Posts Tagged cars
While our annual Motor Muster weekend takes us back to an era of classic cruisers, this year's Saturday night Record Hop USA! dance party is focusing on one particular year and a moment in music history: 1964 and the arrival of the Beatles in America.
While we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the British Invasion in 2014, the recent induction of Ringo Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Paul McCartney hitting the road for the summer festival circuit remind us that we don't need an official anniversary to honor The Fab Four whenever we want.
This Saturday you can join us for a night of dancing and and favorite 1960s hits in Greenfield Village during Motor Muster. For those who can't join us for dance lessons on Main Street, you can learn more about 1964 and the Beatles' first trip to America thanks to our collections and this blog post from Curator of Public Life Donna Braden.
Lish Dorset is Social Media Manager at The Henry Ford.Additional Readings:
- Motor Muster
- The Henry Ford Plans for Motor Muster to Return to Greenfield Village Father’s Day Weekend, June 19-20
popular culture, by Lish Dorset, music, Greenfield Village, car shows, cars, Motor Muster, events
We’ve already made much about the 50th anniversary of Jim Clark’s win, with his rear-engine Lotus-Ford, at the 1965 Indianapolis 500-Mile Race. But it is a big deal. History generally unfolds in a gradual process, but Clark’s victory was a singular turning point for the race. We were delighted that the folks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway agreed and, with generous assistance from the speedway's Hall of Fame Museum, invited us to take the car down for this year’s event.
We kicked off race weekend on Thursday with a great panel discussion open to the media. I was honored to sit with fellow panelists Clive Chapman, proprietor of Great Britain’s Classic Team Lotus and son of Colin Chapman – designer of our car; Leonard Wood, co-owner of Wood Brothers Racing – the oldest active team in NASCAR – and a member of Jim Clark’s 1965 pit crew; and Dario Franchitti, a three-time Indy 500 winner and four-time IndyCar Series Champion – and a certified Clark-ophile. Continue Reading
Henry Ford Museum, Driven to Win, race car drivers, race cars, racing, Indy 500, cars, by Matt Anderson
This year marks the 99th running of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, more commonly known as the Indy 500. Since the race’s inception in 1911, men and women from around the world have participated, but only 5 drivers have come from Scotland. With 2015 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first Scottish win at Indy, here is a look at the five Scots who brought their talent from Dunfermline, Glasgow, Bathgate, Milton, and Kilmany to the Brickyard.
Jim Clark (1936-1968) became the first Scottish driver to compete at the Indy 500 in 1963, going on to start the race in five consecutive years (1963-1967). In his Indy rookie year, Clark took second place, 34.04 seconds behind Parnelli Jones. After dropping out of the 1964 race with suspension problems, Clark rebounded the next year by crossing the finish line in his Lotus-Ford 38/1 almost two full minutes ahead of Jones. The year 1966 witnessed another second place finish, this time to Graham Hill, and 1967 saw an early exit after 35 laps due to piston problems. Unfortunately, Clark would not have the opportunity to compete the next year, as he was killed during a Formula Two race in Hockenheim, Germany on April 7, 1968. Continue Reading
Inspired by Thomas Edison, Oliver Kuttner has not only driven his Very Light Car into engineering history, he’s also got one parked at the Henry Ford Museum.
Creating something new is arguably one of the most satisfying achievements in life. As engineers, our careers are littered with accounts where we’ve improved designs, given life to concepts and maybe even built something brand new and impactful.
For Edison2 founder Oliver Kuttner, all of those things have happened and his X-Prize winning Very Light Car (VLC) stands in the Henry Ford Museum’s growing collection of engineering marvels.
But unlike many of the stories about engineering brilliance, Oliver’s isn’t one about a lone genius working in solitude. Instead, his story is more modern – it’s one that revolves around inspiration coupled with collaboration. Continue Reading
by Kyle Maxey, Thomas Edison, engineering, environmentalism, Henry Ford Museum, Driving America, cars
From its first running in 1911, the Indianapolis 500 has been the most prestigious automobile race in the United States. But in the early 1960s, it was falling behind the technological times. Lithe, rear-engine cars lit up Formula One circuits everywhere, while Indy remained tied to heavy front-engine roadsters not fundamentally changed in a decade. It would take an English designer and a Scottish driver, with some help from an all-American racer and a Big Three automaker, to break the mold 50 years ago this month. Continue Reading
race cars, race car drivers, Henry Ford Museum, Driven to Win, racing, Indy 500, Ford Motor Company, cars, by Matt Anderson
Ultra-Mileage in the Motor City: The 2015 Shell Eco-marathon Americas
Earlier this month, we at The Henry Ford were excited to participate in the Shell Eco-marathon Americas, held in Detroit’s Cobo Center from April 9-12. More than 1,000 high school and college students, representing the United States, Canada, Brazil and Guatemala, competed to determine which of their 113 teams produced the car capable of the best fuel mileage.
Shell, the global energy company, sponsored fuel-mileage competitions as early as 1939, but more recently the Eco-marathon has evolved into three events held annually in Europe, Asia and the Americas. This year marks the first time that the Americas competition took place in the Motor City. Teams may enter cars in one of two classes. Prototype cars strive for maximum fuel efficiency with exotic materials and designs. Urban Concept cars resemble street vehicles complete with lights, signals and working horns. Teams using internal combustion engines may power their vehicles with gasoline, diesel, natural gas or ethanol. Those using electricity can choose between lithium-based batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Whatever the fuel, the goal is the same: squeeze as much distance out of it as possible. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, Michigan, making, events, environmentalism, education, Detroit, childhood, cars, by Matt Anderson
The Henry Ford has an active program through which we loan artifacts from our collection, particularly those that we are not actively displaying, to other museums and institutions. We currently have more than 200 objects out on loan, and we digitize each object before it leaves our campus. This week, we’ve digitized a couple of renderings of the Lincoln Futura, including this one. These drawings will be included in a short exhibition at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Mich., along with an already-digitized scale model of the Futura from our collections, beginning in mid-April. If you’re in the metro Detroit area, be sure to check out these artifacts at Lawrence Tech, and if you’re not, keep an eye on our collections website to see what other treasures from Henry’s attic are going on loan.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
events, Michigan, design, Ford Motor Company, 20th century, 1950s, drawings, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl
It was time once again for four days of education and fellowship as the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM) convened for its annual conference from March 17-20. Our host this year was the wonderful National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, some 50 miles southeast of Cleveland. Approximately 65 volunteers, administrators, curators and board members, representing institutions from Maine to California, gathered to discuss the state of the automobile museum world.
Session topics covered most aspects of museum management. There were presentations on grant research and writing, exhibit planning, marketing and merchandising, and non-profit tax codes. Few talks could match the session on disaster planning for pure drama, though. Wendell Strode, Executive Director of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, updated us on his institution's infamous sinkhole disaster of February 2014. Though five vintage Corvettes were damaged beyond repair, the museum was featured in more than 2,000 media outlets around the world, and visitation jumped astronomically due to the coverage. I continue to be impressed by the speed and style with which Wendell and his staff responded to the crisis. Continue Reading
Regenerative gas turbine engine, 130 horsepower.
Chrysler experimented with turbine engines for some 25 years. The Turbine could run on almost anything – gasoline, diesel, kerosene, even peanut oil (with exhaust that smelled like baking cookies)! While the fuel flexibility was terrific, the fuel economy was less than stellar. Chrysler ended the Turbine program in 1979. Note the huge air filter housing in front of the engine. The Turbine gulped about four times more air than a piston engine.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
1960s, 20th century, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
The John Clark Racing Photographs collection at The Henry Ford is made up of 35mm color slides taken by John Clark between 1994 and 2000, and covers a number of types of racing, including Indy cars, stock cars, off-road trucks, and motocross motorcycles. Digital Processing Archivist Janice Unger updated and published the finding aid for this archival collection last year, and as part of that effort, selected some representative images from the collection for digitization. One particularly dramatic example is this photo of Rod Millen driving a Toyota Tacoma during the 1998 Pikes Peak Hill Climb. To see some of the other highlights from the John Clark collection, visit our collection website.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
race cars, archives, by Ellice Engdahl, racing, photographs, digital collections, cars
