A MOTOR TRIP INTO THE PAST

 

1. January was the 75th Anniversary of THE Cincinnati Flood - some of those pictures were amazing - a complete little home sitting on top of another home, and water everywhere - strange to see downtown being traveled by boat.

   Old pictures are fascinating to me - to see the grand home my Grandparents built in 1931 as a working farm during the war - as they had 7 (plus help) mouths to feed while the two sons were gone.

   Also - it was strange to see my Mom and her brother as toddlers in New York city with their pony - just really hard to wrap my brain around the image (picture taken in 1918).

   Posted by wardmama4       06/04/2012  at  11:19 AM  



2. I’m almost shocked at the total absence of automotive knowledge shown by the author of this article, but that’s journalism these days.

   “Technology meant these early cars were capable of achieving speeds of up to 50 miles per hour - but safety measures were nowhere near as advanced as they are today.”

   Unreal. The statement isn’t wrong, but it is so banal that it indicates an absolute lack of effort on the author’s part.

   Early cars had NO safety measures at all. You could write a list a mile long of all their terrible aspects. Tires did not even have tread until the mid 1920’s. And tread that could push water away didn’t come along for long after that. Not to mention that the tires were very thin, prone to constant blow outs and flats, the vehicles were all made with very high centers of gravity and narrow bodies which meant they tipped over very easily, the brakes were total rubbish, they weren’t even made with tempered glass windows much less safety glass, they had NO seat belts until the mid 1960s, no shoulder belts until the early 70s, no collapsing steering columns, steering wheels that turned into spears on impact, no side impact protection at all in the doors, no flame retardant materials ... the list is endless. Forget crumple zones; the frames weren’t even designed to hold together under any torsion.

   Until about 1967, the Chevy Stepside pickup truck put the gas tank in the back wall of the cab of the truck, right behind the driver. A truck that had a painted steel interior.

   We laugh today about the exploding Ford Pinto, and a lot of folks despise Ralph Nader for his Unsafe At Any Speed which seemed to single out the Chevrolet Corvair, but he was not wrong about the dangers. Cars were death traps, period. All of them. However I refute his leftie claim that it was because of the profit motive; it wasn’t until the Volvos of the mid 1960s that safety was even really thought of, and a Volvo didn’t cost all that much more than a regular car.

   As much as I might admire the appearance of some of the early cars, you won’t find me even going for a ride around the block in anything built before 1968.

   The whole photo set is on Flickr:
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/sets/72157626646768526/

   Posted by Drew458       06/05/2012  at  08:56 AM  



3. Isn’t that Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang?

   Posted by Christopher       06/06/2012  at  04:34 PM  

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