The ACCCA’s involvement in the new monthly breakfast car meet – the Meguiars Coffee & Cars - started right back at the beginning, when club member Alex Ross mooted the idea and asked if we – among several other Auckland based car clubs, might like to assist him getting it up and running, and in particular, operations on the actual event days.

Long story short, Alex approached Auckland Stadiums for a suitable venue - the excellent and slightly underused Mt Smart Stadium – and they were immediately enthused. Another chat, this time to Meguiars, to see if they may be keen to come on board as naming-right sponsors netting a similarly enthusiastic response.

And after a couple of ‘false starts’ as a result of the frankly infuriating Covid lockdowns and daft ‘Traffic-Light’ system we’ve had to endure for months now, the Net result of hours of planning and meetings had it all came together rather spectacularly on Anzac Sunday, April 24th, 2022.

Alex and his small but passionate team of helpers can feel justifiably proud of their efforts, as can Stadium Auckland & Meguiars, as over 800 cars attended during the 3-plus hours of Sunday morning (the event officially ran from 9am till 12 noon) and what must have been at least 2000 people spent the vast majority of that time enjoying the autumn sun and an absolute cracker of a show, with so much variety it was mind numbing! The comparisons to the former Caffeine & Classics event at Smales Farm are not necessarily coincidental! They also kept Lilyworld café staff and the various other Coffee vendors around the stadium rather busy! And a healthy sum was also raised by way of gold coin donations, the takings going on this occasion to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Here is a small selection of pics – for more on this event, see Coffee & Cars - Auckland | Facebook

Rob Milligan

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Everything has to begin someplace.  ..

CAR TUNES Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them.  But they didn’t.  Here’s the story.

SUNDOWN One evening in 1929 two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Q uincy , Illinois , to watch the sunset.  It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.
Lear and Wavering liked the idea.  Both men had tinkered with radios – Lear had served as a radio operator in the U.  S.  Navy during World War I – and it wasn’t long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car.  But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.


SIGNING ON    One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference.  When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago .  There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation.  He made a product called a “battery eliminator” a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC current.  But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios.  Galvin needed a new product to manufacture.  When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention, he found it.  He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin’s factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker.  Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan.  Thinking it might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker’s Packard.  Good idea, but it didn’t work – half an hour after the installation, the banker’s Packard caught on fire.  (They didn’t get the loan.)

Galvin didn’t give up.  He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention.  Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing conventioneers could hear it.  That idea worked – he got enough orders to put the radio into production.

WHAT’S IN A NAME
That first production model was called the 5T71.  Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier.  In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix “ola” for their names – Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the biggest.Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola. But even with the name change, the radio still had problems:

When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression.  (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)

In 1930 it took two men several days to put in a car radio – the dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install the antenna.
These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them.  The installation manual had eight complete diagrams and 28 pages of instructions.
HIT THE ROAD Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn’t have been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression – Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that.  But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorolas pre-installed at the factory.  In 1934 they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with B.  F.  Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire stores.  By then the price of the radio, installation included, had dropped to $55.  The Motorola car radio was off and running.  (The name of the company would be officially changed from Galvin Manufacturing to “Motorola” in 1947.)

In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios.  In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts.  In 1940 he developed with the first handheld two-way radio – the Handie-Talkie – for the U.  S.  Army.  A lot of the communications technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II. 

In 1947 they came out with the first television to sell under $200.  In 1956 the company introduced the world’s first pager; in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon.  In 1973 it invented the world’s first handheld cellular phone.   

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO….
The two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin’s car, Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different paths in life. Wavering stayed with Motorola.  In the 1950’s he helped change the automobile experience again when he developed the first automotive alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators.  The invention lead to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning.

Lear also continued inventing.  He holds more than 150 patents.  Remember eight-track tape players?  Lear invented that.  But what he’s really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation.  He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet, the world’s first mass-produced, affordable business jet. 

(Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)

I’d got my second jab on Dec 31st 2021, so armed with the controversial Vaccine Passport I decided to celebrate by getting the hell out of Dodge.. or in this case, Auckland! I met up with a mate of mine Mike and his partner Gaylene at the Classic Cover Jalopy Dustup at the Waihi Beach dirt Track, for a change of scenery.

And what a day! Stinking hot and aptly named, the views from above the track out over Waihi Beach alone were to die for, let alone the motley crew of jalopy racers who entertained solidly all day. What a hoot of an event!

It was all about having a good time… the racing was hardly fast, or furious, yet there were still a few thrills and spills from over-enthusiast throttle application or woeful 1930’s suspension dynamics, or maybe both. The parade laps at lunch showed the immense variety present and the water splash was hilarious.

After a thorough dusting sitting up in the one ‘stand’ – essentially a row of about eight plastic seats – we departed the venue around 3pm as things were starting to wind down and headed to the Waihi Beach RSA for a well deserved cold one and some damn decent wedges.

What a cracking day… never been before, we now intend to make it an annual pilgrimage, such was the entertaining and low-key nature of the event. Well done (again) to Noddy Watts and his team – as if worrying about what to do about the Beach Hop wasn’t enough on his plate! Seriously, it’s worth the 2 and a bit hour drive down from Auckland – just bring a sun umbrella and a change of clothes!                                                                                              Rob. 

Split window corvettes
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Ricco's '59 T Bird

Casey's 1930 Model A Ford

Two short car stories

​Basket cases to beauties