for a more up-to-date platform for his muscular flathead engines, and he chose, of all things, a Marina Blue 1967 Camaro SS—reportedly, an insurance salvage. He yanked out the 396 cubic-inch big-block V8 and dropped in one of his killer valve-in-block Fords.
Installing a flathead in a Camaro might seem like an outlandish idea, especially to Chevrolet partisans, but it made perfect sense to Everett. Besides, it’s true to a basic principle of hot rodding: Why not? Under the hood we can see a pair of high-compression aluminum heads—standard practice on a modded flathead—and four Stromberg 97 carburetors with slicked-up SP-style airhorns. Everett raced his Ford-maro in the 6-cylinder/flathead gasser classes at local drag strips with some success, reportedly. However, the car’s whereabouts today are unknown.
4. Under the Chinese zodiac, we are now in the year of the rabbit, so Japanese Nostalgic Car noted the occasion not by honoring the Volkswagen Rabbit but the Fuji Rabbit, Japan’s first mass-produced scooter and a Subaru predecessor.
5. As multiple Detroit news outlets reported this past week, the second phase of the Packard plant’s demolition got underway. A statement from Mayor Mike Duggan’s office noted that, of the $12 million that the state has provided for the plant’s demolition, the city has so far spent about $2.9 million. The mayor also noted that a section along East Grand Boulevard (1539 E. Grand Ave.) will be retained and earmarked for redevelopment, though no developer has yet been found.
Fiji Toyota commercial
6. Finally, this low-production-quality commercial for the Toyota Hilux apparently aired in Fiji in 1991 and is not a joke. As freefijimedia—who made the commercial for dealership Asco Motors—noted, high-quality special effects weren’t available in Fiji at the time. There have to be more out there like this, and I’m going to collect them for a niche film festival.
Who invented the radio-control car? It should be a simple question to answer, and indeed, if you plug that question into all-knowing Google, it spits back an answer: Italian electronics company Electronic Giocattoli, with a 1/12th-scale Ferrari 250LM that it offered in 1966. Case closed, move on to the next article, right? Except that’s not the case at all, and the correct answer may have to do with an infamous incident of goofing off at one of America’s largest carmakers.
Why RC Planes Before RC Cars?
Curiously, radio-control aircraft predated radio-control cars in both full-scale and model formats. British drones described as Aerial Targets flew as early as 1917 while the earliest radio-controlled car, a Chandler sedan converted as a publicity stunt, drove the streets of New York City in 1925. (For what it’s worth, the first documented radio-controlled watercraft was demonstrated in 1898 at Madison Square Garden by Nikola Tesla.)
In the world of scale RC aircraft, twin brothers Walt and Bill Good are widely regarded as the pioneers of the hobby after their initial test flight in 1937 and subsequent development of their Big Guff a year later. The powered scale car hobby, however, tended toward tether cars and slot cars over the next few decades just as full-size remote-controlled cars tended to follow Norman Bel Geddes‘s example toward roadway-embedded guidance wires.
Two major factors – one organizational, one technical – created that gulf, according to David Palmeter. The Academy of Model Aeronautics, a strong international organization dedicated to the pursuit, has been around since 1936 while the largest organizations dedicated to RC cars, ROAR and IFMAR, date only to the late Sixties and late Seventies, respectively.
“Also, flying an airplane can be done with the early RC equipment with nothing to hit – except the ground,” Palmeter said. “Cars are generally run in limited space and needed quicker reacting equipment, which improved significantly with the availability of digital proportional RC in the Sixties.”
Palmeter’s experience bridges both the worlds of radio-control aircraft and radio-control ground vehicles. As a teen in the mid-Fifties, he had flown model airplanes with .049 and later .099-cubic-inch gas engines and, after numerous crashes, “I began to contemplate sticking closer to the ground with a gas powered car.” By the late Sixties, his sketches and dreams culminated in a 1/8-scale gas-powered radio-control car using a Monogram 1965 Corvette body, and he went on to get involved in ROAR and RC car racing soon after.
He stuck with the hobby, and about five years ago became increasingly curious about its roots, enough to start digging through old magazine articles and documenting his research on his website.
Was That Ferrari First?
The Elettronica Giocattoli Ferrari 250LM immediately jumped out at Palmeter, even though, at the time, little was known about it other than the suggestion that it was released sometime in mid-1966. A simple plastic toy, it came with a basic box-shaped controller about the size of a transistor radio, and through its plastic windshield one could see the circuit board with its various components. A simple electric motor like the ones found in electric toothbrushes these days controlled the steering up front and presumably a similar one spun the tires in the rear.
Palmeter even found an article on the Ferrari in the June 1966 issue of Italian magazine Quattroruote that offered more details, including the car’s top speed of 3.6 kilometers per hour and its price of 28,000 lire (for comparisons sake, when it made its way to the States a year later, retail price was about $100), as well as a good amount of marveling at the idea of a radio control car. As Palmeter translated, the Ferrari was of “a rather unusual construction, not so much because it moves by itself, but because its movements are radio-controlled. No wires, no guides, therefore, but only an impertinent machine that goes for a walk far and wide, obeying only the impulses that come to it via radio.”
By his reckoning, the Ferrari must have been in development in 1965, which “is certainly a very early production radio controlled car,” though other production RC cars were coming on the market at the same time or right on its heels. Tether car maker Wen-Mac, shortly before its purchase by Testors in 1966, had developed a dual-motor proportional radio-control version of its battery-powered, plastic-bodied 1/11-scale 1966 Ford Mustang that, when introduced at the February 1966 Hobby Industry Trade Show in Chicago, cost $69.95. And within a year, as seen in the March 1967 issue of Car Model magazine, kits were available to turn many 1/18-scale cars into radio-control cars. As Tom Dion wrote in that article (using an Ace Radio Control Ford Mustang kit to illustrate):
Many advances have been made in radio control equipment in the past few years. The introduction and use of the transistor has reduced the cost, increased the reliability and brought the physical size of radio equipment down to where it will fit nicely in a 1/18th scale car about ten inches long. The recent introduction of the low cost, high capacity nickel-cadmium battery assures adequate power on board for those wheel spinning starts, cornering broadsides and flashing speeds on the straightaway.
Early Experiments
However, as Dion insinuated – and as Palmeter documented – other non-commercialized attempts had been made at building radio-control cars prior to 1966. According to a Joe 1967 issue of Model Car Science magazine, Charles Eckles had been working on his own Cox-engined radio-controlled cars using PCS Digital Systems control units and Ford Mustang bodies as early as 1965.
A year prior, Ken Balz wrote about his efforts to conceal the equipment necessary to convert a Monogram Big T to radio control in the October 1965 issue of Rod & Custom Models. “It had long been a dream of slot racers to ‘drop the slot’ and race more like the ‘real’ racers… Ken was one of the first,” Palmeter wrote.
In what may have been the first attempt to chronicle the history of RC cars, Pit Stop Magazine identified at least two other pioneers in its first issue in September 1970: Norb Meyers, who built his first in either 1965 or 1966 and who later went on to found Ra/Car Developments, and Bill Johnson, who built his first experimental RC car as late as 1963 or 1964.
Clearly, an effort was afoot to develop the radio-control car by the mid-Sixties by DIYers and hobby companies alike. But some well-known designers at Ford Motor Company apparently beat them all to the punch.
Goofing Off at Work
In January 1954, Alex Tremulis took over Ford’s Advanced Studio – a perfect placement for a designer whose interests included advanced aerodynamics and streamlining, gyro-stabilized cars, and aircraft-inspired shapes and design elements. Not long after, he and his assistant, Romeyn Hammond, whipped together the earliest radio-control car that we’ve been able to document.
As
we told the story a few years back and as Jim and Cheryl Farrell originally related it for their book Ford Design Department Concepts and Showcars, 1932-1961, Tremulis and Hammond designed the LaTosca as a 3/8-scale model with the purpose of showing “students in the Advanced Studio how hard it was, even for professional designers, to design a car.”
They then decided to take the model a step further by building a basic chassis for the 3/8-scale model on which they installed about $1,000 worth of parts: a full-size car battery, some Lincoln convertible top motors to function as drive motors, a power window regulator to function as a transmission, a power seat unit to function as a steering mechanism, power window relays, and some unnamed model airplane radio controls.
The two placed a 3/8-scale mannequin named Oscar in the driver’s seat and discovered the little car could run as fast as 5 miles per hour. Hijinks ensued, as the Farrells related:
Tremulis would send the Tosca out on the street on occasion while controlling it from inside the building. Designers and clay modelers could watch it through binoculars as it traveled down Oakwood Blvd., in and out of traffic, stopping at traffic signals and finally turning into the driveway of the Ford plant. In time, Tremulis discovered that the radio controls worked up to 1-1/4 miles away. Security guard at the Styling Center recall stopping traffic on Oakwood Blvd., as the LaTosca crossed the street under its own power. On one occasion, while Tremulis was “driving” the car down Oakwood Blvd., it created a traffic jam and was holding up a line of traffic that included Ford’s chief engineer Earle S. MacPherson. MacPherson didn’t have an excess of patience anyway, and when he learned it was Tremulis who was driving his toy on public streets and creating traffic jams from inside the Design Department building, he made sure Tremulis and (Design Department Manager Charlie) Waterhouse knew what he thought of it. Many designers believe that Tremulis’s later problems at Ford started with the LaTosca.
Still, the scale model ostensibly had an actual purpose. As the Farrells noted, Ford vice-president of design George Walker, who was also pictured driving the car, “thought the idea of motorizing three-eighths sized models was an excellent way to see designs in motion.”
Also, despite the hijinks, Waterhouse allowed Tremulis and Hammond to motorize another 3/8-scale design model, the 1955 Mexico, an ultra-streamlined car that had already recorded a 0.22 coefficient of drag in wind tunnel testing. Tremulis even placed an Oscar that looked like himself in the driver’s seat and one that looked like Waterhouse in the passenger’s seat.
The Advanced Studio was dissolved in the spring of 1956 and it appears Tremulis and Hammond didn’t get the chance to motorize any other models at Ford.
Ultimate Dead Ends
The Farrells reported that the LaTosca’s chassis could have been used under other 3/8-scale models, and it was indeed spotted by Ford designers in storage for many years afterward without the LaTosca body, which was presumably destroyed.
The Mexico, on the other hand, remained in the lobby of Ford’s Styling building at the now-demolished Product Development Center for many years afterward. Whether it ultimately survived is anybody’s guess.
Of course, given that nobody outside of Ford or the handful of Dearborn drivers who saw a mysterious 3/8-scale car zipping around town in the mid-Fifties knew of the LaTosca and Mexico, it’s doubtful either car had any influence on Meyers, Johnson, Balz, and the other RC car pioneers mentioned above. It’s also doubtful Tremulis, Hammond, Waterhouse, Walker, and the others involved in the LaTosca and Mexico had any idea how popular the radio control car hobby would become just a decade later.
You’re driving on the highway as the fuel gauge dips dangerously close to “E.” Taking the first exit that advertises petrol, you pull up to the pump and open the door, letting in the full sounds of traffic followed by a breeze carrying whiffs of the surrounding trees, hot pavement, and fast-food eateries. With a squeeze of the pump’s lever, the desire to indulge in undeniably addictive processed foods is washed away by a scent even more tantalizing. Mmmm, gasoline.
How can something so toxic, containing around 150 chemicals including the cancer-causing benzene, smell so enticing that you find yourself fighting the urge to inhale it deeply into your lungs? As it turns out, if you are one of the people who relates to this sensory overload, you’re not crazy. Well, not because of your attraction to fuel vapors, anyway.
The affinity for the smell of inflammable, noxious chemicals floating from the fuel pumps is actually quite normal, and could be caused by one of two things, the first being obvious. Gasoline is an inhalant that contains hydrocarbons that suppress the central nervous system and activate the mesolimbic or ‘reward’ pathway. When someone takes a whiff of fuel vapor, it releases a quick dose of dopamine to the brain. But don’t let your brain trick you; that temporary feeling of euphoria doesn’t mean you should take a deep breath near the fuel pump.
According to the U.S. National Institute of Drug Abuse (NDA), gasoline is in the same realm of toxicity as household cleaners, glues, paints and markers. Of course, inhaling gasoline or similar chemicals is dangerous and could result in addiction or worse; distorted speech, lack of control of body movement, and permanent damage to our lungs and nervous systems, potentially inducing a coma or causing cancer or death. Consider this our disclaimer. Don’t sniff the stuff.
Out of the long laundry list of chemicals that gasoline is made of, benzene is the main culprit for the fuely smell we all know, and that some of us love. The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) states that the irresistibly sweet smell of benzene is so potent, a human’s nose can begin to detect it at a miniscule .25 parts of gasoline per million parts of air.
This affinity for benzene isn’t new news. The chemical was reportedly used in the 1800s to add the addictive scent to aftershaves, perfumes and other personal care products until scientists discovered just how harmful to health the chemical is. Clearly, some folks have a fondness for the smell, which brings us to the second reason for why you might enjoy standing near the pumps despite high gas prices: nostalgia.
The human’s sense of smell has a unique connection to memory and, when triggered by a particular scent, it can evoke vivid recollections of past times. Do you ever find yourself reflecting on memories like family road trips, car shows, weekend boat rides, time spent with relatives or friends at the racetrack while you’re at the pump? If so, benzine is likely your “memory drug.” When this happens, it’s usually involuntary. The brain works in mysterious ways. While wondering why the smell of fuel is so, so good, many people don’t think to link their emotions and memories to their trigger scent. It can go the other way around, too. If someone loathes a smell, it could be linked to negative memories.
Do you love the smell of gasoline fresh from the pumps? What about race gas? Tell us which automotive scents tickle your senses in the comments below, or better yet, share what favorite past time triggers your fondness for fuel.
Date: circa 1970s
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Source: via Historic American Engineering Record
What do you see here?
When the shark-nose E24 M6 (M635CSi in Europe) first rolled off BMW assembly lines in 1983, it was unlike any other sports car in its day. The “M” stands for “Motorsport,” and the only BMW sports car faster than the luxurious M6 coupe was the legendary M1 supercar. Of the 5,855 examples built, this low-mileage 1988 BMW M6 is just one of the estimated 1,767 models shipped to the United States. Production of the E24 M6/M635CSi ended in 1989, making it one of the last of its kind to be produced.
A perfect blend between European luxury and race-bred power, this high-performance grand tourer seats four and is equipped with the 3.5-liter DOHC inline-six, a modified version of the M1 supercar engine rated at 256 horsepower. The standard five-speed manual transmission has the capability to shift the car from 0-60-mph in six seconds.
The engine bay of the ’88 BMW M6 is so clean you could eat off of it, but wouldn’t want to in fear of leaving crumbs behind.
Offered for sale on Hemmings via a live online auction, the seller states that they originally acquired the fully serviced, showroom condition sports car from its previous 25-year owner. The CARFAX report shows consistent servicing and no known issues.
The BMW M6 supports an unbeatable driving experience with its comfortable plush leather interior.
Unlike the 1987 version that wore the generally less desirable front bumpers, this ‘88 M6 sports the smaller standardized bumpers to compliment its shark-nose styling. The seller says the Cinnabar Red paint is in excellent condition and the interior is very clean, showing no visible signs of wear. The factory stereo comes with the car but has since been upgraded with a Boss touch screen audio and navigation system. The original tools and extensive service documentation are also included with the sale.
Sometimes you don’t have to go far to find a rare ride that’s been hiding in plain sight. Carl Manfra found that out recently when he heard about a 1967 Ford Mustang GTA sitting in the woods in Atco, New Jersey, just a few miles from the famous raceway that bears the towns name.
“I was contacted about a Mustang that had been out in the woods for quite a while. I ran down to look at it. As it turned out, this is anything but a regular Mustang to say the least,” Carl said.
The Ford was in poor shape, disassembled and weathered, and missing most of its front clip. “It didn’t look like much, but there was a catch with this one, and the VIN gave it away,” Carl added. This Mustang was an early build, with its VIN showing it was the 38th Mustang serialized that year. Usually, these low number cars were built for a specific reason, so the research began.
Once Carl received the Marti report on the Mustang, the mystery started to unravel. There it showed that this car was ordered June 3 of 1966 and was originally scheduled to be built on July 4. Its actual build date was August 21, which was early in the manufacturing year. The release date was October 17; however, its final sale date was on August 3 of the following year. Why was there such a long timelapse before it was sold?
Carl found that out on the Marti Report as well; “This Mustang was classified as an “Introductory Show Unit,” which means it was used as a special car built by Ford to show off the new model and its options. This car was probably destined for a big auto show or something similar. Once it was finished on the circuit, it was released for sale to the general public. It’s a very well optioned car believed to be the first big-block 390-ci fastback produced on the East Coast.”
Found after it was put out to pasture, the VIN on this ’67 Mustang GTA tells us that this pony was built by Ford specifically for the show car circuit.
This pony car pasture find just gets bigger and better
The ‘67 Mustang had an all-new engine lineup for the new model year, which now included its first big-block offering. The car was also redesigned and grew in length and width to help fit the big Ford engines that were available that year. This included the new 390ci 4v “Thunderbird Special” mill pushing out a healthy 320-hp and 427 ft-lbs. of twisty torque. This powerplant would no doubt add a little punch to the Mustang franchise.
The original 390/4v Thunderbird Special is long gone, but a viable replacement is readily available on the secondhand market.
Some other info came to light after finding the car. It was built in Metuchen, New Jersey. It’s an East Coast car, but Carl also found its “sister” on the West Coast. It’s the exact same car with the same options, including the color combo, the only exception is West Coast car was ordered with air conditioning. It was built before Carl’s barn find, with a VIN that ends in 17.
When built, the interior of this Mustang was stuffed with options like a tilt steering wheel, stereosonic tape system and am radio, deluxe seat belts harnesses, and tachometer with trip odometer. The floors are in poor shape, but sheet metal is readily available.
Carl’s fastback was born in Wimbledon White and has a nicely contrasting blue vinyl interior. Like stated before, it was stuffed with the new 390-ci powerplant, backed by a C6 transmission. Of course, it has the GT package which consisted of front disc brakes, grill-mounted fog lights, dual exhaust, GT gas cap and rocker paint stripes. Other options include styled wheels, deluxe steering wheel, am/eight track stereo radio, tachometer and trip odometer, and shoulder harnesses, among others.
This Mustang came with the popular styled wheels and F-70 Firestone Wide Ovals.
So, what’s the future for this very collectible pony car? “I’m still getting all the parts together, but I will be putting it up for sale shortly,” Carl said, “It will make a great restoration project and a great example of Ford’s big block pony car for muscle car aficionados, especially for any Mustang fanatic.”
In the 1990s I did the How-To segment on the My Classic Car TV show, and it was there that I saw my first restored car. This was years after having gone to Pebble Beach and other famous concours d’elegance shows. Let me explain.
One of the cars we featured on the show was a 1963 Corvette split-window coupe that had been meticulously restored to the way it was when it left the factory, right down to the slight orange peel in the paintwork and the faint overspray on the chassis. In fact, the owner researched everything to the point that he actually knew how much grease was shot into the fittings on the chassis!
Even the original chalk marks made by the inspectors on the assembly line were in place, despite dealers having usually erased them when they prepped the cars for sale. Also, the car’s hubcaps were stowed in the back of the car, wrapped in the correct brown paper that the factory used for shipment. It took years, a lot of money, and a lot of research to make the car as painstakingly authentic as it was, and of course the owner never even started it. The car was strictly for show and was shipped in a closed trailer everywhere it went.
I say kudos to this true restorer who presented us with such an exact restoration of this unique car. I will not take a position on whether it is advisable for anyone to go to such incredible effort to recreate assembly-line mediocrity, though. Or for that matter, why restorers try to exceed the original with a lovingly hand-built fantasy of what the car could have been. That’s because I also enjoy seeing the great classics over-restored to what they could have been.
The great classics on display at the prestigious concours shows are stunning to behold, and yes, they were hand built by craftsmen to very high standards, but they were never done to the level of perfection that you see at Pebble Beach. People who were alive at the time they were built would tell you so, and that includes my late father, who once shot paint for Howard “Dutch” Darrin back in the late 1930s.
Pop said that Dutch used a lot of lead, rather than the best metal finishing, and that some of his early Packard Darrins had problems with cowl shake after being sectioned and channeled, and the doors would pop open without warning. He then resorted to a cast-aluminum cowl. Apparently, Dutch relied on the designer’s dictum: “If it looks good, it IS good,” which is great for static art, but not necessarily ideal for kinetic items such as cars.
I have over-restored half a dozen cars to show-winning standards myself and have the trophies to prove it, and I have gone to a great deal of trouble to make them as factory-original as possible. But I like to drive classics too, so I have subtly upgraded and changed some of them to make them more usable in today’s traffic.
For example, I have added more durable roller-type front-wheel bearings to my 1958 Chevrolet Apache parts-chaser pickup, and vented the brake drums for extra stopping power. I added aftermarket air conditioning to my 1955 Chevrolet Beauville station wagon so my wife and I can be comfortable on hot summer tours. I used the original factory-correct inlets in the passenger compartment, but I had to add an alternator to deal with the extra amps required to run the system.
With my 1940 Packard 110 coupe, I installed the correct original R9 Borg Warner overdrive available that year, but left the non-overdrive differential in place because it had a higher (numerically lower) gear ratio that allows me to drive at freeway speeds without over-revving the engine. Also, the Packard’s paintwork is the original Harbor Gray hue, but it has been color sanded and polished to a gleaming perfection using modern materials that the carmakers were never blessed with at the factory.
So, what’s my point? Just this: I admire and applaud people who restore cars to exact originality, though I have only ever seen one, and I also admire those who over-restore to concours d’elegance standards, based on the original French meaning of the term that originated in Paris in the 19th century, when people tarted up their horse-drawn vehicles and toured them around that city.
Also thrilling to me is seeing well-preserved original cars, because they are the most accurate tangible artifacts of automotive history we have left, and I am a history buff. Such surviving originals are the closest things to time machines that exist and are able to transport us back to another era. I applaud people who keep such cars original and running, so we can all see, hear, and smell what once was.
Instead of restoring, maybe all such preserved cars need is careful re-storing, not restoring, to make sure they survive for future generations to appreciate.