And Sam Posey.

A couple of years ago, Posey wrote a lovely little book called Playing with Trains: A Passion Beyond Scale, not about racing, but about how he and his kids got into model railroading. Really a delight.

Edsel Ford. A man of remarkable taste and considerable integrity, strong willed but far less of an asshole than his father. If you look at a thirties Ford in good stock condition, note its fine proportions and detailing -- you can thank Edsel for that, and also the original Continental. He didn't design anything himself, but they bore his stamp just as GM cars from the thirties to the fifties bore the stamp of Harley Earl.

Yutaka Katayama, former president of Nissan Motor Company USA and the father of the Datsun 510 and 240Z. Plucky, infectiously enthusiastic, and very smart, the only people who didn't like him were stuffed shirts back in Japan. His career would make a fun Hollywood biopic, one of those uplifting comedies about triumphing over adversity.

The Mustang killed the Corvair, not Nader. Chevy initially thought the Mustang was going to be a niche item, and expected the new Corvair Monza and Corsa would give it fierce competition. By the end of the 1964 calendar year, they realized the reverse was true, and decided to kill it. If anything, the safety outcry probably kept it around a little longer, because GM wanted to let it die a 'natural' death so that it wouldn't look like they were killing it for being unsafe. (Production continued until mid-1969.)

Even Nader freely acknowledged that the second-generation Corvair was a much better car. A friend of mine has a black '66 Monza with a copy of Unsafe at Any Speed autographed by Nader.

Chevy really refocused the Corvair as a sporty car in 1961, after the debut of the Monza. The Monza was going to be a one-off semi-custom for the auto show circuit, but people liked it so much they put it into production. By mid-1961, it accounted for more than half of all Corvair sales, so that became the focus. It had nothing to do with the Mustang, which wasn't even a cohesive idea yet -- if anything, the Corvair Monza inspired the Mustang, not the reverse -- but with the fact that the economy had improved a lot since the Corvair was conceived in the fifties. The market for pure economy cars had softened, so buyers were more interested in the plusher models.

In any case, the second-generation Corvair is a really lovely car, one of GM's best efforts of that period, It's one of those rare cars that looks good from almost any angle.

As far as I know, the Catalina (and other B-bodies of the same vintage) had coils in back, with four trailing links to locate the axle.

If they can be convinced that they don't need a van the size of a tennis court. I've been trying to convince my married-with-two-small-children friends to try it out, and they keep making noises about wanting more space to take guests with them on trips. I say, "Is it worth the extra bulk and thirst for the two times a year that actually happens?" but so far to no avail.

Other obligatory plugs:

http://ateupwithmotor.com/sports-cars-and-muscle-...
http://ateupwithmotor.com/sports-cars-and-muscle-...

Porsche as a brand has generally left me pretty cold. The 944 came closest to being my sort of car -- mainly because it's the kind of size and package I like -- but the heart-attack-inducing maintenance and repair costs of all Porsches makes me wary. But I don't feel any particular romance about Porsches qua Porsches.

I can see the argument about the 924 not being a 'real' Porsche, which has some justice to it, since it was designed to be a VW or Audi, and ended up becoming a Porsche as an afterthought. Even so, it's not a subject that keeps me up nights.

Obligatory plug #1:

Stuck Here in the Middle: The Mid-Engine Porsche 914.

Cadillac seriously considered turning the Diplomat B into the first Cadillac Seville. The reason it didn't happen is that Opel used much tighter build tolerances than Fisher Body did, and when Fisher saw the specs, they said, "We can't build that on any of our existing lines." (That's why the Seville ended up being based on the X-body Nova instead.)

The Diplomat 5,4 was a hard sell in Europe. It was monstrously expensive to run (taxable horsepower rules tended to make big-displacement engines prohibitively expensive) and cost a lot to feed. It pushed the Diplomat into the same cost-of-ownership territory as an S-Class Mercedes, at which point buyers balked at the Opel badge.

I don't know that a block heater would help that much. Someone who owns a cross-ram might be able to tell you, but I suspect the block heater wouldn't do a lot to warm the ram tubes themselves.

I'm more partial to the Coronet for looks -- the Mercurys of that vintage don't do it for me, although Marauder is certainly a better name.

In stock form, a 383-4V has a lot more suds than the 390-4V. The 383 was a good match for the base engine in the GTO, and it's interesting to note that it was the engine that Chrysler engineers themselves almost universally preferred. The 390 is kind of a stone. As a station wagon engine, it works well, but its ports and valves are too restrictive, and it gets asthmatic at higher speeds. (The racing-oriented 390 tri-power and 406 are a different story, but their relationship to the basic 390 is not so close as it might appear at first glance.) It's perfectly adequate for daily driving, and it makes a nice wuffly noise, but I wouldn't try to race anybody with it.

The 440, meanwhile, is a lot tougher than a stock 390 or 428. It's worth noting that in stock form, a 440-4V would work over a Hemi up to about 70 mph. The Hemi was quicker through the quarter and had much higher trap speeds (at least, if it were tuned correctly), but it didn't have the 440's diesel-locomotive torque.