The Maligned 1958 Packard -- or is it a Catfish? A contribution from Ed Garten

GONE FISHIN' -- PACKARD OR CATFISH?

1958 saw the Packard line reduced to two models and four body styles; a 4-door sedan, a 2-door hardtop coupe (sometimes referred to as the "Starlight", (a name used by Studebaker with the earlier classic Lowy Starlight Coupe), a 4-door station wagon which simply bore the Packard name, and the Packard Hawk, a modification of Studebaker's Golden Hawk with a “catfish-like” Packard grille.

Restyled by Duncan McRae, Studebaker-Packard's finances dictated that the changes for 1958 be made as cheaply as possible. Quad headlights were achieved by affixing fiberglass pods to the previous year's front fenders designed for two headlights. In the rear, McRae attempted to follow the tailfin craze established by Chrysler's 1957 "Forward Look" by crafting outward canted fiberglass fin extensions that were mounted to the tops of the existing vertical rear fenders. 1956 Clipper taillight units continued to be used. Packards also adopted a low, wide "fishmouth" grille to further distinguish them from their Studebaker cousins.

Despite McRae's efforts, the car that emerged appeared cobbled together, rather than as a cohesive design. Famed auto critic "Uncle" Tom McCahill remarked that from the rear it looked as if the cars had been left in the sun too long and the canted fiberglass fins had started to melt down the straight rear fender sides.

Perhaps the 58 Packard would have given the more recent Pontiac Aztek a run for its money as world's ugliest car.

The forgotten History of Lucille Pieti, "Chrysler's Most Beautiful Engineer" -- A contribution from Ed Garten

Last week's promotion of Mary Bara to CEO of General Motors marked a major milestone of the first female CEO of a global automaker. What may be just as remarkable was how Barra made the climb: As a mechanical engineer, a field once all but closed to women in Detroit.

Sixty years ago, the Motor City's most well-known female engineer was promoted for her looks into a television model rather than allowed to work in the field she'd chosen - and the forgotten history of Lucille Pieti, once dubbed "Chrysler's Most Beautiful Engineer," demonstrates what's changed, and what hasn't.

Pieti was a Detroit native who showed a flair for math and science in high school, and after graduating high school in 1944 signed up for engineering at nearby Wayne University (now Wayne State.) Pieti was popular - she was named Miss Wayne U her last year - but also harassed; male students would play pranks like painting her drill press pink, and engineering professors would suggest that "girls" who graduated would have promising careers as secretaries, if they didn't get hitched first. At 18, Pieti also began a co-op program with Chrysler, the traditional route for engineers to join the automaker which was poised to rebound in the years after World War II.

How rare was Pieti? When she graduated in 1950 with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering, she was not just the only woman in a class of about 300 engineers, but perhaps the first woman to get that degree from the school. Two years later, a national survey found that 0.17 percent of the nation's engineering graduates were women; Pieti was literally one in a thousand. She told Parade magazine in 1954 that getting hired by her Chrysler boss even after six years of co-op work was a challenge, despite a labor shortage: "The toughest part was convincing him to see me and then to give me the job. The rest of the work was nothing that any woman couldn't handle as easily as a man."

But Chrysler, like most industrial companies of that era, had no plan to give Pieti or any other woman the same career opportunities as her male coworkers. Instead of traditional engineering assignments, Pieti was sent to the technical writing department, a ghetto for the few women in the field with no chance of advancement beyond marriage. And it was while doing internal presentations that her bosses came up with the idea of capitalizing on Pieti's beauty.

"If you think of a mechanical engineer as someone who sports greasy overalls and a colorful vocabulary, Lucille would be an educational experience for you. Modish and slender, she has a soft voice, come-hither hazel eyes and dainty white paws tipped with rosy nail polish." That was the women's editor of the Miami Daily News in 1953 ahead of Pieti coming to town with Chrysler's "New Worlds In Motion," a mini-auto show that Chrysler barnstormed around the country. Pieti was often a star attraction, tasked with explaining tech advancements in layman's terms while Chrysler touted the beauty of its single, twentysomething engineer to the press. (Among the cars she promoted: the Dodge LaFemme, a model the company said was made "By Special Appointment to Her Majesty... the American Woman.)


Pieti proved adept enough at working the crowds that Chrysler decided to raise her exposure further. In Apri 1954, Chrysler's Plymouth division signed on as sole sponsor of a new CBS sitcom, "That's My Boy." For commercials, the company moved Pieti to Hollywood, and had her perform live, televised versions of the talks she gave on the road to actors. As Edward Malone noted in his 2010 history, she stood in a garage set, wearing tailored white overalls, occasionally with grease streaked on her face for emphasis. Pieti's fame soared, and she made an impression in Hollywood: "If you're an example of what's being turned out in Detroit, I'm going back working on the assembly line," Groucho Marx said.

And while there's no records she ever turned down a Chrysler assignment, she rejected all offers to dump the engineering career she'd now been chasing for nearly a decade in return for a shot at stardom. "I'm just the slide rule type," she told a Detroit newspaper while staying at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. "Without the micrometers and the calipers and the tools of my trade I'd be a pretty lost girl."

Here's where Hollywood would rewrite Pieti's narrative with her using her fame to make her dreams come true and stump the old-boy network. But Pieti's story was written by Detroit instead; when"That's My Boy" was cancelled in January 1955, Chrysler simply moved Pieti back to her writing job, with the additional tasks of answering customer complaint letters - work that she increasingly saw as a waste of her engineering talents. After getting engaged to her husband, petroleum engineer Jim Milne, Pieti quit Chrysler in September 1955. She got married, raised two children, and returned to engineering in 1977, this time for an oil company in Saudi Arabia. She died in 2011 at the age of 84.

Today, women make up a quarter of engineering, science and technology graduates, and Mary Barra joins a growing list of women who've used their technical degrees as a stepping stone into the executive suites. Yet among automakers, Barra remains an exception; there's few other women in line for roles such as CEO; there's no other woman at another automaker who oversees vehicle development as Barra did for GM. The path ahead may not be as clear as it should be, but for today's young Lucille Pietis crafting a career in engineering, they have far more examples of how to avoid getting lost along the way.
see.

Ed's final comment:  But it's okay to take Danica Patrick out of the driver's seat and put her in skimpy clothing and a bikini, right?  Think about it.

Some Thoughts on Warren Belasco's Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945

The last few days I have spent some time with Belasco's Americans on the Road, in part because I plan to use this book this time around in a senior seminar this coming spring. I have always found this work, now more than 30 years old, a joy to read. It stimulates my own romantic interest in road trips and travel, although at times the narrative is slow moving and a tad repetitive.  It was a pioneering work in its day, however, and considerable scholarship followed this books 1979 publication. Belasco traces the transition of Americans on the road for leisure. beginning with rough and ready camping during the WWI era to the evolution of free, pay, and cabin type camps during the 1920s and the 1930s. It is a story that brings in much concerning  middle class values and aspirations between the Wars, as the author explores the alternative of the hotel and why Americans desired other ways to travel than by the railroad.
So now that I have taken a decade or so break from reading this book, what struck me the most concerning its contents?
On at least two occasions, Belasco discusses the changing nature of the road trip, as daily distance itineraries increase markedly between the 1920s and the 1930s. The trip no longer is about taking time and seeing the roadside, but getting from place to place, as fast and quickly as possible. So the auto experience becoems far more about speed and driving.

Some passages from page 87:

"There seems to be a certain irresistible impulse within us to keep moving on," wrote one autocamper who was not pleased with the discovery...By the 1920s this mysterious urge to move on assumed the status of conventional wisdom....Yet all too often the auto vacation wound up as a hurried drive to a given objective."

As roads were improved daily average trip distance increased from 250 miles, to 300 miles and finally to 400 miles by the end of the 1930s.

The psychology and culture of driving from an historical perspective certainly could use more study.

Program and Schedule, Society of Automotive Historians Biennial Conference, Stanford University, April 10-12, 2104

Hi folks -- what follows is the Program for the next SAH Conference, April 10-12, at Stanford University. Many thanks to Arthur Jones, Conference Chair, for a remarkable effort that will bring together academic historians, SAH members, graduate students, international scholars, and those working at the cutting edge of the automobile industry.  I hope to see some of you there!  

Program and Schedule

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014

Board of Directors Meeting

9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Boardroom

Registration

2:00 – 6:00 p.m.  Hotel Entrance

WELCOME RECEPTION

6:30 - 8:00 p.m.  Stratton Room and Patio

Greetings:  Reilly Brennan, Executive Director Revs Program at Stanford University

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014

Continental Breakfast

7:30 – 8:30 a.m. – Lobby

8:30 - Shuttle bus to Automotive Innovation Facility on Stanford campus

MORNING SESSIONS

Chair:  Arthur W. Jones

9:00 – 9:30 a.m.

“A Portuguese Hybrid Car from the early 20^th Century:  A Case Study in Innovation towards Energy Saving”

Speaker:  José Barros Rodrigues

Engineer and Historian, Portugal

9:30 – 10:00 a.m.

“Making the African Car:  Design, Tinkering, and Politics”

Speaker:  Joshua Grace, Assistant Professor of History, University of South Carolina

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.

“Building a Bricolage of Speed: Dirt Track Racecar Construction, 1920-1960”

Speaker:  Alison Kreitzer

University of Delaware

BREAK - 10:30 – 11:00 a.m.

11:00 – 11:30 a.m.

“On the Road, Auto-mobility in American Culture and Literature”

Speaker:  Christina Ann Mesa, Lecturer in American Studies, Stanford University

11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

“License to Drive:  A History of the Driver’s License from New York in 1914 to California in 2013”

Speaker:  Eric Karl Roth, Attorney and Legal Historian, Stanford University

12:00 – 12:30 p.m.

“Policing the Automotive Society”

Speaker:  Sarah Seo

Princeton University

LUNCH BUFFET – 12:30 – 2:00 p.m.

AFTERNOON SESSIONS

Chair:  John A. Heitmann

2:00 – 2:30 p.m.

“On Balloon Tires into the Automotive Society:  The Low Pressure Tire and Other Technologies of Heavy Truck Transportation”

Speaker:  Jørgen Burchardt, Senior Researcher National Museum of Science and Technology, Denmark

2:30 – 3:00 p.m.

“Historical Development of Crankcase Engine Oils from the Model A to the Z4”

Speaker:  William Chamberlin

Research Engineer, Lubrizol Corporation

3:00 – 3:30 p.m.

“Innovations in Vehicle Coatings during the First Half of the 20th Century:  Breaking a Bottleneck in Automobile Production”

Speaker:  Gundula Tutt, Conservator-Restorer, Institut für Technologie der Malerei

ABK Stuttgart

BREAK – 3:30 – 4:00 p.m.

4:00 – 4:45 p.m.

“   title  tbd   “

Featured Speaker:  Christian Gerdes

Associate Professor of Engineering

Interim Director, Revs Program at Stanford

5:00 Shuttle bus return to hotel

Evening – Dinner on your own

SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014

Continental Breakfast

7:30 – 8:30 a.m. – Lobby

8:30 – Shuttle bus to Automotive Innovation Facility on Stanford campus

MORNING SESSIONS

Chair:  Judith E. Endelman

9:00 – 9:30 a.m.

“Firm Competitiveness and Postwar Economic Integration in Europe:  The Case of Volkswagen in the ECSC and EEC”

Speaker:  Grace Ballor, Department of History University of California, Los Angeles

9:30 – 10:00 a.m.

“Volkswagen’s American Experiments, Then and Now”

Speaker:  John Mohr

Auburn University

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.

“Byers A. Burlingame and the Studebaker Corporation:  Villain or Savior?”

Speaker:  Robert Ebert, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Baldwin-Wallace College

BREAK – 10:30 – 11:00 a.m.

11:00 – 11:30 a.m.

“The Trailer Revolution”

Speaker:  David Burel

Department of History, Auburn University

11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

“Fuel to Drive:  A History of the Gas Station in the United States”

Speaker:  Usua Amanam

Revs Program at Stanford

12:00 – 12:30 p.m.

“Mexico, the United States and International Auto Theft”

Speakers:  John Heitmann

President, Society of Automotive Historians

Professor of History, University of Dayton

and Rebecca Morales, Independent Historian

former curator, San Diego Automotive Museum

LUNCH BUFFET – 12:30 – 2:00 p.m.

AFTERNOON SESSIONS

Chair:  Arthur W. Jones

2:00 – 2:30 p.m.

“Craft, Styling, Design:  The Evolving Disciplines of Car Design in Great Britain”

Speaker:  Helen Evenden

Royal College of Art, London

2:30 – 3:00 p.m.

“The Molecular Interactions of Cleaning Solutions with Lacquered Vehicles”

Speaker:  Owen Falk

Department of Chemical Engineering

Stanford University

3:00 – 3:30 p.m.

“3D Technology:  Additive Manufacturing and Holographic Imaging Applications”

Speaker:  John Marino

Associate Professor, Business Technology

Kent State University at Trumbull

BREAK – 3:30 – 4:00 p.m.

4:00 – 4:45 p.m.

“My Vision of a Feasible Future of Electric Vehicles and Society”

Featured Speaker:  Masato Inoue

Former Product Chief Designer of Nissan LEAF

5:00 Shuttle bus returns to hotel

CLOSING DINNER

AND KEYNOTE ADDRESS

6:30 p.m. – Stratton Room

“Putting It All Together without a Workshop Manual”

Rudi Volti, Professor Emeritus of Sociology

Pitzer College 

The technological significance of the Mercedes W 201 and W 202 Series, 1983-

Mercedes-Benz 190 model, experimental vehicle (W 201) with electric drive, 1991

Engine parts of the Mercedes-Benz M 102 E 2.3-16 engine with four-valve technology, 1984

The 201 model series was of key importance for the introduction of new internal combustion engines and the testing of drive configurations – a tradition that all subsequent C-Class model series continued seamlessly. It was not just internal combustion engines that won their place in the history of technology in this way. Alternative drives were also tested in the various model series of the Mercedes-Benz compact class. These systems made the vehicles pioneers in forward-looking mobility.

Modern-era diesel drive systems

One of the main reasons behind the success of model series 201 from 1983 onwards were the then newly developed diesel engines with four (OM 601) or five (OM 602) cylinders. They all had the characteristics of a modern compression-ignition drive system – low fuel consumption, low emissions, lower friction losses, low noise emissions – yet they offered a higher engine output and more torque. The turbocharged variant of the OM 602 also successfully dispelled the image that diesel vehicles were ponderous affairs: it propelled the 190 D 2.5 Turbo launched in 1986 from 0 to 100 km/h in just 11.5 seconds.

Another famous feature was the encapsulation of the diesel engines in the 201 model series to reduce noise emissions. This led to the vehicles being given the nickname “whisper diesel”. This sound-minimising package was a key factor behind the diesel engine’s successful march towards greater acceptance and higher volumes.

Model series 202 was then made ready for a big premiere: at the Frankfurt International Motor Show (IAA) in September 1997, Mercedes-Benz ushered in a new era by introducing the first passenger car diesel engine with common-rail injection. The OM 611 in the C 220 CDI was the first engine to be based on this principle, which revolutionised diesel drive and remains the preferred injection concept for compression-ignition engines to this day. It makes the diesel engine even more economical and can be developed even more exactly to ensure low emissions. The Mercedes-Benz abbreviation “CDI” became synonymous with efficient drive systems. From 2003 onwards, all diesel engines in C-Class model series 203 were based on the common-rail principle.

C-Class model series 204 marked another big premiere at the end of 2008: the OM 651 engine, which combined the latest technology with high output, high torque, low fuel consumption and low emissions. It was even later used in the S-Class, making this the first luxury-class vehicle to feature a four-cylinder engine. The engineers enjoyed installing the OM 651 in a test vehicle – a W 201 model from 1982 – firstly to emphasise its role as a pioneer in diesel technology and secondly to underline the progress made in developing the compression-ignition engine over a period of 25 years.

Powering ahead with petrol engines

“Business as usual” – this motto initially applied to the petrol engines for model series 201. The engines had already featured in other Mercedes-Benz vehicles. The four-valve version of the M 102, which premiered in the 190 E 2.3-16 model in 1983, caused a sensation: not only was it the first series-produced petrol engine with four valves for a Mercedes-Benz passenger car, it also proved a success by being installed in some 19,487 vehicles. This engine became the basis for further production development of four-valve engines that have now long been the technological norm.

In 1995, the Mercedes-Benz designers remembered the legendary supercharged engines with belt-driven supercharger. The renaissance of this technology in passenger cars began with the 2.3-litre four-cylinder engine M 111, which had its production premiere in the C 230 Kompressor at the 1995 Frankfurt International Motor Show. The engine was around a fifth more economical than a similarly powered naturally aspirated engine. This technology allowed high torque with low fuel consumption and low emissions.

At the other end of the power spectrum, the C 43 AMG was unveiled in 1997. It was the first vehicle in the Mercedes-Benz compact class to feature a V8 engine. An output of 225 kW(306 hp) speaks for itself – in the language of AMG, Mercedes-Benz’s performance brand. The C 63 AMG model (204 model series) impressively continued this tradition from 2007 onwards. Its 6.2-litre V8 engine (M 156) remains the largest-displacement and highest-torque engine in a compact-class vehicle to this day.

Electric drive in model series 201 and 202

It was not just internal-combustion engines that continued to set trends in the Mercedes-Benz compact class. Alternative drive systems did too, pointing a way ahead for the automotive industry. A test car based on model series 201 was presented at the Hanover show’s innovation market in 1990 and the Geneva Motor Show in 1991. It featured two permanent magnet excited electric motors fed by sodium/nickel chloride batteries, each of which had an output of 16 kW (22 hp) and was used to drive one rear wheel. One key advantage of this design was the omission of weight-intensive mechanical components. The vehicle paved the way for further developments in electric drive systems.

Between 1992 and 1996, a road test involving 60 passenger cars and vans made by various manufacturers was conducted on the island of Rügen. Several Mercedes-Benz vehicles took part in the four-year test, including 10 passenger cars from the 201 model series with various electric motor/battery combinations. One of these vehicles was used particularly intensively, and clocked up an annual mileage of 100,000 kilometres on the island.

Seven of the electric 190 models weighing around 1,400 kilograms each had a sodium-nickel-chloride high-temperature battery, were used for testing various asynchronous engines and achieved a range of around 110 kilometres. Thanks to the torque characteristics of the drive system, no transmission was required. Three of the test vehicles with synchronous drive system featured nickel-cadmium batteries with a range of around 40 kilometres; these were equipped with a standard manual transmission. All of the vehicles were fitted with two batteries – one at the front and one in the boot – which were connected using heavy-duty cables in view of the peak currents of up to 400 A. The vehicles were charged at special filling stations with solar collectors to ensure systematic testing of the environmental credentials.

An electric vehicle with an asynchronous motor developing 35 kW (48 hp) and a range of around 110 kilometres, based on model series 202, was then exhibited at the 1993 Frankfurt International Motor Show. This vehicle featured powerful ZEBRA high-energy batteries; the acronym stands for “Zero-Emission Battery Research Activities”. One special feature of this vehicle was the innovative positioning of the batteries and powertrain components which. thanks to their size and installation locations, ensured spaciousness on a par with the standard saloon. Also on display at the Frankfurt International Motor Show were two early research vehicles with hybrid drive based on model series 202: one with a parallel hybrid drive, the other with a serial hybrid drive. Both provided key information for the introduction of hybrid technology into production at Mercedes-Benz several years later.

Model series 201 and 202 were therefore technology pioneers used for the early testing of electric and hybrid drive systems in passenger cars. This pioneering spirit lived on in all subsequent Mercedes-Benz vehicles with forward-looking drive systems, whether test vehicles or ultimately production vehicles.

Perhaps a little Range Anxiety? Nissan Leaf Owner Charged with Stealing 5 cents worth of electricity!

There's no such thing as a free lunch, or free electricity. That's the lesson Kaveh Kamooneh, the owner of a Nissan Leaf electric car, is learning after spending 15 hours in jail for plugging his car into a public school's outlet without asking.

Kamooneh was picking his son up from tennis practice at Chamblee Middle School in Chamblee, Ga., when he plugged his Nissan Leaf into a 110-volt external outlet and let it charge "for about 20 minutes," he says. A little more than a week later, cops showed up and arrested Kamooneh, charging him with stealing from the county.

The estimated worth of that stolen electricity? About five cents. But Sergeant Ernesto Ford of the Chamblee Police Department says what Kamooneh was stealing is irrelevant. "A theft is a theft," he told Atlanta's Channel 11 News. Kamooneh plans to fight the criminal charges.