Thus has it always been for the Car People of the vast Heartland of America: big engines stuffed into little cars. After a recent over-indulgence on high-test muscle cars, a pal up in Alaska wrote to remind me that big engines are not the sole province of snotty suburban kids with connections to the auto […]

(Exterior of the Hazel River Inn, East Davis Street, Culpeper, VA. It is the oldest commercial structure remaining in town, dating to Colonial times. The small windows to the left are the natural illumination to The Rathskeller, and was once a Civil War jail for North and South.) I am at the farm. I had […]

“General Motors’ money-losing European unit, Opel, will halt sales of the Detroit-built Opel [or Vauxhall in the UK] Ampera because of disappointing results.” “After the eventual run-out of the current generation of Ampera, we’ll introduce a successor product in the electric vehicle segment. Our next electric vehicles will be part of our massive product offensive […]

(Maybe my favorite fins of all time on the 1959 Caddie El Dorado with space-alien brake lights. Nothing says “America will land on the Moon!” better than these). Detroit’s infatuation with the tailfin is directly attributable to the War. I don’t have to get any more detailed than this- Dad did two renderings of possible […]

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? – Jakc Kerouac, in “On the Road” (The real Tangerine Flake Baby, as created by Kalifornia Kustom auto madman Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Seeing this car, and talking to Roth, gave New Journalist Tom Wolfe the inspiration to publish his first collection of essays […]

Here is something like the Model A in which Dad drove Mom out to Detroit in 1948 to start their new lives in the Motor City’s rip-roaring auto industry. It was used, of course, having been husbanded by someone through the gas rationing and rubber shortage of the war years. Look at how the design […]

(One of Dad’s concept cars- the Tesla electric car of 1958!) We were car people- in Detroit, of Detroit, the Fathers all had auto contracts with their companies that included a new car every year. We had a flood of new vehicles through the suburbs, and we were quite opinionated about all of them. “Knowledgeable […]

(Tracy has been cooking all afternoon. That is not the winning burger- it is the trophy. Last year’s was a four-foot-tall bowling trophy. Photo Willow). “A GROUND ROUND SMACKDOWN FEATURING TEN OF THE BEST BURGER SLINGERS IN THE DMV.” No, not the Department of Motor Vehicles. That would make no sense. DiMarVA, they mean- the […]

I will never forget the night we abandoned George’s ’66 Mustang up in the Maine woods on the road to Belfast. The 289 cubic inch engine gave up the ghost on us in the dark in 1975. We were at loose ends, as recent graduate of college and had not quite figured out what to […]

(1968 Charger 440 R/t. What a machine). There is plenty to talk about this morning and I am not going to do it, regardless of the temptation. Instead, I want to talk with you about The Way It Was. It was all about the cars then, the really rapid Detroit iron that defined a decade […]