the 62000th post, is that Don "Big Daddy" Garlits was at Bakersfield talking to the students of the Bakersfield College Automotive Program

Don told stories from his legendary career and encouraged the students to find something they are willing to spend their whole life pursuing.

https://www.facebook.com/BAKERSFIELDCOLLEGEMOTORSPORTS/posts/pfbid026ahP1MsyvDE5UcojyhKsTgGq6zoaz6TQLvDinAXXuNtpP7EGZPTa2sekrGwSBry4l

if you have a fortune and want to buy the legendary Bill Burke built 'Super Shaker' Streamliner, and Jan 1960 Hot Rod magazine cover car that went 151.7 mph on a bored and stroked Harley Engine, at the 1959 Bonneville Nationals

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/31569/lot/813/c1959-super-shaker-bonneville-streamliner-engine-no-7/

Will Eisner, illustration and comic book legend (the most prestigious award in comics is named for him!) was a Corporal in WW2, and one of the things he was doing, was the ' Army Motors' magazine

You might recognize Connie from the PS Magazine that Eisner did for the Army through the Korean and Vietnam wars https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/04/will-eisner-originator-of-graphic-novel.html

You can enjoy this whole issue of Army Motors on https://radionerds.com/images/f/f5/Army_Motors_V5_N4_July_1944.pdf where there are 52 issues of AM! 

Lots of issues of PS also https://psmag.radionerds.com/index.php/191

their website has a lot of other cool stuff, including 

the real Smokey Bear when he was rescued from a New Mexican forest fire in 1944.

 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1057312659901697&set=a.488206170145685

R.I.P. to the off-roading legend, Walker Evans. His first off road race was driving an AMC Rambler for Garner in the 1969 Baja 500 after being a volunteer mechanic! Evans was picked to sub for a sick driver, and won the race.

Born in Cedar Lake Michigan, the Off Road Motorsports Hall Of Famer, SEMA Hall of Fame, and Motor Sports Hall of Fame icon

Won nine SCORE World Championships. 

Won nine Baja 1000s, eight Mint 400s, eight Parker 400s & six Baja 500s 

Won six Mojave 250s, six Fireworks 250s, & two Frontier 500s 

1991 Grand National sport truck champion/Mickey Thompson Stadium series

In all, Walker has more than 142 career victories and 21 Championship titles.

His first purpose built race truck was Ford F-100 donated by Marion Beaver at Parker Motor Company and built by Bill Stroppe. The truck won 16 of 17 races.

He was the first to win the Baja 1000 in a full size truck in 1979

Walker Evans Racing brought wheels and shock absorbers into the off-road market. The company eventually manufactured shocks as a valued OEM UTV and snowmobile supplier to Polaris and others. Polaris eventually purchased Walker Evans Racing in 2023.

https://www.mshf.com/hall-of-fame/inductees/walker-evans.html

https://racer.com/2025/08/03/walker-evans-1938-2025

There are 3 things Cale Yarborough never said: 1. I need a relief driver. 2. My car isn't comfortable. 3. I don't care who wins the pole position. He was the first to win 3 consecutive Cup titles

William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough was born March 27, 1939, to a tobacco farmer, in the tiny community of Sardis, just on the outskirts of Timmonsville, South Carolina. The oldest of three boys, Yarborough was 10 years old when his father died in a plane crash.

A star athlete during high school, Yarborough went on to play semipro football for four seasons and was a Golden Gloves boxer for a period before turning to racing.

"I never had a relief driver during my 30 years of racing and that's one record I'm most proud of," says Yarborough, who retired as a driver following the 1988 season. No other driver with at least 500 starts on the Winston Cup tour can make that claim.

He won 83 of 558 races, an impressive 14.87 winning percentage. It's the fourth best percentage in NASCAR for anyone competing in more than 300 races. His 83 wins are fifth on the all-time list. He also won 70 poles, third on the all-time list.

While winning more than $5 million in prize money, Yarborough accomplished some other impressive statistics. He's the only driver to win the Grand National (now Winston Cup) championship three years in succession (1976-78), and the only champion (1977) to be running at the finish of every race.

4 wins at the Daytona 500 and 5 at the Southern 500 – and he is also one of only two drivers in NASCAR history to win three consecutive championships. 

Now, years after he hung up his helmet for good, Yarborough is tied with Jimmie Johnson for the sixth-most wins by any driver in the NASCAR Cup Series with 83 victories to his name.

Of anyone leading at least 7,500 miles of race competition, Yarborough ranks second with 34,079.9 miles led and first in percentage at 16.0% He's less than 10,000 miles behind Richard Petty, who entered more than twice as many races as Yarborough. He's also second to Petty in leading the most laps (101) in a race.

In 340 races, he led at least one lap; only two drivers have led more races.

In 1969 Mercury built 617 Cale Yarborough Special Edition Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II

https://www.mshf.com/hall-of-fame/inductees/cale-yarborough.html

https://fordauthority.com/2024/01/nascar-ford-legend-cale-yarborough-passes-away-at-84/
https://www.legendarycollectorcars.com/car-museums/museum/1969-mercury-cyclone-cale-yarborough-spoiler-428cj/#google_vignette

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/1969-mercury-cyclone-cale-yarborough-spoiler-edition-marcia-colelli.html

https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/39215537/cale-yarborough-three-nascar-champion-70s-dies-84

Roland Leong has passed away

Roland Leong, known far and wide for his "Hawaiian" race cars was a successful gas dragster driver in Hawaii, came to California in the early 1960s and got work at the famed Dragmasters chassis building emporium near San Diego. 

Leong’s Dragmaster-built rail was driven to the Top Gas victory at the 1964 Winternationals by future motorsports legend Danny Ongais, and the 1965 Winternationals and U.S. Nationals with driver Don Prudhomme, duplicating those Winternationals and U.S. Nationals victories in 1966 with new driver Mike Snively – but switched to Funny Cars in 1969 and was immediately successful there as well, winning the Winternationals back to back in 1970 and ’71 with drivers Larry Reyes and Butch Maas.

https://www.nhra.com/news/2023/legendary-nhra-car-owner-roland-leong-hawaiian-passes-away

https://www.facebook.com/KeithBlackMedia/posts/pfbid03KcExvPuPBpEfZBaQ6FAvY6sxtiLaZeyuSBvHo9QGKxogU5aEBj8re8PCEcRz8nwl

Gray Baskerville and his '32 roadster

Baskerville's '32 was originally built as a drag car by Paul Horning, but was found to be too heavy to race and was converted to street car use. Horning was killed in a motorcycle accident before he could have any fun with it.

Horning was Baskerville's best friend, and so Gray purchased the car from Horning's mother in 1966 and proceeded to drive it everywhere, everyday, until 1981, when he bought a truck, stating he didn't want any Hollywood types crashing his car.

That a roadster was a daily driver, and the only vehicle that Gray owned, for about 15 years, is remarkable. It wasn't trailered, and he drove it across country numerous times to hot rod events, back in the good ol days when he wrote enjoyable articles. 

Gray was a really good writer, in the way that you ENJOYED reading what he wrote, as much as what he wrote about. Thankfully, it's all saved for history and accessible any time you open an old Hot Rod magazine

He was a champion of things like Bonneville, of the history of hot rodding, and of traditional hot rodding. He was as connected as anyone has been or ever will be in the automotive aftermarket world. Gray was loved by all and even though the majority of us never met him, we knew his words were honest and from the heart. That shouldn't be rare among auto enthusiast writers, but it's very hard to find.  

https://patganahl.com/2018/08/09/not-gray/

https://bangshift.com/general-news/profile-of-the-legendary-gray-baskerville/

Happy Birthday Willie Nelson, and Dale Sr

back in the 80’s, the two icons joined car owner Richard Childress (who Dale Sr. drove for) to participate in an advertising campaign promoting Wrangler jeans.

https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2022/04/29/the-true-story-behind-the-wrangler-ad-campaign-that-featured-willie-nelson-lighting-one-up-with-dale-earnhardt-sr-and-richard-childress/

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nascar/joint-ad-campaign-with-willie-nelson-was-enlightening-for-dale-earnhardt-childress

http://stillisstillmoving.com/willienelson/willie-nelson-a-legend-in-jeans-9/

my favorite Willie Nelson song was introduced to me by my paternal grand mother

I posted about Merle in 2016, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/04/merle-haggard-was-legend-in-his-own.html 

but I don't remember posting about Willie before

Mickey Thompson only needed 2 cylinders and moxie, to set speed records. He didn't even have a damn CNC to mill parts. He didn't have computers to work out fuel maps, etc.

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/808547945893612?multi_permalinks=5090489987699365&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

Leo Burnett, absolute legend in the advertising and marketing world. He was a client’s dream, and purchased 100 shares of stock in every new client.

Leo entered university in 1910 and graduated four years later with a degree in journalism. (He paid for his education working as a night editor of a small newspaper, and by lettering show cards for a department store.(he was a legit signpainter!))

In 1918, Burnett met his future wife at a restaurant where she was a cashier, and he saw some book she was reading, and suggested a better one, that he dropped off on his next stop. 

He was hire to edit a house magazine for the Cadillac Motor Car Company 

During World War I, Burnett joined the Navy for six months. His service was mostly at Great Lakes building a breakwater, a fact he later told his children "caused a great deal of agitation among the German High Command and was probably responsible for the loss of Verdun."

After the USN, Burnett returned to Cadillac. A few employees at Cadillac formed the LaFayette Motors Company – getting Burnett to move to Indianapolis to work for the new firm as advertising manager

He started his own advertising agency at age 42, in 1935, at the depths of the Depression, by selling his home.  He nurtured it, loved it and saw it grow into the fourth largest agency in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world.

After the shock of Pearl Harbor, Leo plunged into work for The War Advertising Council. One of his first acts was volunteering the agency’s time in the crusade to collect scrap metal for the war effort.

Philip Morris USA,  and its signature brand Marlboro, was one of the agency’s oldest and most historic clients, with Leo Burnett since 1954, when PM wanted to shift it's image away from it's decades as a woman's smoke

Burnett created The Marlboro Man to help sell a more masculine image for the first cigarette brand with a filter, and a Marlboro Man starred in nearly every major campaign for approximately 50 years

In 1955, the year the Marlboro Man campaign debuted, sales of Malboro hit $5 billion -- a 3,241% increase over 1954's sales.

Burnett firmly believed in the superiority of images over words and in the power of visuals in creating brand identity and his great imagination led him to the creation of fantastic characters who are still recognized and associated with the brand they represent today. Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man - just a couple examples

When Burnett retired, he also left his agency teams with a speech to top all speeches. In the speech, Burnett specifically calls for his name to be removed from the premises, if/when the place no longer cherishes ideas and the people who have them.


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett 

https://www.copernicanshift.com/tag/leo-burnett/

https://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/leo-burnett-chicago-goes-through-a-round-of-layoffs-as-philip-morris-pivots-away-from-cigarettes/153856/

https://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/?s=leo+burnett

https://www.emporioadv.it/blog/leo-burnett-personaggi-fantastici-e-dove-trovarli/

https://adpulp.com/leo-burnett-ad-legend/

https://leoburnett.az/thinking/leo-burnett-the-man-behind-the-legend/

Happy 100th birthday to Alex Xydias on March 22nd. Now you have a couple days to figure out how to get birthday wishes to him

there are only a few of the original hot rodders still around.... Isky, Ivo, and Gene Winfield are the only  others I can think of.

Alex graduated from jr high with Judy Garland and Jason Robards. He went to Fairfax High School with Mickey Rooney and Ricardo Montalbán.

While riding his bicycle around Hollywood running errands for his mom, he was sent to a market on La Brea to buy a sack of potatoes. Coincidentally he happened on a gas station and repair shop at La Brea and Oakwood that had Midget race cars in the back shop and Alex was fascinated watching the Midget cars being maintained. Years later he would learn that the Brea Wood Garage was operated by Vic Edelbrock.

Alex Xydias is a WWII vet, as radio operator, top turret gunner, and engineer on a B-17, worked on P-40s and B-25s as a mechanic, was the founder of the So Cal Speed shop in 1946, El Mirage and Bonneville racer (and record setter) in a personally-built roadster, P 51 belly tanker, coupe, and streamliner... one secret to his success was a mixture of 40 percent nitromethane. 

And he was at the first Bonneville meet in 49

And was the Car Craft publisher. 

And he or his cars made the cover of Hot Rod magazine 4 times in the 50s

And as a director, he helped launch an industry trade show that would eventually grow become the annual SEMA Show. 

And he partnered with Mickey Thompson and launched the SCORE Off-Road Equipment trade show.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/happy-100th-alex-xydias.1259038/

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=50783

https://inthegaragemedia.com/alex-xydias-so-cal-speed-shop-racing-part-one/

‘The Flying’ Hawaiian’, Danny Ongais has left the rest of us behind (thanks for the tip Mike!)

Born in Kahului, Ongais got his start racing motorcycles, and returned from a stint as a U.S. Army paratrooper to win the Hawaiian state motorcycle championship in 1960. 

More success on two wheels followed, but he wasted little time in branching out and added AHRA Gas Dragster titles to his resume in 1963 and 1964, followed by the NHRA AA Dragster championship the following year.

 A switch to Funny Cars later in the decade yielded two wins in a Ford Mustang for team owner Mickey Thompson in 1969. The Ongais/Thompson combination would prove to be even more potent on the speed record circuit, where they used a Mach 1 Mustang to set nearly 300 national and international records on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

At the 1966 U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Ongais took runner-up in the Top Fuel class to Mike Snively after triumphing over series legend Don Prudhomme in the semifinals. Three years later, now competing in Funny Car, he left IRP a champion in the blue Ford March 1 Mustang of Mickey Thompson. After adding nearly 300 national and international speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in the Mach 1 with the help of Thompson, Ongais was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2000 for drag racing.

By that point Ongais had already taken a swing at the Indy 500, but was turned away from the 1968 race on the basis of his almost complete lack of experience in open-wheelers. But his time in Europe with the Army had opened his eyes to road racing, and in the mid-1970s he began working up through the ranks of the American scene. His dominance of the 1974 SCCA season put him on the radar of entertainment mogul Ted Field.

After further success in F5000, the pair went into USAC and Indy car racing in 1976 under the Interscope Racing banner. Ongais made his debut at Ontario that year, and claimed his first win the following season at Michigan. He added an additional five victories in 1978 – more than anyone else in the field – but mechanical problems and inconsistency left him eighth in the points. 

Being the only Hawaiian among the 784 drivers who have started the Indianapolis 500 earned Ongais the famous nickname "The Flyin' Hawaiian." He made 11 Indianapolis 500 starts over three decades with four top-10 finishes.

https://racer.com/2022/02/28/danny-ongais-1942-2022/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/motor/indycar/2022/03/01/danny-ongais-indycar-dies-79/9329412002/

https://www.autoweek.com/racing/indycar/a39265929/danny-ongais-11-time-indianapolis-500-racer-rolex-24-winner-dies-at-79/

the first known street-legal fiberglass dune buggy, "Old Red", the 1st Manx, built on a shortened VW Beetle with a monocoque, fiberglass shell and Chevrolet pickup truck (trailing arm style) suspension, in late 1963 to May 1964 in his garage in Newport Beach, California.

In April 1967, Meyers and his friend Ted Mangels outfitted Old Red with a canvas top, knobby tires, and additional fuel tanks and drove the unpaved route down Mexico's Baja Peninsula - from Tijuana to La Paz - in 34 hours and 45 minutes, besting the previous time by more than five hours.

 The run not only captured the attention of off-road enthusiasts, it also inspired the first Mexico 1000 - the race that would later become the Baja 1000 - which Mangels and Vic Wilson won in another Meyers Manx later that year.

from the mold that made it, 11 more were pulled. 

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2014/02/19/old-red-the-first-meyers-manx-dune-buggy-to-go-on-national-historic-vehicle-register

great news, my fellow appreciators of fine craftsmanship of wood working and work benches... I just learned that Henry O Studley had an impressive workbench, which hasn't been hidden away and forgotten

https://blog.lostartpress.com/2015/03/25/update-virtuoso-the-tool-cabinet-and-workbench-of-henry-o-studley/

if you're new around here, and don't know what the hell I'm talking about when mentioning Studley's tool chest, it's this MASTERPIECE that's been blowing my mind since 2006:

Click on that for full size, it's stunning

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/03/most-amazing-tool-box-youll-ever-see.html
http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/tool_chest_made_by_studley.htm

http://benchcrafted.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-temple-of-studley.html

one guy even made a reproduction of Studley's workbench http://donsbarn.com/coming-together-studleys-workbench-replica/

Jacques Cousteau led an extraordinary life, producing 120 documentaries, writing over 50 books and winning three Oscars for his feature films about the undersea world. That only occurred because of crashing his father’s Salmson roadster, due to his headlights suddenly going out, when in the hairpins of the Vosges Mountain, racing to attend a friend’s wedding in 1935

driving up the mountain at night, without warning, the headlamps suddenly cut out.

The accident that ended his aviation career left him in a hospital with twelve broken bones, his left arm in five pieces and his right completely paralyzed.

To recuperate, he took up swimming to rebuild strength in his injured arms

In 1950 a member of the Guinness brewing dynasty agreed to lease the Calypso, a former Royal Navy minesweeper, to Cousteau for a symbolic one Franc per year.

Cousteau also invented the first shark cage, the underwater scooter (made famous by the Bond film, Thunderball) and field tested the first proper diving watch, the Rolex Submariner, with a rotating bezel to help divers’ time their ascents and avoid the dreaded ‘bends.’ Cousteau is also credited with building the world’s first decompression chambers.

https://www.motorpunk.co.uk/articles/car-crash-made-jacques-cousteau/

I thought I'd posted this years ago, as I remember the story quite well, and found it fascinating at the time.. but since I couldn't find a trace of a previous post about it, here is it.