[Amc-list] One off

["Mahoney, John" <jmahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>
My neighbor and I stopped by Scott Henningsen's
restoration shop tonight.  Scott was putting the
finishing touches on the engine restoration of a 1911
Rambler Model 65.   I was so pleased to be able to see
the car and to see the newly rebuilt engine actually
run.  Scott said the car was largely restored when he
received it and his task was to rebuild the engine,
which was a basket case.  He made new pistons and some
other moving parts.  His assistant ground a new cam.
The engine was a work of art as totally befitted this
very impressive large car.

According to Scott this was the first company car
purchased by the Coca Cola Company for their
executives.  It may be the only surviving Model 65.
<<

If that's Terry Parkhurst's 65, he paid $9,800 for it.  Just last year! 

As a top-of-the-line model, it cost $3,050 in 1911 and it was advertised in the April 1, 1911 issue of "Country Life."  Last August, Terry said it "needs restoration but is lovely to look at.  In good shape, it could bring $50,000."  Good!

If it isn't his, it's not the only survivor.

And that's good for automotive history also.

Whichever it is, it'll be good for AMC-Nash-Rambler history.  If your AMC hobby people ever get going good.  2007 Kenosha meet not much publicized in collector car mags; Cardin article not without inaccuracy in HCC.  Do more; do it better.  Make AMC more like Studebaker, Packard, and Toyota.

Good luck.

Since everything's connected (the more we know, the more we enjoy life), I can't resist connecting cars to culture and politics and American history.

http://libertarian.meetup.com/46/members/3480064/

One big Rambler 65 happened to drive President William Howard Taft; he went from horse-drawn carriage to horseless carriages while in office. 

>From Washington [inaugural], March 4, 1909

http://tinyurl.com/256yfr

and "Silent Six" [in Massachusetts], 1911

http://www.sturtevantfan.com/FossP3.html

to touring [Los Angeles], October 16,1911 

http://www.nelanet.org/reportsmaps/hphistory/figure_23.jpg

to standing [somewhere west of Laramie...]

http://tinyurl.com/yubulr

and (to keep coming home to Kenosha) [Oconto City, WI], Spring 1908.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wioconto/HalloranJohn1908.jpg

Republican Taft and Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the same car!

On a campaign stop!

For US President!

Imagine that!

Will we ever return to such a "civil" civilization in America again?

Good luck. 

When Taft was elected in 1908, American was not yet in love with cars and cruising was not cool to everyone.  Read what some Americans said:


Rich, reckless, dare-devil young men, driving automobiles simply for pleasure, [violating the laws] with impunity... wild in their reckless career.
 
- Thetus Sims, 20-year US Congressman [D], Kentucky, 1906

"Nothing has spread Socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles."

- Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton University, 1906

"I am a Southerner and know how to shoot [at automobiles]!"

- Woodrow Wilson, born in Virginia with JD from UVA, 1906

And, of course, the mass media joined in with an automotive word or two.

"The worthless sons of an earlier generation of rich men in this country used to manifest their high spirits and low breeding by getting drunk and becoming disorderly in public places, to the annoyance and disgust of decent people. That sort of thing was tolerated for a time, and then the police and the police courts put an end to it.... There are fifty or a hundred times as many rich men's sons now... those among them who are cads and rowdies are justly regarded as about the least useful class of society. A good many of this class have taken to automobiles."

- New York Times editorial, among all the news that's fit to print

"Witnesses say the vehicle was going at forty miles an hour... Their estimates may be wrong, but it was nearly three blocks from the little crushed body lying in the avenue when its owner finally brought it to a standstill... 'I'll never ride in an automobile again as long as I live.'"

- New York Times accident report, among many such in the pre-teens

Theodore Roosevelt just plain didn't like automobiles (even though his predecessor, William McKinley, had been the first President to ride in one), in part because he associated them with the "privilege" that he railed against [rather like today's Hollywood types who talk up saving energy while they drive 10-mpg SUVs and fly in private Gulfstream jets to any of their many many-thousand square-foot homes]: Teddy was as apt to use "class warfare" to achieve his goals as any politician is to use race or religion or whatever to realize his/her power/ambition today; I cannot respect any of them or call them "public servants" --- they are SELF servants of the worst order and "The Honorable" is -dishonorable- too often to be ignored.  Left, Right, Middle --- guilty.  Politics in America is an -embarrassment- that Americans must recognize and repair.  If nobody does nuthin', things will only go from bad to worse.  That's what got Chrysler, Ford, GM, AMC, and all your dead independent
 s where they are --- or where they went.  The good times may continue to roll, but eventually they'll roll to a dead stop.  Out of gas.  Done.  Over.
Don't let it happen.  It's your America.  Independence is independents thinking for themselves.  You don't buy a Toyota because everyone else does.  You didn't pay for a Ford or a Chevrolet: you chose an AMC car.  You decided what was right for you.  So don't pay politicians to spend YOUR hard-earned money, to decide how YOU should live, how YOUR kids should be educated, or how THEIR gravy trains should run.  They're YOUR employees.  Don't let them ever forget that.        


It was not a populist Rough Rider who had good words for automobiles,

"The automobile, the manufacture of which has become one of our leading industries, is destined to assume a very important part in the economic welfare of the world."

"We live in the Age of the Automobile."

"...the automobile coming in as a toy of the wealthier classes is going to prove the most useful of them all to all classes, rich and poor."

it was Taft. He hated demagogy, political flattery, and, yes, populism.  He was the first President to ask Congress for an official automobile; and he requested that one be delivered in time for use on his first full day in office.

After the White House took delivery of two Pierce-Arrow limousines, the President took a ride.  The future was set: America would move forward -on- the wheels and, after time to taper off of tillers, -at- the wheels of automobiles.

The Model T wasn't available before October 1, 1908; the roads weren't paved to drive cars on; travel wasn't a part of the average American's life experience.  But after 1909, that all would change.  America's motor age had dawned.     

Car life in America, as you know it today, essentially began back then. 

Taft was the first "Motor Age" President, and he acknowledged that fact.  In fact, he spoke to the ACA (Automobile Club of America, which was much more important than any car club we would recognize), in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria (in New York), on December 20, 1911.  I shall let you read exactly what he said.  (He had fun with words, also...)


Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Automobile Club, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have never quite understood the kindly persistence that your president and his associates showed in inviting me to this festal occasion. I never belonged to what I always used to call "carriage class" (laughter). I walked, or rode in street cars. When the automobile took the place of that more dignified procedure, I am sure Judge Moore will agree with me -- I transferred the carriage class to the automobile class, and considered myself still excluded.
It is true that the accident of office and the generosity of a Republican Congress (laughter) gave me for a time (laughter) the privilege of understanding the fascination of traveling by this new method, but it is only a loan. There is no permanency of tenure in the machine or in the office (laughter), and, therefore, I beg of you to understand that I appear here only in a temporarily representative capacity (laughter).

I am told that automobile clubs in Europe are headed by the Dukes and the Grand Dukes, and those who occupy places of near royalty, and that by way of a somewhat forced analogy it was deemed wise to have the temporary Executive of this government present at one automobile dinner in order to show that there was some "pull" at Washington.*
I am glad to be here in any capacity; glad to learn of how much the automobile and its uses have contributed to international friendship among those who can afford to carry automobiles through a custom house (laughter). Reference has been made to the limitation on my power. The truth is that in the performance of my official duties, I don't meet anything but limitation (great laughter and applause). Your presiding officer has said to you that his power, in certain regards, was much longer than mine. I have no doubt of it, and if he can get, as he says, by issuing a mere yellow ticket, so much of value through Loeb and the custom house here, he can exceed any power that I have (laughter).

I am glad to know that I am having the pleasure of addressing not only those who use the automobile, who really form that class that I dare call, in the presence of a brother of mine who teaches the classics, fruges consumere nati, but also those gentlemen who are making it an industry that contributes so greatly to the wealth of this country, and adds so much to its manufacturing product. I tried to help them out by getting the duties lowered into Canada (applause). Once in a while I do something for somebody that ought to make them grateful (laughter and applause), but even that seems to be broken up by a slowness on the part of Canada to appreciate a good thing when she sees it.
Seriously speaking, my friends, the working out of the automobile is a wonderful development. As you look back as far as I can look back -- at least with any sense of economic changes -- to 1876, and think of what has happened in that period in the promotion of the comfort of the human race, the changes are marvelous. The telephone, the electric railway, all the electrical devices for the reproduction of the human voice, and the automobile -- what could we do without them now? How rapidly we adapt ourselves to the absolute necessity of those improvements of which we knew and imagined nothing fifty years ago! I am sure that of all of them the automobile coming in as a toy of the wealthier classes is going to prove the most useful of them all to all classes, rich and poor (applause).
There was a time in the use of the automobile -- I shared it myself when I was plodding along with the tandem that nature gave me, as Holmes called it (laughter), when a spirit of intolerance was manifested against the horrible looking machine that the automobile then was to the ordinary eye. There was an intimation of "get-out-of-the-way or we will run you over," and a resentment against those who were using it until you yourself got into the automobile. Then human nature was shown in the quickness with which the attitude of mind can change, and you regarded as utterly unreasonable the slowness of the pedestrian and the idea that he had any right to any part of the street (laughter), either for crossing or anything else. And then the utter outrage of having any dogs at all in any community that should get in the way of that magnificent instrument of travel and comfort!
 
If you had traveled as much as I have (laughter and applause), if you had been met in every town of five or ten thousand people in every State, with a hundred automobiles, in order to demonstrate the prosperity of that particular town, you would understand that the use of the automobile has gone quite beyond that class which I aspired to and never acquired membership in (laughter). It means that the automobile has come here for use. It is contributing, like the telephone, like the suburban railway, like the rural delivery of the Post Office, to the possibility of a comfortable life on the farm, and it is tending, together with high prices of farm products, to turn back again those who seek the city and professional life, to a place where they have an assured income and are not troubled with suits or litigation, or chased by the government (laughter and applause).
 
Many serious problems are going to be presented, and you are having them now, with these State lines, and these authorities, of whom you can have three in a very short automobile ride just in this neighborhood. I do not know how you are going to get rid of them. You might set some theory of yourself being an unopened and complete package, sent from Connecticut into New Jersey, through New York, that can not be opened until you reach the point of your destination, and in some way or other, call upon the Federal Court to protect you in that transportation (laughter). Whether you escape the tax and the license and all that sort of thing, for the grooves that your automobile makes in the roads of your State, I am unable to say, because those charged with the responsibility of keeping up the roads know that while the automobile owners have promoted the question and the pursuit of good roads, they have very largely contributed to the difficulty of building and maintaining them. The
  experiments made as to what may avoid the influence of those great big rubber tires upon macadam roads are proceeding, and I hope something will come of them.

I speak with considerable deference, because I find that gentlemen who study good roads as a diversion, as an avocation, have such decided views that one who is just charged with the good old governmental way of building a road finds some difficulty in appreciating, and also finds that he is not regarded as an authority in any respect. I had a call from a gentleman who is an automobilist and also a good roads man, and eats, sleeps and drinks good roads. He came to me and said: "Mr. President, I desire that you appoint delegates to a good roads convention -- a national good roads convention." I said, "I will be very glad to do it, sir. We have two departments in which there are road experts." "Which are they," said he. Said I, "We have the Agricultural Department, where we have a Bureau devoted to experts who are laying experimental roads for the country, for the farmers." Said he, "I have had occasion to know how much they know. I have looked into it, and they don't know anyt
 hing about it at all. They have not the first principles at hand." I said, "Then we will go into the War Department, and we will take the army engineers, and I will send you some of them. They have been building roads in the Philippines, in every State in the Union, in Cuba, on the Isthmus, and elsewhere." Said he, "If my boy did not know more about the real principles of building roads than they do, I would not allow him to continue the study of it." I said, "Good morning, sir, I am not in the road business, and I have no delegates worthy of being sent there."

The question of good roads, as I say, is a difficult one, not only because of the perfection of the road for the purpose of resisting this much heavier travel, but also because of the question who is to pay for the roads. Are they to be built by the State? Are they to be built by the county? And whoever builds them, who is to take care of them? This is a much more important question. But I hear the earnest patriot -- and it does not make any difference how he construes the constitution -- if there is any plan of running a national road near his farm, I hear the earnest patriot say, "it is the business of the general Government to build its roads" (laughter). Says he, "let us have a national road running from New York to San Francisco to teach the world what a model road is." "What will it cost?" Ah," what difference does it make what it costs? You can strive and hunt ways of saving $100,000 in the matter of employees at Washington; but when it comes to building roads, what is
  $100,000,000 between friends?" (laughter). And there is the difficulty, gentlemen. I admit that the general Government has the power to build National roads for the purpose of promoting interstate commerce. It has done it already, but I venture to question the wisdom of opening that method of spending Federal Government money. I think it is much better to have the neighborhood and the State, as a large unit, expend its money in the construction of roads across the State, of aiding the counties to keep the roads in repair, because, if you once set out upon a plan of national roads, in addition to the plan of national waterways, I don't know how great the expenditure will amount to. If we could confine it to two or three roads, I would not object, but we have forty-eight different States and every State is as anxious to share in the common funds at Washington as every other State (laughter). It is a dangerous experiment that I would suggest great delay and deliberation before
  you undertake so great an expenditure, the stopping of which will have no end. We have had some experience in that in Washington, and we are looking forward now to large expenditures. If you are going to add roads, and you are going to run your automobiles through them and over them and into them, and are going to promote the cost of them as you will, increasing, of course, the intercourse between all the people, creating a benefit which I do not minimize, nevertheless I say to you that if you can reach that benefit without opening the national treasury, I think it will be the wiser and more statesmanlike course (applause).

I did not intend to talk so long gentlemen, but when you get into a governmental discussion on the subject of economy, the mind runs on to a Congress that is striving to save money (laughter), and I am anxious to express the sympathy that we all feel in that effort. I thank you sincerely for your kind attention.

Ford and Jeffery and Chapin and Durant and Nash all were listening.

Oh, yeah.

When Taft left office (after just one term), he told his successor:

"I'm glad to be going.  This is the lonesomest place in the world."

Oh, yeah.


And, in case you're still reading, Taft's own car was a White Model M

http://whitesteamers.com/images/RThurberM.JPG

Yes, sewing machine maker, yes, steam-powered: hot air used for good!  

http://americanhistory.si.edu/ONTHEMOVE/collection/object_69.html

And yes, Taft was 5-11 and ~340 pounds: low-end torque was also good!

http://www.doctorzebra.com/imprez/27march1913.jpg

(Wilson had just looked at and remarked on an attractive young lady...)

http://tinyurl.com/3cngcm

And so it goes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2974032.stm

Go back to AMC.

New post so non-historians can skip this long trip down memory road.
_______________________________________________
Amc-list mailing list
Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.amc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/amc-list