Dean Batchelor
The Acceptance Speech I Never Gave, For the Book Award That Almost Was
Wheels of Change was one of three books nominated for "Best Book of the Year," an annual award presented by the Los Angeles Motor Press Guild, the most prestigious organization of automobile journalists and industry professionals in the country. Awards were given in the categories of photography, articles, audio-visual, and books. The awards dinner took place Dec. 7 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, and about 150 people attended. Jay Leno appeared and made some opening remarks.
Designed to honor "excellence in automotive journalism," the awards are presented in the name of the late Dean Batchelor, a truly excellent writer and journalist and one of the founding fathers of the hot rod revolution in this country. Book of the Year honors (and the Batchelor Lifetiime Achievement Award) went to Can-Am Cars in Detail, by Pete Lyons, who spoke briefly when he came to the podium to accept his award. The ceremony was not set up for Lyons and the other winners to give acceptance speeches, and so even if Wheels had won I likely would not have said much. But because it was Pearl Harbor Day, it started me thinking about what I would have said if a) the judges had chosen my book and b) if I'd had the guts to actually stand up and say the things I was thinking. This, then, is the acceptance speech I never gave, for the book award that never was: [...more...]
"Today is Pearl Harbor Day, and 69 years ago today Dean Batchelor, Wally Parks, Bob Petersen, and other young men of their generation faced a tough choice. Their country had just been attacked, and they had to stop their lives, stop whatever it was they were doing, and go defend her. It was no choice at all really, it was what they had to do given the awful circumstances.
"And after they were done over there, after they had done the job they had to do, they came back to the country they loved and began the hot rod revolution. Of course, hot rodding began before the war, but it really got going after it, thanks in large measure to Batchelor, Parks, Petersen and so many of those young men who had gone away to fight and now were lucky enough to come back. In a very real sense it was the hot rod revolution that built this building and created this fine institution where we are tonight.
"It took me three years to write and research Wheels of Change. During those years I used and relied on and drew inspiration from The American Hot Rod, Dean Batchelor's book about the early years of hot rodding. The American Hot Rod is an authentic book, and an authentically great one. Open it up and a puff of exhaust smoke or dirt from the Mojave dry lakes will come out.
"And now, at least for one night, to be recognized as someone who is working in the tradition of Dean Batchelor—well, that's a real honor. For Batchelor—and Parks and Petersen and so many others of their generation—did not just drive cars or work on cars or race cars or write about cars. They helped build America and make her the great country she is. Thank you."
If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Pasadena...
The Wheels of Change road trip heads to southern California this week, making stops in three places rich with automotive history: Pasadena, San Fernando Valley, and San Diego. Here are the details on where I'll be appearing, as well as some tidbits on how each place figures into California car culture and the history of cars:
Pasadena
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 7:30 p.m at the Pasadena Museum of History (470 W. Walnut Street, 626-577-1660), I will probably chat a little about how—
- Those two desperadoes you see pictured here, L.L. Whitman and Eugene Hammond, became the third set of drivers to drive across the United States in an automobile, going from San Francisco to New York in 72 days, 21 hours and 30 minutes. Hailing from Pasadena, Whitman became the very model of a hard-driving man, setting speed records for his transcontinental trips across America as well as north-south sprints from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
- Pasadena looms large in the history of automotive design. Walter Murphy Coach Works of Pasadena designed the coaches for some of the most beautiful cars in the world in the 1920s, including Abner Doble's luxury steam masterpiece, the Doble Series E. Two of Murphy's former employees, Christian Bohman and Maurice Schwartz, formed a Pasadena coach-building firm that designed the spectacular Duesenberg JN used by Clark Gable to squire Carol Lombard around Hollywood. Pasadena to this day maintains a high-level design profile, as many of the graduates of The Art Center College of Design are carrying on the Walter Murphy-Bohman & Schwartz automotive design tradition.
- The world's first hot rodder may have been Waldeman Grant Hansen of Throop Polytechnic Institute, now Caltech, in Pasadena. The brilliant young Hansen built the first gas engine car ever seen at Caltech, racing it around the streets in what later became the Pasadena-Altadena Hill Climb, one of the wildest road races of the early 1900s. At one point in the race the cars sped over some railroad tracks and all four wheels lifted into the air.
Granada Hills
It will be a pleasure to stop by to see the Mustang Owners of California (Du-par’s Restaurant, 17921 Chatsworth St., Granada Hills, Wed., Nov. 18., 6:30 p.m.) because Granada Hills is in the San Fernando Valley, and in the late 1940s and 1950s (and other times as well, no doubt), the San Fernando Valley was automobile heaven. Here is one of the all-time great hot rod and sports car guys, Dean Batchelor, late of Burbank, remembering this time in the valley:
"It was a grand time for car nuts," Batchelor recalls in his wonderful book, The American Hot Rod, which I quote in Wheels of Change. "The streets of southern California were thick with interesting cars—hot rods, custom cars, and the occasional imported sports car."
Interesting cars, and interesting people. Since I will be talking to California's foremost Mustang club, I am reminded of what Lee Iacocca said about how important it was for Ford to appeal to California teenagers when it was designing the Mustang in the 1960s: "Although the car industry was born in Michigan, it came of age in California. It was the entry point for the youth market—with muscle cars and four on the floor and various other permutations of the basic automobile that began in a factory in Michigan...It's been said many times before, but it's worth saying again: California is really the mirror into the future."
San Diego
My talk in San Diego (Thurs., Nov. 19, 7 p.m., San Diego Automotive Museum, 2080 Pan American Plaza, 619-231-2886) will be in Balboa Park, which hosted the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. This was a world's fair designed to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and spotlight San Diego's role as a port city for trade. Tens of thousands of people from around the world came to the fair and rode around Balboa Park in one of Clyde Osborn's Electriquettes.
Clyde Osborn will never be listed among the titans of the automobile industry. Rather, he is one of the countless indefatigable American optimists who had a dream to build an automobile and then acted upon it. His dream was the Electriquette, a two-passenger, battery-run electric car that was built for the fair. With a body entirely made of wicker, it looked like a lounge chair on wheels. Rides cost a dollar apiece, and the battery ran eight hours before needing a boost. A San Diego attorney who owned the Fritchie electric car dealership in town, Osborn produced about 200 Electriquettes that did everything that was asked of them. After the fair he abandoned electric car manufacturing and returning to lawyering.
