A moment of time changing the history of employment, the horsedrawn fire engine in route to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire

found on http://edwardianera.tumblr.com/page/7

A variety of interesting car stuff, on tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com

Imagine, how crude a car has to be to think that 2 hundred miles is an incredible achievement

Air pump, relevant tools permanently attached, and a rack to hang the bike while working on it. Installed on campus at the University of Virginia.

 A 1920's photo of a sign pointing the way to the Lincoln Highway

 Reason that big wheel is called a Penny Farthing

And the pain in the butt that a rental car can be.
these and more mixed in with an ecclectic and informative collection http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/

the drastic effect of the assembly line technique

The large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was debuted by Ransom Olds at his Oldsmobile factory in 1902. The assembly line style of mass production and interchangeable parts had been pioneered in the U.S. by Thomas Blanchard in 1821, at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. This concept was greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1914.

As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in fifteen minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing productivity eightfold (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colors available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926. This is the source of Ford's apocryphal remark, "any color as long as it's black". In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.

Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism," and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the economic rise of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using "less productive methods". (higher quality work from master mechanics, master carpenters, master craftsmen were forced out of auto manufacturing, replaced by unskilled labor at drastically less per hour) http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/07/changing-times-in-auto-industry.html

In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide seeing the founding of Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany 1925; in 1921, Citroen was the first native European manufacturer to adopt the production method. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke; by 1930, 250 companies which did not, had disappeared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile

The first bus in America, was built by Mack in 1900

Jack was 14 when he ran away from home, became a mule driver on the railroads and then went on to be an engineer on heav equipment and ships. Later he went into business with his brothers

Now, the Mack trucking company has a museum and heritage center in the Mack Customer Center in Allentown Pennsylvania http://www.macktrucks.com/assets/mack/Bulldog/BulldogMagazine2011Volume1.pdf page 3

“It gives us a powerful way to immerse customers from North America and around the world in the products, history and culture of the Mack brand.” said Mike Reardon, Mack vice president, marketing.

Created inside the company’s former engineering development and test center, the Mack Customer Center includes a product showroom, an 18,000-square-foot modification center and a two-lane, .73 mile oval track, allowing customers to put their vehicles to the test. The track has multiple grades, on- and off-road durability courses and a skid pad.


Inside, customers can relax, meet and work in a comfortable reception area or at the “Bulldog Café.” The new facility also houses the Mack Museum and Heritage Center, which will open to the public beginning November 1, 2010. http://www.macktrucks.com/default.aspx?pageid=5094  

interesting distinction, tri 5 sedan delivery vs station wagon

Sedan delivery is classified as a commercial vehicle and therefore a truck, a station wagon is just a car. Which do you think has a better chance of winning against the competition?

B&M bought Flowmaster

Flowmaster was founded in 1983 and really came into their own during the late 1990′s. The company has floundered recently in the face of stiffer competition and though economic times have cut into their market share. B&M Racing hopes that the iconic brand can be restored to its former glory, and sees Flowmaster as a key to expanded beyond their core business of shifters and transmission products.

Jalopnik changes format, traffic and comments take a nosedive, down 24% in 3 months according to one source, 75% in another

Above stat graph from http://karakullake.blogspot.com/2011/03/jalopniks-new-format-design.html but looking at Alexa, http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/jalopnik.com pageviews are down 25% in the last 3 months.

1967 Rebel station wagon regional models

The Mariner (600 units) in Barbados blue with panels trim of simulated bleached teakwood planking accented by narrow black horizontal stripes and a "nautical anchor" medallion. The interior featured anchors and stars decorating dark blue suede bolster panels of the seats, which also had white piping and broad horizontal pleated inserts of medium blue antelope grain vinyl and was sold along the coastal regions of the United States.

Above, the Mariner

Below the Westerner

The Westerner (500 units) in Frost White with plankwood trim side inserts and a "Pony Express" medallion. The interior featured stallion brown vinyl that simulated "richly tooled" leather on the seats and door panels in combination with white antelope grained vinyl and was available west of the Mississippi River.

The Briarcliff (400 units) in Matador Red with simulated black camera grain side panels and "regal" medallions, as well as its own black "antelope grain" vinyl interior. The Briarwood was marketed in major markets in the east and south.

Designed to spur interest in all of AMC's products and to generate increased sales for the company, the special wagons were limited for sale to geographical areas.

Info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Rebel learned about it and got photos from
http://svammelsurium.blogg.se/2010/may/mariner-westener-briarcliff-rambler.html

If you have a car shipped, I recommend inspecting the cargo container before they lock it closed and send it off

If you look closely, you'll the see above photo has 2 pieces of lumbar stacked on top of each other , both sides of the container, from the front to the back. Doesn't look safe to me.

Photos from http://svammelsurium.blogg.se becuase if I recall correctly, that blogger works at a recieving location where collector cars come into Sweden

You have less than a second to see the biker... Click on the image to see the full size first

Too late, next time slow down and be careful, it's the only way to see better... Ducati advertising found on http://autoadvert.tumblr.com/

Rental car fuel charges as of last week, before gas prices jumped

National...........$5.01 a gallon
Avis..................$7.99
Hertz................$8.29

This is what you will be charged if they have to top off the tank, if you opt not to prepay them, and don't fill the car before returning it.

I've just added a translator widget, adapted from the brilliant Dicasblogger.com.br translator widget

I adapted the code from Dicasblogger.bz to the following, but since they were are writing their blog in Brazil, they speak Portuguese, and never wrote a code for translating anything to Portuguese, nor did they use a flag of Brazil, so I need one of those also, I can't adapt any code to translate from English to Portuguese... can anyone write the code to do that?
Here is one source code to show an example of what it takes, But it's not complete or all that would be displayed would be the flag, and none of the code text. So, clicking on the flag will work for a translator... but to see and example of the source code behind I'm going to have to delete a little bit of it

!--– Add English to Italian –-- a
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"
onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/translate?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&langpair=en%7Cit&hl=en&ie=UTF8'); return false;"
title="Google-Translate-English to Italian" img style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px solid; BORDER-LEFT: 0px solid; WIDTH: 32px; HEIGHT: 32px; BORDER-TOP: 0px solid; CURSOR: pointer; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px solid" title="Google-Translate-English to Italian" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/translate?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&langpair=en%7Cit&hl=en&ie=UTF8'); return false;" alt="Google-Translate-English to Italian" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_mcq01yDJ2uY/Sdke2xCmrPI/AAAAAAAAAj0/Jv14yyDo1i4/Italy.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" /

I deleted all the <> >< stuff so you can read it.

What I did adapting the code from Portuguese to English as the origin language seems to have worked, if you find it didn't, I'm sorry. I can't do anymore with it, coding is beyond me.