Americans used to smoke cigarettes, and they smoked them while driving, so cars had ashtrays and cigarette lighters. The lighter’s electric elements would broil cigarette ends, filling the car with a toasty aroma. Your car probably has a vestigial lighter today. A video by Zack Pradel explains.
Coachmaker and blacksmith Charles Richard (“C.R.”) Patterson of Greenfield, Ohio founded C.R. Patterson & Son coachworks in 1893, producing buggies, buckboards, phaetons, surreys and other horse-drawn carriages, about 500 each year. After the death of his son Samuel, his eldest son Frederick Douglas Patterson moved home to help Patterson senior with the business. C.R. died in 1910, and Frederick Patterson added automoblie repair to the company’s services.
The first C.R. Patterson and Sons automobile was assembled in 1915, a two-door coupe, the first motorcar produced by a Black-owned company. Of the 100 or so autos produced by Patterson, none are still in exsistence. The firm couldn’t compete with the Ford assembly line, so the company switched to producing trucks and buses. There was brisk demand for the latter, especially schoolbuses, and Patterson manufactured 500 buses a month, producing as many as 7,000 between 1921 and 1931. One-third of the school buses in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania were thought to be Pattersons. Although the Depression closed the business in 1939, some Patterson buses were still on the roads as late as the 1950s.
If a Bianchi bicycle married a Fiat 500, they’d have a cute little baby Autobianchi Bianchina. Made in Milan, it was a car for a recovering post-war Europe (and in this case, Britain). This model is probably known as the Autobianchi Bianchina Furgoncino, a pint-sized commerial van. Ian Seabrook takes it through its tiny little paces.
Cruising is legal again in Sacramento after years of discriminatory ordinances targeting Chicanos. Lowriders are cruising again. Hopping, bouncing, and skipping, too.
More:
“Cruising is back in Sacramento, how locals are celebrating a change decades in the making,” Luke Cleary, KXTV ABC10
In 2006, 47 percent of car models sold in the US offered standard or optional manual transmissions. One decade later, only 27 percent of new cars offered manuals. By 2020, the number was just 13 percent.
More:
“8 Manual Transmission Statistics,” Pete Ortiz, House Grail
King Charles III motors into the throne with a garage full of autos, but his personal vehicle is a Jaguar-Land Rover I-PACE EV, and His Majesty’s Aston Martin DB6 runs on old wine and cheese.