This day in History

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 1st 1926

Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford's office workers the following August.
Henry Ford's Detroit-based automobile company had broken ground in its labor policies before. In early 1914, against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labor unrest, Ford announced that it would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours (the policy was adopted for female workers in 1916). The news shocked many in the industry--at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made--but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford's workers.
The decision to reduce the workweek from six to five days had originally been made in 1922. According to an article published in The New York Times that March, Edsel Ford, Henry's son and the company's president, explained that "Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation….The Ford Company always has sought to promote an ideal home life for its employees. We believe that in order to live properly every man should have more time to spend with his family."
Manufacturers all over the country, and the world, soon followed Ford's lead, and the Monday-to-Friday workweek became standard practice.


May 1st 1902
First gasoline powered Locomobile was produced.


May 1st 1925
Ettore Bugatti registered both the 'Pur Sangre Des Automobiles', and the thoroughbred racing horse profile, as French trademarks.


May 1st 1994
Three time F1 World Champion, Aryton Senna died at Imola. Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed in a practice accident the previous day. Senna and the other drivers still opted to start the Grand Prix, but the race was interrupted by a huge accident at the start line. A safety car was deployed and the drivers followed it for several laps. On the restart Senna immediately set a quick pace with the third quickest lap of the race, followed by Schumacher. As Senna entered the high-speed Tamburello corner on the next lap, the car left the track at high speed, hitting the concrete retaining wall at around 135 mph. Senna was removed from the car by Sid Watkins and his medical team and treated by the side of the car before being airlifted to Bologna hospital where Senna was later declared dead.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 2nd 1918

The General Motors acquired the Chevrolet Motor Company for $32 million in GM stock. This is quite an interesting story. The deal was actually a merger engineered by William Durant rather than a buyout. The original founder of GM, Durant had been forced out of the company by stockholders who had disapproved of Durant's increasingly reckless policies to run the company. Durant after being kicked out of GM started Chevrolet with Swiss racer Louis Chevrolet and managed to make the company a successful competitor in a relatively short period of time. Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more stock in GM as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control of the company he founded, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, Durant regained control of GM.



Fifty years ago,1963, Ford photographers were capturing this styling prototype on film. The new car was still known at Ford as the "Special Falcon," but also notice the Cougar grille emblem. The Mustang name would not be chosen for several more months.


May 2nd 1972
Buddy Baker became the first stock car driver to finish a 500-mile race in less than three hours en route to winning the Winston Select 500 at the Alabama International Motor Speedway in Talladega, Alabama. He also broke the 200mph barrier two years ago on the same track.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 3rd 1987

The late Davey Allison recorded his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory at Talladega, Alabama, driving his Ford Thunderbird. The very day and in the same race his father, legendary Bobby Allison suffered a near fatal crash.
After the crash, NASCAR made the use of restrictor plates mandatory in all
cars.


May 3rd 1980
On this day in 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner of Fair Oaks, California, is walking along a quiet road on her way to a church carnival when a car swerves out of control, striking and killing her. Cari's tragic death compelled her mother, Candy Lightner, to found the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which would grow into one of the country's most influential non-profit organizations.
When police arrested Clarence Busch, the driver who hit Cari, they found that he had a record of arrests for intoxication, and had in fact been arrested on another hit-and-run drunk-driving charge less than a week earlier. Candy Lightner learned from a policeman that drunk driving was rarely prosecuted harshly, and that Busch was unlikely to spend significant time behind bars. Furious, Lightner decided to take action against what she later called "the only socially accepted form of homicide." MADD was the result.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 4th 1904
Charles Stewart Rolls met Frederick Henry Royce in Midland Hotels, Manchester for the very first time and rest is history.


Pictured Charles S. Rolls



Historic Midland Hotel in Manchester, which occupies a whole city block where Rolls met Royce for the first time on 4th May 1904.


May 4th 1920
Harry Miller was issued a U.S. patent for a race car design that introduced many features later incorporated into race cars in the following decades.

May 4th 1946
British F1 racer John Watson was born in Northern Ireland.

May 4th 1948
Three time le Mans winner Hurley Haywood was born in Chicago. He was drafted into Army and sent to Vietnam in 1970 before driving his Porsches' to victory.

May 4th 1949
14 time NHRA funny car drag race winner John Force was born in Bell Gardens, California.

May 4th 1984
New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen releases "Pink Cadillac" as a B-side to "Dancing in the Dark," which will become the first and biggest hit single off "Born in the U.S.A.," the best-selling album of his career.

May 4th 1987
Jorge Lorenzo, a two time 250cc class World champion was born in Mallorca, Spain. He is currently Rossi's partner in Fiat Yamaha Moto GP team. He previously rode Aprilla to both his victories.

May 4th, 1965
San Francisco Giants outfielder Willie Mays hits his 512th career home run to break Mel Ott’s National League record for home runs. Mays would finish his career with 660 home runs, good for third on the all-time list at the time of his retirement

[Shermatt]

On this day, 5th May 1914
Erwin "Cannonball" Baker began his record setting cross-continental motorcycle trip. After this trip he received his nickname 'Canonball' by A New York newspaper reporter who compared him with Canonball Train.
Baker set 143 driving records from the 1910s through the 1930s. His first was set in 1914, riding coast to coast on an Indian motorcycle in 11 days. In 1915, Baker drove from Los Angeles to New York City in 11 days, 7 hours and fifteen minutes in a Stutz Bearcat, and the following year drove a Cadillac 8 roadster from Los Angeles to Times Square in seven days, eleven hours and fifty-two minutes while accompanied by an Indianapolis newspaper reporter. In 1926 he drove a loaded two-ton truck from New York to San Francisco in a record five days, seventeen hours and thirty minutes, and in 1928, he beat the 20th Century Limited train from New York to Chicago. Also in 1928, he competed in the Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race, and set a record time of 14:49.6 seconds, driving a Franklin.
His best-remembered drive was a 1933 New York City to Los Angeles trek in a Graham-Paige model 57 Blue Streak 8, setting a 53.5 hour record that stood for nearly 40 years. This drive inspired the later Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, better known as the "Cannonball Run", which itself inspired at least five movies and a television series. In 1941, he drove a new Crosley Covered Wagon across the nation in a 6,517-mile run to prove the economy and reliability characteristics of Crosley automobiles. Other record and near-record transcontinental trips were made in Model T Fords, Chrysler Imperials, Marmons, Falcon-Knights and Columbia Tigers, among others.

5th May 1944
Bertha Benz, the wife of inventor Karl Benz and the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, dies on this day in 1944, in Ladenburg, Germany.
Born Bertha Ringer, she married Karl Benz around 1870. Karl Benz received a patent for his horseless carriage, called the Motorwagen, in January 1886. The wooden vehicle had two wheels in the back, one in the front, and a handle-like contraption as a steering wheel. Powered by a single-cylinder, 2.5-horsepower engine, it could reach speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. Benz was having trouble selling the Motorwagen, however: Early press reports were not altogether positive, and customers were reluctant to take a chance on a vehicle that had so far only been tested over short distances.
In early August 1888, Bertha and her two teenage sons, Richard and Eugen, hatched a plan to take the car on a surprise visit to her mother in Pforzheim, Germany. Knowing that Karl would never allow it, they left early in the morning, while he was still sleeping. The trio drove from their home in Mannheim to Pforzheim and back, a total distance of 106 kilometers. Though big streets in the cities were often paved, there were no real roads outside urban areas yet, and Bertha had to drive along railway lines in order to find her way. To refuel the car, she bought Ligroin, a detergent then used as fuel, at local pharmacies. When the car's fuel line clogged, she unclogged it using one of her hairpins. She also used the garter on her stocking to fix a broken ignition.
Bertha's history-making drive proved that the horseless carriage was suitable for regular use. The press covered it extensively, and Karl Benz began to field requests from potential buyers all over the world. By the end of the 19th century, Benz & Cie. was the world's largest automobile company, with 572 vehicles produced in 1899 alone. Karl Benz left the company several years later. He died in 1929, three years after Benz & Cie. merged with Daimler Motors to form Daimler-Benz, makers of the famous Mercedes-Benz. Bertha Benz continued to live at their home in Ladenburg until her death on May 5, 1944, at the age of 95.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 6th 1991
Harry Gant, aged 51, broke his own record to become the oldest man to win a NASCAR race when he won the Winston 500 in Talladega.

May 6th 1994
French President Mitterrand and Queen Elizabeth II jointly open the Channel Tunnel linking Britain and France underneath the English Channel. Eurotunnel Shuttle service, a roll-on roll-off shuttle service is used to transport road vehicles including freight lorries from France to UK and vice-versa.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 7th 1967
Don Prudhomme, then 26, popularly known as 'The Snake' drove a modified Ford to became the first dragster to run the quarter mile in less than seven seconds when he reached 226 mph at the NHRA World Series.

May 7th 1952
James J. Nance resigned form his position at Hotpoint, an appliance maker to become the president and general manager of the Packard Motor Company. There he was responsible for development of Packard's first V8 engine and automatic transmission popularly known as Ultramatic.

May 7th 1998
Dana Holding Corporation announces its participation in the largest-ever merger of automotive suppliers by its acquisition of Echlin Inc.

May 7th 1998
On this day in 1998, the German automobile company Daimler-Benz--maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz--announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation.
The purchase of Chrysler, America's third-largest car company, by the Stuttgart-based Daimler-Benz marked the biggest acquisition by a foreign buyer of any U.S. company in history. Though marketed to investors as an equal pairing, it soon emerged that Daimler would be the dominant partner, with its stockholders owning the majority of the new company's shares. For Chrysler, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the end of independence was a surprising twist in a striking comeback story. After a near-collapse and a government bailout in 1979 that saved it from bankruptcy, the company surged back in the 1980s under the leadership of the former Ford executive Lee Iacocca, in a revival spurred in part by the tremendous success of its trendsetting minivan.
The new company, DaimlerChrysler AG, began trading on the Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges the following November. A few months later, according to a 2001 article in The New York Times, its stock price rose to an impressive high of $108.62 per share. The euphoria proved to be short-lived, however. While Daimler had been attracted by the profitability of Chrysler's minivans and Jeeps, over the next few years profits were up and down, and by the fall of 2003 the Chrysler Group had cut some 26,000 jobs and was still losing money.
In 2006, according to the Times, Chrysler posted a loss of $1.5 billion and fell behind Toyota to fourth place in the American car market. This loss came despite the company's splashy launch of 10 new Chrysler models that year, with plans to unveil eight more. The following May, however, after reportedly negotiating with General Motors about a potential sale, DaimlerChrysler announced it was selling 80.1 percent of Chrysler to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $7.4 billion. DaimlerChrysler, soon renamed Daimler AG, kept a 19.9 percent stake in the new company, known as Chrysler LLC.
By late 2008, increasingly dismal sales led Chrysler to seek federal funds to the tune of $4 billion to stay afloat. Under pressure from the Obama administration, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2009 and entered into a planned partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 8th 1899
Olds Motor Works was incorporated by the merger of Olds Motor Vehicle and Olds Gasoline Engine Works.

May 8th 1933
The very first police radio system was installed in Eastchester Township, New York, by Radio Engineering Laboratories of Long Island.

May 8th 1956
Henry Ford II resigned as the chairperson of Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is a philanthropic institution incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that was chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford. He resigned as a trustee in 1976 rendering it independent of Ford Motor Company and Ford family.

May 8th 1964
Bobby Labonte, an american Nascar driver for born in Texas. As of 2008, Labonte is the only driver to have won both the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship and the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship.

May 8th 1982
Gilles Villeneuve, Canadian race car driver died when he crashed his Ferrari during the Belgian Grand Prix.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 9th 2008
"Speed Racer," the big-budget live-action film version of the 1960s Japanese comic book and television series "MachGoGoGo," makes its debut in U.S. movie theaters.
Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Matthew Fox co-starred in "Speed Racer" alongside Hirsch. Another key cast member was not an actor but an automobile: the mighty Mach 5, a race car designed and built by Speed's father, Pops Racer. As in the American version of the comic, the sleek Mach 5 used in the film is white with red accents, bears similarities to an early Ferrari Testarossa and is outfitted with an array of special features, including jacks that automatically boost the car, allowing for easy repair; rotary saws that protrude from the front tires; and a deflector that seals the driver into a crash-proof container. As part of the publicity for the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer," the Mach 5 went on display in January 2008 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan. As reported in USA Today, however, the car saw little real action on the track. During filming, it was attached to a crane, and most of the effects for the racing scenes were computer generated.

May 9th 1911
Thomas H. Flaherty, of Pittsburgh, PA, received a patent for a "Signal for Crossing", first U. S. patent application for a traffic signal design.

May 9th 1992
Roberto Guerrero, a Colombian race car driver set an Indianapolis 500 qualifying record, driving his Lola-Buick to an average speed of 232.483mph and setting the single lap record at 232.618mph.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 10th 1841
James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald and one of the very first sponsor and patrons of auto racing (Gordon Bennett Cup Races) was born in New York City.

May 10th 1923
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. elected GM president, Chairman of Executive Committee.

May 10th 1975
Hélio Castroneves, a two time Indy500 race car driver was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

May 10th 2012
Carroll Shelby dies.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 11th 1947
Ferrari made its independent racing debut at a race in Piacenza, Italy. Enzo Ferrari had been designing race cars for Alpha Romeo since the late 1920s, After the WWII he decided to start his own brand. His debut car Tipo 125 featured a revolutionary V12 engine and way ahead of time but failed to finish due to fuel pump error. Still during the season he made and sold 3 Tipos. He adopted the now famous prancing horse logo in honour of Italian World War I ace Enrico Baracca, who used the logo on his fighter plane. Interesting thing about Enzo is that he manufactured and sold his cars to
fullfill his racing hobby.

May 11th 1916
Charles Kettering and Edward Deeds agreed to sell their Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, famously known as DELCO to the United Motors Corporation, a holding company of William C. Durant at a record $9 million. Delco was responsible for several innovations in automobile electric systems, including the first battery ignition system and the first practical automobile self starter.

May 11th 1947
On this day in 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces it has developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient.

[Shermatt]

William Claytons Odometer



On this day, May 12th 1847
William Clayton invented the odometer. During his trip across the plains from Missouri to Utah he was assigned to record the number of miles the company traveled each day. Clayton with the help of mathematecian Orson Pratt tired counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel and computing the day's distance by multiplying the count by the wheel's circumference. After consulting with Pratt, he developed a design consisting of a set of wooden cog wheels attached to the hub of a wagon wheel, with the mechanism "counting" or recording by position the revolutions of the wheel. The apparatus was built by the company's carpenter Appleton Milo Harmon.

May 12th, 1948,
Roy McCarty rendered his sketch for the first Mustang. (Not Ford) The first Mustang was built in 1948 by Roy in Seattle, Washington who later went on to sue Ford for $10,000,000 in damages over the use of the Mustang name?
He was a service manager at a Lincoln dealership and a thinker of large proportions. On paper, his logic was unassailable. He planned on using parts that were already in manufacture for every system of the car and he’s adapt them to fit. Steering from a Willys Jeep, engine from Continental, Spicer axles originally intended for some other car. The benefit was cost and ease of access to repair parts and service items. The downside is that Roy McCarty didn’t have a lot of money and launching a car company from a far flung corner of the USA was no small job. A maximum of 12 1949 Mustangs were actually built before the company went bankrupt in 1950
MORE INFO HERE:
http://bangshift.com/blog/the-first-mustang-was-built-in-1948-not-by-ford-and-it-looked-like-this-cool-story.html?utm_content=buffer21b3e&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer

May 12th 1957
Alfonso de Portago fataly crashed his Ferrari during the Mili Miglia. He, his co-driver Edmund Nelson along with nine spectators were killed when his tire blew. Among the dead were five children. This accident also resulted in a long trial for Ferrari team owner Enzo Ferrari.


May 12th 1973
Art Portland, an american race car driver died during the practice session for the 1973 Indianapolis 500.


May 12th 2000
On this day in 2000, 19-year-old Adam Petty, son of Winston Cup driver Kyle Petty and grandson of National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) icon Richard Petty, is killed after crashing into a wall during practice for a Grand National race at Loudon, New Hampshire.

[Shermatt]

Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by an angry crowd




On this day, May 13th 1958
During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. The incident was the dramatic highlight of trip characterized by Latin American anger over some of America's Cold War policies.


May 13th 1980
At the annual meeting of the Chrysler Corporation on this day in 1980, stockholders vote to appoint Douglas Fraser, president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), to one of 20 seats on Chrysler's board of directors. The vote made Fraser the first union representative ever to sit on the board of a major U.S. corporation.
Born in 1916 in Glasgow, Scotland, to a strongly unionist father, Fraser was brought to the United States at the age of six. After dropping out of high school, he was fired from his first two factory jobs for trying to organize his fellow workers. Fraser then got a job at a Chrysler-owned DeSoto plant in Detroit that was organized by the UAW. Quickly promoted through union ranks, Fraser caught the eye of UAW president Walter Reuther. He worked as Reuther's administrative assistant during the 1950s, a groundbreaking period during which the UAW solidified policies on retirement pensions and medical and dental care for its members. Well liked by Reuther, with whom he shared a similar philosophy of unionism as social action, Fraser became a member of the union's executive board in 1962 and a vice president in 1970. Reuther died in an airplane crash that year, and Leonard Woodcock won a narrow vote over Fraser to become UAW president. Fraser succeeded Woodcock in 1977.
The late 1970s were turbulent times for the American auto industry: Rising fuel prices and the popularity of fuel-efficient Japanese-made cars had crippled sales, and Chrysler--known for its big, gas-guzzling cars--faced possible bankruptcy. In 1979-80, Fraser played a key role in getting Chrysler a $1.5 billion bailout from the U.S. government, negotiating a deal that called for hourly workers at Chrysler to accept wage cuts of $3 per hour (to $17) and giving the company permission to shed nearly 50,000 of its U.S. jobs. In a controversial move that was viewed with trepidation from both sides of the labor-management divide, Chrysler's chief executive, Lee Iacocca, nominated Fraser to the company's executive board. The stockholders voted in Fraser on May 13, 1980--three days after U.S. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller announced the approval of the Chrysler bailout.
Chrysler's subsequent turnaround--the company paid off its government loans ahead of schedule and posted record profits of some $2.4 billion in 1984--seemed to justify Fraser's willingness to make compromises on the labor side. Some critics, however, saw the union leader's actions as opening the door to a wave of similar concessionary bargaining on the part of automakers that later spread to management in other industries. Fraser retired as UAW president in 1983 and left the Chrysler board the following year. He died in February 2008, at the age of 91.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 14, 2007
Cerebrus Capital Management, a private equity firm acquired 80.1% interest in Chrysler from Daimler A.G. for $7.4 billion. Daimler had bought it for $36 billion in 1998. The management renamed it Chrysler Holdings. Daimler paid $677 million in cash in return for release from $18 billion health/pension liabilities but retained 19.9% interest in Chrysler. This was the first private auto company in Detroit since 1956 (Ford went public).
On March 30, 2009, it was announced that Cerberus Capital Management will lose its equity stake and ownership in Chrysler as a condition of the Treasury Department’s bailout deal, but Cerberus will maintain a controlling stake in Chrysler’s financing arm, Chrysler Financial. Cerberus will utilize the first $2 billion in proceeds from its Chrysler Financial holding to backstop a $4 billion December 2008 Treasury Department loan given to Chrysler. In exchange for obtaining that loan, it promised many concessions including surrendering equity, foregoing profits, and giving up board seats.

May 14 1998
The legendary singer, actor and show-business icon Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 15th 1942
United States began gasoline rationing.

May 15th 1981
The 20,000,000th Volkswagen Beetle was produced at the Volkswagen plant in Puebla, Mexico.

May 15th 1982
Gordon Smiley, an american race car driver was killed in Indianapolis Speedway

May15th 1986
Elio de Angelis an Italian F1 racer was killed during testing at the Paul Ricard circuit at Le Castellet

May 15th 1992
Edward Jovy Marcelo, a Filipino race car driver from Quezon City, Philippines was killed in practice for the 1992 Indianapolis 500.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 16th 1903
George Wyman became the first motorcyclist to make a transcontinental trip across America. In fact, he was the first ever to make the trip by means of a motorized vehicle. Wyman’s trip was made on a 1.25-horsepower, 90cc California motorcycle designed by Roy Marks. Wyman’s arduous journey, which started in San Francisco on May 16, took 50 days and ended in New York City on July 6.
PS: not to be confused with a 19th century architect of the same name.

May 16th 1956
General Motors opens its brand-new $125 million GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Today, the GM Technical Center is one of the landmarks of twentieth-century architecture. A $1 billion dollar renovation of the GM Technical Center was completed in 2003.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 17th 2005
On this day in 2005, Toyota Motor Company announces its plans to produce a gasoline-electric hybrid version of its bestselling Camry sedan. Built at the company's Georgetown, Kentucky, plant, the Camry became Toyota's first hybrid model to be manufactured in the United States.
Toyota introduced the Camry--the name is a phonetic transcription of the Japanese word for "crown"--in the Japanese market in 1980; it began selling in the United States the following year. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the success of the Camry and its Japanese competitor, the Honda Accord, had allowed Toyota and Honda to seize control of the midsize sedan market in the United States. By then, Toyota had adapted the Camry more to American tastes, increasing its size and replacing its original boxy design with a smoother, more rounded style. By 2003, as Micheline Maynard recorded in her book "The End of Detroit," apart from the early-'90s success of the Ford Taurus, the Camry and Accord had long maintained their position atop the list of the nation's best-selling cars overall, each selling around 400,000 units per year.
In 1997, Toyota's Prius--the world's first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle--went on sale in Japan. It was released worldwide in 2001. By using an electric motor to supplement power from the gasoline, hybrid technology resulted in greatly improved fuel efficiency and higher gas mileage. Honda launched its own hybrid lineup with the Insight in 1999 and continued with the hybrid Civic in 2002. By then, skyrocketing gas prices had combined with a backlash against gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUVs) to make hybrids suddenly chic. Eco-conscious Hollywood celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz proudly drove their Priuses around Los Angeles, and by 2003 Honda and Toyota were selling 50,000 hybrids a year in the United States. The plans to develop a hybrid Camry, announced in May 2005, brought the total number of Toyota-made hybrid models to four, including the Prius; the Lexus RX 400h, a midsize sport utility vehicle (SUV) released in April 2005; and a second SUV, the Toyota Highlander, released that June.

May 17th 1868
Horace Elgin Dodge, automobile manufacturing pioneer was born in Niles, Michigan.

May 17th 1890
Emile Levassor married Louise Sarazin, the widow of Edouard Sarazin and the French distributor of Daimler engines. The marriage set the stage for Levassor's business venture, Panhard et Levassor, which would use Daimler engines in its cars. Emile, France's premier car racer before the turn of the century, set an early record by driving from Paris to Bordeaux and back at an average of 14.9mph in 1895. His cutting-edge Panhard had a 2.4 liter engine and produced only 4hp. After two years of development Levassor's Daimler engine was capable of pushing the lightweight, wood-framed Panhard to over 70mph.

May 17th 1994
Al Unser Sr. announced his retirement from auto racing, ending one of the greatest Indy Car careers of all time.

[Shermatt]

Pictured: Colin Chapman


On this day, May 18th 1958
In Monaco, France, Team Lotus makes its Formula One debut in the Monaco Grand Prix, the opening event of the year's European racing season. Over the next four decades, Team Lotus will go on to become one of the most successful teams in Formula One history.
Team Lotus was the motor sport wing of the Lotus Engineering Company, founded six years earlier by the British engineer and race car driver Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman.
Chapman built his first car, a modified 1930 Austin Seven, while still a university student. His success building trial cars led to the completion of the first Lotus production model, the Mark 6, in 1952; 100 were produced by 1955, establishing Chapman's reputation as a innovator in the design of top-performing race cars. By 1957, Lotus had become a well-known name among car aficionados, while Team Lotus dominated the Le Mans racing circuit, winning the 750-cc class and the Index of Performance at Le Mans in 1957 with the Lotus Type 11.
On May 18, 1958, Team Lotus made its first entry in the Formula One circuit, entering two single-seat Type 12s, driven by Cliff Allison and Graham Hill, into the Monaco Grand Prix. Though Ferrari was the favorite going into the race, British-made cars dominated the qualifying rounds, with Vanwall, British Racing Motors (BRM) and Cooper all finishing in front of Ferrari. In the main event, Maurice Trintignant (driving a Cooper) took first place after Ferrari's Mike Hawthorn, that year's eventual Formula One champion, was forced to stop with a broken fuel pump. Allison finished sixth in his Lotus, 13 laps behind the leader; Hill finished in 26th place.
Chapman learned from the success of the midsize engine Cooper race cars, incorporating the layout into a refined version of the Lotus Type 12. In 1960, Stirling Moss drove the result--the Type 18--to victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, scoring the first of what would be many Grand Prix wins for Lotus. Jim Clark won the team's first World Driver's Championship in 1963, beginning a golden age of Lotus racing. Both Clark and Graham Hill won multiple Formula One titles, and Clark also drove a Lotus to victory in the Indianapolis 500 in 1965. In later years, virtuoso drivers like Emmerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti and Alessandro Zanardi all represented Lotus. In 1977, the low-slung Lotus Esprit had a starring turn in the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me"; another Esprit, the Turbo, was featured in the 1981 Bond film "For Your Eyes Only."
Chapman died in 1982, and Team Lotus left racing in the 1990s. It remains one of the most successful Formula One teams of all time, with more than 50 Grand Prix titles.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 19th 1903
Clarence Spicer received a patent for a "Casing for Universal Joints"; first practical universal joint to power automobile (vs. chain-and-sprocket drives
Pictured: First car utilizing Spicer's universal joint, built at Cornell in 1903. Spicer had attended Alfred Academy where he studied physiology, then applied human joint structure to the auto.

May 19th 1903
David Dunbar Buick, former plumbing inventor and manufacturer, incorporated Buick Motor Co. (formed in 1902) in Detroit, Michigan.

May19th 1928
Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars was born in the suburb of London.

May19th 1991
Willy T. Ribbs became the first African-American driver to qualify for the Indy 500.

May19th 2007
Los Angeles, California, is the first stop on a cross-country road show launched on this day in 2007 by Smart USA to promote the attractions of its "ForTwo" microcar, which it had scheduled for release in the United States in 2008.
In the early 1990s, Nicholas Hayek of Swatch, the company famous for its wide range of colorful and trendy plastic watches, went to German automaker Mercedes-Benz with his idea for an "ultra-urban" car. The result of their joint venture was the diminutive Smart (an acronym for Swatch Mercedes ART) ForTwo, which debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1997 and went on sale in nine European countries over the next year. Measuring just over eight feet from bumper to bumper, the original ForTwo was marketed as a safe, fuel-efficient car that could be maneuvered easily through narrow, crowded city streets. Despite its popularity among urban Europeans, Smart posted significant losses, and Swatch soon pulled out of the joint venture.
Undaunted, Mercedes maker DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG) launched the Smart ForTwo in Canada in 2004 as an initial foray into the North American market. In June 2006, DaimlerChrysler chairman Dieter Zetsche announced that the Smart would make its U.S. debut in early 2008. Between 2003 and 2006, as reported by the German newspaper Handelsblatt, DaimlerChrysler took a loss of some 3.9 billion euros (around $5.2 billion) on the Smart brand, and the company looked to the U.S. market as a way to bring the brand into profitability.
The cross-country road show that began in May 2007 allowed consumers in 50 cities nationwide to test-drive the ForTwo. On each stop on the tour, a large truck served as a mobile exhibit dedicated to the microcar, complete with interactive displays and virtual demonstrations. As Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA, put it: "The Smart ForTwo is all about urban independence and freeing people from the constraints of city driving." Under normal driving conditions, the ForTwo was designed to achieve 40 plus miles per gallon. The show was presumably a success: By September 2007, according to an article in MarketWatch, Smart USA said it had already received more than 30,000 registrations from potential buyers. The FortTwo went on sale in the United States in January 2008, at prices ranging from around $12,000 to around $21,000.

May19th, 2014
Three-time formula one world champion Sir Jack Brabham has passed away, aged 88.
A former Royal Australian Air Force mechanic, Brabham’s motorsport career started on Australian speedway dirt tracks in the late 1940s before he headed to the United Kingdom and joined the Cooper Racing Team, with which he won the 1959 and 1960 Formula One championships.
But it was his own Brabham racing cars – designed and engineered with friend and fellow Australian Ron Tauranac – that led to him winning the 1966 championship.
Brabham is the only person to have won the F1 world championship in his own car.
He was born John Arthur Brabham on April 2, 1926 but was known as Jack and later picked up the nickname Black Jack.
Brabham is survived by his second wife, Lady Margaret, and sons to his first wife Betty - Geoff, Gary and David, each of whom has enjoyed success in motorsport.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 20th 1899
Jacob German, operator of a taxicab for the Electric Vehicle Company, became the first driver to be arrested for speeding when he was stopped by Bicycle Roundsman Schueller for driving at the speed of 12mph on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. German was booked and held in jail at the East Twenty-second Street station house. He was, of course, not made to hand over his license and registration, as neither item was required until two years later in the State of New York.

May 20th 1961
The Ford Motor Company completed a highly modified stretch Lincoln Continental convertible sedan for the U.S. Secret Service to be used as a presidential limousine. It was modified by Hess & Eisenhardt Company. The limo, later known as the SS-100-X, carried President John F. Kennedy down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, when he was assassinated in 1963.


May 20th 1971
Anthony Wayne "Tony" Stewart, a NASCAR driver was born in Columbus, Indiana.


May 20th 1973
Jarno Karl Keimo Saarinen, a Finnish Grand Prix motorcycle racer died during the fourth Moto GP season in Monza, Italy. A crash during the 350cc race left an oil slick on the track which the Race officials had failed to clean it properly between races. On the opening lap of the 250cc race, track marshals didn't wave the yellow and red stripe oil flag warning riders of the oil slicked surface. The race leader, Renzo Pasolini fell in front of Saarinen, who was in second place. He couldn't avoid the fallen rider and the resulting crash caused a multiple rider pile up. In all, 14 riders were embroiled in the mayhem that resulted. When the dust cleared, Jarno and Pasolini laid dead with many other riders seriously injured.

SS-100-X as it stands today in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 20th 1899
Jacob German, operator of a taxicab for the Electric Vehicle Company, became the first driver to be arrested for speeding when he was stopped by Bicycle Roundsman Schueller for driving at the speed of 12mph on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. German was booked and held in jail at the East Twenty-second Street station house. He was, of course, not made to hand over his license and registration, as neither item was required until two years later in the State of New York.

May 20th 1961
The Ford Motor Company completed a highly modified stretch Lincoln Continental convertible sedan for the U.S. Secret Service to be used as a presidential limousine. It was modified by Hess & Eisenhardt Company. The limo, later known as the SS-100-X, carried President John F. Kennedy down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, when he was assassinated in 1963.


May 20th 1971
Anthony Wayne "Tony" Stewart, a NASCAR driver was born in Columbus, Indiana.


May 20th 1973
Jarno Karl Keimo Saarinen, a Finnish Grand Prix motorcycle racer died during the fourth Moto GP season in Monza, Italy. A crash during the 350cc race left an oil slick on the track which the Race officials had failed to clean it properly between races. On the opening lap of the 250cc race, track marshals didn't wave the yellow and red stripe oil flag warning riders of the oil slicked surface. The race leader, Renzo Pasolini fell in front of Saarinen, who was in second place. He couldn't avoid the fallen rider and the resulting crash caused a multiple rider pile up. In all, 14 riders were embroiled in the mayhem that resulted. When the dust cleared, Jarno and Pasolini laid dead with many other riders seriously injured.

SS-100-X as it stands today in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 21st 2003
Alejandro de Tomaso an Argentinean racing driver and car maker died in Modena Italy. He participated in two F1 races winning no points but was a very successful car maker. He founded the Italian sports car company De Tomaso Automobili in 1959, and later built up a substantial business empire. Even Elvis Presly was fan of his car and owned himself a yellow one
...
May 21st 1901
Connecticut became the first state to enact a speeding-driver law. The State General Assembly passed a bill submitted by Representative Robert Woodruff that stipulated the speed of all motor vehicles should not exceed 12mph on country highways and eight mph within city limits.
...
May 21st 1950
Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinean auto racer won the Monaco Grand Prix in an Alfa Romeo 158, the victory was the first of the 24-Grand Prix victories in his illustrious Formula One career.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 22nd 1921
Racer Marshall Teague was born in Daytona Beach, Florida. Teague was one of NASCAR's earliest heroes. Racing Hudson Hornets equipped with revolutionary step-down chassis, Teague won five races in 1951 alone.

May 22nd 1977
Janet Guthrie became the first female to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. However she failed to finish the 1977 race due to mechanical troubles.

May 22nd 2001
Ford Motor Co. announced plans to spend more than $2 billion to replace up to 13 million Firestone tires on its vehicles because of safety concerns and numerous law suits.

[Shermatt]

Iconic Image of Bonnie and Clyde, Check the Ford V8 at back


On this day, May 23rd 1934
Wanted outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police officers as they attempt to escape apprehension in a stolen 1934 Ford Deluxe near Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
Beginning in early 1932, Parker and Barrow set off on a two-year crime spree, evading local police in rural Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico before drawing the attention of federal authorities at the Bureau of Investigation (as the FBI was then known). Though the couple was believed to have been responsible for 13 murders by the time they were killed, along with several bank robberies and burglaries, the only charge the Bureau could chase them on was a violation of the National Motor Vehicle Act, which gave federal agents the authority to pursue suspects accused of interstate transportation of a stolen automobile. The car in question was a Ford, stolen in Illinois and found abandoned in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Inside, agents discovered a prescription bottle later traced to the Texas home of Clyde Barrow's aunt.
As authorities stepped up the pressure to catch the outlaw couple, the heavily armed Barrow and Parker were joined at various times by the convicted murderer Raymond Hamilton (whom they helped break out of jail in 1934), William Daniel Jones and Clyde's brother Ivan "Buck" Barrow and his wife, Blanche. In the spring of 1934, federal agents traced the Barrow-Parker gang to a remote county in southwest Louisiana, where the Methvin family was said to have been aiding and abetting the outlaws for over a year. Bonnie and Clyde, along with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana, on the night of May 21. Two days later, just before dawn, a posse of police officers from Texas and Louisiana laid an ambush along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. When Parker and Barrow appeared, going some 85 mph in another stolen Ford--a four-door 1934 Deluxe with a V-8 engine, the officers let loose with a hail of bullets, leaving the couple no chance of survival despite the small arsenal of weapons they had with them.
The bullet-ridden Deluxe, originally owned by Ruth Warren of Topeka, Kansas, was later exhibited at carnivals and fairs then sold as a collector's item; in 1988, the Primm Valley Resort and Casino in Las Vegas purchased it for some $250,000. Barrow's enthusiasm for cars was evident in a letter he wrote earlier in the spring of 1934, addressed to Henry Ford himself: "While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned and even if my business hasn't been strictly legal it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V-8."

May 23 1945,
Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, assistant chief of the Gestapo, and architect of Hitler's program to exterminate European Jews, commits suicide one day after being arrested by the British.

[Shermatt]

On this day, May 24th 1991
On this day in 1991, the critically acclaimed road movie "Thelma and Louise" debuts in theaters, stunning audiences with a climactic scene in which its two heroines drive off a cliff into the Grand Canyon, in a vintage 1966 green Ford Thunderbird convertible.

May 24th 1899
W. T. McCullough, of Boston opened first public garage, Back Bay Cycle and Motor Company, as a "stable for renting, sale, storage, and repair of motor vehicles."

May 24th 2013
Aussie drag racer, John English passes away aged 89. John, along with Eddie Thomas, was one of the first real stars of Australian drag racing, a pioneer of the speed equipment industry and an all-round top bloke

May 24th 1903
Marcel Renault, age 31, and his riding mechanic Vauthier, were killed in a crash during the Paris-to-Madrid Race. After another deadly crash, the race was canceled at the end of the first leg from Paris to Bordeaux, and the era of city-to-city races came to an end.

May 24th 1938
The very first patent was received for a "Coin Controlled Parking Meter" by Carl C. Magee of Dual Parking Meter Company of Oklahoma City

May 24th 1987
Al Unser Sr. won his fourth Indianapolis 500 driving the year-old March-Cosworth car. At 47 years and 360 days old, Al became the oldest winner in the event's history.