Information Connection: Car Facts

• The first U.S.-built car to appear at a World's Fair was William Morrison's six-passenger electric wagon in 1893.
   
• In 1952, Chrysler manufactured Jupiter space exploration missiles for the U.S. Army.
   
• There are laws in all 50 states requiring children to ride restrained, yet one out of three children (ages 5 to 15) rides unbuckled.
   
• Walter Reuther, an American labor leader and president of the United Auto Workers of America, was the pioneer and organizer of the sit-down strikes against automotive giants, such as Ford in 1936.
   
• The automotive industry's environmental protection really began to take shape in 1963, when the first emission controls were mandated.
   
• Pierce-Arrow Motor Co. descended from rather strange roots.  Before it earned its namesake building luxury cars, Pierce-Arrow was known as Heintz, Pierce and Munschauer, a firm which made birdcages (and a few other non-auto-related products).
   
• Many of us today would not survive without power steering. (Well, maybe that's going a little overboard, but it is a nice luxury.)  Power steering seems like it would be a fairly recent innovation, but the Francis W. Davis invention was commercially available in 1951.
   
• Ferrari often is associated with red, for the most part because red was the color assigned to Italian Grand Prix cars in the early 20th century.  Today, Ferrari's GT cars are available in 16 different colors.
   
• The year 1966 marked the release of the first Chevrolet Camaro.  It was produced largely to compete with the popularity of the Ford Mustang.
   
• Henry Ford produced cars that ran on alcohol. That was his preferred fuel over petroleum, but the powerful figures in the oil industry managed to kill off the alcohol automobile. In fact, those are the very people who made Prohibition a reality.
   
• Hemp panels and other parts made from hemp were common in automobile manufacture until, you guessed it, the oil industry went after hemp as a competitor to its plastic. That's the main reason marijuana is illegal, today.
   
• The automobile is the most heavily-subsidized mode of transportation in history. Many people compare Amtrak negatively to the automobile based on cost per mile, but they leave out such things as the fact that the automobile industry does not pay for the roads that its customers drive its products on.
   
• Today's cars aren't wider than their predecessors of the 1960s, but their drivers are.

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Keep your car looking new

Edited by Mark Lamendola

How can you keep your car looking like new? If it's a used car, it's probably already damaged and you can use the tips here to stop further damage. If it's a new car, you will be able to take it back to the car dealer and show them that it looks better than the cars on the showroom floor. I'm not exaggerating. I do mean better. And in my own case, it's the salesmen who have taken me aside and quietly asked me why my car looks better than the new ones they are selling. Did I have it repainted? Nope.

The main thing to understand is that it takes about six months for the finish on the car to truly dry. Many people make the mistake of waxing their car before the 6 months have passed, or they use one of those godawful carwash soaps that contain wax. The truly car damaging people use the "dry wash" sprays, a sure way to ruin the finish.

Here's what you do. When you get your car home from the dealer, park it in the sunlight. Be sure you put towels on the dash, to protect the dash. Otherwise, it may fade or crack. What you want to do is bake the exterior finish, not destroy the interior.

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