‘American Pie’

“So bye bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.
Them good ol’ boys was drinking whisky and rye, saying ‘this will be the day that I die...’ ”

Not so long ago, after a number of years I made contact with my old mate, Mark. I had done a drawing of Mark’s 1948 Chev Thriftmaster pick up truck a couple of years ago. In the mid '80s I'd taken some 35mm photos of ‘Baby Blue’ with the idea of doing an airbrushed illustration.

How times have changed! It wasn’t until 2008 that I got around to doing the illustration. Computers had replaced drawing boards and the global economy was going down the toilet. I found myself with time on my hands so I dragged out the old black and white 8x10" print I had made years earlier in the Auckland Star darkrooms and set to work.

This was the very first time I had attempted this kind of work on a computer. The idea was to create a rendered illustration of something unique – not just any 1948 Chev Thriftmaster but the particular truck that Mark had owned years earlier. I began by blocking in the blue painted surfaces and used Photoshop’s dodge and burn tools to render highlights and shadows. The Chev also bristled with chromework and working out how to render the polished hubcaps and model the fluted grille surfaces was a real challenge. The final touches were the small details, the 1940’s Chevrolet badging, the polished bolt caps on the 1/8" steel bumpers, the Chevrolet ‘bowtie’ emblems, double rear leaf springs and the 1980s vintage registration plates. IMHO this is what ‘makes' the illustration.’

If anybody wants a blow-by-blow tutorial drop a comment in the blog and I'll see what I can do...

About 'Baby Blue'...

Mark’s first car was a 1970’s Mk 3 ‘Coke Bottle’ Ford Cortina that his old man had picked out for him. It had been owned by a mechanic, had been well maintained, had a tidy body and was in good running order. At the business end it had a 1.6 litre four-cylinder crossflow engine lugging a fairly substantial mid-sized body and Mark hated it. He often said his old man had brought it to try and kill him. In fact he must have always been a Chev man because when he sold it a few years later this was the vehicle that replaced it!

‘Baby Blue’ was huge. Traditionally pre mid-1950’s Chevs had inline six-cylinder engines and ‘Baby Blue’ was no exception. The original sidevalve ‘Stovebolt Six’ had been replaced with a more modern ‘Blue Flame’ unit mated to the original three-speed gearbox. Acceleration was hardly neck-breaking but once wound up the truck would cruise comfortably at nearly 60 miles per hour (100kmh), it’s town-and-country rear tyres making a distinctive ‘frrrrrp’ sound as it whizzed along the roadway. Fuel consumption was the stuff of legend.

Mark was a collector. From his childhood he had made collections of all manner of articles. I met him during my third-form year at college and he invited me home after school shortly afterwards. He then showed me his collection of Malaysian ‘Kris’ daggers, a couple of machetes, some WWII bayonets and a ‘Kukri’ – the weapon of choice of the Ghurka Regiment. Subsequently he acquired a veteran Excelsior motorcycle, a King Nuetrodyne wireless radio set, a vintage Austin Seven and all manner of other stuff. If you needed to get hold of anything in the second hand/‘antique’ line or any old machinery Mark always ‘knew where one was’. With a 1/2 ton payload ‘Baby Blue’ was the ideal way to move his collections around. Most importantly it also meant that his Alsatian, Sheik, could ride on the huge tray, thus eliminating the problem of dog hair on any upholstery.

Like all older vehicles, ‘Baby Blue’ had it’s quirks. After years of wear the ignition switch could be turned on without the benefit of a key. It had a floor-mounted starter switch and no synchro on first gear. It had a vinyl-upholstered bench seat and absolutely no seatbelts. A collection of air-horns linked to an asthmatic compressor lurked behind the grille. The windscreen wipers were operated by the vacuum in the induction manifold, meaning that they would stop altogether when going uphill on full throttle and nearly fly off the screen going downhill on over-run. On one memorable trip from New Plymouth to Auckland the industrial-strength fanbelt broke and the engine overheated sending steam pouring up through the floorboards into the cab. Fortunately the Blue Flame suffered no permanent damage but a blown head gasket had to be replaced!

In fact that was our last trip in ‘Baby Blue’. Mark was taking her up to Auckland to sell her. He needed the money to contribute towards his share of the house that he and his girlfriend were buying.

I sent him a print of ‘Baby Blue’ for his birthday this year. Thanks for the memories...

“I was a lonely teenage bronc'n'buck with a pink carnation and a pick-up truck...”
(‘American Pie’, Don McLean)

50 years of the Mini!

After 50 years why do people still love the Mini? What was the thinking behind Alec Issigonis’ ground-breaking design? How can you fit four full-sized adults in a car with an overall length of just 10'? This short documentary (just under 16 minutes) answers these questions – and others. Well worth a look (well, I think so anyway)...

Lockie’s Bel Air

To me, this car personifies the excesses of 1950s American automotive design. Larger and lower than the classic ’57 model, the 1958 Bel Air dripped chrome. The heavy bodywork sat on top of a massive ‘X’ framed chassis and the whole car just floated over any irregularities in the road surface.

I was introduced to Lockie during my third form year. A friend who knew about my interest in aircraft took me to meet the elderly West Coaster, who had served with the RNZAF in the Solomon Islands as a navigator on PBY5 Catalina flying boats during the Second World War. Born and bred in Reefton, Lockie was driving a Rover P6 at the time, but he was a Chev man through and through. He didn’t like the Rover (“Poms can’t build a motor car, you need to be a contortionist to get into it”) and used to talk fondly of the Chevrolet cars that he had owned, particularly of “Old Goldie”, the 1958 Chev Biscayne with the Blue Flame motor.

A few years later during the school holidays Lockie phoned up one morning and told me that I had to get over there. “I’ve brought myself a Motor Car!” he exclaimed. And that’s all he said. He wouldn‘t tell me any more over the phone so I biked over at top speed, arriving to find the largest car I had ever seen sitting on the back lawn. Lockie was delighted with his buy, even though he said it meant that he would be living on bread and dripping for the forseeable future. He promptly presented me with the key. “Take it for a drive” he urged me.

I‘d never driven column shift before but could recall a friend’s older brother, who had an HD Holden sedan, showing me how it all worked. So I jumped in the car, crossed my fingers and off I went. I turned the key and the small block V8 started up, rolling the bodywork on its springs as I nudged the throttle. To a 17 year old, this was an unforgettable experience. What a contrast to Mum’s Morris 1300 – I was hooked!

During the time that Lockie owned the car I regularly got to drive it. Whenever I was finished I would reverse it into the garage so that the wall of chrome at the front was showing. Lockie even urged me to take it to school one day as he was sure this would do my mana no end of good, though I never took him up on the offer. Which is not to say that I didn’t attract attention from other sources. Such as the traffic cop who pulled me over when I had gone down to the dairy to get Lockie some milk (as I’d called in on my way back from school I was dressed in my school uniform) and asked me if I owned this car? When I stated truthfully that I didn’t and explained who the owner was I then had to wait while the MOT officer got on the radio to verify my story. Personally I think he had stopped me because he wanted to have a good look at the Chev!

But sadly Lockie didn’t get the same fun out of the Bel Air that I did. A fall that he had some years earlier had damaged his spinal cord, leaving him with a loss of mobility and a withered left arm, and he had difficulty working the column shift. And when a relative in the motor trade offered to swap the Bel Air for his 1966 Impala, complete with automatic transmission, Lockie accepted. But to me, it was never the same.

All that I have left of the Bel Air is the newspaper advertisement from when Lockie brought it. The headline reads A Piece of History and I see that the asking price was $3,500. While researching this illustration, I was amazed to find the same Bel Air on TradeMe, where it is listed for $35,000, which to me is a great return on investment! All these years later the upholstery is well worn but there are only a couple of signs of rust in the door panels.

Just goes to show, as the saying goes, “old Chevys never die...”

Under Construction?

No, I’m not talking websites here (websites should never carry the words ‘Under Construction’ - it’s like saying ‘enter at your own risk’ or ‘beware of falling brickwork’). Lately, as temperatures plummet, storm clouds gather overhead and winds reach gale force, we suddenly have a spate of orange cones and men in safety vests digging up the roads.

For a long time comedians have made jokes about road working crews. Like, why do you need two men with stop/go lollipops, one man with a road roller, two trucks and three guys standing watching (one’s there to make the tea), working on a one metre wide by 10 metre long strip of new asphalt? Why, when driving during the weekend or holiday season, do you find yourself driving through ‘road works’ at 30kph for miles and miles while all the machinery is parked well off the road and there isn’t a worker in sight?

I used to think it was just a Kiwi phenomenon (why else was the Ministry of Works commonly referred to as the ‘Ministry of Jerks’?). Until I saw this video the other day. In the 1960’s, at the height of the Vietnam Conflict American singer/songwriter Barry McGuire performed a song "Eve of Destruction", exposing the hypocrisy of modern society. Forty years later comedian Dan Geiger has written new lyrics and made a video about road works!

Apparently Barry really enjoyed it too!

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mini!

I didn’t want to let this April pass without mentioning that it has been 50 years since the launch of that everyday classic car, the Mini. Designed by engineer Alec Issigonis the small car was a revolutionary design featuring transversely-mounted engine and front-wheel drive, rack-and-pinion steering and rubber cone suspension that gave legendary handling, and a surprisingly large passenger space relative to the small overall physical dimensions of the car.

My Mini, affectionately known as ‘The Beast’, was made in 1961, and totally rebuilt in 1983. When I brought it the car was a near basket-case. Every time it rained water flowed through the rust holes in the gutters and exited through the rust holes in the floorpans (not surprisingly the interior smelt like a wet dog). The electrical system was suspect (I even had a small fire under the dashboard one night) and, as with all early Minis, trips in wet weather were fraught with tension lest a curtain of spray from opposing traffic drown the exposed distributor behind the grille and kill the ignition. However when it wasn’t raining ‘The Beast’ was a lot of fun to drive, veering round corners on the metal road I lived on almost sideways, holding on with the aid of a widened rim at each corner and its firm ride on rubber cone springs.

I became so attached to the car that after a year I decided to completely rebuild it to a sort of ‘Cooper’ specification. The rebuild took a whole year and involved stripping the bodyshell back to bare metal and repairing the rust-affected areas (roofline, scuttle, door skins and floorpans), completely rewiring the electrics and repainting and retrimming the interior. The original 850cc A-Series engine was replaced with a larger 1100cc unit (better for the open road and enabling ‘The Beast’ to take on all comers when going uphill) complete with straight-flow exhaust system and a two-inch tailpipe that made the car sound much larger than it actually was. The only thing missing was the set of dual SU carburetteurs that I had always promised myself. Needless to say, I learned a lot that year!

Once completed, ‘The Beast’ was the archetypal 'Boy Racer'! I sold it to my younger brother in 1987. Should have kept it...

Back to the Future... again!

OK. I’ll ’fess up now and admit I watched Back to the Future – again – this weekend.

What a nostalgia trip back to the ’80s! Seeing Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd as in character as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown. And then there was the car! Doc’s “if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” DeLorean DMC-12 managed to be both awesome and kitsch at the same time. The time-travelling DeLorean is, putting it simply, incredible. Flashing LEDs, digital readouts and lots and lots of buttons – real 1980s technology hardware at work! Sure, there are the reliability problems that I believe were part and parcel of 1980s DeLorean ownership (in fact one or two cars that I have owned that were definitely not DeLoreans suffered from similar problems)! But then the car hits 88mph, the Flux Capacitor kicks in and all that remains are burning tyre tracks scorched across the asphalt! After the movie, still feeling nostalgic, I looked up ‘DeLorean’ and guess what I found?

This press ad for carsguide.com.au is one of a series of three (the other two being the original Knight Rider and The A-Team). The set is totally in keeping with Doc Brown’s workshop from Back to the Future. And what I like best of all is that the image tells the whole story. The only words on the ad are in the tagline ‘Choice is Everything’ and the address for the carsguide website. How often can a designer persuade the client to forgo the headline in an advertisement completely?

Brilliant!