Gone Too Soon

Gary “Butch” Hanlin
October 5, 1947 – December 10, 2005

Tribute To An Old Car Guy

It was the summer of ’66. It was a good time to be young. If you had any interest in cars, it was a good time to live near Detroit, the Automotive Capitol of the World.

Gary and I were 1st cousins, descendants of an old Irish/American family, the Hanlins. Being the same age we were always friends, but we became much closer that summer. We would take our girlfriends on picnics to Hines Park in Dearborn or go to any event that had anything to do with hotrods. Gary was fun to be with.

One Saturday morning that summer, Gary called me to say he wanted to race his car at Detroit Dragway that day and wanted to know if I was interested in racing mine. My girlfriend Christine was working that day, so I was free to go play with the boys.

Eddie Palmer and I drove to Gary’s house in Dearborn, where we met up with some of his friends and we all headed to the racetrack. Gary had a red ’66 Chevy Impala SS and I had a ’66 Chevelle SS-396. I had more mods on mine than Gary did, so we had to race in different classes.

We both made it through eliminations to the trophy runs. Gary beat his opponent by a nose and won the trophy for his class. I was up against some guy in a Plymouth Belvedere with a 426 Hemi.

Coming off the line, my opponent sat there frying his slicks while I rode the clutch and pulled way out ahead of him. I could see the finish line coming up fast and began to envision Eddie holding my trophy all the way home. With about one hundred feet to go, I heard that big Hemi roar up beside me in the left lane and glanced over to see him crossing the line ahead of me by one full car length.

All the way back to Gary’s house I drove behind him with a big yellow T on my windshield, but no trophy. Every single time he stopped at a traffic light, he would hold his trophy out the window and wave it at me. I was green with envy.

Shortly after that Gary was drafted and went to Vietnam. If I remember correctly, he was a door gunner on a Cobra Gunship. He survived the war, but he came home a different person. He never really talked much about his experience over there. The war had aged him as only warfare can. From that time on, he had a quiet sadness about him. I know for a fact that he struggled with his memories of that horrible time.

Gary and I worked together for Utley Brothers over the years. Gary had a brilliant mind. You could show him a production layout for the plant and he would show you a dozen ways to improve it. He was the plant manager for many years before his retirement.

On December 10th, 2005, Gary had a massive coronary and died in his sleep. He left behind three beautiful women, his wife Linda and his two grown daughters Stacey and Amber. He also left behind a lot of family and friends that loved him.

An Irish Wish

May the roads rise to meet you,
May the winds be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields,

And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Gary, we’ll see you on the other side.

Turning The Titanic

Turning The Titanic

They say that memory is highly subjective. Mine is not only subjective, it can be quite flexible depending on whatever point I’m trying to make. I believe it was way back in January of ’04, I saw the ’05 Mustang at the Detroit International Auto Show. For me it was instant lust. Those boys at Ford had really knocked themselves out with their new, but very retro ponycar. Once again, just like in 1964, Ford had gotten the jump on GM.

Lo and behold, at the ’06 auto show, there was a new Camaro concept on display. It wasn’t as retro-ish as the new Mustang, but it was gorgeous. It looked mean, like a muscle car on steroids, with a bad attitude to boot. Once again, my eyes were filled with lust. So when is it coming out? Spring of 2009? You’re bringing it out more than 3 years after you introduce it and more than 5 years after the intro of the new Mustang? In today’s world, that’s an eternity.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, when the new Mustang was introduced in January 2004, the price of crude oil was $33.73 per barrel. The average price per gallon of gas was $1.63.

A lot can happen in 5 years. As of this writing the price of crude is $128.26 per barrel. The price of gas has already climbed over $4.00 per gallon. By the spring of 2009 the price of gas at the pump could be considerably higher.

The point here is that the window of opportunity for the new Camaro may have already opened ……and closed. The new Mustang has already stolen all the thunder over the last 3 years and bringing out a new Chevy ponycar next year with a 400 horsepower V8 just doesn’t make much sense. This is especially disappointing to me because I have always loved both cars and was hoping to see them go head-to-head in the marketplace again.

For all the organizational shakeups General Motors has been through over the last few decades, the old culture of “we know best” is still deeply entrenched. It isn’t that they don’t want to listen to the buying public, they just don’t know how. By the time the message gets from the street to the boardroom, it has mutated into something that agrees with the status quo.

Considering the staggering amount of market share that GM has lost over the last twenty-five or so years and the escalating price of fuel today, you’d think alarm bells would be going off all over the RenCen. They are not exactly awash in small fuel-efficient vehicles right now. Two of their five domestic divisions (Cadillac and Buick) don’t even have any.

When Toyota came ashore back in the late ‘50s, they were considered somewhat of a joke by Detroit standards. They were small and funny looking. Even the name Toyota suggested to many that they were just “toy cars”. Since then Toyota has grown exponentially. They are now neck-n-neck with GM for the title of world’s largest automaker.

GM, wake up! Iceberg dead ahead!

Wupped With The Ugly Stick

Wupped With The Ugly Stick

When I was a kid I had to walk three miles to school, …..through the snow, ….every day, ….barefoot! No, hold it, wrong story! That’s the line I handed my sons when they asked if they could drive the car to school. Sorry, I’ll start over.

When I was in junior high school I sat in class behind a couple of guys that seemed to be obsessed with insulting each other’s mother. Their talent for this seemed to know no boundaries. Aside from this odd behavior, they appeared to be good friends.

“Yo mama sho is ugly!” “Yeah, well yo mama is so ugly, she has to sneak up on a glass of water just to get a drink!” They seemed to enjoy this banter almost as much as I did. When I would laugh out loud, they would go straight-faced. The teacher would stop and say; “What’s so funny, Mr. Utley? Perhaps you could share with us.” Of course, I couldn’t.

Since that time, whenever I would see something that had obviously been severely thrashed with the Ugly-Stick, I would say to myself; “Self, that Sho Is Ugly?” For me, this especially applied to cars.

Sometimes a car is so ugly that it’s cute. Sometimes the line between ugly and cute gets blurred. I remember (as a kid) the first time I saw an Isetta (shown above). It was difficult for my brain to process what my eyes were seeing. Was it a small car or a large insect? Was it ugly or cute? At that time big fins on big American cars were all the rage. We were told that was beautiful. It was art deco. Who was I to question what was art?

The original VW Beetle was very popular for decades. It was so ugly that it was cute and Volkswagen capitalized on this trait.

The first time I saw an original British Mini, I thought it was so ugly that I fell in love with it. It became the most successful automobile in British history. I was happy to see BMW pick it up and bring it back to life, keeping it …..beautifully ugly.

No one has produced more ugly cars than the French or the Russians. Come to think of it, they’ve never produced one that isn’t. It seems like they were in heated competition to out-ugly each other. All dogs, but nary a cute one in the litter.

To me, a synonym for the word ugly is Peugeot. The video on the link below shows you what to do with a Peugeot.

But alas, we Yanks have had our share of ugly vehicles too. The Pacer, Gremlin, Pinto, Edsel, and many others come to mind. Every once in a while, one of the automakers trots out something that is so ugly, it just nauseates you at first glance.

There is one American vehicle that should get the World’s Ugliest Vehicle Ever Award. Can you guess what it is?

Is it………….?
(1). The Pontiac Aztec?
(2). The Pontiac Aztec?
(3). Or ….the Pontiac Aztec?

The first time I saw an Aztec I became physically ill. It pulled up beside me at a traffic light. It was yellow. Had I been a man of lesser stamina, I would have left my cookies on the steering wheel. It was so hideous I had to look away. Never before have my eyes experienced such a violent assault. What madness could have overtaken the mucky-mucks at Pontiac HQ to approve such a visual disaster?

I guess that beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. As my mother once told me, “Everyone is entitled to his or her own stupid opinion”. Even me.

OK, here’s that video I promised you. Click on the link.
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Tank-Crushing-Peugeot_150208.htm

Stickin' It To OPEC

Stickin’ It To OPEC

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has something we want. They are willing to give it to us for something we have. This is the fundamental basis of economics. Unfortunately for us, they want to give less of theirs in return for more of ours. That’s called gouging. They can charge us whatever they want and we have no choice but to pay it.

They are in the Cat-Bird Seat. We Americans hate it when that happens. We certainly can’t go back to the horse and buggy days. Can you imagine what a mess that would be on the expressway? Who’s gonna clean that stuff up? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go spend a few days on Mackinaw Island. It’s a smell you never get used to and it follows you everywhere.

So what are we going to do? Well, this situation will force new technologies to the forefront. Hybrid and electric vehicles, and bio-fuels are already available, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to keep us as mobile as we like to be.

There is one particular technology that has captured my interest. That is the air-powered vehicle. Cars are actually being developed that run on compressed air and these may be available as early as next year. Hybrid versions of this are expected to go as far as 500 miles before getting an air refill. Imagine air stations replacing gasoline stations. An air fill-up might cost $2.00 and take about 3 minutes.

MDI or Motor Development International is preparing to introduce such a vehicle within the next few years. Imagine cheap fill-ups; zero air-polluting emissions, and all the fuel you can ever use. It sounds too good to be true.

But if it is true, we can count on the Opekians to buy up all the new manufacturers and charge us whatever they want for these new cars. We can also count on our own Congress to find a way to put a hefty fuel-tax on air.

Oh well, you know what they say about death and taxes.

If you’d like to see this new type of vehicle in action, go to this page and watch the video.
http://www.celsias.com/2007/02/23/air-car-tantalisingly-close/