I can remember being around 10 years old and having sleep overs with my buddies. We'd stay up late and talk about things that little boys talk about. We weren't old enough to rap about leggy chicks yet, so we mostly discussed super heroes, guns, ninj... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
I had briefly wondered if we would be driving around in flying ford probes like Back to The future 2. ..But I was convinced it would be more like Mad max, turning blazers into death machines and what not.
the "s" could mean sucked in or shilled.. i am a firm believer that flying cars of my youth will still hover quietly on a endless supply of unknown fuel...and look cool..
Hmmm... top speed of that "Davis" was 115 mph. It looked like it was going to fall over just parking. And changing tyres in the future was supposed to be "exhillarating"
Wayne Carinne just restored one of those Davis cars on the Velocity channel...It had a flat head v8 in it.
I wonder when the inspiration switched from aero-planes to "scrubbing bubbles". Ryan, don't forget to ask Siri what the meaning of life is.
It's kind of funny how when things were great the future looked like some place you would want to be............now that we're in it ...........we yearn for the past.........very few actually live in the present.....which was the future....in the past!
In 1987 I "designed" a car for a 6th grade science project...it used video screens and cameras for navigation and nearly drove itself. It was really low and mostly plexiglas... My teacher gave me an "F" because it was "completely impracticle and not thought out at all"... Possibly the only "F" I got as a kid and now I see cars like the new BMW hybrid prototype and I can only smile... What a douche...
I'm glad that three wheeled car never came true. I think even shriners would avoid that thing. It would have had a definite impact on society because any guy driving one of those would never get laid. I've heard the "S" in 4S stands for Speed.... or Siri..... or Steve. Take your pick.
In the future, when flying cars are the norm, will Street Rodders of the day build hovering deuce "retro-tech" Rods? I hope that when this all comes to pass, the cars look like the ones in Wees' paintings.
I remember when I was a kid and all the cool Hotwheels,Deora,Beatnik Bandit,Silloette,Twinmill,on and on...Then we would go to the carshows and see all the wild showcars and think of how great it was gonna be to drive when we got older. All the concept cars also! The ones that looked like jets,Harley Earls ideas. I'm disapointed that it's 2011 and there's nothing I imagined would exist,around. I really didn't think we would be flying for personal transportation,ala George jetson or Blade Runner,but I thought we might be cruising in bubble-top,hovercratfts or something.
I went to at least two, maybe three or four, of the GM Motoramas between '53 and '56. Any other old farts get to do that? In LA, they were at the Pan Pacific Auditorium, a fairly futuristic place in itself. I think that Motorama promotional film was really well done, in a kind of Mad Men style.
On the first film at about 1:27 The Aluminum Car comes down a drive in front of a garage and onto the 1 (PCH) This is filmed outside Santa Monica....if the car took a left it would head towards the Pier. Though I could be wrong....
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Gawd I love this stuff! Don't know where you come up with it but don't stop. I used to literally dream of a flying jetpack. HEMI 32, great picture. Thanks! SLICK WILLY, unfortunately we all had one or more dumbass teachers. Just makes the great ones stand out that much more. Luckily for me I had several good ones. AUTO BILLY, you know whatever they come up with rodders will make it Kooler, faster, louder and really irritate most folks out there.....
The G.M. Motorama didn't come St. Louis, but my buddies & I just knew that in a few years Detroit would be building a complete line of new Buicks that would look just like one of my all-time faves: The XP-300. Unfortunately, we're still waiting. JK PS: Ryan & fellow Hambers... If you ever get a chance, see if you can find a copy of "CHROME DREAMS", a cool documentary narrated by Rock & Roll Legend: Ronnie Hawkins. (Ronnie was from Arkansas, and a good friend of my GM at KAAY/Little Rock. His band "The Hawks", later turned into "THE BAND", toured with Dylan, etc.) It encompasses how some of those Cars of the Future came about after WW II. This is a great video that's based on '55-'57 Chevs, BUT explores the Cruisn' experience, and Motor City Dream Cars, as well as many other facets of what we all love. PLUS, the original designers weigh-in on what they did to get those cars on the road. Very neat video. <TD></TD><TD>Chrome Dreams - Tailfins and Two-Tone [FONT=Times New Roman,Georgia,Times]Sit back and explore America's love affair with the automobile. Hosted by Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins, this video tells the story of the '55, '56 and '57 Chevy. Interview with the designers, and many stories from the road.[/FONT] 60 minute</TD>
All that stuff fascinated me as a kid too; though I was barely ten when I discovered that the fascination lay in the way "the future" could be a complete context, what we might call a theme, like the Middle Ages or the Age of Sail or the Wild West; indeed that matrices of direct equivalence could be set up between them. That equivalency tickled me: I'd draw series of similar scenes in different themes. I particularly remember a series of themed motor-homes I drew at the age of twelve or so. In that sense the future had less to do with anticipation than with something self-defined to sit at a constant remove from the present; and indeed it soon struck me that there had been fashions in future visions. By fifteen it had occurred to me that the dominant future vision at any given time seemed to consist in that time stripped of anything aforegoing. "The future" in 1962 was nothing but a world "born in a night, to perish in a night" in 1962. This conformed even less with the idea of something that was actually going to happen: the future was less of an expectation than a hypothetical state of historylessness. The vision of the year 2100 (for so long the year 2000, it was so far away even in the early '90s) very seldom includes what, say, Durham Cathedral would be like in 2100. It took several years to discover that the very idea of historical appropriateness is historically a fairly new idea. Quite recently the word "futuristic" would not have been capable of sustaining any cohesive meaning if it could sustain any meaning at all. I was then old enough to be offended at the normative version of that, which the philosopher Jacques Maritain aptly called chronolatry: the idea that time has moral authority and that one ought to live in a way appropriate to one's place in history. I've never been one to take kindly to being told his place As one might expect from someone who goes about calling himself Ned Ludd, I have a philosophical problem with the Future Machine, that edifice of R&D praxis and legislation that causes us perpetually to need new stuff to keep doing the same things. It isn't just history unfolding: the questions one can ask about this stuff are much more interesting than that. Which of us are drawn to the dominant future vision of 2011, especially as it involves motoring? I certainly am not. Today the classic dystopias of Orwell, Huxley, Zamyatin, etc. ring truer than ever. I have absolutely no interest in polite, technologically opaque, disposable, electric cellphone cars. I take heart from the persistence of front engines: in 1935 the consensus that all cars would soon be rear-engined was fairly absolute. Those that were actually built, even interesting ones like the Tatra T77, tended to be ill-handling beasts. That failure represents a hole in the idea of the preconceived, predefined, pre-packaged future vision that is implicit in the notion of "futuristicness". A non-futuristic future vision leaves much more up to our creativity. Once one gets one's head around the idea that such a thing is possible it leaves us free to envision the future as anything we might want it to be - and that, I submit, is a prerequisite for actually solving anything.
The Trautman Road Air still lives next door to me. http://www.fantasyofflight.com/aircraftpages/roadair.htm
I never had the sleepover moments and discussions that you described, because I was born into a consumate hot rod family... More on that in moment. First I have to mention that the second car, or more likely a kissing cousin thereof is happily living in Mesa AZ's Space Age Paint super store. Cool little thing has an "A" drivetrain turned around and made into front wheel drive. Cool! But back to the story. Growing up as I did, I knew what a "T" bucket was, or what a '40 Ford looked like before I could walk. That's what was prominent in my home. I knew instantly what I would drive, and it wasn't a rocket pack! Afternoon naps occured often in the seat of one of the front motored rails at my dad's shop, and the dreams were always of when I could be in there with the engine running, ready to race. My mom recently reminded me that I once "brought" a top fueler pilot to show and tell... Pretty much a predetermined life. I never realized how screwed up I was until some buddies I met in my twenties were laughing and talking about their favorite comic book heros as kids. When asked, I responded that I never had owned a comic book. "WHAT!?" Was the general answer. When you grow up around guys in silver space suits that just climbed out of an earth bound rocket that did over two hundred miles per hour in front of your very eyes, how is a make believe guy in tights gonna' hold your attention?! The subject never surfaced again... I've rambled a bit, but thanks as always for the vid Ryan. Wouldn't it be somewhat cool if a Davis could be the future? That would make life allot more fun to look forward to. Iphones just don't get it for me...
Been there ! Saw this as a kid and never forgot it: Tex Avery was one of THE b-e-s-t cartoonists in that "Golden Age" with an imagination that reached the Outer Limits !! Try this link and be prepared for some fun ! (Some of the neatest parts are the "Pedestrian Bumper" & "Adjustable Seat For Your Date" segments...Avery always liked to involve cool chicks in the mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aTjof5fqQo Jonnie King www.legends.thewwbc.net
That was the cartoon that got me into american concept cars when I was a kid, really stuck with me, the way they drew the cars like 50s concept art, pastel with lots of highlights. theres just so much imagination possible. Goofy was good too.
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