Not the same Frontenac, not the same Continental
The latest Collectible Auto mag has a genuine oddity in its Car Spotter section.



Caption says it's a Frontenac, the Canadian version of the 1933 Continental.

Obviously not the same Frontenac that was the Canadian version of the Falcon, and obviously not Lincoln's Continental.

This Continental was part of the Norman DeVaux mini-empire. DeVaux was something of a scavenger in the automotive ecosystem. When Billy Durant's last company failed, DeVaux picked up the tooling and modified it, using his own name for the car. This lasted for two years, and when DeVaux failed, Continental Motors picked up the company instead of getting paid for its engines. Continental then produced the car under its own name for a year or two. DeVaux went on to scavenge Cord's body for the Hupp Skylark and Graham Hollywood, another brief and pointless venture.

The Wiki article on Continental mentions the Canadian branch but doesn't link to any meaningful explanation.

Continental Motors was the main supplier of engines to most of the 'independents' and occasionally to the Big Three. Continental is still around, making engines and parts for aircraft. Needless to say, it's now owned by the Chinese government.

The Canadian version is the same body as the American, but has a different front clip. Just like the later Canadian versions of Big Three cars.

Seems odd for such a small operation to take the trouble of branching out to Canada, and especially odd to spend money on tooling up alternate body parts!

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 3:38 AM

  Graybill vs Lerma
Thinking about a puzzle. In many cases the BEST versions of American cars were produced by foreign branches of the US automakers, and never brought here. We didn't get the good stuff even from our own companies.

Example 1: The Canadian Meteor was the BEST-looking Ford by a long shot. Peak Ford. Other Canadian variants weren't prettier than the original but offered more variety in sizes and engines.



Example 2: The Argentine IKA Torino took the neat but dull Rambler American and turned it into a dramatically beautiful sports machine with wood and leather interior. AMC in Mexico turned the Hornet into the Lerma, a snappy and roomy Euro-style hatchback.



Example 3: The Brazilian branch of Willys turned the drab Aero into the sharp modern Itamaraty, after Willys had stopped making sedans entirely in US.



These struck me as exceptions or violations of Graybill's Law. Maximal use of local skill made possible by globalism?

No. I was falling into the false binary created by the antinationalists. They force the question of trade into two endpoints. If you're trading at all, you're globalist. If you're not globalist, you want NoKo-style isolation.

Correct definition: Globalism is not JUST trade. Globalism is TREASONOUS USE OF TRADE. Globalism is using trade to destroy your own country.

These local specialties were SPECIFICALLY MOTIVATED by local-content laws. Canada and Argentina and Brazil and Mexico bought some parts and tooling from the US corporations, thus contributing to US profits; but they didn't simply take complete cars. They built their own cars using some of their own materials and designs because their governments insisted on SERVING THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

And the US carmakers didn't import those local specialties because the US automakers were also SERVING THEIR OWN WORKERS. Bringing in the variants would have taken work away from US factories.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 6:43 AM

  Uniformity
A 1996 issue of Collectible Auto included a letter from a fellow who had written an article for some car club newsletter back in 1958. He had gone to the trouble of asking all the governors of US states and Canadian provinces about their official and personal cars.

The results show a remarkable uniformity, but not really surprising for '58. Lincoln had never been a serious maker of limos, Packard stopped around 1950, and Chrysler stopped after '54. Caddy was the only choice unless you could afford custom-built.

Official cars of governors:

Cadillac 29
Buick 5
Lincoln 4
Olds 4
Imperial 3
Chrysler 2
Ford 2
Chevy 1
Mercury 1
Packard 1
Nash 1


Personal cars of governors:

Buick 9
Caddy 4
Chevy 4
Ford 4
Chrysler 3
Olds 3
Edsel 2!!!
DeSoto 2
Imperial 2
Austin 1
Hudson 1
Lincoln 1
Mercury 1
Nash 1
Packard 1
Rambler 1
Willys 1


A couple of safe bets: The official and personal Nash were in Wisconsin. The Austin was in Canada.

Missing major brands: Studie and Pontiac and Dodge and Plymouth. Studie is understandable, but Pontiac and Dodge were both considered 'appropriate' cars. I'd expect to see them on the personal list.

Two Edsels are surprising, since it was new in '58 and immediately recognized as an undignified choice for a respectable man. Driving a cunt on wheels wasn't a reliable way to get votes. I'd like to know who owned the Willys. Was it a Jeep or an Aero?

The US govt had limos of all three major brands, Caddy, Imperial and Lincoln, because the Secret Service was willing to spend billions and liked to hedge its bets. Ike mostly used the '50 Lincoln.

Ike didn't own a personal car, but used a Crosley as a golf cart!
  ¶ 3:09 PM

  Were Canadians stockier than Americans?
As long as I'm doing odd bits of history today...

A Collectible Auto article on the Canadian versions of Ford and Mercury mentions:

In his announcement at the 1946 shareholders meeting (Ford of Canada stock was publicly traded on the Toronto exchange, something no other Canadian carmaker could claim) company president Douglas Greig said etc.

In USA the situation was reversed. There were 10 significant and separate automakers at that time. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Nash, Hudson, Willys, Studebaker, Packard, Crosley, Kaiser. Ford was the only company that was NOT stock-based. Ford didn't "go public" until 1956, and even now a member of the Ford family is still on the corporate board.

How did Ford of Canada end up as a separate corporation with a separate form of ownership, while the other Canadian divisions were just divisions?

From wikipedia:

The Ford Motor Company of Canada [founded in 1904] was not a subsidiary or a branch plant of Ford Motor Company - rather, it was a separate organization and had its own distinct group of shareholders. At its formation, Ford Motor Company was not a shareholder of Ford Canada, but its twelve founding shareholders directly held 51% of Ford Canada's shares, and Henry Ford himself owned 13% of the new company. The Company had gained all Ford patent rights and selling privileges to all parts of the British Empire, except Great Britain and Ireland.

Okay, but still doesn't explain why Henry decided to leave it separate, while GM and others turned their Canadian operations into divisions. GM's northern branch started as an unrelated company using Buick engines in its cars, then merged.

Labels: Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 5:16 PM

  Random auto export thought
Stirred by seeing a Packard limo of the Clipper era in an Egyptian movie:



These limos were never seen here. Packard exported most of them.

"Thinking" more, I realized that Cadillacs are never seen in foreign pictures. This applies to movies, and also to old street shots from various places. In every country without its own carmakers, US cars were common in the 30s and 40s. But the luxury end of the US range was NOT Caddy. Buicks were the top GM car in most countries, and Packards were also more common than here.

Why Buick? One possible explanation is the Canadian McLaughlin Buick company. McLaughlin made its own cars at first, then allied with Buick, then became a GM division. Because of Canada's close ties to England, McLaughlin took care of GM's exports to England and other RHD countries. British royalty chose Buicks, and the rest followed.

Asia was RHD following British colonial tradition. China and Korea switched to LHD, but the rest of Asia is still mainly RHD. So a ruler or rich asshole in those countries was more likely to buy Buicks.

Footnote for clarity: GM had its own divisions in England and Germany, but those plants didn't make US brands. They made Vauxhalls and Opels, which were completely different from US cars until very recently.
  ¶ 7:20 AM

  Just odd
The city of Spokane is reminding drivers not to leave their cars warming up in the driveway. Open invitation to theft. Oddly, the picture they use is a car that was never imported to the US, a mid-60s British Ford Cortina. The car is LHD, so presumably it was Canadian.

Maybe not so odd. They caught MY attention and kept it! Would it work as well for a normal viewer who isn't a fan of weird old cars?
  ¶ 6:10 AM

  Is the whole thing a total fraud?
In between bursts of work on courseware (good old hurry up and wait) I'm enjoying the weird spectacle of the Elon Cult. Elon gets crazier and crazier, doing everything possible to ruin his company plus MANY things that nobody ever considered possible. Innovative Disruptive Ruination. All of his ruinous actions raise share "value".

Loony beyond loony beyond loony.

Under all of this hyperbonkersness, there's one basic question that the rational commentators aren't asking. Is Tesla actually PRODUCING ANYTHING AT ALL?

Supposedly Tesla has produced a total of 360K cars in 5 years, most of them within the last year or two.

360K cars should be visible. That's about one for each thousand Americans, so in a city the size of Spokane you'd expect about 300 of them. All are nearly new, so you'd expect them to be driven regularly.

I've never seen one of the recent models. About 8 years ago I saw one of the original roadsters in a 'collector car cruise' situation. Since then nothing. This year I've seen a '41 Studebaker and a '53 Canadian Cheviac but no Teslas. Both of those brands ceased manufacture 52 years ago, and the Cheviacs were never sold on this side of the border. Yet they're more common in my experience than Teslas.

Do Teslas exist? If so, they're certainly not on the road. Maybe the cultish buyers were deluded into thinking that a plug-in electric would be a usable car, and then got hit by plain old reality? Maybe all the Teslas are sitting in garages waiting for the Gaian Rapture? Meanwhile, the '41 Studie and the '53 Cheviac are daily drivers.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 11:08 PM

  More irrelevant auto trivia
Chrysler had a long-standing habit of designing and tooling brand-distinct parts that didn't look different. You had to be a serious car fan to notice. Sometimes you had to compare cars side-by-side to see the difference. Why bother?

GM never made this mistake. Sloan and Earl understood how status works. When GM went to the trouble of tooling up a different part, it LOOKED different. You could tell without a microscope, and you could also tell which version had higher status. This makes perfect sense. If you're going to spend money on a change, it should cause the customer to spend more money to gain more status.

But Chrysler was smarter than GM or Ford just once.

Their Canadian rebadge of Dodge trucks was Fargo.

Same number of letters, so the two could use the same dies for badges, and use the same hole-drilling jigs for separate chrome letters. The separate letters could reuse the G and O.

GM already had Chevrolet and GMC trucks before it expanded into Canada, so it used them as the lower and upper brands in Canada.

Ford rebadged its slightly fancier trucks from Ford to Mercury for Canada. This did have the advantage of visibility; you can see the long name vs short name from a distance; but it wasn't a necessary difference. In the first few years the Mercury trucks were dramatically fancier, so the label didn't need to be noticed.

Ford made the same mistake with Ford / Meteor and Falcon / Frontenac, but it saved money with Mercury / Monarch.

Ford is responsible for the most famous word-length amortization. The Comet was originally planned as the compact for Edsel. When Edsel was killed, a hasty change was needed, and Comet saved money in tooling as well as dealer signs.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 6:03 AM

  Odd way to advertise
This is from the Canadian Patent Register for 1886, which included a sort of Pop Mech magazine along with the list of patents.



An Edison proposal for a telegraph system in moving railway cars. Normally an illustration shows proper work practices and a workman (ahem) absorbed in his task. This is the exact opposite. Dude is letting the telegraph blanks drop to the floor, losing important info and forming a slip and fire hazard. He seems to be reading a magazine instead of sending messages.

Was this meant to be the awful Before that the proposal would improve into a much neater After? The text doesn't say so, and the patent is for circuits, not desks and files.

Even if an inbox and outbox weren't provided, a competent telegrapher would have improvised his own boxes or filing system. Grab a leftover eggcrate from a loading dock and nail it to the desk.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 12:46 AM

  Random local notes
Latest on Gayor West: Shannon Sullivan's recall effort is finally gathering momentum. A state judge has agreed to speed up the examination of the Gayor's objection to the recall, so the petitions will have a fighting chance to hit the fall ballot. [I've repeatedly observed that Wash state judges are surprisingly rational; really shouldn't be a surprise, since they're elected to short terms, not appointed for life.]

Mixed: Wash has been trying to restore its open primary system after a federal Emperor decided it was "unconstitutional" a couple years ago. The '04 election was run with genuine party primaries, but the locals wanted their own tradition back, so they passed an initiative designed to get around the Emperor's objections. Didn't work; yesterday a different Emperor said the new setup was also "unconstitutional", which of course it isn't. I have mixed feelings about this: open primaries are a bad idea, leading to weak parties. But the state should be allowed to pick its own method, no matter how dumb. When black-robed Emperors force unwanted laws down the people's throats, rebelliousness takes over, and there's no chance to examine the inherent virtues of one method over another.

Swarmings: Vancouver, BC is suffering from a spate of swarming incidents, in which a wolfpack of teens beat up another teen, usually chosen for low status. This seems to be a long-standing Canadian problem, as you can determine by a quick Google on 'swarmings'.

Here's how we get swarmings: A couple of young assholes were shooting bottle rockets directly into the windows of passing cars. They chose the wrong car, containing a pair of older assholes, who chased the younger assholes on foot. One of the younger assholes ran into traffic and was hit and killed by a car. Now the older assholes are being charged with manslaughter, the surviving younger asshole is being treated as a victim instead of a criminal, while the dead younger asshole is being treated as a hero instead of a criminal.
Story here.
  ¶ 8:18 AM

  Each in his own tongue



Very early in this blog, I questioned whether it was better to have a common stock of knowledge, as we had 50 years ago, or to have lots of alternate sources and varieties of knowledge available. At that time I concluded, though not firmly, that the modern condition is better because there is less room for propaganda.

I've changed my mind. I was starting to write on this point a week ago, from a different viewpoint and for other reasons that I'll return to later.

But today's events make the point more critical.

[Later addendum: the "event" was the Virginia Tech massacre.]

We need a common stock of culture.

Specifically we need a commonly respectable set of cultural elements, for two reciprocal reasons.

Example.





This poem was written in 1910 by an English professor at KU, and became nationally popular for a while. Its topic rings Polistra's soul, which is how I happened to locate it through Google's new and immensely valuable Books service, but the topic isn't what I'm discussing right now.

Think about it.

A poem. A nice poem. A lovely poem. A deep poem.

A poem with rhyme and rhythm.

An understandable poem.

Nationally popular.

Written by a professor of English Literature at a major university.

Nationally popular.

Nothing in this poem about bitches, hos, or Glocks, nothing about Transgressive Constructs or Endangered Elephants.

In 1910, professors and poets and artists and composers were respected because they offered something of value, something that ordinary people could recognize and enjoy. And in return, ordinary people had a common connection with fairly serious matters; when someone mentioned Ravel or Edison or Dickens, he could count on his listeners understanding the reference if not the deeper aspects of the subject.

Just after that, the Dada movement and Marxists gradually took over the 'formal' production of culture.

By 1940 the movement hadn't yet influenced most people. Modern artists were popular with the academic critics, but they were also the target of radio comedians; classical music was still commonly heard and used as material by Big Bands; newspapers still published daily poems, often by local poets.

By 1965 when I was in high school, the respect was still there, though running on vapors, but the products were already beneath contempt.

The takeover was dramatically and suddenly completed in 1969. At least symbolically, landing on the moon was the climax and endpoint of respect for learning.

Madame Mao's cultural revolution flipped the world upside down.

Now we still have 'formal' arts, but the products are at best incomprehensible and arcane, at worst obscene and deadly.

Maybe, just maybe, we'd see fewer Final Solutions to resentment and bullying if we had more respect for youngsters who try to think and create, whether in the arts or literature or science ... But we won't reach that point unless arts and literature and science become worthy of respect and worthy of common understanding.

= = = = =

Addendum:

To be clear, I'm not simply saying we need less crap in the arts and sciences. That would be a pointless recommendation. I'm talking about a cross between Gresham's and Parkinson's Law: Shit expands to fill the mental space when no gold is available. We need more gold, available, accessible, and socially approved.

In 1940, a boy with poetic or playwrightish tendencies could pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio and encounter new works, written with decency and depth. He would develop his skills by trying to copy this work, and he could envision making a career from decent writing.

In 2007, a similar boy can turn on the TV and see demonic shit. He will develop his skills and imagine his career by trying to copy this work.

Admittedly the old stuff is still available in libraries and now (blessedly) through Google Books, but it's a fact of life that young folks don't like antique stuff. They need fresh-looking material to observe and copy.

Laws and litigation are part of the modern problem. If our budding poet copies a style and publishes his work on the Web, he's likely to receive a Cease & Desist letter from Walt Disney or some other corporate content holder.

In the sciences:

In 1940, an electrically or mechanically minded boy could take apart a radio or a car; all parts were visible, adjustable and replaceable. In 2007, cars and radios are non-adjustable. No user-serviceable parts. Nothing to learn. Granted, you can still wire up 800-decibel speakers or replace your wheels with flashy '20s' to impress the hos, but it's not the same. Experimentation that leads to learning is no longer available.

Our 1940 boy with a chemical or biological flair could mix things over a Bunsen burner in his basement, or slosh around in the creek and capture odd creatures. In 2007, the budding chemist would be knocked down by a Hazmat team in spacesuits, who would proceed to evacuate the entire neighborhood permanently. The apprentice biologist would be jailed for violating the Endangered Species Act.

And what if our chemist somehow avoids the hazmat team and develops a simple compound that promises to cure cancer? Nobody will notice or fund his work, even if he's a fully credentialed professor in a medical school.

Yes, the Canadian Cancer Cure, which I've been covering here for a while, fits nicely. Stem-cell research fits the model as well. Our 'formal' and professional classes are so deeply immersed in outright fraud (global warming) and love of death (global warming again, embryonic cells) that they can't be bothered with simple and effective solutions to real problems.

Young people see this, and shape their thoughts and career plans accordingly. When golden material - decent, deep, informed by faith and rigorous thought - is visible and available, they will try to emulate the gold. When demonic shit is the only visible and marketable career path, they will pursue demonic shit.
  ¶ 8:46 PM