This Day in Automotive History

[Landrover]

30th April 1925
The Dodge widows sold Dodge Brothers Inc to the New York City banking firm of Dillon, Read & Company for $146 million plus $50 million for charity. It was the largest cash deal in history at that time. The sale of Dodge was not the result of a downturn in the company's fortune as Dodge was still selling well. The sale of the company was rather the result of the unwillingness of the Dodge Brothers' offspring to manage the company's affairs. Both Horace and John Dodge died in 1920. During their lifetimes, they had run the company personally, explicitly excluding their family members from participation in the company's management. After the brothers' deaths a brief depression in the stock market in 1921 scared the family members into "cashing out" of the company's affairs.
After running it unsuccessfully for three years Dillion Read & Company approached Chrysler for takeover.

April 30th 1948
Land Rover was unveiled for the first time in Amsterdam Motor Show. Land Rover was developed as a result of necesscity when Maurice Wilks, a Rover engineer was unable to procure parts for his constanly breaking WW2 american Jeep while working on his farm in Wales.
He thought there could be a huge demand of such vehcile, as there were a very limited option in that segment namely, Jeep and Kubelwagen only.
He had very limited resource, as Steel was rationed and available to company that exported and at that time Rover didn't. So he thought of using Alumunium, as they were plenty as WWII surplus used to built aircraft. Ironically this had added advantage, one it was cheap, other it was rust proof, just right for Britain's weather.
Its said that 75% of Landy that left the Solihull is still alive.

April 30th 1963
Micheal Waltrip, two time Daytona 500 champion was born in Kentucky. He is retired and currently lives in North Carolina. He owns a racing team, Michael Waltrip Racing and do ocassional commentary for race events.

April 30th 1975
Elliot Sadler, a Nascar race driver was born in Virginia. He currently drives No19 Dodge Charger for Gillett Evernham Motorsports.

April 30th 1991
The last Trabant rolled out of assembly line after 34 years of production and and nearly three million example produced. The model hardly had any significant change during its 34 years of lifecycle. It is commonly used as a handy symbol by the advocate of free market for everything wrong with government planned economies and communism.

April 30th 1993
Roland Ratzenberger, an Austrian racecar driver crashed fatally during the qualifying run for the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, In the same event the very next day three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna died.

April 30th 2003
Possum Bourne, A kiwi rally driver succumbed due to head injuries sustained on 18th April in non-competitive circumstances while driving on a public road, that was to be the track for an upcoming race. He was driving his Subaru Outback and collided with a Jeep Cherokee driven by another rally driver Mike Baltrop. At the time of his death, Possum had just re-entered the world stage, driving a production-class Subaru Impreza.

First Landrover Concept, the Center Steer.



LRX Concept and 'Huey,' the First Production Land Rover From 1948, at Solihull Facility in England during the 60th Anniversary Celebration

Source:
The History Channel
Club Hemmings
NY Times
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

1st May

May 1st 1902
First gasoline powered Locomobile was produced.

May 1st 1925
Ettore Bugatti registered both the 'Pur Sangre Des Automobiles', and the thoroughbred racing horse profile, as French trademarks.

May 1st 1925
On this day in 1926, Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford's office workers the following August.
Henry Ford's Detroit-based automobile company had broken ground in its labor policies before. In early 1914, against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labor unrest, Ford announced that it would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours (the policy was adopted for female workers in 1916). The news shocked many in the industry--at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made--but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford's workers.
The decision to reduce the workweek from six to five days had originally been made in 1922. According to an article published in The New York Times that March, Edsel Ford, Henry's son and the company's president, explained that "Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation….The Ford Company always has sought to promote an ideal home life for its employees. We believe that in order to live properly every man should have more time to spend with his family."
Manufacturers all over the country, and the world, soon followed Ford's lead, and the Monday-to-Friday workweek became standard practice.


May 1st 1994
Three time F1 World Champion, Aryton Senna died at Imola. Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed in a practice accident the previous day. Senna and the other drivers still opted to start the Grand Prix, but the race was interrupted by a huge accident at the start line. A safety car was deployed and the drivers followed it for several laps. On the restart Senna immediately set a quick pace with the third quickest lap of the race, followed by Schumacher. As Senna entered the high-speed Tamburello corner on the next lap, the car left the track at high speed, hitting the concrete retaining wall at around 135 mph. Senna was removed from the car by Sid Watkins and his medical team and treated by the side of the car before being airlifted to Bologna hospital where Senna was later declared dead.

Aryton Senna's car after the crash.


Aryton Senna Crash Video (Courtesy Youtube)
YouTube - Ayrton Senna - How the crash killed him

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

2nd May

May 2nd 1918
The General Motors acquired the Chevrolet Motor Company for $32 million in GM stock. This is quite an interesting story. The deal was actually a merger engineered by William Durant rather than a buyout. The original founder of GM, Durant had been forced out of the company by stockholders who had disapproved of Durant's increasingly reckless policies to run the company. Durant after being kicked out of GM started Chevrolet with Swiss racer Louis Chevrolet and managed to make the company a successful competitor in a relatively short period of time. Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more stock in GM as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control of the company he founded, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, Durant regained control of GM.

May 2nd 1972
Buddy Baker became the first stock car driver to finish a 500-mile race in less than three hours en route to winning the Winston Select 500 at the Alabama International Motor Speedway in Talladega, Alabama. He also broke the 200mph barrier two years ago on the same track.

Buddy Baker

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

3rd May

May 3rd 1980
On this day in 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner of Fair Oaks, California, is walking along a quiet road on her way to a church carnival when a car swerves out of control, striking and killing her. Cari's tragic death compelled her mother, Candy Lightner, to found the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which would grow into one of the country's most influential non-profit organizations.
When police arrested Clarence Busch, the driver who hit Cari, they found that he had a record of arrests for intoxication, and had in fact been arrested on another hit-and-run drunk-driving charge less than a week earlier. Candy Lightner learned from a policeman that drunk driving was rarely prosecuted harshly, and that Busch was unlikely to spend significant time behind bars. Furious, Lightner decided to take action against what she later called "the only socially accepted form of homicide." MADD was the result.


May 3rd 1987
The late Davey Allison recorded his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory at Talladega, Alabama, driving his Ford Thunderbird. The very day and in the same race his father, legendary Bobby Allison suffered a near fatal crash.
After the crash, NASCAR made the use of restrictor plates mandatory in all
cars.

Davey Allison

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[350Z]

Hi Landrover, One of your post has been deleted on request. If something has been missed please do post it, otherwise let me know if it needs some editing.

Drive Safe,
350Z

 

[Landrover]

Note! can you bring back the deleted post. I wanted the above to be deleted as it has two news and the other one had most important Tinovan story. i was researching and 15 mins was over. I normally prewview but this time i actually posted and then tried editing.

PS: Please delete this also.

 

[Landrover]

4th May

May 4th 1904
Charles Stewart Rolls met Frederick Henry Royce in Midland Hotels, Manchester for the very first time and rest is history.

May 4th 1920
Harry Miller was issued a U.S. patent for a race car design that introduced many features later incorporated into race cars in the following decades.

May 4th 1946
British F1 racer John Watson was born in Northern Ireland.

May 4th 1948
Three time le Mans winner Hurley Haywood was born in Chicago. He was drafted into Army and sent to Vietnam in 1970 before driving his Porsches' to victory.

May 4th 1949
14 time NHRA funny car drag race winner John Force was born in Bell Gardens, California.

May 4th 1984
On this day in 1984, New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen releases "Pink Cadillac" as a B-side to "Dancing in the Dark," which will become the first and biggest hit single off "Born in the U.S.A.," the best-selling album of his career.

May 4th 1987
Jorge Lorenzo, a two time 250cc class World champion was born in Mallorca, Spain. He is currently Rossi's partner in Fiat Yamaha Moto GP team. He previously rode Aprilla to both his victories.

Historic Midland Hotel in Manchester, which occupies a whole city block where Rolls met Royce for the first time on 4th May 1904.


Harry Miller, Circa 1928



1925 Miller 122 Indianapolis 500 racer

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia
Harry A. Miller Club.​

 

[Landrover]

5th May

5th May 1914
Erwin "Cannonball" Baker began his record setting cross-continental motorcycle trip. After this trip he received his nickname 'Canonball' by A New York newspaper reporter who compared him with Canonball Train.
Baker set 143 driving records from the 1910s through the 1930s. His first was set in 1914, riding coast to coast on an Indian motorcycle in 11 days. In 1915, Baker drove from Los Angeles to New York City in 11 days, 7 hours and fifteen minutes in a Stutz Bearcat, and the following year drove a Cadillac 8 roadster from Los Angeles to Times Square in seven days, eleven hours and fifty-two minutes while accompanied by an Indianapolis newspaper reporter. In 1926 he drove a loaded two-ton truck from New York to San Francisco in a record five days, seventeen hours and thirty minutes, and in 1928, he beat the 20th Century Limited train from New York to Chicago. Also in 1928, he competed in the Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race, and set a record time of 14:49.6 seconds, driving a Franklin.
His best-remembered drive was a 1933 New York City to Los Angeles trek in a Graham-Paige model 57 Blue Streak 8, setting a 53.5 hour record that stood for nearly 40 years. This drive inspired the later Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, better known as the "Cannonball Run", which itself inspired at least five movies and a television series. In 1941, he drove a new Crosley Covered Wagon across the nation in a 6,517-mile run to prove the economy and reliability characteristics of Crosley automobiles. Other record and near-record transcontinental trips were made in Model T Fords, Chrysler Imperials, Marmons, Falcon-Knights and Columbia Tigers, among others.

5th May 1944
Bertha Benz, the wife of inventor Karl Benz and the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, dies on this day in 1944, in Ladenburg, Germany.
Born Bertha Ringer, she married Karl Benz around 1870. Karl Benz received a patent for his horseless carriage, called the Motorwagen, in January 1886. The wooden vehicle had two wheels in the back, one in the front, and a handle-like contraption as a steering wheel. Powered by a single-cylinder, 2.5-horsepower engine, it could reach speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. Benz was having trouble selling the Motorwagen, however: Early press reports were not altogether positive, and customers were reluctant to take a chance on a vehicle that had so far only been tested over short distances.
In early August 1888, Bertha and her two teenage sons, Richard and Eugen, hatched a plan to take the car on a surprise visit to her mother in Pforzheim, Germany. Knowing that Karl would never allow it, they left early in the morning, while he was still sleeping. The trio drove from their home in Mannheim to Pforzheim and back, a total distance of 106 kilometers. Though big streets in the cities were often paved, there were no real roads outside urban areas yet, and Bertha had to drive along railway lines in order to find her way. To refuel the car, she bought Ligroin, a detergent then used as fuel, at local pharmacies. When the car's fuel line clogged, she unclogged it using one of her hairpins. She also used the garter on her stocking to fix a broken ignition.
Bertha's history-making drive proved that the horseless carriage was suitable for regular use. The press covered it extensively, and Karl Benz began to field requests from potential buyers all over the world. By the end of the 19th century, Benz & Cie. was the world's largest automobile company, with 572 vehicles produced in 1899 alone. Karl Benz left the company several years later. He died in 1929, three years after Benz & Cie. merged with Daimler Motors to form Daimler-Benz, makers of the famous Mercedes-Benz. Bertha Benz continued to live at their home in Ladenburg until her death on May 5, 1944, at the age of 95.

Erwin "Cannonball" Baker


Bertha Ringer, circa 1871, the year before marrying Karl Benz.


Karl and Bertha Benz circa 1914


The Benz Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 3 of 1888, used by Bertha Benz for the first long distance journey by automobile (more than 106 km)

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia
motohistory.net​

 

[Landrover]

6th May

May 6th 1991
Harry Gant, aged 51, broke his own record to become the oldest man to win a NASCAR race when he won the Winston 500 in Talladega.

May 6th 1994
French President Mitterrand and Queen Elizabeth II jointly open the Channel Tunnel linking Britain and France underneath the English Channel. Eurotunnel Shuttle service, a roll-on roll-off shuttle service is used to transport road vehicles including freight lorries from France to UK and vice-versa.

Harry Gant


President Francois Mitterrand and Queen Elizabeth officially open the tunnel, Coquelles, France.


English engineer Graham Fagg and Frenchman Phillippe Cozette as the two sides of the Channel tunnel met, 1 December 1990.

Source:
The History Channel
harrygant.com
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

7th May

May 7th 1952
James J. Nance resigned form his position at Hotpoint, an appliance maker to become the president and general manager of the Packard Motor Company. There he was responsible for development of Packard's first V8 engine and automatic transmission popularly known as Ultramatic.

May 7th 1967
Don Prudhomme, then 26, popularly known as 'The Snake' drove a modified Ford to became the first dragster to run the quarter mile in less than seven seconds when he reached 226 mph at the NHRA World Series.

May 7th 1998
Dana Holding Corporation announces its participation in the largest-ever merger of automotive suppliers by its acquisition of Echlin Inc.

May 7th 1998
On this day in 1998, the German automobile company Daimler-Benz--maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz--announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation.
The purchase of Chrysler, America's third-largest car company, by the Stuttgart-based Daimler-Benz marked the biggest acquisition by a foreign buyer of any U.S. company in history. Though marketed to investors as an equal pairing, it soon emerged that Daimler would be the dominant partner, with its stockholders owning the majority of the new company's shares. For Chrysler, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the end of independence was a surprising twist in a striking comeback story. After a near-collapse and a government bailout in 1979 that saved it from bankruptcy, the company surged back in the 1980s under the leadership of the former Ford executive Lee Iacocca, in a revival spurred in part by the tremendous success of its trendsetting minivan.
The new company, DaimlerChrysler AG, began trading on the Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges the following November. A few months later, according to a 2001 article in The New York Times, its stock price rose to an impressive high of $108.62 per share. The euphoria proved to be short-lived, however. While Daimler had been attracted by the profitability of Chrysler's minivans and Jeeps, over the next few years profits were up and down, and by the fall of 2003 the Chrysler Group had cut some 26,000 jobs and was still losing money.
In 2006, according to the Times, Chrysler posted a loss of $1.5 billion and fell behind Toyota to fourth place in the American car market. This loss came despite the company's splashy launch of 10 new Chrysler models that year, with plans to unveil eight more. The following May, however, after reportedly negotiating with General Motors about a potential sale, DaimlerChrysler announced it was selling 80.1 percent of Chrysler to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $7.4 billion. DaimlerChrysler, soon renamed Daimler AG, kept a 19.9 percent stake in the new company, known as Chrysler LLC.
By late 2008, increasingly dismal sales led Chrysler to seek federal funds to the tune of $4 billion to stay afloat. Under pressure from the Obama administration, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2009 and entered into a planned partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat.

James J. Nance looking at a new Packard torsion spring chassis.


Don Prudhomme, a.k.a. "The Snake"

Source:
The History Channel
www.dana.com
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

8th May

May 8th 1899
Olds Motor Works was incorporated by the merger of Olds Motor Vehicle and Olds Gasoline Engine Works.

May 8th 1933
The very first police radio system was installed in Eastchester Township, New York, by Radio Engineering Laboratories of Long Island.

May 8th 1956
Henry Ford II resigned as the chairperson of Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is a philanthropic institution incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that was chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford. He resigned as a trustee in 1976 rendering it independent of Ford Motor Company and Ford family.

May 8th 1964
Bobby Labonte, an american Nascar driver for born in Texas. As of 2008, Labonte is the only driver to have won both the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship and the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship.

May 8th 1982
Gilles Villeneuve, Canadian race car driver died when he crashed his Ferrari during the Belgian Grand Prix.

Gilles Villeneuve with Enzo


Gilles Villeneuve fatal crash
YouTube - Gilles Villeneuve

Source:
The History Channel
Ford Foundation
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

9th May

May 9th 1911
Thomas H. Flaherty, of Pittsburgh, PA, received a patent for a "Signal for Crossing", first U. S. patent application for a traffic signal design.

May 9th 1992
Roberto Guerrero, a Colombian race car driver set an Indianapolis 500 qualifying record, driving his Lola-Buick to an average speed of 232.483mph and setting the single lap record at 232.618mph.


May 9th 2008
On this day in 2008, "Speed Racer," the big-budget live-action film version of the 1960s Japanese comic book and television series "MachGoGoGo," makes its debut in U.S. movie theaters.
Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Matthew Fox co-starred in "Speed Racer" alongside Hirsch. Another key cast member was not an actor but an automobile: the mighty Mach 5, a race car designed and built by Speed's father, Pops Racer. As in the American version of the comic, the sleek Mach 5 used in the film is white with red accents, bears similarities to an early Ferrari Testarossa and is outfitted with an array of special features, including jacks that automatically boost the car, allowing for easy repair; rotary saws that protrude from the front tires; and a deflector that seals the driver into a crash-proof container. As part of the publicity for the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer," the Mach 5 went on display in January 2008 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan. As reported in USA Today, however, the car saw little real action on the track. During filming, it was attached to a crane, and most of the effects for the racing scenes were computer generated.

Roberto Guerrero


SPeed racer Movie Poster



The Mach 5 (shown on display at the 2007 Comic-Con International), is designed to be driven, but was hung from a crane for the film's sequences and had its motoring effects computer-generated.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

10th May

May 10th 1841
James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald and one of the very first sponsor and patron of auto racing (Gordon Bennett Cup Races) was born in New York City.

May 10th 1923
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. elected GM president, Chairman of Executive Committee.

May 10th 1975
Hélio Castroneves, a two time Indy500 race car driver was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.


James Gordon Bennett Jr



The 1906 Gordon Bennett Cup


Hélio Castroneves at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Carb Day for the 2009 Indianapolis 500

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

11th May

May 11th 1916
Charles Kettering and Edward Deeds agreed to sell their Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, famously known as DELCO to the United Motors Corporation, a holding company of William C. Durant at a record $9 million. Delco was responsible for several innovations in automobile electric systems, including the first battery ignition system and the first practical automobile self starter.

May 11th 1947
Ferrari made its independent racing debut at a race in Piacenza, Italy. Enzo Ferrari had been designing race cars for Alpha Romeo since the late 1920s, After the WWII he decided to start his own brand. His debut car Tipo 125 featured a revolutionary V12 engine and way ahead of time but failed to finish due to fuel pump error. Still during the season he made and sold 3 Tipos. He adopted the now famous prancing horse logo in honour of Italian World War I ace Enrico Baracca, who used the logo on his fighter plane. Interesting thing about Enzo is that he manufactured and sold his cars to
fullfill his racing hobby.


May 11th 1947
On this day in 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces it has developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient.

B.F. Goodrich Tubeless advertisement

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

12th May

May 12th 1847
William Clayton invented the odometer. During his trip across the plains from Missouri to Utah he was assigned to record the number of miles the company traveled each day. Clayton with the help of mathematecian Orson Pratt tired counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel and computing the day's distance by multiplying the count by the wheel's circumference. After consulting with Pratt, he developed a design consisting of a set of wooden cog wheels attached to the hub of a wagon wheel, with the mechanism "counting" or recording by position the revolutions of the wheel. The apparatus was built by the company's carpenter Appleton Milo Harmon.


May 12th 1957
Alfonso de Portago fataly crashed his Ferrari during the Mili Miglia. He, his co-driver Edmund Nelson along with nine spectators were killed when his tire blew. Among the dead were five children. This accident also resulted in a long trial for Ferrari team owner Enzo Ferrari.


May 12th 1973
Art Portland, an american race car driver died during the practice session for the 1973 Indianapolis 500.


May 12th 2000
On this day in 2000, 19-year-old Adam Petty, son of Winston Cup driver Kyle Petty and grandson of National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) icon Richard Petty, is killed after crashing into a wall during practice for a Grand National race at Loudon, New Hampshire.

William Clayton's odometer


Adam Petty

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​