Cars One thing I have always had since I was a teenager is a love of cars. As hard as it is to believe today, we had a few electric trucks back then. They were mainly used to deliver milk, pies and such to our doorstep. This was sort of like the food deliveries today, except it was mostly for dairy products. The electric trucks were vans, and had a very limited range. There were no charging stations and the trucks would use just regular lead acid batteries. I remember how bad I wanted my first car. Before I had one, I was on the night shift and used to take an elevated train to work. It used to be really cold when I would stand on the platform at 11:00 at night. I would think to myself how I wished I had a car. It wasn’t long after that I got my first one. Since I was employed, I had enough money to buy a new car with monthly payments. I looked for the cheapest one I could find and it turned out to be a Volkswagen Beetle. I was very proud of my 1960 car, that lasted for a couple of months until things started going wrong with it, but that is another story. Cars back then were very primitive. Many people were still driving stick shift cars. After my four speed stick shift Volkswagen, I wanted an automatic because I was so tired of going through all those gears. I was in to every type of car event. Lucky for me the Grand Prix had an event not to far to drive to. Then there was all that drag racing. It was taking place in so many places. I even used to get into it with a friend, but it was more of a joke at the time because he and I would race. I was in my Volkswagen and he was in an equally underpowered car called the Renault Dauphine. I don’t think they had 70 horses between them. A car back then had just the essentials. They could have an automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, heater and a radio. Not every car had all of these items. Many cars cost extra when you wanted this stuff. The heaters were pretty much standard, not the other items. What I liked about these cars was anyone who put their minds to it could repair these cars themselves. I became a pretty good hobby mechanic and saved a lot of money doing many of my own repairs. I was very fortunate to have lived through the muscle car era. There used to be a drag race every Sunday in the parking lot of the old Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, NY. It wasn’t long enough for a quarter of a mile, so the races were for an eight of a mile. I remember one car; I believe it was a Plymouth with a huge Chrysler engine which I seem to remember had 413 cubic inches. It dominated for an entire season. One of my favorite cars was my 1972 Plymouth Duster. It was a cool looking car. True, it was only a six cylinder, but I loved the style with the black vinyl roof. It didn’t have many amenities, but handled great. There was a radio, automatic transmission, and power steering, but no power brakes, and the brakes were not disc brakes. This was a problem when you went through water, such as a deep puddle when it rained. You would actually lose your breaking power and have to ride the brake to get then hot enough to dry. Luckily for the drivers of today, this is no longer a problem. If someone could have time jumped from 1972 to today, they would be amazed how advanced our cars have become. They also would have been amazed at the fact there are sophisticated electric cars, many of which have about the same range as the gasoline models. Looking at the features of the cars, I think one of the things which would have amazed them the most is the navigation. I know what a pain it was trying to read a map when you were going somewhere. All the gasoline stations used to carry free maps. Sometimes even with a map you had a problem getting to somewhere if it was in an isolated area, it might not even appear on the map. Another area that would have amazed that time traveler, is the system which not only displays all the functions of the car, but also allows you to change many features just by making selections on the screen. Take the transmissions for example. Many new cars allow people to change the shift point in the transmissions by selecting different performance modes. Using my car as an example, I can select either economy, performance, or automatic selection by the car’s computer depending on the situation as I am driving. There are so many other things you can do and one of these is the dynamic speed control which if set allows you to first set the distance to follow a car, and then allows for the constant speed set, but with the ability to slow down and even stop if the car in front does that and then start up again. I think this would blow the mind of our time traveler. If you would have told someone back then a car would really be a giant computer, they would have laughed at you. Even today I am amazed at how well things work. We used to see cars broken down on the side of roads all the time. While this still might happen, it is much more infrequent. This is a tribute to the new technology in our automobiles. There was one thing a lot of people expected to happen by now and that was flying cars. We felt this way because every once in a while, you would be shown a flying car. Actually, the flying car has been around in many forms since 1917. It was first introduced by Glenn Curtiss, known as the father of the flying car. It was the Curtiss Autoplane. It was followed by other flying cars and by 1946 the Airphibian, built by Robert Fulton and certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. It had 150 horsepower, could fly at 120 miles per hour, and travel as a car at 50 miles per hour. Nobody wanted to back it financially. Cars have come such a long way since they were first invented, and I am sure they will be even more amazing as time goes by.
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