Motor Vehicles of Our Acquantaince

Ordinary and strange vehicles we have owned, driven, used, and abused:

I confess: some of these photos (the ones that look really good) are scanned from books, and do not show our personal cars.

The one that got away . . .

Everyone has a story about a great opportunity ignored. In the mid-1970's, I had the chance to buy a Jaguar XK-120 Fixed-Head for less than $1,000. I declined because I already had one Jag disassembled for rebuild; my arm was broken, and I didn't think I could handle another Jag basket case. In retrospect, it was a wise and rational choice -- one of the few I have made pertaining to cars -- but I wonder if I could have done it! (Probably not!)

Cars and motorcycles I would like (I think):

My racing career . . .

In the early 1980's, I briefly raced a Yamaha TA125 in WERA club races. I bought the bike -- an obsolete production-based roadracer -- for $300, raced it for two seasons, quote won unquote a regional championship (through dumb luck and scant competition), then sold it for $700. In the process, I scared the pee-willy out of myself several times, crashed twice, and discovered how to melt pistons. I guess this qualifies as a racing success story.

A long and winding road

Years ago, in a former life, I worked on cars for a living. (Which is not to say "professionally.") Like many mechanics confronted with perverse mechanisms, I often griped "I could design something better than this!" After a dozen years or so, putting my money where my mouth had been, I studied mechanical engineering with intent to pursue machine design. Following life's convoluted paths, (I will not thrash through all the details) I am today a data analyst by trade and a mechanical designer only when life demands -- usually to repair my old cars.

More than one person has observed that a physician, particularly a surgeon, is in essence a mechanic. Having been a mechanic, I recognize that this idea contains some metaphoric truth: a human body is a complex organic mechanism; accurate diagnosis is the foundation of both medicine and auto repair. Having been a mechanic, I also recognize this idea's untruths: I did not have to keep my patients running while I worked on them. Also, car parts are easier to find than people parts.

My first car was an old Jaguar sedan (2.4 Mk II). Owning this car made me a mechanic of necessity. British cars became my first and enduring mechanical favorite; I admire their simplicity, even their perverse archaic crudeness. At heart I may be a Victorian mechanical engineer; I like brightly painted mechanisms of cast iron, brass, and leather.

Although new cars are more reliable than old ones, they're not nearly as much fun! In general, I enjoy cars less than once I did. I am torn between viewing cars as tools of fun and freedom, versus their darker nature as much-too-numerous devices that crowd our cities, consume irreplaceable resources, excrete carcinogens, and squash small animals. I should not blame these inanimate tools for the ways we use them; our problems with cars are at heart problems with people. As Shakespeare didn't say, "The fault lies not in our cars, but in ourselves."

Permit me this further tirade: we are trying wrong solutions to many automobile-related problems. Certainly we should remove hazards from cars and roads where we reasonably can; however, many "safety" features in modern cars (e.g. crash bumpers, ABS brakes, third brake lights, and air bags) attempt technological solutions to a non-technological problem; that is, most drivers don't understand how cars work and don't drive very well. Similarly, we are probably bashing our heads against a technical wall by trying to make gasoline-powered internal combustion engines not pollute our air. Gasoline IC engines might as well be designed to pollute; their nature makes it almost impossible to do otherwise. If we sincerely want cleaner transportation, then we need other power sources.

After statistical analysis of accident data in the late 1960's or early 1970's, Road & Track magazine concluded (as nearly as I remember after 25+ years, and subject to customary statistical caveats): "There is no car . . . so inherently unsafe that it cannot be driven safely by a competent driver; [conversely,] there is no car . . . so inherently safe that it cannot be driven unsafely by an incompetent driver."

Random Impacts

On a one-lane road, the slowest driver is always in front. This is not a Murphian corrollary, but a kinematic fact.

Paul Newman receives an Honorary Oscar for Honesty (and for Best Line Delivered by a Racing Actor). When asked what caused him to crash into the bank exiting turn 12 at Road Atlanta, Newman responded "I had my head up my ass."

A Humvee is what a Jeep looks like when designed by a military committee.

"Fighting traffic congestion by widening the road is like fighting obesity by loosening your belt."

Motive Power

Other ways to push ourselves around:

Electric motors seem the most likely option. Electic motors are compact, powerful, controllable, and quiet. An appropriately designed electromotive system needs no clutch or multi-ratio transmission, and it can recapture part of a vehicle's kinetic energy while braking, returning that energy to a storage battery as electrical charge. Electric vehicles will need better batteries or other energy storage devices. Today's common batteries are impractically heavy and inefficient; lighter, efficient batteries are today monstrously expensive. Fuel cells may be the answer. (Or maybe not.) Solar charging may help in consistently sunny locales.

Steam is not as silly as it may seem. Many of us retain an archaic image of steam engines as heavy, bulky, crude, slow, noisy devices that belch black smoke and explode unpredictably. However, early automotive steam engines (Stanley, White, Doble, etc.) could be clean, quiet, and often more powerful than contemporary gasoline engines. In the 1930's the Bessler Corporation built and flew a steam-powered airplane; it was light and powerful enough to fly, and quiet enough that ground observers could hear the pilot's voice. [I remember reading this 15 years ago; I'm not making this up!] Like an electric motor, a steam engine can be designed to need no clutch or transmission. Steam engines operate by a thermodynamic cycle that is theoretically less effecient than the cycle by which internal combustion engines work, but a theoretic cycle is not a working engine; in practical use, steam can work at least as efficiently. We can design steam engines to burn any commonly available fuel: gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, or natural gas, as well as coal or wood. Because steam engines burn fuel in a low- and constant-pressure environment, they can burn fuel cleanly, producing little pollution. Probably the worst practical problems of steam engines arise from their working fluid. Water freezes at common environmental temperatures and corrodes metal engine parts.

Hybrid systems may give the best practical answer. I envision a vehicle with electric motors driving its wheels, reclaiming kinetic energy by regenerative braking; solar collectors maintain battery charge when possible; a small, efficient, clean-burning "helper" engine drives an electric generator to boost battery power or recharge batteries as needed.

Balloonacy

I don't much like airbags. Here's why:

In summary, I think airbags are unnecessary, expensive, and dangerous.

Sage Advice from the East


Beware the Festive Dog
At the rise of the hand
of policeman, stop rapidly.
Do not pass him by
or otherwise disrespect him.
When a passenger of the foot
hove in sight, tootle the horn trumpet
to him melodiously at first.
If he still obstacles your passage,
tootle him with vigour
and express by word of the mouth
the warning "Hi, Hi!"
Beware the wandering horse
that he shall not take fright
as you pass him.
Do not explode
the exhaust box at him.
Go soothingly by
or stop by the road-side
till he pass away.
Give big space
to the festive dog
that makes sport
in the road-way.
Avoid entanglement of dog
with your wheel-spokes.
Go soothingly on the grease-mud,
as there lurk the skid demon.
Press the brake of the foot
as you roll round the corners
to save the collapse
and tie-up.


Edwin Miller collected and set into stanzas this "found poem" -- a Japanese-English guide for foreign motorists -- explaining rules of the road in 1935 Japan. Quoted by William Least Heat-Moon in River-Horse.

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