Here’s an interesting item in Motor City car lore: The Valiant, Chrysler Corporation’s all-new compact offering for 1960, was not originally badged as a Plymouth.
When the Valiant was introduced for the 1960 model year, the Detroit automakers were still struggling with the question of how to market their new compacts. Should these smaller models be promoted as completely new car brands, from a clean sheet of paper if you will, or should they be cradled in the marketplace as junior versions of the existing brands, trading on their familiarity and reputation? While the company would soon reverse its decision, Chrysler originally chose to market its new compact as a stand-alone brand with the tagline, “Nobody’s kid brother.”

​There was was careful reasoning behind the Valiant’s unusual styling (peculiar, some would call it). The short nose and low hood profile, enabled by the Chrysler Corporation’s cleverly packaged Slant 6 engine, were designed to improve driver visibility and command of the road. (Read all about the Slant 6 here.) The elevated rear deck line increased the trunk’s useful luggage capacity, while the thin, bowed-out doors and football-shaped passenger cab maximized interior volume without enlarging the car’s footprint.

​To develop the new compact, Chrysler set up a “Valiant Task Force” of 200 engineers and designers in a rented factory a few miles from the company’s Highland Park, Michigan headquarters. Shrouded in secrecy, the project was most likely a government defense program, many Chrysler employees assumed. Along with the Slant 6, engineering firsts for the Valiant included the automaker’s first alternator and a downsized version of the famed Torqueflite transmission called the A-904.

​Unlike some Detroit compacts, which were intended as second cars for their customer families, the Valiant was engineered from the start as a “prime vehicle,” the only car a family would need with full seating for six. While the Valiant styling team was directed by Robert Bingman, one obvious flourish from Chrysler styling chief Virgil Exner was the faux spare tire stamping on the deck lid, a gimmick the critics named the “washing machine lid” or “toilet seat.”

​All Valiants for 1960 rode on the same 106.5-inch wheelbase unibody platform, and for the inaugural model year, the body styles included a four-door sedan, a six-passenger wagon, and a nine-passenger wagon. A two-door would not be added until the following year, and a convertible was never offered in the first-generation Valiant.
There were two trim levels: the base V-100 and the V-200, which added a little more chrome and some upgraded interior materials. Neither was flashy as the Valiant’s original focus was on function and practicality. The Motor City automakers, Chrysler included, had not yet fully sorted out that many buyers chose compacts simply because they were fun to drive. The bucket seats and convertible models would arrive shortly.
Introduced on September 21, 1959, the Valiant was originally sold and serviced by Chrysler- Plymouth and DeSoto-Plymouth dealers. Some of them, that is—around half the dealers elected to take on the Valiant franchise. Volume was respectable the first year at more than 195,000 units, but clearly, potential sales had been left on the table. For 1961, both the product lineup and corporate management at Chrysler (there was a major scandal in the executive suites in ’60) were given a good shaking as the DeSoto brand was eliminated, the Valiant was rebranded as an official Plymouth model, and the Dodge division got its own badge-engineered version of the Valiant called the Lancer.

​We have a special thing for the obscure factory show cars of the Motor City, and few are more obscure than the 1966 Rambler St. Moritz station wagon.

Unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show in February of 1966, the Rambler St. Moritz is sort of an odd fit in the design timeline at American Motors. Nothing like the advanced and exciting Project IV vehicles rolled out a bit later in June of that year by AMC design chief Richard Teague, the St. Moritz was based on a production Rambler Classic Cross Country station wagon, but with a twist. The gimmick, if you will, was a custom greenhouse with a pair of curved observation windows for the rear seat passengers.

​Named after the famed ski resort town in the Swiss Alps, of course, the St. Moritz was constructed around a winter sports theme with a ski rack on top and and a snowflake motif for the interior. There were three rows of seats, with the rearmost seats facing the rear (known in the car biz as “Dramamine seating”) and upholstery in dark blue Dupont Corfam, a simulated leather product of days gone by. Snowflakes embroidered in metallic thread completed the winter sports theme inside, while the exterior paint was a snowy ice-blue/white in candy pearl. The roof area between the two large glass panels was trimmed out in stainless steel.
We don’t know this, but we’re guessing that the massive side glass was constructed in acrylic plastic—Plexiglass or suchlike. On a one-off show car with little production intent and a shelf life of one season at best, real glass would have been a fiendishly expensive undertaking. (As a side note, the production Classic wagon for ’66 used contrasting two-tone paint that approximated the look of the St. Moritz greenhouse.) Except for a press release and a handful of photos, little seems to remain of the Rambler St. Moritz, and we assume the wagon was scrapped long ago.

​Corvette prototypes have taken countless forms over the years. Here’s a furtive attempt at a 1963 Sting Ray four-seater from GM Styling.

The Chevrolet Corvette story, which now spans eight decades, features a number of fascinating twists and turns along the way. Here’s one that, fortunately for the Corvette legacy—in our opinion, anyway—never got the green light for production: a four-seat version of the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray.

​In Corvette lore, the executive responsible for the 2+2 Sting Ray (internal code name XP-796) was GM’s powerful car and truck boss, Ed Cole, who looked on in envy as the four-place Ford Thunderbird continued to rack up impressive sales figures year after year. Of course, the notion of a Corvette with a rear seat was not entirely original (read our feature on the 1956 Corvette Impala here) and in the Motor City, the traditional rule of thumb is that a two-seater is a niche product by definition, while a four-seat package has real volume potential. The ’63 Sting Ray redesign was an expensive and ambitious undertaking for Chevrolet, so we can understand Cole’s instinct for covering his bets.

​While the GM styling crew led by Bill Mitchell reportedly hated the four-seat Sting Ray variant, they did an admirable job trying to make the proportions work out. In the photo at the top of this page, a careful camera angle nearly conceals the awkward stretch job, but a normal side view gives away the game: The chassis and the graceful Sting Ray profile have been stretched a good six inches to create a rear passenger area. And even so, the folding 2+2 seating (above) is probably even less comfortable than it looks.
The one-off prototype was shown to the company brass in around January of 1962 in the GM styling studios, parked next to a new Thunderbird to provide the obvious competitive benchmark. It was there, as the story goes, that GM president John F. Gordon was trying out the rear seat when a front seat latch jammed, trapping him inside. And although he was quickly rescued, that, they say, was pretty much the end of the four-seat Sting Ray project.

When it was introduced in 1930, Cadillac’s mighty V16 engine represented the pinnacle of automotive engineering.
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When the Cadillac V16 made its debut at the New York Auto Show on January 4, 1930, the automotive world was gobsmacked. In those days General Motors was arguably the greatest engineering company in the world, with technical resources second to none and a staff that boasted some of the greatest minds in the business, including Charles “Boss” Kettering, Owen Nacker, and Earl A. Thompson. With the Cadillac V16, GM raised the bar in engineering excellence, to a level many automobile manufacturers couldn’t reach.

​The Cadillac V16 was such a grand, over-the-top engineering statement, in fact, that it’s easy to lose sight of how fiendishly clever it was in its smallest details. Rated at 175 horsepower at introduction, the V16 was more powerful than most every other American car on the market (the Duesenberg was rated at 265 hp, notably). But the engine wasn’t designed for all-out performance; rather, Owen Nacker and his team carefully optimized smoothness and flexibility.
With a bore of three inches and a stroke of four inches, the 16 cylinders displaced a mammoth 452 cubic inches. But the torque curve was deliberately engineered to mimic the characteristics of the standard Cadillac V8, so the V16 could share the existing V8 drivetrain. Intake and exhaust systems were located on the outboard side of each cast-iron cylinder bank, so  the V16 was in effect two overhead-valve straight eights on a common crankcase, if you will. (The two cylinder blocks were cast iron and the crankcase was aluminum.) With the banks separated 45 degrees, the engine and its 135-lb crankshaft were perfectly balanced, and with eight firing impulses per crankshaft rotation (16 per four-stroke cycle) it was dead smooth. There was virtually no perceptible vibration at idle, and the engine could pull top gear from 2.5 mph to over 100 mph, depending on gearing and bodywork.

​While the V16 was an engineering tour de force, commercially it was only a qualified success. Cadillac offered the mighty V16 on a 148-inch wheelbase chassis in 54 lavish styles, and sales were brisk at first, as more than 2,500 were produced in the first year. But sales quickly plummeted as the limited demand was exhausted and the nation’s economic depression deepened, and in the final two years, 1936 and 1937, the annual output dwindled to barely 49 units. Cadillac also introduced a 368 CID V12 closely based on the V16’s architecture, giving the brand a head-on competitor with the V12 Packard and Lincoln, but it didn’t fare much better.

​For 1938, Cadillac rolled out a totally redesigned V16 (above). With its nearly pancake-like 135-degree bank angle and L-head valvetrain, it wasn’t nearly as attractive as the previous 45-degree V16 and its beautifully enameled rocker covers. (Harley Earl’s styling team reportedly assisted in the original V16’s visual presentation.) But in its own way this new V16 was as clever as the original. With its square 3.25-in bore/stroke dimensions and aggressive 6.67:1 compression ratio, it sacrificed nothing to the original in performance. Additionally, it was six inches shorter and 250 lbs lighter than the first-generation V16, and with its flattened proportions, it could fit in the same chassis/body package as the standard V8. This second-generation V16 remained in production through 1940, but the annual production numbers remained small.
Naturally, nobody is more aware of the magic and mystique of the mighty V16 than the Cadillac Motor Division itself. The GM brand has periodically revisited the concept over the years, most recently with the XV16 concept engine of 2003 (below). This engine was actually based on the Chevrolet/GM LS architecture and a handful were built, including the one that powers the Cadillac Sixteen, a fully roadworthy test vehicle and show car. Will there ever be another Cadillac V16 production car? As the electric future looms, that seems highly unlikely. But we will always have the original.

​The official United States Space Force logo has been unveiled, and we love it. The delta-shaped insignia "signifies defense and protection from all adversaries" and incorporates an internal star at its heart, "which symbolizes how the core values guide the Space Force mission." This is all according to a statement and infographic from the new branch of the military, as you can see above.
Like we said at the outset, we're big fans. And we as a collective group of automotive enthusiasts have been big fans ever since it was unveiled pointing downward (it makes sense that the Space Force's logo would point upward since its motto is Semper Supra, or Always Above) as the Arrowhead emblem in 1959 in between the split grilles of the Pontiac Bonneville.

Or, um, in 1965, when Gene Roddenberry first introduced the world to "Star Trek" and Starfleet Command, boldly taking the logo where no other logo had gone before. At least until the Space Force's seal was unveiled to the world by President Trump on Twitter in January of 2020.
All joking aside, the new Space Force logo may indeed draw some inspiration from Pontiac and "Star Trek," but really it's a logical extension of the Air Force Space Command. So if we're going to point fingers for copying the automotive and science fiction realms, we'd better hop in a DeLorean and slingshot around the sun to travel back in time to 1982, when the AFSC came into existence.

Article courtesy of Autoblog, written by Jeremy Korzeniewski.

By 1965, the Ford Thunderbird had grown into a luxurious 4,500-lb boulevard cruiser with some memorable gee-whiz features.

As we’ve chronicled before here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, each successive generation of the Ford Thunderbird earns a nickname from the car enthusiast community. First come the 1955-57 two-seater Baby Birds, then the 1958-60 Squarebirds, followed by the 1961-63 Bullet Birds. The fourth-generation models of 1964-66 are known by T-bird fanciers as Flair Birds, though we’re not sure if that name has stuck quite as well as the other Thunderbird handles.
By its fourth generation, the Thunderbird had departed far from its origins to become an all-out luxury car with barely a trace of sports car flavoring—the curb weight was now over 4,500 lbs. With a base price of $4,394, by far the most expensive model in the Ford model line for ’65, the Thunderbird was priced a bit higher than even its upmarket rival, the Buick Riviera. As the pioneer of the personal luxury class, the T-Bird outsold the Riviera by a comfortable margin, too: nearly 75,000 units, compared to not quite 35,000 for the Buick.
The Flair Bird’s marketing tagline, “the private world of Thunderbird,” spoke to the nearly endless list of standard and optional luxury features, but the two most memorable items, even to this day, were the fabulous wrap-around rear passenger seat and, brand new for ’65, the gee-whiz sequential turn signals. As car-crazy little kids in the ’60s, we were impressed by these neat gimmicks. Courtesy of Ford Heritage at the UK’s National Motor Museum, we have this nicely preserved dealer film singing the praises of the Thunderbird for ’65. Video below.

​For 1964, American Motors launched one of the more novel marketing campaigns in Motor City history.

In 1964, the American car industry was going crazy with horsepower. With its Total Performance campaign, Ford was launching full-scale assaults on Le Mans, the Indy 500, drag racing, and NASCAR. Chrysler’s Dodge and Plymouth brands fought for domination in NASCAR and on the drag strips with the 426 Hemi, and while GM was officially out of the racing business, the automaker aggressively pursued the performance consumer market with the Corvette, the Chevy Super Sport models, and two of the cars that kicked off the ’60s muscle car movement, the Pontiac GTO and Olds 442.

​Meanwhile, little American Motors, the smallest member of the Detroit four and famous for zigging when the rest of the Motor CIty was zagging, went in a totally opposite direction. Check out the remarkable 1964 print ad above. Here, the company announced that it was not chasing the muscle market, no sir. “The only race Rambler cares about,” the company crowed, “Is the human race!”. It was a bold stroke.
But that is not to say that American Motors products of the era were bland or lacking in personality In fact, Ramblers were loaded with their own quirky and fascinating character, as we hope to show you here.

​The most popular product in the American Motors lineup for ’64 was its mid-priced, mid-sized entry, the Rambler Classic. Completely restyled the previous year, the Classic line included 550, 660, and 770 trim levels, while the body styles included two and four-door sedans, a four-door wagon, and new for ’64, a two-door pillarless hardtop.
While the exterior sheet metal was fairly fresh, under the skin the Classic shared much with the Ramblers of the ’50s Nash era, with torque-tube drive and long-coil suspension on all four corners  At mid season, a limited-edition Classic 770 hardtop called the Typhoon was rolled out as a promotional tool for the company’s new 232 CID straight six engine. (Read about the Typhoon here.)  The Classic lineup also included a 287 CID V8, but sixes were far more popular among Rambler’s thrifty customer base, accounting for more than 80 percent of Classic sales. Trademark Rambler features on the Classic included the automaker’s famed fold-down front seats, another carryover from the Nash era.

​The top of the line at American Motors for 1964 was the Rambler Ambassador, above. (In these years, the company was called American Motors but the cars were all branded and marketed as Ramblers across the model lines.) The Ambassador was in fact built on the same 112-inch wheelbase unit-construction platform as the Classic, but with additional equipment and a single trim level, the 990. Features included a blacked-out grille that spelled out AMBASSADOR and a 327 CID V8 available in both two-barrel (250 hp) and four-barrel (270 hp) tune.
Options of note on the Ambassador included bucket seats with a fold-down center section and the novel Twin-Stick transmission. Available on all Ramblers, Twin-Stick  used a pair of levers to operate a three-speed overdrive gearbox (more about Twin-Stick here.) Body styles were limited to a four-door sedan, a four-door wagon, and a two-door hardtop.

​The big news for Rambler in 1964 was the compact and sporty American, completely redesigned that year under American Motors design chief Richard A. Teague. The wheelbase was lengthened from 100 to 106 inches to increase rear passenger space and modern ball-joint suspension was added up front. One strangely anachronistic feature was the base powerplant, a 195 CID flathead six, which offered only 90 hp but allowed the company to price the American 220, a stripped-down entry model, at less than $2,000. For those seeking a little more glamour, the snazzy 440 trim level included a handsome two-door hardtop (above) and a convertible (lead photo).
Of course, Rambler owners were known to be practical folk, so it’s not surprising that station wagons (below) were important elements in the Rambler lineup . All three car  lines—American, Classic, and Ambassador—included wagons in ’64, and all were four-doors that offered folding seats, twin-circuit brakes, and other sensible-shoes Rambler features. Of the nearly 380,000 Ramblers registered in 1964, more than 100,000 were station wagons. But even American Motors could not ignore the expanding youth market, and in 1968 the company officially reversed course, embracing racing and performance in a major way.

The Lincoln Continental Mark IV of 1972-76 was the American luxury coupe of the 1970s. Here’s a Lincoln-Mercury dealer film with a closer look at the 1975 product line.

Few products from the Motor City have been as well-defined in the market as the Continental Mark IV. Produced by Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury division from 1972 to 1976. the Mark IV was the sleeker, flashier successor to the successful 1969-71 Mark III. (Read the story behind the Mark III here.) A team of two designers and six modelers under the direction of veteran FoMoCo stylist Wes Dahlberg developed the Mark IV’s imposing profile, which, surprisingly, was only four inches longer (and 200 lbs lighter!) than its predecessor. When Ford president Bunkie Knudsen saw it, he reportedly said, “Gentlemen, that is the next Mark… Don’t change anything.”

Of course, all you hardcore Lincoln enthusiasts know this wasn’t the first Continental Mark IV, as Lincoln also produced a Mark IV in 1959. But when the Mark III was introduced for ’69, the Mark series roman numerals were reset—rather like a TV or movie franchise reboot.

​Anyway, by 1975 the Mark IV was in the fourth year of its five-year product cycle, so Lincoln offered a series of  special trim packages to offer buyers some exclusivity. As showcased in this original Lincoln-Mercury dealer film, these included the Lipstick and Blue Diamond luxury groups. (L-M expanded on this theme in 1976 with its Blass, Cartier, Givency, and Pucci fashion-designer editions.) Of course, the Mark IV will be eternally remembered for its signature styling features: the faux-Rolls grille, spare tire bump, and opera windows, and all three are on prominent display here. Video below.

American Graffiti, the surprise summer blockbuster that ignited the career of filmmaker George Lucas (director and co-screenwriter), is one of the most car-saturated movies that is not explicitly about cars. Set in Modesto, California, at the tail end of summer 1962, it follows the exploits of a quartet of recent high-school grads: college-bound Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss), class president Steve Bolander (Ron Howard), the nerdy Terry the Toad (Charles Martin Smith), and drag-racer John Milner (Paul Le Mat). The action takes place on a single night against a backdrop of endless cruising. Lucas made the movie in 1972, and it was highly autobiographical. In an interview in The New York Times, Lucas said of the film:

It all happened to me, but I sort of glamorized it. I spent four years of my life cruising the main street of my hometown, Modesto, California. I went through all that stuff, drove the cars, bought liquor, chased girls... a very American experience. I started out as Terry the Toad, but then I went on to be John Milner, the local drag race champion, and then I became Curt Henderson, the intellectual who goes to college. They were all composite characters, based on my life, and on the lives of friends of mine. Some were killed in Vietnam, and quite a number were killed in auto accidents.

American Graffiti is newly available on HBO's streaming services this month, so we figured it was worth another pass down the main drag. Here are some lesser-known facts to know about it, in case you settle in for a rewatch or a first watch — it's highly recommended if you haven’t seen it before.

1. Some 300 cars were used in filming. Local vintage-car owners were paid $20 to $25 per night (reports vary) plus food.

​2. Milner’s ’32 Ford chopped-top Deuce coupe had a ’66 Chevy 327-cu.in. V-8 with four Rochester 2GC two-barrel carbs. The engine was mated to a Super T-10 four-speed gearbox, and a ’57 Chevy rear end with 4:11 gears. The car was originally red but was repainted yellow for filming, and the red-and-white interior was dyed black. The rear fenders were bobbed, front cycle fenders added, and the dropped front axle chrome-plated. When the movie was done, the car was advertised for $1,500 but failed to sell for more than a year. It eventually ended up with a collector in Kansas and has since gone to an owner in San Francisco, both of whom preserved it.

​5. Curt’s obsession is a mysterious blonde (Suzanne Somers) in a white ’56 T-Bird. Somers had a surprise reunion with the car in 1999 on an episode of Leeza Gibbons’s TV show.

​6. The film takes place in 1962 but Curt’s Citroën 2CV is actually a ’67 model.

​7. Toad’s crashing his Vespa in the opening scene was unscripted. He lost control of the scooter but stayed in character, and George Lucas kept filming.

​8. The license plate on Milner’s Deuce coupe is THX 138, a nod to George Lucas’s earlier science-fiction film THX-1138. Steve’s ’58 Chevy Impala has the license plate JPM 351, and that plate appears again on the Studebaker that Carol, Judy, and some other girls are riding in.

9. The prank in which Curt attached a chain to the cop car’s rear axle, which is then ripped out from under the car when the police set off, was tried and proven not possible on Mythbusters. For the film, the axle had been cut away from the frame, and the chain was not really attached to a light pole but to a winch on a heavy-duty tow truck. The winch was activated as the cop car pulled away, yanking the axle out from underneath it.

10. Although set in George Lucas’s hometown of Modesto, California, the film was shot largely Petaluma, California. Petaluma hosts an annual Salute to American Graffiti.
11. The entire movie takes place over one night, and filming was done between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. The shoot lasted just 28 days.​

12. An assistant camera man fell off the trailer of a truck and was run over shooting one of the road scenes, suffering minor injuries.
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13. The DC-7 airliner that appears in the final scene was later converted to cargo use, and in 1986 it crashed after taking off from Dakar, Senegal, killing all four people on board.

​Conceived by GM styling boss Bill Mitchell, the Silver Arrow III was a dramatic reinterpretation of the production boattail Riviera introduced in 1971.

Introduced at the 1972 Detroit Auto Show at Cobo Hall, the Silver Arrow III boasted a number of advanced features, including four-wheel disc brakes and Max Trac, an early form of electronic traction control that was offered on the production Riviera as well. Above the backlight at the trailing edge of the roof was a set of high-level warning lamps that also served as secondary directional indicators. Additional show-car touches included a fully chromed and detailed 455 CID Buick V8 under the hood.
When the Silver Arrow III appeared on show floor at Detroit, Chicago, and elsewhere in 1972, we’re not quite sure what the ultimate effect was, except perhaps to throw some shade on the more conservatively styled production Riviera. It is known that Mitchell was quite proud of the two Silver Arrows—here, below, he’s shown posing with the pair. Both Silver Arrow I and Silver Arrow III are still in existence today.   -Photos courtesy of General Motors. ​