Post your Monday Doorway!
lundi 30 avril 2012
Portes de lundi
Post your Monday Doorway!
dimanche 29 avril 2012
Série du Pont de Dimanche
We will begin this review of the bridges of the San Francisco Bay Area with the northern most bridge, the Carquinez, which carries the Interstate 80 Freeway northeast of the Bay Area at Vallejo.
You got a high-altitudge view of the Carquinez Bridge when «Louis» et Mme la Vache took you to the top of Mount Diablo. Here's a closer view taken from the Carquinez Straight. If you click to enlarge, you'll see the C&H Sugar mill behind the bridge on the right. In doing so, you'll also see that this is actually two bridges. The eastern most span carries east-bound traffic on Interstate 80, while the one in the foreground carries the westbound traffic.
The Carquinez bridge lies between Crockett on the south and Vallejo on the north. The original Carquinez bridge predates either the Golden Gate Bridge or the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Here's a snippet from Wikipedia about the Carquinez Bridge.
samedi 28 avril 2012
Weekend Reflections
See all the other contributors to James' Weekend Reflections
vendredi 27 avril 2012
Le vendredi «Sky Watch»
See the Sky Watch Friday entries from around the globe!
jeudi 26 avril 2012
mercredi 25 avril 2012
Mercredi sans mots
See all the other participants in Wordless Wednesday
mardi 24 avril 2012
Mardi Rouge
(a.k.a. Red Car Day at Chez la Vache!)
Clic sur les images pour les agrandir
In a Ruby Tuesday post not long ago, «Louis» wrote about his favorite of all Packards, the '55 - and especially the '56 Caribbeans. One of the most famous styling cues on the '55 and '56 Packards is the "cathedral" taillight, designed by Richard Teague. Today's Ruby Tuesday post is the story of how those taillights came to be. The "Ruby" this Tuesday is the red in the taillight lens!
Richard Teague had been hired by Packard Styling in 1951 after John Rinehart, the designer of the 1951 Packards, left the company. In 1952, James J. Nance arrived as president of Packard. Nance's mission was to restore Packard to its glory as the premier luxury make in the U.S. Nance wanted an all-new Packard for 1955, but lead times being what they are in the auto industry, dictated that the first-under-Nance all new Packard could not be introduced until 1957. Nance gave Teague orders to make the Rinehart-designed 1951 body shell look as new as possible for 1955. Originally, the bulging taillights and the double bumper of the 1954 Packards were to be retained, but Teague used a new grill, a wrap-around windshield and new side trim for his proposed 1955s.
Packard president James Nance had a name for those taillights...
Teague recalls that on the afternoon of Good Friday, 1954, "...Nance had wandered back to Styling with his nodding disciples and bright young Ford escapees...a sort of shirtsleeves, 'let's look at cars' thing. I remember that he said we could live with the doors, but we needed a new look in the tail area."
The story, as recounted to «Louis» in a letter from Teague's widow differs a bit in detail from the version given in "Packard - A History of the Motor Car and Company". According to Mrs. Teague, Nance bellowed "Teague, those bulls nuts taillights have got to go! You're a bright guy, why don't you come up with something and I'll see you next week?" That important difference aside, the version quoting Teague himself in the book parallels Mrs. Teague's story.
Teague himself continues, "This was like 5 p.m. Friday, so I took a bunch of junk home in case I got time to work something out. Nance didn't much care about normal lead times - it was like April, and the car had to be built in the summer and ready by fall!"
"I lived in Rochester and it was Easter Sunday," Teague continued. "I didn't feel like going anywhere. I drew this thing up, and I knew it was impossible, there was no time, but JN wanted it so...I whipped it out in about four hours."
For all Nance cared, it might have taken weeks of research. "I was a big hero, J. Pierpoint Teague. 'G--d---it, that's it,' Nance said when he saw the sketch, 'put that sonofabitch on the car!' It was ridiculous. But we eyeballed it and I mothered it or fathered it and it turned out. The thing involved cutting of the end of the bumper and fender and was a monster job around the exhaust pipes, but he was in love with that taillight. I never saw a guy get so hooked on a design, and he gave me a $250-a-month raise - 33% - and a trip to Europe."
Teague's facelift of the 1951 body shell was so successful that most people thought the 1955 Packards were an all-new design. The 1955 facelift was carried over little-changed for 1956. As «Louis» recounted to you last week, Nance gave Studebaker most of the development money for 1956, trying to buy time until the all new 1957 Packards and Studebakers could be introduced. Alas, we never saw those cars in production...
Why are Teague's famous "cathedral" taillights called that? One story that circulates from time-to-time is that Teague was inspired by the lancet-shaped stained glass windows in church that Easter Sunday. Mrs. Teague in her letter informed «Louis» that while the shape was indeed inspired by lancet-shaped windows, her husband did not go to church with her that Easter Sunday - he stayed home working on the design. Teague had been leafing through a magazine that had photos of stained glass windows in French cathedrals, particularly Chartres, and the idea took shape, as it were, from there.
The Packard "Predictor" show car, designed by Teague and the planned but never built 1957 Packards had a variation of Teague's now-iconic "cathedral" taillights.
lundi 23 avril 2012
Portes de lundi
Here's the story: In France, it is common to add a bit of chicory to coffee. «Louis» couldn't resist the joke and labeled his chicory blend coffee "Frog Fuel". (That's how the habit of adding chicory to coffee got started in Louisiana, the French brought that habit with them to Louisiana when they held Louisiana as a possession.)
Post your Monday Doorway!
dimanche 22 avril 2012
Série du Pont de Dimanche
samedi 21 avril 2012
Le psaume de dimanche
• • •
1 Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
2 No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
3 Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies.
4 Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears,
5 that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however skillful the enchanter may be.
6 Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions!
7 Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
8 May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
9 Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns—
whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.
10 The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 Then people will say,
“Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth.”
Sunday Psalm is hosted by Daily Athens and Katney's Kaboodle
• • •
Weekend Reflections
See all the other contributors to James' Weekend Reflections
vendredi 20 avril 2012
Le vendredi «Sky Watch»
See the Sky Watch Friday entries from around the globe!
jeudi 19 avril 2012
mercredi 18 avril 2012
Mercredi sans mots
See all the other participants in Wordless Wednesday
mardi 17 avril 2012
Mardi Rouge
(a.k.a. Red Car Day at Chez la Vache!)
Clic sur l'image pour l'agrandir
Our Ruby Tuesday post two weeks ago was about the still-beautiful 1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner, which (as you have read) is in «Louis'» opinion, the most beautiful car ever built. If you have been following the history of Studebaker and Packard «Louis» has been posting on Ruby Tuesday, you will recall that in 1954, Packard, now led by the dynamic James Nance, had bought Studebaker as a step in a grand plan posited by Nash president George Mason to become the fourth full-line U.S. automaker after General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The newly merged company would be called American Motors. Toward that end in 1954 , Nash bought Hudson and Packard bought Studebaker. These two halves were then to merge to complete Mason's grand plan.
Then the chain cigar-smoking Mason got pneumonia and died. Nash was taken over by Mason's second-in-command, George Romney, father of current U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney did not like James Nance and refused to complete the merger. Not only that, he cancelled the component-sharing plans Mason and Nance had worked out. Nance had built an all-new engine and transmission plant in Utica, MI in no small measure to supply Nash and Hudson with Packard's new V8 engine and re-tooled Ultramatic Drive automatic transmission. Romney tooled Nash to built its own V8 and bought Hydramatic Drive automatic transmissions from GM, leaving Nance with excess capacity at Utica. Romney also refused to supply Nance with Nash-Hudson built components for Studebaker-Packard. Romney was going to go his own way, and did...
Nance had arrived in Packard in 1952. The auto industry has long lead-times in product development, so the earliest practical model year in which the Nance imprint would appear in great detail on Packard cars was 1955. The first built-from-scratch Nance Packard was to be the 1957 models. More about the 1955-1956-1957 Packards in future posts. This brings us to 1956, a stop-gap year for Studebaker-Packard.
The merger between Studebaker and Packard was completed in 1954. With Packard, having received most of the development money for its 1955 models, Nance gave Studebaker most of the development money for 1956. Nance desperately needed to get more volume out of Studebaker, whose plants in South Bend, Indiana and Los Angeles, California were vastly underutilized. (In retrospect, Nance should have closed Los Angeles as soon as it was clear that Romney would not follow through on Mason and Nance's merger plans. In the end, it wouldn't have changed the outcome, but in the short term, it would have kept Studebaker from bleeding so much money off of Packard. Studebaker had the highest labor costs in the industry. Neither the South Bend nor Los Angeles plants were operating at any where near capacity. South Bend easily could have supplied the West Coast with all the cars built at Los Angeles. The additional shipping cost would have been more than offset by the savings in labor.)
To get more volume out of Studebaker for 1956, the Bourke-designed body shells were given a handsome facelift by stylist Vince Gardner. Studebaker extended the model range in the sedans by adding a President Classic to the top of the range President line. The regular President was built on the 113" wheelbase chassis that the Champion and Commander lines were built on; the President Classic was on the 120" wheelbase. (Had Bourke gotten his way for the 1953 models, all the sedans would have been on the 120" wheelbase. Studebaker management, in one of the mistakes that put them under, insisted on the 113" wheelbase, a decision that made the resulting sedans look foreshortened and somewhat dumpy while the Land Cruiser (which became the President for 1955 and beyond) were built on the 120" wheelbase and thus were much nearer to the ideal Bourke strove for in the sedans. Had Bourke gotten his way, the sedans would have rivaled his stunning Starliner coupe in beauty.) For 1956, trying to reach into more market segments to give Studebaker more volume, Nance approved two versions of the Starliner (hardtop) and two versions of the Starlight (pillared coupe) spun off from Bourke's 1953 design. These four cars would be the Studebaker Hawks.
At the bottom of the range was the Flight Hawk. This was a pillared coupe powered by the Champion's 6 cylinder engine. Next up was the Power Hawk, a pillared coupe powered by Studebaker's 259 cubic inch V8 used in the Commander series.
The top of the Hawk line for 1956 was the Golden Hawk, powered by the Packard 352 cubic inch V8. The 1956 model year was no where nearly as good for the industry as 1955, and both Studebaker and Packard suffered volume losses - fatal in the case of Packard. Alas, the four versions of the Hawk only were only built for the 1956 model year.
lundi 16 avril 2012
Portes de lundi
This is the back door of «Louis'» new espresso van as the decals are being applied. «Louis» put the espresso van into service at the Orinda, California and Walnut Creek, California Farmers Markets this weekend!
Sorry! «Louis» can't e-mail you a latte! Check «Louis'» Facebook page or his Twitter page for the location of the Espresso Van daily!
samedi 14 avril 2012
Le psaume de dimanche
• • •
For the director of music. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” Of David. A miktam. When he had fled from Saul into the cave.
1 Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,
for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.
2 I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who vindicates me.
3 He sends from heaven and saves me,
rebuking those who hotly pursue me —
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.
4 I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
6 They spread a net for my feet—
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path—
but they have fallen into it themselves.
7 My heart, O God, is steadfast,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.
8 Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
9 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
10 For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
11 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
Sunday Psalm is hosted by Daily Athens and Katney's Kaboodle
• • •
vendredi 13 avril 2012
Le vendredi «Sky Watch»
Clic sur l'image pour l'agrandir
See the Sky Watch Friday entries from around the globe!
jeudi 12 avril 2012
Kung Fu Cow!
Brought to you by the Holy Cow Coffee Company
mercredi 11 avril 2012
Mercredi sans mots
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See all the other participants in Wordless Wednesday HERE and also at Tina's Wordless Wednesday.
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