The Library Muse
 It’s springtime and a young man’s fancy turns to …………. sports cars. And racing, particularly F1. As I write this we are three races into the new season. And it’s shaping up to be a good one. Ferrari, which had been struggling for several years, is currently leading in points with 102 and two wins. Mercedes is right behind with 99 points, and Red Bull is a not too distant third with 47. New regulations, including wider tires and increased downforce, seems to leveled the playing field. In fact, at the Bahrain race only 0.776 seconds separated the top three teams’ qualifying times. That’s with cars that have completely different chassis, drivetrain and bodywork, not like Indy cars and Nascar which are basically spec cars.
Another new thing this year is the addition of the T-wing, an air foil that sits on top of the rear spoiler. Reminds me of a hillbilly camper (an old school bus with a TV antenna) and hopefully they will soon be gone.
Numerous cars are sporting new livery this year. Toro Roso and Sauber are nice dark blue, while McLaren wears orange and black. Red Bull’s flat black (at least on my TV set) is rather drab. But the Force India Team’s pink is a bit of a shock. Even though there have been pink race cars in the past, Dale Earnhardt started in one, I’m not so sure about it.
Due to scheduling conflicts (white bass run on Wisconsin’s Wolf River) the library will be closed for May.
Jaguar in America
By John Dugdale, 1993, 267 pages, hard bound, photos
John Dugdale his career as an automobile journalist in 1933, then after the war come to America to work for Rootes. In 1994 he started for Jaguar as their West Coast manager, then moved on to become VP in charge of advertising and PR. The book covers Jaguar’s arrival in the U.S. up to the Ford years. “There is a wealth of anecdotal detail on everyone from Bill Lyons onwards….The marketing/PR rather than the product viewpoint makes the book especially interesting…” MG and Jaguar were part of the same corporation for a long time so a lot of the internal company workings applies to our cars.
| -- ~~ Bill Mennell
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Book donated to CMGC library by the Goebberts
DID – U – KNOW
by Facia Nearside
What's in a name? In the automotive industry plenty, as the name is probably second only to styling when it comes to creating desire in the customer's mind. Yet despite what must be a huge amount of effort invested in the process, the results sometimes leave one to wonder! This is part one of a series looking at some of the names that may have, well. perhaps fallen a little short of the mark.
KIA Motors, a company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea has been producing automobiles since 1986. Enter the KIA "Cee'd" in 2006. The Cee'd was the first KIA designed to sell exclusively in Europe. To commemorate this event KIA created the name from European Economic Community or EEC, which is sometimes called CEE, but they added another "ED" for European Design. Realizing they had too many "e"s in Ceeed the last one was replaced with an apostrophe. Seriously?!
As if that wasn't bad enough the 3-door hatchback of this model was called a "Pro Cee'd". I suppose at least that meant it was designed to move forward.
| Reprinted from British Boots & Bonnets Chronicle— October 2016 issue.
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May 2017
