The second season of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee kicked off last week with a killer episode featuring Sarah Silverman. This week, David Letterman joins Seinfeld on his quest for caffeine via a cool ride; that episode will go live at Noon today over at the show’s official website and at Crackle...

BMW mechanic in LA. Now this is what I call New Age!

1940 Ford flaming up the road.

Back in 2005 I adapted the famous poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” by Clement Clark Moore into the drag race themed “A Visit From St. Garlits”. The adaptation was a pretty big hit with the hot rod set and grew some decent legs on the internet. In what has to be the highest form of electronic flattery, I actually got it sent to me in an e-mail forward by someone who had no idea I wrote it. Here’s a slightly updated 2012 version!

A Visit From St. Garlits
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the pits
Not a crew man was stirring, no nitro cars were making hits

The rods and pistons were hung in their holsters with care,
In hopes that St. Garlits soon would be there;

Capps and Force were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of header flames danced in their heads;

And Alexis DeJoria in her ‘kerchief, and Del Worsham in his cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the strip there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the tower I flew like a flash,
flipped on the lights and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the freshly prepped track
Gave the luster of mid-day and hit my eyes with a smack,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature old digger, powered by eight tiny Hemis, oh dear!

With a little old driver, so quick like a starlet,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Garlits

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

“Now, Grippo! Now, Wickam! Now, Rourke and Chiluk !
On, Byrd! On, Liggett! On, Garrison and Nutting!”

To the starting line tree! To the top end of the strip!
We must leave the line hard, we have quite a trip!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With a blown Hemi on nitro, and St. Garlits too.

And then, in a twinkling, I smelled on the roof
A snoot full of nitro, it was the last bit of proof!

As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Garlits came with a bound.

He was dressed all in black, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of parts he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes — how they twinkled! his demeanor so merry!
His headers were hot, they glowed like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a chassis pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He was short and stout, a right intimidating old elf,
And I stood at attention when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And rebuilt a blower; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his slingshot, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they launched off, with the ferocity of a missile.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

Claus Miller (Munich, Germany) with me in the photo taken at a Sarasota Cafe Racers lunch and with one of his vintage Ford historic racecars. He's interested in starting a Cafe Racers satellite in Munich.

Wolfgang von Trips was never one to languish in a hotel. He had not entirely outgrown his sickly childhood, but workouts and weightlifting gave him a robust, barrel-chested presence. No racer of the time looked more handsome in a polo shirt and goggles, his cheeks colored by sun and smudged with exhaust. Hearts fluttered. Women gravitated to him, and he returned their flirtations in gentlemanly fashion. “If he saw a girl he liked he really zeroed in on her,” Louise King said. “He was good looking, glamorous and, of course, he was a count.”
One evening Louise King was having drinks on the aft deck of a yacht docked in Monte Carlo with von Trips and a couple of girls. With barely a parting word von Trips slipped off with a redhead named Zoe. “He always went off to some quiet place with them to make out,” King said. “He always kept them away from us.”
Von Trips had a wealth of affairs, none of them serious. As if to capture everything about his new life—as if to savor it with a survivor’s relish—von Trips traveled with a 16 mm movie camera. Viewed years later, his homemade movies are a montage of preposterously beautiful women in bathing suits and ski outfits, all of them laughing and turning fond eyes on the cameraman. Michael Cannell, The Limit.

‎"Maximum Bob" Lutz photographed at his desk at GM for my book, MOTION Performance, Tales of a Muscle Car Builder, when he was Vice-Chairman. He's surrounded by airplane models (some built for him by Joel Rosen) and a model of a Baldwin-Motion Phase III 427 Corvette. He's still a Motion fan.

From a scene in Death Proof.

Oldsmobile kicked it off with the restyled Futuramic Rocket 88. It included the Hydramatic automatic transmission and a brand-new V-8 engine. Now, neither was new. Olds introduced the automatic transmission in 1940 and it had been building V-8’s since 1932, but the two things hadn’t been put together in a designed-from-the-chassis up vehicle. In addition, the Rocket V-8 was the first overhead-valve design, allowing the engine to take up much less space and producing less vibration when accelerating. It also had an AM radio that could sorta kinda be heard with the top down at cruising speed maybe if you had lots of imagination. y father, therefore, wanted one. But they were hard to find in February of 1949. Yet the above pic from 1949 shows that he got one. (Well, actually the Rocket 76 with the Big Six engine.) Only wanting is not having. How did he make that leap?

Moscow bump and ride.