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About Me
My work has appeared in a number of major publications either as writer, photographer, or source. I enjoy talking about all things automotive. Recent Posts
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CarSpace Hudson's BlogAll around the car world there are stories and these are just a few of them. A new blog is posted every Monday. Sometimes more often. Feb 25, 2008 - The Shaky World of Automotive InvestingUntil around 1950, there was a Wild West-like attitude in the American automotive industry. It was a frontier to be conquered. Throughout automotive history, there have been something like 5,000 individual makers of cars and trucks in the world with about 3,500 of them being situated in the United States. Companies like General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have survived, in one form or another, for over a century. General Motors turns 100 this year but its oldest parts (Cadillac, Buick, and the late Oldsmobile) are well over the century mark. Ford was founded in 1903. And while Chrysler was created in 1924 from the remains of Maxwell, parts of the company can be traced back to Rambler which dates back to 1903 as an automobile manufacturer. There are a few minor vehicle manufacturers in the US. The most prominent of them is Panoz which is slowly approaching its 20th anniversary. Outside of these tiny footnotes, there hasn't been a major successful American manufacturer founded since World War II. And even new import brands on US soil have been a rare find in the past 30 years. Rare successes like Hyundai and Kia are at odds with struggling Mitsubishi and soon-to-be-gone Isuzu. So you might have to forgive my apprehension everytime someone announces a new venture. When Bob Lutz announced the revival of Cunningham about eight years ago, I was excited. This was the first time in half a century that a new manufacturer would be coming to the US where I trusted the founder. Bob Lutz is the consumate car guy with REAL automotive experience working with the likes of BMW, General Motors, and Chrysler. Lutz even had novel, and as I saw it workable, approaches to manufacturing (which he laid out in two issues of Automotive Industries). But when Lutz was hired by General Motors, it was obvious that all bets on the Cunningham were off. So if Lutz prefered to take the corporate route instead of laying the foundation for real history, I knew new car production was truly a tough nut to crack. When people with questionable backgrounds talk about their automotive ventures, I automatically write them off in my head. People like Malcolm Bricklin, Gerald Weigert, and many others show great enthusiasm, some even know aspects of the automotive business, but most of them are just in business to make a quick buck. So ventures trying to tap the Chinese automakers for the next big thing find their way to my "skeptical" list. I understand that these people are trying to do what the Germans did in the late 1940s, the Japanese did in the 1960s, and the Koreans in the 1980s...catch the next big wave at its beginning. People like Max Hoffman and Kjell Qvale did just that, but the market was vastly different than it is today. The members of my list have included many different types of ventures. Importers of the ARO from Romania, the Proton from Malaysia, the TVR from the UK, the Citroen from France, the Alfa Romeo from Italy, and the Chery from China, among many others, have all announced their intentions in the past 20 years. Many times, these announcements have been followed by many different setbacks, some even could be just called frauds or scams. So it was of no surprise that Automotive News revealed that the head of one of these latest ventures was hiding a shady past. CHAMCO is a New Jersey-based importer who has announced that they plan on selling Chinese trucks in the next few years. The head spokesperson for CHAMCO has stated that he's simply a consultant for the company, but it seems that his wife is actually the chief stockholder of the company. And his past, according to the newspaper, shows that "he did time for fraud" in an earlier trucking venture that he controlled. I'm a huge car fan. I would love to see new and exciting choices in cars and trucks in the US. But each time a Build-To-Order or CHAMCO or ARO America is announced, I need to take a step back and see what's actually going on. The odds of any of these ventures getting off the ground, let alone becoming successful, are becoming smaller an
Nov 5, 2007 - My DiseaseOnce in a while, I get to combine two or more things I really love. Among the things I enjoy are cartoons, music, Legos, poker, photography, writing, history, movies, trivia, and cars. Every so often some of these things come close enough that I can enjoy two at a time. Lately, I've been reading a book called Bricklin, a thirty-year old book on the demise of the title car manufacturer. I find it quite educational about the events leading to the collapse of this sports car maker and the people involved. But the errors that I'm noticing are almost at entertaining as the story. According to the writers of this book, the people who were working for Bricklin in 1974 were looking for another car to build instead of the SV-1 gullwing coupe that Malcolm Bricklin had proposed. The authors of this book stated that they had been looking at the "recently" deceased Studebaker for a potential product. It was portrayed that the Studebaker Avanti was on the table as a potential replacement for the still-under-development Bricklin. My first problem was that Studebaker had in fact stopped production of vehicles prior to 1974, but if any company were looking into their products at that time, they would have found them to be woefully out of date. Studebaker stopped producing vehicle in the United State in 1963 and stopped production in Canada (where the Bricklin factory was located) in 1966. Eight years after the last Studebaker rolled off of the assembly line, their cars would not be competitive especially since Studebaker cars were not cutting edge in 1966. The second problem focused on the Avanti. Studebaker introduced the Avanti in 1962 and it was radical for the time. Unfortunately, Studebaker was in dire straits and by late 1963, they could not maintain production of this coupe. Studebaker dealers Nate Altman and Leo Newman purchased the rights and tooling for the Avanti and started production of the Avanti II in 1965. There is no way that Studebaker, as the book states, was looking to sell the rights to the Avanti to Bricklin financiers since Studebaker no longer owned them. Items like this appear in "historical" contexts all of the time. And in the days before the internet, these items could generate lives of their own. Another such item also appears in this book. The authors of Bricklin talk about the promotional machine that sold the SV-1 to the public. Movies and TV shows used the modern-looking car in many different productions. Even non-automotive magazines ran articles showcasing the visual virtues of this swoopy little coupe. Bricklin mentions the SV-1's appearance in the movie The Betsy, a Harold Robbins book turned film about a family-run car company. I'm sure in 1977, the authors had very little chance to check up on the validity of this claim, but in 2007 I do since I own a DVD copy of said movie. And the Bricklin does not appear in the movie. I believe this is a case of mistaken identity and confused memories. The big-budget theatrical release The Betsy starring Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, and Tommy Lee Jones came out in 1978. Around the same time, a 1971 book by Arthur Haley entitled "Wheels" became a made-for-TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson and Lee Remick. Both stories followed tales of a large American car company attempting to release a radically new model. Most of the vehicles used in The Betsy were lightly disguised mainstream vehicles. The "Betsy" itself was a sporty coupe of relatively conventional styling powered by a revolutionary new turbine engine. The featured vehicle in "Wheels" was a model called the Hawk. The actual Hawk was a modified AMC AMX or Javelin (sorry, the movie still isn't offered on DVD yet). Like the Bricklin, the Hawk featured gullwing doors which, to me, led to the confusion. While the Bricklin never appears in either movie, someone connected the Hawk to the Bricklin and assumed that the vehicle showed up in The Betsy rather than in Wheels. It's these little bits of trivia that keep me going. And it doesn't end with strictly automoitve movies. The John Travolta/Arye Gross movie The Experts (one of my favorite "unknown" movies) is set in New York City, but the first time I watched the movie, I noticed a little car that made a brief and blurred appearance at the end of a scene...a car that was never offered for sale in the US (a Hyundai Stellar). Connecting the car with this knowledge, I assumed that this NYC scene was probably shot in Canada. And a glimpse of the credits confirmed this. Watch the opening credits to the movie Mannequin 2 (you needn't waste your time with the rest of the film) and you'll notice one of my favorite automotive-related film flubs. The main character in the movie is driving his Jeep to work in center city Philadelphia. He turns right onto Kelly Drive heading toward the city. As he's driving in, one camera angle is shot from his passenger seat showing the famous Boathouse Row passing by the driver. Anyone who's driven up or down Kelly Drive will tell you that if Boathouse Row is on the driver's left side, you're heading OUT of Philadelphia. There's a little glimpse into what's wrong with me. Finding enjoyment out of discovering trivial errors in books and movies especially when they're automotive-related. That's entertainment to me. And I'm sure that many of you have a version of this same disease. "Hi, I'm Hudson. And I'm a Trivia Flub-aholic!"
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