In the mid-1970s, with sport-utility vehicles and vans still operating on the fringes of the market, the station wagon was the vehicle of choice for motoring through great swaths of this great land. And, as far as size was concerned, 1976 was the high-water mark for the biggest domestic-brand wagons—cars like this Plymouth Gran Fury.
Come 1977, GM’s big wagons would be downsized; Ford and Mercury wagons would follow two years later. The Mopar trio of Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler entries wouldn’t survive to see 1978. But in 1976, one could still stride into a Chrysler-Plymouth showroom and drive off in a grandly proportioned Plymouth station wagon, one sitting astride a proper 124-inch wheelbase.
Although it’s a product of the Pentastar’s most humble division, there’s nothing parsimonious about this Plymouth. Not only is it the brand’s largest offering, but it’s the mack-daddy Sport Suburban, the top-of-the-line wagon entry. Its flanks displaying vinyl wood-grain denote it as a chariot of the stolid middle class, unlike its denuded and more utilitarian siblings. Furthermore, it’s optioned with groovy patterned-cloth upholstery, a 400-cubic-inch V-8, A/C, a tilting-and-telescoping steering column, a roof rack (naturally), and the must-have third-row seat.
It’s on offer from Gesswein Motors, of Milbank, South Dakota. With an indicated 33,355 miles, the ask is a not unreasonable $17,450. Rather than have it shipped, we suggest you pick it up in person and then point it toward Mount Rushmore, which is about 450 miles due west. What better way to get in tune with bicentennial America than cruising across the Great Plains in a giant station wagon on a road trip to visit Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln? They don’t make ’em like that anymore—cars or presidents.
“The Spirit of ’76” is C/D’s Fourth of July holiday-weekend series highlighting some of the most awesome cars for sale from our nation’s bicentennial year.
We’ve previously profiled occasional C/D contributor P.J. O’Rourke’s Driving Like Crazy: 30 Years of Vehicular Hellbending, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still need it.
A list of “bests” is always temporary, but these books will add weight to anyone’s corpus of knowledge for cars, racing, and race drivers. Our list includes recent titles as well as some oldies that deserve reacquaintance. And nobody’s automotive library is complete without Sir Stirling Moss’s All but My Life: Face to Face with Ken Purdy, Purdy’s The Kings of the Road, Denis Jenkinson’s The Racing Driver: The Theory and Practice of Fast Driving, and The Reckoning by the late David Halberstam on the parallels of the American and Japanese car industries.
Total Competition: Lessons in Strategy from Formula One Ross Brawn and Adam Parr; Simon & Schuster
A valuable peek behind the veil at the politics of Formula 1 and the sport’s economics over the past 20 years. Includes portraits of Bernie Ecclestone, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, designer Adrian Newey, and the Jaguar, Ferrari, Honda, and Benetton teams where Brawn held sway as technical director and team principal. The account is marred by the tendency of the authors to fall back on simple self-help mantras and overly weighty references to classical texts such as Carl von Clausewitz’s On War and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Still, a winner.
Corvette: America’s Star-Spangled Sports Car, the Complete History Karl Ludvigsen; Bentley Publishers
The best book on Corvettes: comprehensive, informative, easy to read, and not overly technical. It’s no surprise, as Ludvigsen’s Excellence Was Expected remains the canonical work on Porsche.
Klemantaski: Master Motorsports Photographer Paul Parker, photography by Louis Klemantaski; Motorbooks
Hands down, the most evocative photos of cars at speed—of the phenomenon of speed itself—ever produced. It should be remembered that Klemantaski, old-fashioned Leica in hand, worked at a time when track photographers had such close access they could get within feet of cars sliding by at barrier-less venues like the Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps.
Photography as high art, even by Avedon or Cartier-Bresson standards.
Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving Carl Lopez; Bentley Publishers
The go-to manual by the Skip Barber School’s emeritus instructor, a man who knows how to drive and how to teach.
Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500 Art Garner; Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press
Writing a book is hard, especially when the book in question is based on meticulous research that surfaces as page-turning prose. This is such a page turner on the 1964 Indy 500, which incinerated Eddie Sachs and rookie Dave MacDonald on the second lap and left the racing world aching.
The Unfair Advantage Mark Donohue with Paul Van Valkenburgh; Bentley Publishers
Written shortly before the death of the great Mark Donohue and recently reissued, this book does something very few racing memoirs manage to pull off: make readable the infinitely boring but indispensable business of setting up a car to win. Being at Donohue’s side as he prepares his Indy, Trans-Am, and Can-Am mounts, we see the all-consuming passion that carried this man to championships, including the Indy 500.
Can-Am 50th Anniversary: Flat Out with North America’s Greatest Race Series, 1966–74 George Levy, photography by Pete Biro; Quarto Publishing
The best account we have of the fierce, open-spec Can-Am series, which lasted eight years and featured almost all the world’s greatest drivers, many of whom Levy personally interviewed for his fine text.
Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR Neal Thompson; Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing
Thompson chronicles NASCAR’s moonshiner origins in the Depression-wracked South: divorces, drunks, knife fights, and back-road wrecks galore, as well as the “good ol’ boys” (including the then young and not-so-kempt Bill France) who made American stock-car racing into the gold mine it is today.
The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit Michael Cannell; Twelve/Grand Central Publishing
A chilling account of the Phil Hill/Wolfgang von Trips duel for the 1961 Formula 1 Championship. The portrait of Hill, who cooperated with the author, gives us a close-up of this oddly introspective man who played the classical organ, was afflicted with ulcers, and suffered from bad nerves before every race.
Portraits Jesse Alexander; David Bull Publishing
As the title suggests, this is a book of portraits, some posed, some candid, of the most important racers of the ’60s and ’70s. There’s Innes Ireland cracking his wonderfully raffish smile; a wasted Jimmy Clark just after winning at Spa; and a recently retired, grinning Dan Gurney with wife Evi, happy to have survived a lifetime of racing during which, he once explained to us, he’d lain awake in bed one night, counting the number of colleagues who’d perished in racing cars until he had to stop at 28. They’re all here, all the faces, all revealed as, above all, human.
The Cruel Sport: Grand Prix Racing 1959–1967 Robert Daley; Motorbooks
When Dan Gurney crashed into the crowd at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1960 and killed a young spectator, he commented to author Daley, “This is a cruel sport.” That’s how close Daley was to the action, and it shows in his incandescent portrait of Grand Prix racing during the sport’s dangerous glory years. The author was a deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department and has written scads of crime novels. It’s no surprise, then, that there’s a Hemingwavian muscularity here that gives this book a no-bullshit quality that’s rare in sports writing, whether it’s about the NFL, NBA, or driving at the limit in open-wheel cars at a time when drivers wore T-shirts and flimsy cork-lined Cromwell crash hats.
Shelby Cobra: The Snake that Captured the World Colin Comer; Motorbooks
From the early 260 Cobras to the Ferrari-beating Daytona Coupes, from Ken Miles to Bob Bondurant, and, of course, the garrulous, limelight-loving Shelby himself, this book by Road & Track contributing editor Comer gives the complete history, including the SoCal hot-rodding scene from which the Cobra coiled forth.
A French Kiss with Death: Steve McQueen and the Making of Le Mans Michael Keyser; Bentley Publishers
Replete with photos, this is a chronicle of McQueen’s passionate drive to make the ultimate racing movie, which cost the star his marriage and nearly his career. Unlike many racing authors, Keyser knows a thing or two about racing. His familiarity and understanding of the world makes French Kiss a particular pleasure.
Automotive Handbook—9th Edition Robert Bosch; Bentley Publishers
A handy 1500-page encyclopedia of everything automotive; chockablock with info, diagrams, pictures, tables, and charts.
Side Glances, Volume 3: 1998–2002 Peter Egan; Brooklands Books
Another from the Road & Track crew, this time a collection of easily digested columns from the magazine. Because Egan’s a Midwest boy through and through, his writing calls to mind the folksy easiness and sunny wisdom of Garrison Keillor, which is certainly no bad thing.
When Ford hired Jim Hackett as its new chief executive officer last month, he delivered a mandate: In a rapidly changing industry, the automaker no longer could afford to take a plodding approach to making decisions. Ford needed to move faster.
The company took a step in that direction Thursday, consolidating its artificial-intelligence and robotics researchers into a single new team that will explore using those technologies on a broad range of transportation projects.
The team will report to Randy Visintainer, Ford’s director of autonomous-vehicle development and controls. While self-driving vehicles will be a significant focus, they won’t be the lone one. Ford expects the researchers will evaluate artificial-intelligence applications for drones, mobility projects, and the technical requirements for entry into global markets
“I can tell you there’s so much going on in the world of advanced engineering, it’s imperative that we maintain a crystal-clear focus on the most important elements to help us achieve our vision of changing the way the world moves,” wrote Ken Washington, Ford’s chief technology officer, in a Medium blog post.
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“This means you’ll likely see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the road, one led by the Ford team conducting advanced research and another by Argo AI.”
—Ken Washington, Ford
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Some of those visions are well documented, with the company’s recent investments in artificial-intelligence and high-definition mapping companies. Others, Washington noted, haven’t yet been revealed.
Perhaps he hints at some of the more secretive projects, saying the team will also explore “aerial robotics to enhance first- and last-mile travel.” Whether Ford will follow with plans for a contraption similar to the likes of Uber’s flying taxi or the Airbus self-flying Vahana concept, well, that’s an intriguing thought. For the time being, Ford is focused on the process of discovering and refining its next innovations.
The new research team will work with Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based artificial-intelligence company that Ford made a $1 billion investment in last year. Argo will continue to do the bulk of the work developing the virtual driver system for Ford’s first generation of autonomous vehicles, a company spokesperson said, while the new team concentrates its efforts on more fledgling technologies.
“This means you’ll likely see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the road—one led by the Ford team conducting advanced research, and another by Argo AI, developing and testing our virtual driver system for production,” Washington wrote.
In his introductory remarks, Hackett stressed that the company needs to match the speed of the ever-changing industry. But in terms of autonomous vehicles, the company’s approach hasn’t necessarily been lacking. An independent report issued earlier this year by Navigant Research found that Ford’s autonomous strategy and execution ranked as the most effective out of the 18 companies examined.
Ford has previously stated its intent to put Level 4 autonomous vehicles—those that never require input from drivers when the system is active but might have limitations on the conditions in which they operate—into production by 2021. Combining the AI and robotics teams may show that Hackett and others are starting to make plans for what happens beyond that first autonomous launch.
