Today’s Cold Start is a bit of a grab-bag of a few things I noticed in an old July 1973 issue of Popular Science, specifically three things that I feel you require to begin your day in the most effective manner. Actually, wait, four things, each wildly important and relevant today (please don’t check on that). Let’s get started, I’m late on this already!
First, let’s talk about that cigarette ad up top there. Cigarette ads in general are really historical artifacts now, as they pretty much no longer exist and have been banned from television since 1971, and were banned from magazines that could be “popular with teenagers” since 2000. I’m not sure Popular Science counts in that category, but I think we can safely say cigarette ads in general are pretty much extinct.


This one has a car racing theme, sort of, so I thought it’d be appropriate for us to look at it here:
So, this one is less about racing and more about watching racing, live, at a track. Which I suppose makes sense; the target audience for Camel Filters was probably vastly larger for people who just watched racing occasionally than it was for people who actually raced cars.
The premise of the ad is that in that group of racing fans – and, it appears, one driver – you have to figure out who is the Camel Filters smoker, and who smokes, you know, garbage cigarettes.
Unsurprisingly, the answer is the “cool” guy at the center, with his jacket flung cavalierly over his shoulder and a large, well-maintained moustache. This guy’s general look and self-satisfied smirk were sort of archetypal cigarette smoking male ideals of the era.
The rest of the people, if you read the little descriptions in the ads there, all are said to have a “gimmick” of some kind, which, of course, the Camel smoker doesn’t need. I don’t really get the “Third Turn Albanian” thing with the driver – was this some weird stereotype about Albanians I’ve never heard of?
Oh, wait, it says “Abanian?” What is that? Is that a name, perhaps an Armenian name?
And I think there’s a sexy double-entendre with the woman in the patriotic top and the guy wearing the hi-fi on his head. Also, the rich guy is such a perfect example of the cliché, with an ascot and a cigarette holder!
Anyway, just zoom in and enjoy that. Time for some other stuff. Like this amazing early example of doctoring a photo to make cars look genercized!
This was from a Quaker State oil ad, and the car on the left is clearly an AMC AMX and the one on the right is a Chevy Vega, but both have had their front ends airbrushed to look bit different, likely so Quaker State wouldn’t be seen as endorsing or denigrating any particular company’s cars.
I like the split grille on the Vega; it sort of prefigures the Pontiac Astre which came out in 1972 as Pontiac’s re-badged Vega. The AMX looks a bit more serious and business-like with that front end, but the front indicators seem to have been a casualty of the photo retoucher’s airbrush.
This is also fascinating, from the standpoint of just how wrong it turned out to be:
Two huge things that never quite happened in America are referenced here: GM making a Wankel rotary engines, and the US moving the the metric system. The GM Wankel project was doomed and pretty much forgotten about by the ’80s, but I remember the idea that the US was going to switch to metric “next year” being pushed to me pretty much every year of my childhood. I think by the ’90s everyone finally gave up.
Finally, I think this is the first mention of the Volkswagen Basistransporter I’ve seen in an American publication:
A Finnish company called Teijo built a bunch of these, too, from those VW kits.
There was a Mexican variant of this called the Hormiga (Ant); I’ve talked about the Hormiga a couple times here; this was an ultra-simple and rugged truck based on a reversed Beetle drivetrain driving the front wheels, like the Basistransporter version seen above, but with a slightly different body.
These were designed without any complex curves so it could be easily built in developing countries. They’re very cool, though I’m not sure I’d heard them referred to as “kits” before? Maybe in the context of CKD (completely knocked down) kits that carmakers send to assembly plants; that could be it. But I think the point of these was that as much could be locally made as possible.
The Hormiga was built in Mexico in decent numbers, and there were Basistransporter variants that used the Type 2 cab body panels, called Basistransporter, that were built in places like Turkey and Indonesia, too:
Fascinating, right? Anyway, I suspect this was the first talk about it in American media.
I hope these things helped. Now go forth and enjoy your day!
#4 is Pedro Pascal
#4? Really? I’d have said puppy kicking child molester but OK, Camel smoker it is.
Number three is Jack Nicholson, four is Burt Reynolds, and six is Ray Walston. Burt seems to be holding two cigarettes.
Suspect the race wasn’t in the Winston cup…
But did any cars look cooler than the FI JPS cars of Lotus.