Just a Gremlin

found in early '70s Life. The Saint's Row edition of the Gremlin is naturally one of the rare V8s:

One of those "I'm Hard at Work" posts

specifically, I'm finishing up the Imperial airship saga. In the meantime, have these Life-culled images.

In 1969, student protests had moved from being against things (like the Vietnam war) to disrupting campuses and making demands. In May, Life got a smattering of comments from the students themselves - including a rather familiar face who'd just got her undergrad from Wellsley College -

Since we're on politics - 1968 was a hell of a year. Hubert Humphery was the Democratic candidate, but the Democratic party had fractured, thanks mostly to the war in Vietnam. He got the nomination at the infamous 1968 democratic convention, where even Life describes the police "rioting" against the many protesters. There were many protesters as the youth wing supported Eugene McCarthy and late-comer Bobby Kennedy - until the latter was assassinated. The democratic side was even more fractious as the segregationist George Wallace was running as a Democrat as well. A straight populist, he appealed mostly to disenfranchised whites. Against this, Richard Nixon united a 'big tent' Republican party - one that appealed to many working class people and union types - as his 'silent' majority. Nixon also cultivated the "southern strategy" - up until the Civil Rights act, racist southerners were traditionally democrats. In the wake of protecting black people's rights, as President Johnson had predicted when he signed it into law, the racists migrated to the Republicans, helped along by Nixon, who managed to appeal to them via a careful campaign of signals that never actually locked him into politically damaging positions.

Here Nixon panders to Big Mastodon

The student protest movement, that started out extremely focused, and somehow meandered into every hippie stereotype we know today, is grimly amusing to me. The end of the 1960s was the end of 20 years of prosperity for the west, and in particular for America. For a young person, rents were low, university tuition was low (to the point that you could work your way through law school by waiting tables part time), cars were cheap and easy. Insurance was cheap, as was gas, (as was, frankly, the cars themselves.)

What nobody knew at the time is that the postwar boom was nearing its end. Inflation from the Vietnam War and constantly rising wages would lead to 'stag-flation', and foreign manufacturers would begin to seriously muscle in on American markets - especially the Japanese. The United States was on the same narrative arc that Goodfellas had - though they had yet to get to Layla's piano coda.

Nissan initially sold a small car and a small pickup - and the pickup was a success immediately, without any ad campaign, even. While Japanese manufacture was not state of the art, the Datsun pickup was a tough, durable little thing. "Datsun" was the name of the car - for face-saving reasons the Datsun became the nameplate overseas until the 1980s, when the Nissan name replaced it.

In the late 1960s, Detroit was increasingly aware that the imports were more than a passing fad - none more so than AMC, who more or less specialized in markets that the imports were strongest in.

Honda had already been the subject of a Life magazine article, but only made a splash in America with the CVCC of the early 1970s. Toyota, however, was already making inroads.

The truth was that many people looking for second cars were attracted to the small Japanese offerings.

Which made a lot of sense, if you consider station wagons were still the most popular family car.

This one would clearly be named the Green Monster.

Oldsmobile occupied a very comfortable niche in the market, as purveyors of comfortable cars with excellent value for money.

The first-gen Camaro was a quick and dirty reaction to Ford's mega-hit Mustang. Ads played up the fact that it shared bits with the much more high-tone Corvette:

Consumerism - too much is never enough.

Ford was not overly concerned. Though even the Mustang was starting to suffer from Detroit obesity.

Dodge, meanwhile offered new disease vectors! (This is why they were America's #3 automaker.)

Stripes are a sign of the virus:

And most car ads promised that their car would help you score with (university girls/friends of your kid sister etc.)

Also, 'OJ Simpson endorsed' suffers what we might call the 'Cosby Effect' going forward.

Can I just say this ad was into it before it was cool?

Oh, and I'm not really mentioning it, but in spring of 1969 we were about to land on the moon.

Heublein is a long forgotten brand. They made ready mixed cocktails, a few of which are still produced today.

Yes, this is the Bahama Island Chain formed by models in bathing suits, what of it?

Hmmmm, what else do I have that's not very PC -

This image is PC, but I've shown it to other people and SA forums poster Duke Chin make a joke too good not to share:

"This feels like more of a threat than an advertisement. Like a ransom note showing up under my door.

You fly 737. First Chance You Get.

No?

I kill family."

This may be the neolithic form of what our civilization would later know as pop-tarts:

This ad is noteworthy basically because of how poorly it is done. It looks like they took a picture of some cowboys, and then turned it into a Marlboro ad by drawing a lit cigarette in a cowboy's mouth, slipped a carton of Marlboros drawn on some white paper into the scene, and called it a day.

While buying those cigarettes, remember to get some amphetamines:

You can also get both together:

I also have to pass this along. Life did an article on Ringo Starr and his movie acting:

Ringo Starr wanted to be Samwise in a Lord of the Rings Movie. My mind reels as I imagine what a LOTR movie would have looked like in 1970. I'd like to think we could get the rest of the Beatles as the Hobbits. Maybe Frodo could have been Paul McCartney? I'm imagining them walking through an alp, in robes, sometimes very stoned and smoking cigarettes. Christoper Lee famously locked down the role of Gandalf by having a gushing nerd-conversation with Mr. Tolkien himself in a pub one day, so he's in. I'm not sure if Led Zeppelin is formed yet, but I imagine we could work them in somewhere, as elves or dwarves or something. Barbra Bach as Galadriel?

Raquel Welch plays Boromir in the new Lord of the Rings Movie. Right, Ringo Starr dressed as Sam the Hobbit.

OK, back to work on Airships.

The November of our Souls

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, November is nobody's favorite month. It is cold. The yellow face that brings life avoids you. When the sun does show up, it often shines in vain, concealed behind slate grey clouds. Christmas is near enough that you get the stresses of shopping for Christmas, without the benefits of it actually being close to Christmas. If you are a student, you have the reverse ski-jump of exams to look forward to.

Frankly it's enough for you to contemplate suicide by flintlock.

Still, I'm buoyed up a bit by the results of Canada's federal election. The Liberals crushed the Conservatives to form a new majority government. While I feel this is a big positive development generally, it also means that Canada buying the F-35 is now likely not going to happen. While almost nothing has happened on that front as yet, a proper fighter competition is likely, so good news there. There is also two further bits of good news for Canada's next fighter: everybody seems to now agree that ending production of the F-22 Raptor was a mistake, and a new option for Canada might be getting a second shot at life. The F-15 Silent Eagle (SE) is a low-observability version of the F-15 Eagle that Boeing was shopping around the past few years. It remained a prototype - it lost several contests to the F-35 - but is getting a second shot at life thanks to Israel. (Israel is getting lots of new American weapons as compensation for the whole Iran nuclear deal, and apparently want to buy both the F-35 and the F-15SE.) The F-15SE would be a fantastic choice for Canada, combining a proven fuselage with some LO technology and superior performance. It'd be my choice of airplane of the current offerings, but of course Boeing needs a certain production number to be economically viable, and of course Canada has a fairly tight time-frame before the CF-18s are completely used up.

So  - where were we? Shit, it's November.

This woman gets it.

November! Where you can't even decide if "Aspirin is a treatment for depression" is the Sixties view of mental health at work or just a really really dishonest ad campaign!

 November! When you are reminded "I'm not married, so there is literally no way for me to understand this picture!"

(Just for context, here is the whole ad, not that it helps:)

November! Where the only happy people are on drugs!

Chevelle SS 396 - as fun as drugs and slightly less risky.

The latest thing to show up in Life are ads for a new kind of restaurant.

I think Stuckley`s ran ads in the late 1950s, but this is fast food as the world would know it.

McDonald`s has not shown up, but Life did run an actual article on the `Hamburger University` McDonald`s ran.

Kentucky Fried Chicken makes an appearance as well.

As do some franchise rivals in the fried chicken game.

I`m pretty sure sandbox games like GTA and Saint`s Row put more work into fake in-world ads then these people did in the real world.

Speaking of marketing, this `white car sale` was the brainwave of one Lee Iococcia:

The sexism and using sex to sell things has reached some point whereat least some of the ads might be doing it as a joke:

This is a annual ad, with all 52 head shots of the Miss America contestants. Comparing faces and hairstyles to today is an interesting exercise.

A puzzle here is what woman is buying her man a Chevelle.

Women, this is how you use a telephone.

Sexy ad about pens.

Sexy ads about big newspapers

Sexy FIAT ads (OK that`s not too surprising)

but this one is! Et Tu, Quaker Oats?!

But it is not all bad. Car ads are still in a wild era, where the ads themselves are as striking as the shapes Detroit was creating.

This is in fact the first front-wheel drive Detroit car - which naturally weighted two and a half tons, and was powered by a gigantic honkin`V8.

It`s a nice dress and a nice color combo.

In a combination of themes, Mercury was for a time being sold as a man's car. I`d like to think this campaign started when two Ford executives asked each other "so why the hell does Mercury exist, anyway?"

The Late `60 Lincoln Continental grew in size, and was now something between a luxury car and a Dreadnought. This red car is actually a coupe having two utterly gigantic doors but probably the same interior space as the sedan. It was a goofy time. My favorite design detail are the blades of chrome along the lower front bumper. Ironically, this gorgeous car would lead the way to the immensely profitable and bestselling but homely Lincoln Mk. VII of the 1970s.

By the way, you can get an actual Lincoln Continental Limo if the Sedan is too downmarket for you.

The 'quality' spiel is more true than you might expect. While Lincoln-Mercury lost its bespoke V8, the Continental was still on its own platform. Lincoln until 2005 had a factory at Wixom, Michigan, that only made Lincoln products, and unlike much of the rest of the domestic auto industry, Ford regularly spent money to update its technology. The Japanese imports especially would achieve superior quality by always spending money on manufacturing - and its not that Ford was not familiar with the technology. It's just they were only implementing it on Lincoln.

Lincoln: outdoing Cadillac's class anxiety since 1963.

This is worth a look: GM was approaching the zenith of its power, with every fourth car sold being a Chevrolet. This car was the Toyota Camry of its era: the Chevrolet Caprice, with options ranging from convertible and wagon versions, to a whole Chef`s salad of V8 options. (This should not be seen as some sort of performance endorsement - when dealing with sixties cars, unless the V8 was of monstrous displacement, performance would be considered slow compared to modern vehicles.) This car does a good job underlining how much the automotive industry has changed since the 1960s.

You know what George Bernard Shaw fans van drivers are.

The Domestic automakers, despite all their wealth and power, couldn't really figure out the people who were driving imports. With the Chevelle SS, there appears to be some sort of effort to target it to people driving MG Midgets, which was wrong-headed but at least a honest effort.

The giveaway is the driving glove.

The Chevelle was Chevy's midsize platform, and could be had in anything from an economy car to the aforementioned 396.

 Then you had importing foreign cars to sell to these oddball foreign market people. The cars were disdained by dealerships (no options meant low profit) and usually difficult to service by most garages. The cars were fairly terrible too, so the whole experience would deliver the message "if you drive a small car, Detroit hates you" quite well. This is not a message that Chrysler would shake until the K-car of the 1980s - Ford managed to change the tune with the Ford Focus of the late 1990s. GM only really shook that judgement post-2008 bankruptcy, when small car manufacture was outsourced to Korean makers.

The Japanese and VW were not the only people making inroads in North America. Volvo was quite successful selling unfashionable boxes - the 240DL was introduced in the Nixon administration but lasted until 1992.

Even Saab is moving in. This Saab had a two-stroke engine, which made for some...interesting driving characteristics.

I'm guessing the Don Drapists out there liked the style, because Pontiac stuck with lavish illustration when it was falling out of favor.

Truly, while bad moons would eventually arise (mostly when 8 mpg land boats became uneconomical) the Domestic auto industry was languid in its long summer days. They could predict the coming of fall, but did not wish to. Why are my feel so cold?

You tiled the living room floor? Why would you do this? I don't care that it looks sophisticated! I know it is only 2 PM but I was going for a nap and my feet are frozen, just frozen! If I curl up on the couch I go to sleep! We're going to need to cover it all in rugs...

Whoops, sorry. Forgot. November. Just think happy! Don't cry before 2 PM on weekdays! This is what we decided! Look how happy this woman is!

And this is because she got new flooring. Vinyl flooring! Hm, wonder if it'd be cold on the feet like this tile...

 And it could be worse. Look at this guy, fat-shaming a statue. Imagine if I were that guy. Or that statue. Hell, she looks just fine to me. Why is this jerk fat-shaming her? I have to move on.

Another thing old Life magazine frequently has is recipes. While these are mostly food, drinks recipes crop up now and then, which is useful at Christmas. A month from now.

 First whiskey, now Bourbon. I imagine it was pretty ordinary stuff, but I can't help but wonder if it was any good. I leave you with this enigmatic image of a French statue eternally eye-bangin' the French ladies.

Actually, I have another picture of a similar. If memory serves, this is in the sculpture garden in Versailles:

Ok, France, this makes me laugh. I think I can get through November. I mean, I got a shelf full of unmade model kits and god knows what else to look forward to, right?

Exactly.