A Or B?, Million-Dollar Concept Car Edition

First…the death of former Houston Astros pitcher JR Richard struck close to home. He was one of the first players, if not the first, whose career I followed who didn’t play for the Baltimore Orioles.

I subscribed to The Sporting News at age 10. That publication opened my world to baseball beyond Baltimore. Its minor league coverage was a revelation to me. In this age of Internet Instant Information it is difficult for younger people, and even older ones, to understand a time when not everything was chronicled and available 24/7 in real time.

I first learned about Richard in The Sporting News. The Astros had jumped him over class Double-A to Triple-A in 1971, when he was just 21. He finished his minor league season with 202 strikeouts in just 173 innings and a fine 2.45 ERA.

Richard made his major league debut that September and in his first major league game he amassed 15 strikeouts. That is still the major league record for most strikeouts by a pitcher in his major league debut.

Despite the auspicious start, Richard’s control (lack thereof, more specifically) held him back and he didn’t establish himself as a regular major league starting pitcher until 1975. In time, he became one of the best and most intimidating pitchers in baseball.

Richard was 6-foot-8 and threw very hard. He was death on right-handed hitters (Richard threw right-handed). In his ill-fated final season of 1980, right-handed hitters hit just .124 (or .144, I’m not sure) against him.

Richard joined Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax as the only pitchers in major league history with consecutive seasons with 300+ strikeouts when he accomplished that feat in 1978 and 1979. He also led the league in ERA in 1979.

He was off to an amazing start in 1980, despite suffering from arm fatigue. He threw four shutouts in just 17 starts, compiled an excellent 1.90 ERA, and–of course–had more strikeouts than innings pitched. Apparently, that’s fairly common in today’s baseball, but wasn’t in Richard’s time.

His season, his career, and very nearly his life came to an end on July 31, 1980 when he suffered a major stroke. Richard had been complaining of arm fatigue and numbness and tingling in his pitching hand all season, but many did not believe him and doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital cleared him to play on July 25.

His post-baseball life was difficult. By the winter of 1994 Richard was homeless and living under a highway overpass in Houston. He was befriended by a church minister and began working at an asphalt company.

I don’t know if he had been vaccinated against the damn virus, but Richard died in a Houston hospital on Wednesday, August 4th and his family claimed he had been suffering from COVID-19 complications. From Pinterest a picture of James Rodney (JR) Richard:

See the source image

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I almost split today’s content into two posts. Yes, A Or B? returns. This edition is total fantasy.

You have stumbled onto a million dollars and decide you want to build a faithful replica of a famous concept car. One is the first concept car, the Buick Y-Job of 1938. The other is Tom Tjaarda’s legendary Rondine. You can only build one and you can assume that both will be fully modern underneath the skin. Which one do you want?

See the source image

The Y-Job was fully functional and was very much ahead of its time, including electric-powered windows and a power-operated convertible top.

Yes, this is total fantasy, but what a dream! I think if my wonderful wife and I actually won $50+ million in a lottery, finding a company to build one of these would be one of the first things I would do. So, which one would you have built?

#AOrB

#MillionDollarConceptCarEdition

#JRRichard

#RondineConceptCar

#BuickYJob

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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A Or B, Self-Indulgent Edition

It’s been some time since I wrote an A Or B post. Today I will ask you to formally choose between two idiosyncratic favorites of mine, two General Motors products that had promise, but were either out of sync with the market or poorly executed at first or both. Alphabetically by make:

See the source image

The top photo of a Buick Reatta is from streetpeep.com and the bottom photo of a Cadillac Allanté is from Barrett-Jackson. Both cars were offered from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. Combined in a total of eleven model years—seven for the Allanté and four for the Reatta–only about 43,000 of these were sold. Coincidentally, sales for the two cars were very similar: 21,751 for the Reatta and 21,430 for the Allanté.

As every regular regular reader knows, I am quite enamored with the looks of these cars. The Reatta was never a performance car and only in its final year of production, 1993, was the Allanté a solid performer.

OK, kind people: Buick Reatta or Cadillac Allanté?

#AOrB

#BuickReatta

#CadillacAllante

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Here are the dimensions (in inches) for the last production year of each car:

CAR	Wheelbase	Length	Width	Height
Buick Reatta (1991)	99	184	73	51
Cadillac Allanté (1993)	99	179	74	52

A Real A Or B

OK, two pics first…

That white smudge is Venus. Not sure why the pic is so blurry; it looks fine on my phone. Must be a resolution thing. Any help, photobyjohnbo? Ironically, I named the photo “A Better Picture Of Venus” before I saw it here. No rest for the “wicked,” I guess.

That is my wonderful wife holding up my newest acquisition. While Guck Foogle T-Shirts are plentiful, I had to have this made. I will wear it as often as possible and when it wears out, I will buy one or two more. Fack Fucebook!

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OK, today’s A Or B is not a theoretical exercise. Tangent…looking out my office window can be quite the distraction. I can’t get a good picture because of the window screen and schmutz (“dirt” in Yiddish), but my eyes and brain are having quite the feast at present with the bands of orange, the cactus and the distant mountain peaks. Just since I began writing this tangent, the sky has developed a large orange-pink feature. (Sorry, I am partially color-blind and terrible at assigning the “right” name to many colors.) It’s still 10-15 minutes before “sunrise.”

Anyway, back to the cars…as every regular reader of this blog knows, my wonderful wife and I are on the verge of buying a car, I think. While we will make the final decision, of course, I would like to get your choice and read your thoughts about these two cars:

See the source image

The photo comparison is not apples to apples because the picture of the Lexus RC is of “studio quality” and the picture of the Cadillac ATS coupe is not.

OK, what do you want to know? For this exercise price does matter and assume the Lexus is $5,000 more expensive, let’s say $30,000 compared to $25,000 for the Cadillac. Assume the turbocharged 4-cylinder engine for each car.

The rear seats in the Cadillac are larger, but the trunk space is virtually the same. I have no “data” on how the RC drives because we haven’t driven one, yet.

If you want more info before casting your vote, please feel free to let me know. OK, Lexus RC or Cadillac ATS coupe? Thanks.

#AOrB

#FackFucebook

#LexusRC

#CadillacATSCoupe

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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A Or B, O-Kei

First…when the damn virus became the front-page news every day I was determined not to let it take over my blog. I wanted this space to be a refuge from the unrelentingly bad news.

While I have little doubt that the MSM has over-reported the negative and under-reported the positive, this damn virus has been a scourge of scourges. That’s why the news that the UK has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine for use is worth mentioning. The U.K. government is the first in the world to formally approve the U.S.-German vaccine for widespread use; that approval means Britain will be one of the first countries to begin vaccinating its population.

The FDA will not be formally considering Pfizer’s and Moderna’s applications for emergency use authorization until next week. The US does not do everything better than every other country in the world. It is true, though, that 60% of all new pharmaceuticals come from the US. That wouldn’t happen under a government scheme of price controls and other constraints.

Let’s hope the recent Goldman Sachs report on a vaccination timeline is at least close to right. This report, based on a combination of supply assessments (using data from leading vaccine developers) and demand using consumer survey data, estimates that half the population of the US and Canada will be vaccinated by the end of April. This report did predict that the UK would reach the 50% threshold before the US and Canada (by the end of March).

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Yes, I love Corvettes and first-generation Buick Rivieras and the DeTomaso Longchamp and Aston Martins, etc. Like many automobile enthusiasts, I am a big fan of high-performance cars with great styling.

However, I have a thing for small cars. While I do not like the SmartCar, I think the Scion iQ was a handsome little car (picture from Auto Evolution).

See the source image

Today’s A Or B post was inspired by an episode of Everyday Driver. In this episode Todd Deeken and Paul Schmucker drive an Autozam AZ-1 (manufactured by Mazda) and a Suzuki Cappuccino–Kei cars–in the streets of Seattle.

It was actually kind of funny to watch the 6-foot-3 Deeken try to wedge himself into these Kei cars. In case you don’t know, or even if you do, the Kei car category was created by the Japanese government in 1949, and the regulations have been revised several times since. These regulations specify a maximum vehicle size, engine capacity, and power output, so that owners may enjoy both tax and insurance benefits. I believe the current regulations are that to qualify as a Kei car, and so the owner can receive the tax/insurance benefits, the car cannot be more than 11 feet long, more than 5 feet wide and the engine cannot have a displacement of more than 660 cc, which is 40 cubic inches.

These cars have been enormously popular in Japan, at times reaching a 40% market share. Not surprisingly, when the Japanese government raised the Kei-car tax by 50% in 2014, sales of the cars declined. The people who think taxes don’t matter so government can make them as high as they want should have operations to have their heads removed from their rectums. <end soapbox>

As one of the hosts said (I think it was Paul Schmucker), not all cars are world cars that can be sold in every market. As the facts that more than 70% of American adults are overweight and one-third are obese are a major driver in the move away from cars and towards SUVs and pickup trucks, only a very small percentage of Americans could drive these cars comfortably.

The top photo of an Autozam AZ-1 (without its gull-wing doors open) is from Import a Vehicle. The bottom photo of a Suzuki Cappuccino is from Wikipedia.

See the source image

I believe both cars use the same Suzuki engine: a turbocharged, 3-cylinder engine of 657 cc displacement (40 cubic inches) that produces 63 HP/63 LB-FT of torque.

OK, maybe this is an extremely idiosyncratic manifestation of my “enthusiasm” for cars, but I like what I like. What can I say? Besides, where else can you read about Maseratis one day and Kei cars the next?

Kind people, please choose between the Autozam AZ-1 and the Suzuki Cappuccino. Thanks.

#HelpOnTheWay?

#AOrB

#KeiCars

#AutozamAZ-1

#SuzukiCappuccino

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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A Or B 2

First…from here comes the “news” that the FDA has asked a group of advisors to set aside December 8-10 to participate in meetings to discuss COVID vaccines. The meetings would be a key step in the agency’s emergency authorization process. If emergency use is approved next month that would represent the fastest vaccine development in history, by far. Maybe I’m out of my lane, but I think the ability to sequence the virus genome must have played a role in the speed of development AND will continue to revolutionize future vaccine research.

Second…from here comes the news that the FAA has cleared the Boeing 737 Max to fly after the planes were grounded for 20 months. Boeing has made the automated flight control system “less aggressive” and added more redundancies.

Yes, I rely on CNBC for my news. I don’t trust CNN and I don’t trust Fox News. I know I’m in the minority among Americans who seek news.

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OK, after a long hiatus A Or B returns. Use whatever criteria you want to choose between these two cars that, in this case, have a lot in common.

See the source image

The top picture of a 1935 Auburn Speedster 851 is from Mecum and the bottom picture of a 1937 Cord 812 is from Top Speed. Obviously, I chose photos that showed the most famous views of the cars.

Both cars represent the agony and the ecstasy of the Cord Corporation. Both exteriors were designed by the legendary Gordon Buehrig.

Do you care about specs? To me, these cars are more rolling sculpture than engineering marvels and, besides, cars from the 1930s cannot compare in any way to modern cars in terms of performance and reliability. OK…the highest output Auburn engine for 1935 was a 280 cubic-inch, supercharged inline-8, made by aircraft company Lycoming, that produced 150 HP, but probably had more torque than 150 LB-FT given its old-fashioned undersquare (bore < stroke) layout. The ’37 Cord had a 289 cubic-inch V-8 made by Lycoming, which in its highest supercharged spec made 190 HP.

From what is my most valuable book, Encyclopedia of American Cars by the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide®, comes this passage:

“Perhaps to avoid a brewing scandal over his management of these enterprises [Duesenberg, Cord, Lycoming, Ansted Engines, etc.], Cord fled to England in 1934 and promptly dropped from sight…Like a prodigal son, E.L. Cord returned from England in 1936 to salvage his crumbling empire, only to find the IRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission ready to launch major investigations of his doings.”

Cord’s automotive empire collapsed shortly thereafter and he sold what was left of his corporation in 1937. Of course, he later made millions in real estate and in uranium mines. He also became a US Senator from Nevada, which is where he moved after he sold his company.

I think Elon Musk represents the spirit of people like E.L. Cord and Preston Tucker. Of course, the automobile business is one that requires huge capital investment to succeed in any meaningful way. The sheer size has taken some of the romance away.

OK…1935 Auburn 851 Speedster or 1937 Cord 812? Please let me know which car you prefer and, if you are so inclined, why. Thanks.

#AOrB

#COVIDVaccine

#1935Auburn851Speedster

#1937Cord812

#ErrettLobbanCord

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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