Interesing Automotive Stories

I’m looking for some true (or at least not easily-proven false haha) historical automotive stories. I’m thinking things like the Chevy Nova didn’t sell well in Mexico because the name meant “doesn’t go” or something like that, or that Ferruccio Lamborghini started his company because Enzo Ferrari had poor customer service. Or that Lee Iacocca first pitched the idea of the minivan to Ford, but they thought it was dumb. Stuff like that. Doesn’t have to be old, doesn’t have to be foreign or domestic, just interesting. Whacha got?

GT40s came about because Enzo wouldn't sell Ferrari to Ford (they were negotiating and Enzo said no). Henry II was pissed....legendary car gets created.

Ferdinand Porsche did jail time for building tanks for nazis. Some claim porsche designed the first 4 wheel drive (electric motors at the hubs - early 1900s or teens?).

Enzo was going to sell to Ford, but when he asked about the racing program, he didn't like Ford's answer and called the sale off.

Shelby didn't like the Daytona Coupe at all. Once the cars were built, he was put on another program and didn't mess with them after that at all. Once the racing season was over, the cars were sold for about $5k each. They almost couldn't give them away.

The fastest production car in the world behind the Corvette in 1957 was the Rambler Rebel, which some people claim is the "first" muscle car.

Rambler invented unit-body (unibody, unitized body structure) construction.

Oh, and the Ferrari/Ford/GT40 tales are true, as the ones above about Ferdinand Porsche and the electric car. In fact, Porsche just finished a replica of it and displayed it at Geneva. Ferdinand's tank design lost out to the Tiger I, but became the chassis for the Maus tank-hunter.

The 1st gen Buick Lacrosse was not sold in Canada as the Lacrosse because in Quebec apparantly that is slang for self-pleasuring!!!

I read somewhere that Ford would have saved money overall if, on the first day of the Edsel program, they had somehow been able to locate everybody who subsequently purchased a new Edsel and simply given them a free new Mercury instead.

Something to think about as people head into Monday morning strategy meetings....

The Nova story you mentioned was debunked by Snopes a million years ago (along with not even making sense...) I don't know about the other two.

Former-CEO (and longtime engineer) of Lotus Mike Kimberly told a highly-entertaining story at his retirement banquet about how he rolled Colin Chapman's brand new Bond Bug. Fortunately someone else has already written it up so I don't have to.

There's another retelling of it and a few more anecdotes here too.

GM sold a number of different cars in Canada under the Pontiac banner that were re-badged Chevrolets that they never sold in the US.

Beaumonts (Chevelle)

Acadian (Nova and Chevette)

Okay take the T-1000 off the list. I was wrong on that one.

Etc.

There is a story about Henry Ford II driving Chevrolet rentals when he needed to keep a "Low Profile" ?? I guess that isn't Mrs. Ford with him !!

GM came to talk to Lockheed (p-38, SR-71, skunkworks etc.) to a find out about casting and machining aluminum when they were developing the Corvair.

I was told this by an old Lockheed employee I worked with when I worked at a company that used to be part of Lockheed.

NGTD wrote: GM sold a number of different cars in Canada under the Pontiac banner that were re-badged Chevrolets that they never sold in the US. T-1000 (Chevette)

Actually, the T-1000 was available in the States. It was the Pontiac-badged Chevette. A friend of mine had one. Not only that, but back when we ran a self-serve carwash, we had a regular customer who had one he bought new. We first saw it when it still had the T-tags and 50 miles on it. Funny thing about it was, it had a Chevette emblem on the front and a T-1000 emblem on the back, and it was NOT an accident repair.

NGTD wrote: GM sold a number of different cars in Canada under the Pontiac banner that were re-badged Chevrolets that they never sold in the US. Beaumonts (Chevelle) Acadian (Nova and Chevette) T-1000 (Chevette) Etc.

The T1000/1000 was the US version of the Chevette. It was Acadian in Canada and we got it right from '76 to 87. Brieft overview of Canadian Acadian

Canadian GM – the Beaumont story (and a bit of Acadian too)

There was also Canadian Fords like Meteor and Mercury trucks and vans

Plus the Frontenac (one year only based on the Falcon)

Fargo trucks, Valiant (its own marque), the Plodges - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plodge, etc

How about some automotive guffaws, as well (not styling blunders per se, but things like the Iacocca minivan/Ford thing)?
I'm not real specific because I'm just looking for anything you folks find generally interesting that you might tell to a semi-automotive buddy at a cocktail party.
Thanks, keep the brain farts, oops, brain storms coming!

If you want total insider stuff, my dad was an engineer at Ford in the early 50's. One of his projects was designing, developing, and testing a prototype 8-track tape player for automotive use. It may have been to first ever.

For the record, he never owned an 8 track in his life. He is very much an audiophile and thought formay was lame.

Duke wrote:

NGTD wrote: GM sold a number of different cars in Canada under the Pontiac banner that were re-badged Chevrolets that they never sold in the US. T-1000 (Chevette)

Actually, the T-1000 was available in the States. It was the Pontiac-badged Chevette. A friend of mine had one. Not only that, but back when we ran a self-serve carwash, we had a regular customer who had one he bought new. We first saw it when it still had the T-tags and 50 miles on it. Funny thing about it was, it had a Chevette emblem on the front and a T-1000 emblem on the back, and it was NOT an accident repair.

I stand corrected. I edited my original post.

Type Q wrote: If you want total insider stuff, my dad was an engineer at Ford in the early 50's. One of his projects was designing, developing, and testing a prototype 8-track tape player for automotive use. It may have been to first ever. For the record, he never owned an 8 track in his life. He is very much an audiophile and thought formay was lame.

In the early 1950s? Lear introduced the 8 track in the 1960s. I used to work for the company that built the tape heads for them. Prior to that, Muntz built a 4 track player that was semi-popular for a few years.

I love the stories about Ford/Ferrari/LeMans. I did a commemorative speech in speech class today on the 1967 24 hours of LeMans and got an A.

As Dan Gurney stood on the winners podium, looking down at Carroll Shelby, Ford Jr., team mate AJ Foyt, and their wives, he was overtaken with joy and in an act that was thought extremely uncouth by the French, he popped the cork on the magnum bottle of champagne that he was handed and showered the crowd. That was the first time it was ever done, but is now the almost universal celebration of podium winners around the world.

Oh, and that race in '67 was the first time and the last time that 24hrs of LeMans was won by an American team with all American drivers in an all American car.

Javelin wrote: Rambler invented unit-body (unibody, unitized body structure) construction.

Invented? No. Maybe the first domestic product to use it, but they certainly didn't invent it.

ddavidv wrote:

Javelin wrote: Rambler invented unit-body (unibody, unitized body structure) construction.

Invented? No. Maybe the first domestic product to use it, but they certainly didn't invent it.

Every Rambler book claims invented.

Less of a story and more of a trivia but...What was the first car sold in the US with an optional center mounted 3rd brake light?
Not to be confussed with the non-center mounted high brake lights of the '70's Old Toronado and twins.

Taurus? I know it was the first with an airbag.

Edit: I meant T-Bird. Taurus... Pfft. Wasn't the late 60's model T-Bird available with it?

I love the stories about Shelby and the Daytona Coupe.

Near as I know, the Coupe was Pete Brock's invention and Shelby hated it with a passion. When they first went to test it, Shelby insisted they take off the rear wing, and begrudingly allowed it only after he saw first hand how much affect it had on the car's high-speed stability.

I think he couldn't stand that with the 289 they had so much more top end than the 427 cars, though that's pure speculation on my part... one story was that a driver hit 189mph in a test run of one of the coupes and backed out of it, even though he had significantly more pedal left.

The whole Ford vs Ferrari GT40 saga is great, too. Especially all the rule changes that Ferrari pushed, only to still get beat by the Fords. 5.0L limit? Cool, Ford busts out the Mk I with the Hi-Po 289. No displacement limit? Mk II running a 427 with four 2-barrel carbs. Homogolation requirement? Okay, here's the Mk III, sold in just enough quantities in the UK to make the rest of the line legal. Alright, we've won Le Mans three years straight, and now Ferrari won't even play ball. We had fun with the 427s, let's run those some more back home (Mk IV).

There's a great special about the Daytona Coupe on HDTheater on Dish Network. It was called America's Greatest Race Car. Watch it and be amazed!!!

Javelin wrote:

ddavidv wrote:

Javelin wrote: Rambler invented unit-body (unibody, unitized body structure) construction.

Invented? No. Maybe the first domestic product to use it, but they certainly didn't invent it.

Every Rambler book claims invented.

Every Rambler book is wrong.

It started in the aircraft industry back in the teens, first showed up in a car in the 20's, mass production in the 30's, and the Nash 600 gets the credit of the first popular mass produced pure monocoque (unibody) car back in the 40's.

foxtrapper wrote:

Javelin wrote:

ddavidv wrote:

Javelin wrote: Rambler invented unit-body (unibody, unitized body structure) construction.

Invented? No. Maybe the first domestic product to use it, but they certainly didn't invent it.

Every Rambler book claims invented.

Every Rambler book is wrong. It started in the aircraft industry back in the teens, first showed up in a car in the 20's, mass production in the 30's, and the Nash 600 gets the credit of the first popular mass produced pure monocoque (unibody) car back in the 40's.

Okay... So Nash (Rambler) does the first car out of it, which is extrmely different than airframes, and that's not inventing automobile unibody construction how?