Forget about Le Mans, Indy, Daytona, and Monaco. The greatest event in all motorsports is currently winding down at an unimaginably desolate and barren space near the Utah-Nevada border: the Southern California Timing Association's annual Bonneville National Speed Trials, aka Bonneville Speed Week.

This is the ultimate Zen Master level of gearhead. There is no prize money, there are no million dollar sponsorships, there is no normie-world glamor. There are barely any spectators, even though admission is free. Every driver is battling one, and only one, competitor: the electronic clock.

Yet every year, weather and salt conditions permitting, gearheads from around North America and the world make a pilgrimage to this godforsaken expanse of NaCl in the middle of nowhere. Objective: to see if their garage-built machines can break the speed record in their class.

If they're successful, they get their name in the next SCTA record book. If (and only if) they exceed 200 mph AND break an existing record, they get a red cap printed "Bonneville 200 MPH Club Life Member." Go 292 mph in a class with a 293 mph record? Sorry no cap for you.

Similarly there are 300, 400, and 500 mph clubs, with their own cap in lieu of prize money. And regardless of the number, those cheap $10 red cap carry a deep cachet in the gearhead world, like a war medal. They say this man (or woman) went to war against time itself - and won.

Of course every victory against time is temporary, and a Bonneville class record comes with the knowledge that it will eventually be broken. And the record holder knows that, and will likely celebrate when it happens.

The last time I attended Bonneville Speed Week I witnessed an older fella being strapped into his streamliner that he had built, honed, and raced at Bonneville for over 25 years. My late friend Bob Klessig told me, "this is his last run. He has Stage 4 cancer, and he'll be dead next year." That was strangely moving to me, that this man would spend some of the precious little time he had left going through the ardors of prepping his car, hauling it to this desolate location, getting painfully strapped into it as if a coffin, and risking instant death one more time -- all to give a final middle finger to time itself.

A few paragraphs up I called Bonneville "godforsaken," but maybe I'm 180 degrees wrong. Maybe Bonneville is God-infused. All I know is it's the only race track I've ever been that conjures thoughts of time, the universe, infinity, and immortality.

In any case this is the program for the first annual SCTA Bonneville Speed Trials in 1949, with Marvin Lee's "City of Pasadena" straight 6 Chevy lakester on the cover. Via the American Hot Rod Foundation, a fine historical organization that you should support with your tax deductible donations. I waxed philosophic on that post longer than I originally intended, so rather than go into a Bonneville history thread now I will save that for tommorow's episode. Time to get to those reader mystery cars!

Today's Dave's Car ID Service pays tribute to Googie, the exuberant late 1940s to mid 1960s architecture style that sprung forth from car culture.

Roadside vernacular architecture, like giant teapots and teepee motels along Route 66, goes back to the 1920s. I've covered those charming spots in the past, and will elaborate on them more in the future. But Googie (so named for a Los Angeles coffee shop that was an early adopter of the style) was the apotheosis of Roadside Vernacular: the sign is the building is the sign, dramatic angles and curves, bright colors, boomerangs and starbursts and swirling Space Age atoms. It had the right dynamic for the New Frontier.

Googie is not really "Midcentury Modern," as it lacks the detached cool reserve of MCM. MCM is "less is more," Googie is "make cars want to stop here." And it was very successful in doing so, especially in Los Angeles.

Among my favorite LA Googie redoubts is Norm's Coffee Shop, 470 N. La Cienega. It was designed in 1957 by Armet & Davis to look like a car showroom, and has since remained an LA icon. It has even inspired fine art; notably (3) Ed Ruscha's "Norm's, La Cienega, On Fire" (1964).

And it's been a staple of films and movies, most recently "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" (2025). They didn't use the actual spot in that case though, but build a replica of Norm's in South Africa for filming.

Not long ago there was talk of Norm's on La Cienega being converted to a Raising Cane's but the proposal was thankful withdrawn due to public outcry. That'd be like converting Fallingwater into a Chipoltle.

Here's the eponymous Googie's Coffee Shop at 8100 Sunset Blvd that gave its name to the architeture style, designed in 1949 by a young go-getter architect named John Lautner. Lautner would go on to become one of the most important architects of the midcentury.

Among Lautner's later works were the Sheats-Goldstein House (2, 1963) in Beverly Crest, which you may remember as the Jackie Trehorn house in the Big Lebowski. Also the Elrod House Palm Springs (3, 1968) which you may remember from the 007 classic "Diamonds Are Forever."

FFS am I the only person on this hellsite with a rudimentary grasp of the working class

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I don't know who needs to know this, but if you really, really want to understand "the working class" the absolute worst people to ask are from academia

Happy Independence Day weekend! The occasion of America's 250th birthday called for a special Dave's Car ID Service commemoration, and I decided a big one: what is singularly the greatest American car ever made?

There are plenty of candidates for the car who best embodies America's spirit. The Ford Model T, industrious, thrifty, reliable, for the everyman pulling himself up by his own bootstraps; the Willys MB Jeep, fiesty, rugged, itching to join the fight; the 1959 Cadillac, a brash, bold, over-the-top movie star tycoon unafraid to show it off; the 1965 Ford Mustang, optimistic and forever young.

Nope. All are fine vehicles and deserve a place on the Mount Rushmore of automobiles. But this honor calls for something very, very special.


To me the choice for the car that best embodies the spirit of America is... the Spirit of America.

Duhh.

Not merely a groaner of a punchline here. Craig Breedlove's land speed racing icon truly deserves recognition as a self-flattering avatar of American individualism, skill, and daring.

There were actually 3 Spirits of America; the original 3-wheeler built in 1963, first car to break the 400 and 500 mph barriers; the 1965 4 wheel Spirit of America Sonic 1, the first car to break 600 mph; and the 1992 Spirit of America Sonic Arrow, which unsuccessfully challenged the sound barrier.

And I shan't neglect a mention of Ohio feed mill operator Art Arfons and his Green Monster, who battled back and forth with Breedlove and his Spirits of America for the title of fastest car in the world during the 1960s. It was a ground-bound Space Race, a competition that yielded mind boggling speed achievements over a short period of time.

This is literally insane: every time you buy WNBA merch with her name on it, each of the goons who eye-gouge and throat-punch her gets more money from it than she does.

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Let's start with this tidbit: 7x increase in merch sales, 11x increase in player-specific merch sales between 2023 and 2024. You'd have to be absolutely delusional not to credit Clark for at least 80% of that growth.

Today's Dave's Car ID Service pays homage to the wild body graphics of the Muscle Car Era, starting with the GOAT - the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Screaming Chicken.

Coincidentally enough, today is also the 60th birthday of the Firebird. In a way. On June 28, 1966, Chevy's Pete Estes held a press conference announcing a new car line to battle the Ford Mustang, code name XP-836, and its name would be "Camaro." Pontiac was the only other GM division that would get the platform, with slightly different styling and powered by a Pontiac engine, under the the Firebird name.

From 1967-68 the Firebird sort of languished in the shadow of its Camaro cousin, but it did have some success in Trans Am road racing by privateers. "Trans Am" is short for Trans America, a series for sub 5 liter (302 cubic inch) stock cars.

Anyhoo to mark that success Pontiac rolled out the Trans Am option package for Firebird in 1969. At first it was fairly restrained; Cunningham-style blue hood stripes over white. But designer Bill Porter, inspired by an abstract design on a Tiffany vase, sketched out what he thought would be a cool graphic cue for the next gen Firebird, which was honed by Norm Inouye.

Porter taped the graphic to the hood of the styling studio clay model to gauge the reaction of GM's head styling honcho Bill Mitchell. It did not go well, as Mitchell allegedly let loose with a string of profanities. But it did appear on the 1970-72 Trans Ams, albeit as a very small decal on the nose.

In 1971 a persistent GM designer named John Schinella decided to re-present the idea to Mitchell. He noted that Mitchell rode a custom Yamaha bike painted black and gold in graphics like the John Player Special F1 car. Schinella applied an enormous Screaming Chicken decal on a black Firebird, parked it next to Mitchell's custom Yamaha.

This time Mitchell relented, and the idea was approved. The first 3 "hood birds" are in top secret August 1971 photo (1). They were offered for sale in September 1972 with the rollout of the 1973 model year. Not all Trans Ams had them, it was optional graphics package code WW7. But the buying public clamored for them.

And why not? It's exactly the kind of statement that the kind of person who wanted a Trans Am wanted to make. Loud, brash, unapologetic, a 10 minute Free Bird guitar solo on wheels. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Pontiac wasn't unique, or first, in offering bold decal graphics. Chrysler built branding around the "Scat Pack" concept, like the 1968 Dodge Super Bee and little brother Dodge Dart Swinger. By 1970 the was an entire panoply of bold decal options for Dodges and Plymouths; AAR stripes (2), "billboard stripes" (3), and "hockey sticks" (4).

Today's #DavesCarIDService risks treason by sharing some of America's top secret roadside attractions with visiting soccer fans. But it seems the shock and awe of BBQ and Buc-ee's has resulted in their widespread surrender to American cultural might. Now that they seem friendly, I think it's finally safe for use to share the GOOD stuff. The roadside attraction equivalent of a secret cache of 85 year old Scotch. The kind of places we keep secret from strangers unless we have solid evidence that they're friendly.

First and foremost for me is the Loveless Cafe, just outside Nashville. One breakfast here and you will renounce your beloved Full English forever. And one biscuit (not a cookie, but the most sumptuous scone you've ever encountered) will make you slap yo' mama. I mean mum. While Buc-ee's is admittedly a mindblower, you may notice that it lacks one thing: trucks. Yep, big rigs are verbotten there. For the full American road trip experience one must make a pilgrimage to a truck stop, and the greatest of all is in my home state of Iowa. Mister this right here is Trucker Valhalla, complete with a barber shop, dentist and doctor offices, a 60 seat movie theater, and spectacular vintage truck museum. Not to mention endless rows of wolves-howling-at-moons t shirts and chrome dress up accessories for you big rig.

Oh, and bring an appetite. Not for the fast food joints, but for the acclaimed all you can eat diner buffet.

15% of Musk's wealth is $150 billion. The US Federal government spends more than 100% of Musk's wealth every single year on food, housing, and medical care for the poor, and we're only 4% of global population and 0.1% of global poverty. You ain't curing shit with his money

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If by "we" you mean I'm invited to the big Wolfgang's 11 heist you've apparently masterminded, I have some questions:

1. Where are the secret vaults where he stashes all of his ill-gotten loot?

Welcome to the Dave's Car ID Service countdown of the Definative Indisputable Top 10 List of the Greatest Car Movies of All Time!

(1935 Chrysler Airflow, 1933 Studebaker) Just joking, there's no arguing taste, especially when it comes to movies. But I've often been asked to name my fave car flix, and these are some that I'd recommend.

10. Grand Prix (1966). High style mid sixties melodrama set in the glamorous world of F1 racing. Directed by John Frankenheimer, starring James Garner and Eva Marie Saint. Plus Jessica Walter and Francoise Hardy rrrrowwwrrr. And hands down the greatest opening title sequence ever, by Saul Bass.

youtu.be/GkMOAoiGuGc

Dave's Car ID Service is keeping it clean today with a look back at a neglected topic in automotive history: the car wash. So sit back, put it in neutral, release your parking brake. And don't forget to roll up your windows!

(1959 Chevy Bel Air sedan) Of course people have been washing, or ordering their chauffeurs to wash, their cars as long as there have been cars. I'm specifically talking about a commercial enterprise devoted to car washing. The first would be the 'Automobile Laundry,' founded, appropriately, in Detroit Michigan 1914.

Like the automobile business, owners Frank McCormick and J.W. Hinkle designed it on the assembly line principle: drive your car in while workers would wet, soap, rinse, and dry in successive task stations.

The cost? A princely sum of $1.50, about $50 today.

Happy Indianapolis 500 Day to all who celebrate from Dave's Car ID Service! Today we pay homage to Indy's "Junk Formula" Era of 1930-37.

Why celebrate a formula for junk? Let me give you some context. At its inception Indy featured some cars that were pretty much stock. In that first 1911 race, the 5th place finisher was a stripped-down but otherwise complete stock Marmon 32 passenger car that was street-driven to the track. It was in the realm of possibility for a regular upper-middle class Joe with cojones and a dream to participate.

That all changed quickly, especially after WW1. By then it was strictly a rich man's sport, dominated by very exotic and expensive specialized racing machines, primarily Millers and Duesenbergs. Rules demanded smaller and smaller engine displacement. Until 1922 cars were limited to 3 liters (183 cubic inches), then from 1923-25 2 liters (122 ci) and starting in 1926, 1.5 liters (91 ci). The reduction in displacement was to curb speeds in an age where death on the track was common, but also to spark innovation.

Those rules worked almost too well. Geniuses like Harry Miller and the Duesenberg brothers figured out ways to coax ever more power out of ever smaller engines: overhead cams, integrated head-engine block casting, arrays of carburetors, exotic superchargers.

Those cars, to me, are the Sistine Chapel of American car racing. But they were incredibly expensive, and you had to have one if you wanted to be competitive at Indy. This all but closed off the field to anyone who didn't have cubic buttloads of cash.

That was okay for a while. During the Roaring Twenties there were plenty of high-living Gatsbys who wanted to sink some mad money into the exciting glamorous world of big time auto racing.

But then came October 29, 1929.

The Black Tuesday stock market crash wiped out a good number of those Indy-curious Gatsbys, kicking off what would soon become the Great Depression.

Enter Eddie Rickenbacker.

Best known as a World War I fighter ace, Rickenbacker was already famed as a successful racing driver for Duesenberg before the war. In 1927, the war hero had enough financial backing to buy Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Less then two years later he was faced with a grim reality: there were probably not going to be enough entries in the 1930 race to fill the 33-car grid. The economy's impact on ticket demand meant that the total prize purse for 1930 would be reduced from $98,000 to $54,000, and the winner's share from $50,000 to $18,000. Which made it even harder to attract entrants, etc. A vicious cycle that threatened to end the Indy 500 for good.

In response, Rickenbacker announced a new set of rules for 1930: displacement up to 6 liters (366 cubic inches) was allowed, supercharging was banned, there would be a return to Indy's mandatory ride-along mechanic rule 1911-22, and the field was expanded from 33 to 38.

This rule was derided by the high-dollar Miller and Duesenberg teams as the "Junk Formula," because it meant there'd be cars in the field with unsophisticated stock block engines. But that was sort of the point. It gave quasi-regular Joes and backyard mechanics a fighting chance to field a car at Indy, powered by a big modified Buick or Studebaker engine.

It didn't end the dominance of Miller & Duesenberg, who created their own bigass engines under the new rules, and no true "Junk Formula" car ever one. But helped keep Indy alive during 1930-37, amid the darkest days of the Great Depression.
The first Indy Junk Formula cars of 1930 were a bit ungainly compared to the supersleek Millers of the day, but had some success.

#1 here is Rollie Free piloting the Slade Special, powered by a Chrysler Model 70 engine. Free would go on to become a motorcycle legend, photographed in the 1950s planking in a Speedo on his Vincent Black Shadow across the Bonneville Salt Flats en route to a motorcycle land speed record.

#2, the Buick Fireball 8-powered Butcher Brothers Special. That's Harry Butcher behind the wheel with brother Jimmy as ride along mechanic. Just a couple of bros with a dream.

#3, The Romthe Special, driven by J.C. McDonald. Powered by a Studebaker engine, and you can see the stock Studebaker hood sides.

#4 Chester Miller behind the wheel of the Fronty Special. Believe it or not, the engine block is a stock Ford Model A 4-banger, but with a Frontenac (aka "Fronty") overhead cam conversion. Frontys were popular at lower classes of racing, and designed by the Chevrolet Brothers.

Today's Dave's Car ID Service pays homage to the General Motors Technical Center in Warren Michigan, which held its grand opening May 16, 1956. The absolute pinnacle of postwar Detroit style, confidence, and power, and a fitting showcase for a 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The shot of the Caddy was merely the lobby of the Design Center. The technical center itself is a huge 320 acre campus, built around an artificial lake, with office space originally designed for 5,000 workers - engineers, designers, researchers, GM's brain center. At the time of its opening 70 years ago it had a reported price tag of $100 million, about $1 billion in 2026 money.

Internal discussion of the project began in 1944, when GM car production was still shut down for war production. GM Chairman Alfred P Sloan and Research Director Charles Kettering (of Sloan Kettering cancer hospital fame) presented the proposal with early design layouts to the GM Board that December. It was approved, and the first 100 acres of farmland were purchased outside the then-tiny town of Warren, north of Detroit.

Neither Sloan nor Kettering really cared for architectural flourish, but GM's chief of styling Harley Earl argued that an architecturally distinct working environment would spur creativity and innovation. The earliest design by Finnish-American Eliel Saarinen were in a Streamline Moderne style, similar to the GM Pavilion building at the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1948 GM again hired Saarinen, Saarinen & Associates to revise the plans. It was assigned to Eero Saarinen, Eliel's son. It would be his first solo project as an architect. Saarinen's revised design was in the International Style, influenced by Mies van der Rohe's IIT campus in Chicago. The landscape architecture was handled by Thomas Church.

It took 8 years to complete, and the Finnished product (pun intended) is among the most stunningly beautiful examples of Midcentury Modern architecture ever built. Subsequent expansion of the campus to accommodate 20,000 workers, and $1 billion renovation/restoration completed in have adhered to that style. It was truly "Where Today Meets Tomorrow."

Right fucking now

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Players earning money, out in the open, in a free market
Historically bad program winning a championship
Teams with gigantic spending failing terribly
10-15 programs with a legitimate chance at a title
End of the ESPN-SEC 1000 year reich

What's not to like?

I love Texas, but my god the Dallas skyline is an aesthetic abomination.

Worldwide skyline rankings:

1. Chicago
2. 4000-way tie of also-rans

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Say what you want about Chicago, but its skyline is a 140 year long group project masterpiece. Unequaled on Planet Earth, go talk to a wall

M is for her Mercury Marauder
O is for her Oldsmobile Jetfire
T is for the Triumph Grandpa got her
H is for her Hudson white wall tires

A very happy 150th birthday to the Otto Cycle internal combustion engine from Dave's Car ID service! Revealed May 9, 1876, it was the first practical example of a gasoline powered 4-stroke (a/k/a Otto Cycle). Or as we gearheads say, "suck squeeze bang blow."

German Nicolaus Otto invested 14 years of research, trial and error, and help from his employees Gottfried Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach into creating it, but reportedly had zero interest in transportation applications; his were all designed as huge stationary engines for industrial or agricultural jobs. When it debuted, it claimed the "day of steam was at end." Not a correct forecast as it turned out, but it carved out a niche in the light industrial market. I've seen a working Otto engine from the early 1880s.

In any event, the potential of Otto's engine for transportation didn't escape his employees Daimler & Maybach, who pioneered the earliest days of automobiling with scaled down, more efficient versions of Otto's 4-stroke. It wasn't the invention of the car, but it made the invention of the car possible. Technically the Otto engine was not the first internal combustion engine. Otto was inspired to create his design after seeing Jean Lenoir's IC engine in 1862. He built a replica but noted it was noisy, inefficient, and had an unfortunate tendency to BLOW THE HELL UP.

The key insight he derived was that compression mattered. Though it had a piston, Lenoir's design did not compress the fuel, it simply ignited and returned to TDC where it received the next fuel charge. It worked, but not for long due to the stress on the cylinder and piston. Otto's experiments proved fuel compression was more efficient and resulted in more power and durability.

Unlike Otto, Lenoir *was* interested in transportation. He powered a boat with one of his engines in 1861, and built his "Hippomobile" (2) in 1862. Petroleum powered, it made a 7 mile trip around Paris in 1863 at about 1.8 MPH. Arguably the first gasoline powered car, beating the Benz Patent-Motorwagen by over 20 years.

From my intrepid cousin, who has learned through the National Archives that our grandmother was forced to attend what was literally known as “Detention School” until she dropped out. I couldn’t be prouder or more delighted *I'm the result of crossbreeding a completely taciturn American Gothic Iowa farm family (Dad) and a family of insane dysfunctional Irish criminal alcoholics (Mom). This is my mom's mom

Honestly it's just Nebraska with a better PR agency

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Fact: the most boring people from every Midwest high school go to Denver in the mistaken belief that this will make them more interesting

This is incorrect, per latest US Census estimates the largest US city without a big 4 sports team is Fort Worth

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Texans, set this guy straight

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Of all the Hot Dog Guying ever Hot Dog Guyed, this is the Hot Dog Guyest

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Honestly, I'm just not sure this Pratt fellow has the years of professional training and experience it takes to properly manage a free range herd of 30,000 violent drug addled incontinent zombies

@grok please convert these into NFL draft pics per million population and rerank

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Honestly if this were demographically adjusted Iowa would completely rout every other state

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