One of the most common “tells” of images created with artificial intelligence (AI) is that things like logos or written text are often strange, corrupted messes, resembling their intended representation, but not quite hitting the mark. They’re off, often in comically obvious ways. Images that are blighted with such distortions are usually a good way to tell if they’re from the past couple of years, but I’ve recently happened to see some examples of real-world artifacts, some dating from as far back as the 1950s or even earlier, that are strangely similar to weird AI text glitches. These artifacts are hubcaps.
Specifically, they’re hubcaps from mail-order catalogs like JC Whitney, and while they’re made for common, popular cars, they don’t quite look like the original equipment. This is because most cars’ hubcaps have the carmaker’s logo on them, and JC Whitney was far, far too cheap to pay good money to license any logos or branding from major automakers. Uncle JC isn’t made of money!
Look, you want cheap hubcaps, something has to give. And, remember, from the, say, 1940s to the 1990s, hubcaps were far more common and were always getting lost, stolen, damaged, or just flung off comically in corners, where they would roll, loudly, before clattering to a halt like a dreidel that was definitely not comin’ up gimmels.
That’s why, if you looked really carefully at ads like this, you might notice something:
Okay, take a close look at hubcap C, for example. It’s for a Chevrolet. Look carefully at the center, where the Chevy bowtie usually resides. What do you see?
Not the Chevy bowtie. A hyphen. A truncated bowtie! That’s because JC Whitney was not about to cut a check to GM to use their bowtie, and they didn’t want lawsuit trouble. So they just made something that looked close enough, at least from a distance. They did this a lot. Look:
I love these! Some are subtle, like substituting the Cadillac shield’s birds (they’re actually not ducks, they’re merlettes) with stars or little hashmarks, or having a Ford hubcab read FOBD, or Chrysler becoming some very AI-looking unpronounceable minestrone of letters, and then, yes, the Chevy hyphen.
JC Whitney seemed to have the most fun with Ford’s script logo, which they sometimes rendered as Fool or Bool – the first letter could be either a B or F:
My favorite Ford one are these Model A hubcaps that read “Food”:
That’s so good! I would love to drive a Food!
Dodge was another fun one, coming out as something that could be Doood or maybe just Doooo or even Dodoo or Doodd or some combination of those:
From a distance, these probably worked just fine! And, when driving, they’re spinning anyway, so how accurate do you really need to be?
JC Whitney was also very big in the aftermarket accessory business for air-cooled Volkswagens, so they had a number of bootleg VW hubcaps. I remember these very well from when I was a kid with a ’73 Beetle and pouring through these catalogs:
These were the fancy ones. They classed up your humble Beetle or Squareback or Bus and looked like this:
That’s sort of like two overlaid VW logos, so it has to be twice as good, right? Also, these were full-wheel-sized and slotted, to give those brakes some cooling air. But they also had ones that tried to mimic the originals more closely. This variant is extremely close:
Those are really, really close. Just a pair of breaks where the V-shapes intersect, giving a dimensional illusion. I wonder if these were too close, forcing JC Whitney to switch to ones like these:
They also had ones that had a sort of twin lightning bolt look to them, but those felt a bit like the SS logo, a visual association that I suspect most Volkswagen owners weren’t eager to make so obvious.
What kind of baffles me about these is that while most of the hubcaps had knockoff logos and badging, JC Whitney would happily sell you other products that absolutely replicated carmaker’s logos and badges:
Why were these okay, and the full hubcaps not? Because one was an actual car part, and the other more clearly an accessory? Also, weird VW badge there, and the less said about the Confederate flag, maybe the better.
Look, they even sold Ford-specific ones, with the actual names. You could even get these for your Tempo or Topaz! Imagine combining these with some Food hubcaps so you could rock a Food Tempo!
I mean, that’s the dream, right?
If the “food” hubcap didn’t have sharp spring clips and other awful bits…and wasn’t probably made of the cheapest mild steel available, I’d at least let my dog (that I don’t have) eat or drink out of it. If not myself.
Or maybe you could tape a bag of emergency trail mix under it, so at least you know what wheel has it.
“I know we’re stranded but it’s okay! Pry the cap off the Food wheel! It has food in it!”
“…why’s it all crumbled to dust?”
“…I didn’t think that through did I…”
Also thought of another use for the “Food” cap – making Ice Cream!
“What flavor is it?”
“Rocky Road”
*ptooo* “ugh, tastes like a rocky road alright…”
Oh, so THAT’S where China got the idea from!
Do the Pentester hubcaps come with a rootkit and a set of lockpicks?
Lol, clever
Perfect time to upgrade to a set of forged Vork wheels
https://i0.wp.com/i16.photobucket.com/albums/b26/stickydiljoe/The%20Chronicles/vork2.jpg?resize=562%2C508
The shop teacher at my high school had a tailgate for his truck that said “FRED” rather than “FORD”. We all thought he fabricated it. Me wonders if it was mail order.
Maybe that was just his first name?
It wasn’t. I’ve called all my Fords Freds though, in honor of teach. I just sold Fred the 4th.
When I was a kid, I remember seeing a white Ford van at a campground that had the individual chrome FORD letters rearranged to read F R O D. I found it amusing on several levels.
The weird single guy travelling in that van and camping (apparently) alone probably wishes fraud had been his only legal trouble.
I loved getting the JCW catalog! I purchased many cheap[ stereos and questionable speakers from their pages and marveled over all the other crap they had for sale!
Oh! and CB Radio stuff!
My grandpa had these catalogs. I loved looking through them when I was a kid. Many years later, we bought one of those musical car horns with tons of sound effects for our Hummer H2. While exiting a crowded stadium parking lot, we often played the cow and sheep sounds. MOO MOO MOO. BAA BAA BAA. Other times it was the ice cream truck song, “Music Box Dancer.”
I’ve said here before how I am a diehard for the JCW catalog, because they always sold many, many replacement parts for two types of vehicles that I have owned in the past: my 1978 Camaro, my first car, and my 1977 VW Westfalia camper. I mean, where else were you supposed to find affordable replacements for the powder blue interior door pulls that broke right off on my Camaro, the same way they did on every late 2nd-gen F-body?
Didn’t David Tracy and Kristen Lee once prepare an entire meal using automotive parts and serve the food on hubcaps back when they were still at the German lighting site?
I’d go there to check but my phone is already getting hot from being on this site (thanks to all the recent changes in advertising) and I worry that it’ll explode if I go over to the German lighting site, lol. However, in fact, I’m gonna have to get offline & turn my phone off to let it cool down…
There’s a cookbook, Manifold Destiny. My parents have Model As and there are actual kits for cooking with your engine heat. They have done events where people drive then eat.
Omg. We owned that book. I cooked several pita bread pizzas and some brown and serve sausages on the manifold of our 1980s Volvo on the way to High School in the late 80s, once as an end of year fake “science project” for my first period science class, with the laughing approval of the teacher.
Grandparents from UP Michigan also had these.
Switch to Brave browser and never see an ad again.
Yeah, just have to work it out in my budget with getting a membership so in the meantime I figure I might as well just put up with the ads on this website so they get some modicum of support though I know a membership actually provides more support than ad views…
It’s usually not a problem overall since I rarely frequent ad-heavy websites; in fact this might be the most ad-heavy website I frequent.
Anybody remember the Warshawsky catalogs? I think the addresses were around the corner from each other, They had basically the same stuff as JC Whitney.
Warshawsky was the exact same thing as JC Whitney. They didn’t think the Warshawsky name would work nationally so they invented the JC Whitney name for every where else that wasn’t the Chicago area.
Yep – I lived in not-Chicago and my dad would get Warshawsky catalogs, and then somewhere along the line (1980-ish?) they became JC Whitney.
They were still sending out Warshawsky catalogs in the 90s. My dad’s friend got them all the time.
The dog dish FOOD hubcap would make a perfect dog dish.
It reminds me of a company that made imitation Cobras. They would sell you a car and give you the Cobra badges. They couldn’t put them on, but what you did to your own car is your business. Same legalities. Like putting Dark Horse emblems on your Mustang GT.
I just spotted a more modern version while walking my dog – a Lexus LX450 with chromed stock wheels and gold plated badging. The Lexus logo looks more like a 7.
https://www.sftiresandwheels.com/cdn/shop/products/Lexus_LX450_a_1024x1024.jpg
IIRC there was a kerfuffle – possibly a donnybrook or a brouhaha – over a company whose logo parodied Ford:
Fuct
I remember it as more of a fracas.
Absolutely, shenanigans were involved.
Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.
Take a star. Take 42 of them.
Clearly you have to pair these with some genuine Sorny or Panaphonics electronics!
Never…I’m a Magnetbox man myself.
Carnivale makes a superior set – premolded hand grip, two prong wall plug, durable outer casing to prevent fall-apart
Suddenly I’m thinking that they missed the boat by not marketing their own car stereos under the name JCW, massaged to make the initials look like the JVC logo.
I’m a child of the 80s. I always wanted a Bluepunk stereo. Looked really classy in a car that had put a Mercades Beans hood ornament on the hood..
I so love this. Going to start scraping eBay for Food hubcaps for my son’s Model A.
Since Cadillac eventually removed the birds from their logo, is this a full circle situation where JCW could have sued Cadillac for infringing on their fake logo?
This is known as the Hedley Lamarr Defense.
I understood that reference
What the hell are you worried about? It’s 1874. You’ll be able to sue HER!
Thanks. Now that movie will live rent free until I bother to watch it again.
Sitting here laughing just the same.
That Dodge one that looks like “Ooooo” reminds me of the Land of Ooo from Adventure Time, which is actually a post-apocalyptic Earth, the result of a global disaster called the Mushroom War.
From AliE I got an RC totally-not-a-Unimog. When putting it together, in the box I found a small plain brown envelope (really!) containing embossed stickers looking *very* much like Mercedes logos, and they fit perfectly on the empty spaces on the model. I guess someone had had trouble with EU customs in the past.
It continues today with grilles on Alibaba. DODD!
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Raptor-Style-Black-Replacement-Mesh-Grille_1600079009618.html
I immediately thought of the fake Raptor grilles, too bad nobody’s had the guts to put Food on them.
At least the Food one is on a dog dish hubcap. Did JC Whitney have a sideline in pet supplies?
Given that DT once cooked using a hubcap, the “Food” one would make a swell gift.
Kinda like those stylized O O O O plastic monster truck grills you can buy now that might kinda convince someone you have a Raptor?
You and I apparently share a brain.
So you’re also wondering why we’re not seeing more B A M grills at this point?? I feel better!
I see you beat me to my comment by 14 hours. Well done.
Curse you, sleep!
People were more gullible then, I only buy quality, name-brand aftermarket auto parts, like GOOACC, YESPER, or GOOLOO
What kind of false eyelashes do you buy? https://www.amazon.com/stores/Pooplunch/page/7642B9BA-58A7-4D34-A943-056873B0CE21
35,000 reviews! I had no idea so many people enjoyed a Pooplunch.
LOL, the first repair shop I turned wrenches in had an old guy in a late 70s F350 with a catering body on the back that stopped by the shop every day. He had the BEST breakfast burritos. He had replaced the R on the hood with another O so it said F O O D. God speed Gino, wherever you are.
I remember these trucks from Los Angeles and Denver in the mid to late 1970’s.
The burritos or breakfast egg, cheese, bacon biscuits always were excellent.
I have a long list of band names, and one of them is Food, which would use the Ford logo. It’ll never happen, so please feel free to steal my idea.
Drof anybody? Who remembers Dorf? Tim Conway was a genius
I’ve always enjoyed how STP seems to not officially notice the occasional Stone Temple Pilots use of very similar iconography. I guess it figures there’s worse things than the association.
Well as long as as it’s not Scientifically Treated Petroleum.
Or Studebaker Tested Products.
Or Something To do with Packards .
Unless they never heard the band’s temporary name, which Atlantic Records made them change before releasing “Core,” but allowed them to keep the initials STP:
Shirley Temple’s [P-word]. Yikes.
The Venn Diagram of people that can come up with awesome band names and the people that actually can form a good band is nearly two different circles.
But that’s ok. There’s a story of a band that started off being called John Evan’s Smash. They sucked as bad as their name. Fortunately for them, they had a booking agent that was good at coming up with band names. The Agent would book them for a gig, they would do the gig and not be invited back, but end up doing another gig the next weekend other a different name. And the names were epic. Ian Henderson’s Bag O’Nails. Candy Coloured Rainbow, Navy Blue, etc.
As they performed, they got better. Finally, they did a gig and got invited back. They have stuck with that name the happened to be playing under for over 50 years now.
And that’s how a band got named after a seed drill inventor… Jethro Tull.
Ha. Two things:
My music teacher in high school, when giving an example of how a band should proceed through certain professional situations, had a standard fictional band name he would use to illustrate such stories: The Aluminum Puddle. “So let’s say The Aluminum Puddle is about to sign a record contract, and you don’t want to get ripped off on your royalties…”
The second thing: I met an awesome old biker dude once who told stories of going to see bands at a venue in Chicago when he was a young man in the late 60s/early 70s, a “big room” that typically featured either hot bands on their way up, one step before they would be playing arenas, or former arena bands on the way down. He said he could always spot bands that would hit it big, but that he memorably got it wrong twice. One was “a buncha twerps dressed like peasants from the Middle Ages, fronted by some fool playing a flute and standing on one leg like a flamingo.” “Who the hell is this?” “They’re called Jethro Tull.” “They’re never gonna make it.” The other? An English band all dressed in white, “except for the lead singer, who was dressed up in a damn flower costume.” “Who the hell is this?” “They’re called Genesis.” “They’re never gonna make it.”
I’m thinking it isn’t that hard to predict what bands are going to make it in such an environment. There are fairly standard genres in the music industry. If you have a good look and a good sound that fits in a genre without sounding like a copy, you are going to do well. Especially if you have someone writing music that can pull of good hooks.
Where things become problematic is when the group doesn’t fit into a genre. Jethro Tull has a genre. Progressive Heavy Metal Renaissance Fair. It’s just that no other band has ever tried to go into that genre. So it’s easy to think that that genre doesn’t exist and figure the band isn’t going to make it.
Or if they change Genres. Take Genesis. They were hitting megahits every couple weeks when I was a teenager. With Phil Collins doing vocals as a Pop group. Peter Gabriel was doing well with what was a variant of New Wave. Both were a far cry from the experimental art house music that they started with where even David Bowie fans thought was weird.