Have you been in a dentist’s office in 1970 to 1975 recently? If not, then you likely haven’t encountered this 1969 issue of Road & Track. Also, you probably are overdue for a fluoride treatment; do you think the government can do all the mind control it needs to do with just the fluoride in the water? It can’t. And while I can’t help with the fluoride, I can help with that issue of R&T, because I happened to find a copy recently and am more than happy to share it with you.
Now, due to a childhood promise I made to veteran funnyman Slappy White, I am forbidden to share anything of real value from old copies of Road & Track, Field & Stream, Guns & Ammo, Clam & Shell, and any other periodical with an ampersand in the middle of the name.
So, with that in mind, you’ll have to just make do with some of the more trivial bits and ads and other non-significant clippings from the issue. It’ll be fun! Mildly!
You know what kind of performance cars I really like? Carpet performance cars. Like what I assume is being discussed in this Carpet Performance Test Report! These carpets are six times better than other viscose carpets! Do I know what a viscose carpet is? No! Did I just look it up? Kinda! Do I know any better now? A little?
You could write to them and get free carpet samples! Holy shit, carpet samples? What is this, Sex Christmas?
Look at this Pininfarina-designed Bentley; it’s quite a famous car, known as the Coupé Speziale, and was designed by Paolo Martin. It’s thought to be the inspiration for the later Rolls-Royce Camargue, but what I find most striking are those massive TV-like headlamps. They give the car a kind of peculiar look from the front, but there’s no denying this was an elegant machine.
When I was growing up, every neighborhood seemed to have at least one Volkswagen-based kit car being built in some backyard, but I don’t recall seeing ads for kit cars like these in car magazines. And yet, here one is, for the Fiberfab Avenger GT-12! This was a pretty sleek looking car, and if you weren’t familiar with kit cars, you’d be hard pressed to guess it was a Beetle pan under there.
Speaking of VW, I think we all know how influential Dole Dane Bernbach (DDB)’s ad campaign for VW was. It’s pretty clear that Volvo’s advertising was very inspired by those ads, retaining the same simple, clever ad copy and honest, even humble, tone. Here they’re using some really faint praise – a 3 mph increase in top speed – as an excuse to talk about all the other good stuff in the ’69 Volvo. It’s a clever ad.
Look, it’s another kind of VW-based kit car – a Meyers one, even, just not the famous Manx; this one is the Tow’d. This was cheaper than a Manx, and, really, almost anything – in today’s money it’d be just a bit over $3,000. You didn’t even need a whole VW chassis, just the bits at each end!
See this crude little golf cart-like vehicle? You know what makes it special? It was the first real drive-by-wire vehicle! And it was all handled via that joystick! These also used brushless Switched Reluctance Motors that are still a thing today! Too bad they only built seven of these; our pals at the Lane Museum have one!
Look at this – I had no idea that Karmann assembled AMC Javelins! What the hell? And I’ve never seen a Javelin parked next to a VW Type 3 Ghia either, now that I think about it.
And speaking of Ghia – look at this incredible thing: it’s a Checker Marathon, the famous NYC taxi, re-bodied by Ghia! It’s an extended wheelbase one, and was designed by Tom Tjaarda, recently back at Ghia, with a luxurious limo-like interior with a bar and television and all that. They called it the Centurion, and it seems to be the only one made.
Have you ever looked at an MGB or a Sunbeam Alpine or Triumph Spitfire and thought “you know what this needs? A big, honkin’ landau bar!”
Me neither.
I had this issue of R&T as my old man was a subscriber.
Even then it was pretty much the best car mag on the market.
“I am forbidden to share anything of real value from old copies of Road & Track, Field & Stream, Guns & Ammo, Clam & Shell, and any other periodical with an ampersand in the middle of the name.”
Even the typographic magazine U&lc? As seeing how you have a background in graphic design…
And what if a magazine was never published but still had some work such as the masthead logo done? Herb Lubalin, one of the better-known type designers of the 20th century, worked on the masthead logo for Mother & Child where the word “Child” is inside the ampersand which then is inside the O of “Mother” https://i-p.rmcdn.net/5a835cb7ab2c1523bea66af6/1009159/upload-9a57b350-557a-11e8-aa72-157a248d390b.jpg?w=972&e=webp
I’ve been told that carpets were a lot fuller and busier in the 60s.
Blame Brazil.
Dental floss…
Ever notice as Brazilians became more popular, dentists started pushing flossing?
Landau bar hard top; great execution, terrible taste!
Ampersand&Ampersand Consolidated Consortium LLC is as secretive as it is litigious. Fools trifle with but once.
What I like best about the Meyers Tow’d ad is the manual correction of the mailbox/mailstop in the company address at the bottom.
It’s a literal cut and paste, which was the style at the time.
One of my old car friends has the Iso Rivolta from the cover! It is just so “best worst” in all it’s gigantic horrible greatness, that you can only love it 🙂
I love the way those look, tbh
So – Is revolting?
Lol, “Dual roll bars for extra safety” on the Meyers Tow’d.
My first thought when the Jarret Electronique scrolled into view was Ray and Charles Eames tootling one around under a concrete hyperbolic parabaloid.
Then I suddenly smelled burnt toast. Weird.
Ray Charles should not be driving, even with a joystick.
I don’t know, have you seen him shoot?
That Bertone bodied 504 coupe on the cover though! I’ve had an obsession over this car for the past year now.
I used to work at one of the University of Florida libraries, and they had ALL the issues of Motor Trend and Car and Driver, all the way back to the beginning. I spent waaaaay too many hours reading them instead of working.
That Jarret Electronique looks dangerous just being stationary. I feel like I could flip it just by trying to get in.
No restraints, no handles, just an armrest that looks to be below ones center of gravity. I can’t begin to count the ways to fall out of that thing.
Courtesy of the local IH/Volvo dealer, our drivers ed classes featured a fleet of 144s. Speeds were limited, even less than 103 mph.
Coco Mats will send you free samples if you’re insured by Hagerty. I know because I did it.
So if you hurry, you could have *checks calendar* Sex Memorial Day!
January of 1969, that takes me back. Marvin Gaye was hearing things through his grapevine, America tuned in to watch Goldie Hawn giggle and wiggle on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, and Disney was raking in profits with a rerelease of the original One Hundred and One Dalmatians just six months before they helped NASA fake the Apollo 11 moon landing. The Celtics were stumbling halfway to repeating as NBA champs for the 11th time in 13 years with player-coach Bill Russell at the helm for a final time. Interestingly, Laker great Jerry West won the MVP award despite being on the losing team, the only time in NBA history this happened. In early February, Road & Track readers in the northeast would have a longer than usual wait for the next edition as the infamous Hundred-Hour Snowstorm and Nor’easter paralyzed cities from New York to Boston and points north. Hundreds of commuters were stranded on New York bridges and 94 people perished there over four days. The storm stalled over the New England coast dumping record snowfalls including 8 feet on Mount Washington, NH. My father and I shoveled for 11 hours only to turn around and find the driveway filled in again behind us with two feet of additional accumulation. Plows piled up snow so high on the roadsides that it towered above the first story of the house and was more than 20 feet thick. Later, after we’d spent days shoveling out driveways and sidewalks we would sled down the long steep hill we lived on in a tunnel created by the snow walls on either side, just like an Olympic bobsled track. You had to cross your fingers that no cars were turning into a driveway as you shot through openings or at the bottom of the hill where the run ended in the middle the main road. You’d never see them (nor they you) until it was too late. Oh yeah, and the number one book in January ‘69 was the espionage thriller The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes. There was a lot of time for reading.
Good times, all good times, I recall it well.
Do you have the same feeling I get looking back that it seems like another life, or some sort of alternate reality compared to the now?
Absolutely. From analog to digital, completely different world.
I do. I can’t qualify the differences as better or worse, just different. My impression is that people are different, both better and worse than those times. I spent the last 23 years teaching and coaching in a school and the young people are different, mostly, I think, because of the internet and communications In my youth, common cause was sought face to face. Today the leveling power of the internet allows virtually anyone to reach everyone with individual grievances and causes, which I feel has elevated the “me” over the “we.” I just saw a poll of college students where a third of respondents didn’t think democracy was a good form of government. I don’t know if they think that because of the usurpers that prevail in our institutions today or because they’ve never faced a true crisis of government. I fear they’re going to, though. But these things seem to be cyclical. Everything I perceived as positive during my education and life as a military man, journalist, civil servant and teacher is not totally gone and much of what I disliked in life, it’s true, has been eliminated or reduced. So progress with some pain. And of course, the older I’ve grown, the more I’ve stepped outside the mainstream to the point where it’s sometimes hard to recognize the country as it stands. And that’s when I feel the alternate reality dysphoria the most. Sorry, long answer to your question.
Great answer, thanks.
I spent decades in education and the kids of today are, I think, objectively kinder than in my youth. It was vicious in my growing up days, and I wonder if removing the lead in the gasoline has anything to do with the sea change in young people’s behavior I witnessed. Violent crime stats, the large reduction since the peak in the early 90s, gives correlation.
Kids at all levels of school are now nicer, more self aware, more thoughtful, than ever.
Meanwhile, pop culture seems to have consumed itself, which is probably a function of the inherent nature of the internet.
Paradoxically, public discourse is now shockingly vile and mean spirited. Folks are hunkered down in their tribal camps, warily eyeing each other through the inhumane lens of the internet, seeing the “other” as beastly foe more than I’ve ever seen before.
That crisis of government you mention seems to be lurching upon us.
And yes, I too often feel like a stranger in a strange land. Maybe that’s the way all people have felt upon reaching old age. At some point we stop mattering and become surplus to need. The stars and heroes are always 35 years old, from Jesus to Marilyn.
My experience with today’s youth jibes with yours. Whether it’s the internet or things like the program at my school that requires community hours and individual senior service projects to be completed to graduate, or maybe more involved parents than ours might have been, the kids are nicer. Probably smarter, too, though I also find them to be more naive than I recall being at their age, but that might just be my memory playing tricks. So, there’s hope for the world. And yeah, I feel myself pulling away the older I get. I’d go look for an ice floe to hop on and float out to sea so as not to be a burden, but the darn climate change has melted them all.
Knew a lot of McCleods back in my youth up New England way. Wondered if you might be from there, too? Good rapping with you.
My people came through the south and ended up here in Calif. Been to New England a few times, lovely.
Yes, I think the kids are smarter as well, and for all the horrors that the internet is, they are very naive.
They do leave me with hope. But I ingested a lot of Star Trek and mid century optimism.
Best to go out at the helm of a roadster, reaching for 3rd, rather than drifting off on a melting ice berg. Might get eaten by a polar bear that way.
What is this, Sex Christmas?
Oh those poor, poor elves….
SNL even did a sketch about them…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYD1zCgbso
dual rollbars for safety!!
So Fiberfab sells the complete kit with all upholstery, but not carpet. Seems like they should have contacted Auto-mat Co. Could have been some real synergy there.
An AMC Javelin as an opulent, luxurious car in Europe.
Curious.
Yes. And Budweiser is totally a premium brand.
Heard it in a love song, can’t be wrong.
I’m still not sure if the “Custom Quality” landau hardtop for an MG of this era would be an upgrade or downgrade in quality… At least it won’t have electrical issues right?
I remember those days . . . Don’t forget JC Whitney!
I was around in 1969 – and I can attest that Landau Bars were all the rage.
(They were usually near the Tiki bars)
“Hey Moshe – Its Jon! Come have a drink with me and Martin!”
But in a different kind of neighborhood from the taillight bars.
Very true. Landau bars are in affluent or aspirational neighborhoods. Taillight bars… well, there is a reason everyone carries Escalade taillights there
One of my favorite vintage car mag ads has to be the one on the back of an old C&D (I think), advertising the Turbonique Rocket Drag Axle, in the infamous Black Widow VW Beetle. Amazing that Elon can’t offer a rocket car today but you could just mail order a kit for one in the ’60s.
Would also love one of those Meyers Tow’ds. That’s like a Lotusified version of a Manx, simplified with lightness. And very cool looking.
Agreed about the Tow’d. It looks like a fun garage project and a cool little runabout.
And I just looked up the Turbonique Drag axle – that’s a fascinating little bit of automotive history I’d never come across.
https://turbonique.com/
Brian Lohnes has an excellent video on the company on his YouTube channel, as well as many other historical motorsport subjects, especially related to drag racing. But that ad was my first exposure to the company.
The Tow’d looks super cool. Looked it up, apparently it’s under 900# and was meant to be towed to the beach instead of being street-legal. But people plate ’em anyway, can you imagine having a super-light VW side-by-side as a runabout?
I can imagine 40hp wheelstands, yes.
Only if I can hang an air cooled Porshe 911 engine outback
The claim that the Bentley looks just like an enlarged Ferrari 375GT 2+2 is the absolute definition of stretching the truth.
Not even the back end. And the front…
I hear cognitive behavioral therapy has done wonders with that.