School Days

School opened in our town today. Twenty-four years ago, my son Nick set off for his first day of school. After a hearty breakfast, seen off by his mother and younger sister, he boarded Bus 19, a big yellow International.

I remember my first school bus, too. As it happened, it was a Plymouth station wagon, called into service because our only town bus, a 36-passenger Mack, was too small for the student body of booming babies. No pictures of the Mack survive, but it had the familiar 1940s nose and a streamlined body similar to this one that languishes in the woods in a neighboring northwest Connecticut town. From the interior configuration I think it's a 1940-47 Ford.

No other town had a Mack bus; most had Chevys and GMCs, like the buses that replaced our Mack, and a few Dodges. By sixth grade, I rode a spiffy Thomas-bodied Ford like this one, still later a Wayne-bodied International. The bus contractor in nearby Canaan always insisted on White chassis, and my high school had a Reo, used mostly for athletic events and field trips.

Many years later I was intrigued to encounter the Crown Coach, the popular California transit-type school bus with underfloor engine. We had nothing like that in the east, although the Amtran Genesis, with International chassis, and Blue Bird flat-front have been gaining some traction here. Our town still uses conventional Internationals, though, as far as the eye can see. They're probably on the road as you read this. If you like school buses, you'll find plenty to enjoy at School Bus Explorer and Josh's School Bus Gallery.

Nick's first day of school was a great success. When his sister Harriet welcomed him home, he was anxious to tell all about his adventures. He still is. He'll turn 30 next spring and is still studying - for his PhD in neuroscience.

Some Day I'll Have a Jag

"Jaguar" means sports cars to most people my age (and for the moment let's imagine the British pronunciation - JAG-you-ur, three syllables, not JAG-wahr as most Yanks say it). The XK-120 gave great speed (120 mph), thanks to an advanced twin-overhead-cam six-cylinder engine, at a bargain price. The voluptuous E-Type (XK-E in America) aroused the hormones of more than a few adventurous youth.

Jaguar's birth was less auspicious. An outgrowth of the Swallow Coachbuilding Company, whose initial products were motorcycle sidecars and custom bodies for Austin Sevens, the early cars were badged SS. The first, the SS-I came in 1931, followed by a smaller-engined SS-II. Particularly attractive were "Airline" coupe bodies available in the mid-1930s. The Jaguar name first appeared on the SS-100 of 1935, built until World War II.

After the War, when "SS" had sinister connotations, Jaguar became the marque name and so it has been ever since. My sports car period having ended many years ago, it is Jaguar's sedans (saloon cars) that appeal to me now. A Mark V provided my first Jaguar ride (saloon, not drophead) and a Mark VII was the first Jag that I drove. By the time the Mark designations reached X the cars had become rather ungainly, but a smaller line, variously called 2.4, 3.4, 3.8 and Mark II, appeared in 1956. The flagship XJ6, introduced in 1969, had a near-20-year run before being replaced by a less svelte XJ40 (called, curiously, XJ6 in the USA). In 1975, the E-Type was replaced by the somewhat nebulous XJS, based on the XJ cars. Jaguar's fortunes have ebbed and flowed, as quality and fashion have varied. Today the marque is owned by Ford, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Today's Jaguars don't excite me very much. The entry-level X-Type looks too much like a Buick (although the Sport Wagon is interesting). The XJ8 comes only with a V8 engine (most un-Jaguarlike), and the "sports" XK8 is hardly more exciting than the XJS. The only current Jag for which I feel any empathy is the S-Type, and that may be only for its retro themes.

Some day I'll own a Jag. It must have the XK-type dohc engine; preferably it should be a Series III XJ6. I passed up a cheap Series I at Hershey (at least the clock worked). A 3.4 Mark II at Beaulieu Autojumble last year was downright scruffy, but came with carefully-preserved vintage cigarette butts. The car I probably should have bought, a 1986 Series III XJ6, was being offered by the Larz Anderson Auto Museum last summer but is no longer available. One day I'll find my Jaguar. Folly, you say? Don't forget: I once drove a Rover 2000 as my everyday car for fifteen years and 120,000 miles.

Wide Load

Wayne Graefen is the CarPort's Texas ranger. He roams the range in search of interesting automobiles, and this time he's come up with a 1960 Mercury Park Lane Crusier hardtop coupe. It is, says Wayne, "one of those '60 Ford products that were federally illegal to be on the highway due to width."

Indeed, the full size 1960 Mercurys were, at 81-1/2 inches in overall width, tied with the big Fords (and short-lived Edsels) as fattest cars of the year. Wayne's recollection is that a Federal 80-inch width limit forced Ford Motor Company to put the cars on a crash diet. Slimmer, 79.9-inch '61 Fords and Mercs were the result, supporting this line of thinking.

It's not so simple, though. Ford and Mercury were not the only 1960 cars to break the 80-inch barrier. According to the annual Statistical Issue of Automotive Industries, there were five other over-80 makes: brother Lincoln at 80.3, Imperial at 80.5, Olds at 80.6 and even Chevrolet (80.8). Interestingly, Wide-Track Pontiac, while keeping the industry-unique 64-inch tread dimension first seen in 1959, was, at 80.7 inches, a tad narrower than Chevy. Moreover, Mercury, Lincoln, Imperial and all GM cars except Chevy were 80-plus in 1959.

All FoMoCo makes retreated below 80 inches in 1961, Lincoln to 78.6. Chev and Pontiac were 78.4 and 78.2 respectively (and Pontiac, while advertising "Wide-Track" well beyond 1961, actually narrowed the tread dimension to 62.5 inches). Imperial, however, was not to be constrained, shamelessly puffing up its cars to an unprecedented 81.7-inch width from 1961 to 1963.

Trivialists my wonder what was the narrowest car of 1960. Automotive Industries tells us that, too: Corvair at 66.9 inches. Interestingly, Corvair also had the least overall height, 52.8 inches. Tallest cars were Lincoln and the Pontiac Catalina, tied at 58.4 inches. (Note that by March 15, 1960, AI had already forgotten the Edsel.)

I'm not quite sure what to make of the Federal limit. Although today we have Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, administered by the US Department of Transportation, in 1960 there was no such thing. Most motor vehicle regulations were administered by the states. The only 80-inch stricture I've found is a requirement for clearance lights and identification lights on certain wide vehicles. The lighting regulations have been around for a long time, the nickname "ICC lights" coming from the US Government body, the Interstate Commerce Commission, that required them.

I'm not sure if you'd be ticketed for driving a 1960 Mercury on the road today. I've worked out a remedy, though, for those who may be apprehensive. Wayne, your street legal '60 Merc is ready!

The Kaiser Role

It has become the conventional wisdom that Henry J. Kaiser, despite his success with concrete, shipbuilding and healthcare, was a failed automaker. Even with the help of industry veteran Joseph Frazer, formerly with Willys and Graham-Paige, Kaiser was unable to sustain what author Richard Langworth has called the "last onslaught on Detroit."

The onslaught, if you care to call it that, began with a flourish, new, cleanly-styled cars called, appropriately, Kaiser and Frazer for the 1947 model year. Sales were satisfying in that car-starved postwar market. When marketing got a bit tougher, both Kaiser and Frazer received more interesting grilles and there came a trio of body styles unique to Kaiser-Frazer Corporation. The Traveler and similar Vagabond made up for Kaiser's lack of a station wagon. A hatch opening at the rear (America's first hatchback?) and a folding rear seat meant that what was otherwise a Kaiser sedan could carry as much as a station wagon, even, if you were clever, a pony. Kaiser didn't have a two-door, so they used their four-door as a basis for a convertible, which, with a fixed roof, became a four-door hardtop.

In 1951, the Kaiser was restyled by Howard "Dutch" Darrin, who had penned the first cars. Joe Frazer had left the company and his higher-priced namesake car was due to be phased out, so a few left-over 1950s were given new outer sheet metal and sold as 1951 Frazers. New at Kaiser was a two-door sedan, which had a matching Traveler version.

Making a stab at the compact car market that had been successful for Nash, Kaiser brought out his own small car, the Henry J. The Henry J, however, was a fairly austere car with only one body style, no match for the fully-quipped Nash Rambler that came as a convertible or station wagon. To fill the void left by the demise of Frazer, Kaiser tried some new twists, like the gussied-up Virginian in 1952 and bamboo-like interiors in '53. A Dragon model featured some even more opulent innards.

A new grille in 1954, and a plastic-bodied Kaiser Darrin sports car were last-ditch efforts. Kaiser couldn't afford a V8 engine, so they offered a McCulloch supercharger on their ex-Graham, Continental-designed L-head six. None of it helped, and Kaiser sold the tooling to South America in 1955 and ceased to build cars in the U.S.

But that wasn't the end of Henry J. Kaiser, the automaker. In 1953, in a much-leveraged buyout, he had bought Willys-Overland Motors of Toledo, Ohio. Willys had supplied engines for the Henry J, and did so for the Kaiser Darrin as well. Willys' "Aero" passenger cars, while better appointed than the Henry J, were not doing well in the market, but the perennial Jeeps were often profitable. At the end of carmaking, Kaiser continued to build the Jeep line and, changing the corporate name to Kaiser Jeep, introduced the Jeep Wagoneer in 1963, arguably the first American upscale sport utility. The Jeepster Commando filled another niche, and the CJ series of Jeeps maintained their hard-core constituency.

Henry J. Kaiser may thus be called the godfather of the sport utility vehicle, ushering Jeep through an uncertain adolescence until its discovery by Roy Chapin, Jr. of American Motors Corporation. By this time, all American automakers were pumping out SUVs, the success of which led to Chrysler's purchase of AMC in 1987 in order to get the Jeep name and product line. Failed automaker indeed!

Great White Fleet

Chances are, if you're of certain age you associate the name "White" with trucks. For over seven decades, the White Motor Company built commercial vehicles, with very few exceptions. In the beginning, however, White vehicles were passenger cars.

In 1900, Rollin, Walter and Windsor White began building steam cars in their father's Cleveland sewing machine factory. The White car was a bit more advanced than its main competition, the Stanley, using front mounted condensers from 1902 and fast-heating monotube boilers. But by 1910, the Whites could see that steam had a limited future and phased in an internal combustion car. The last steamer was built in January 1911.

The first White truck was a steam delivery van built in the second year of automobile manufacture. Increasingly larger trucks were offered, both steam and internal combustion, and the success of White trucks during World War I convinced the White Motor Company, as it was renamed in 1916, to concentrate on the heavy commercial market. White trucks were of conventional design, but through the 1920s incorporated a radiator of distinctive shape derived from the condenser of post-1904 steam cars. The White touring car atop this page is one of the last passenger vehicles, a 1917 model originally used by the U.S. Forest Service. It is currently owned by the County of Los Angeles and stored at LA's Petersen Automotive Museum.

In 1936, Alexis de Sakhnoffsky restyled the cab of White trucks, a seminal design that would last into the 1950s. Specially-built White sightseeing buses became legendary at Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and when I was young a neighboring Connecticut town used nothing but White school buses. "White SUPER POWER" read the hood emblem, and diesel-powered trucks from 1949 proclaimed "White DIESEL POWER." An attractive cab-over-engine model appeared around this time, and an innovative White Horse delivery truck, with rear-mounted air-cooled flat-four power, was produced from 1939-42 and in small numbers after the war. White was among the first to build tilt-cab trucks, introducing the 3000 series in 1949.

In the 1950s, White Motor Company went on a buying spree. The firm gobbled up Sterling in 1951, the same year a sales arrangement was inked with Freightliner. Autocar came into the fold in 1953; Reo in 1957 and Diamond T the following year. Engine manufacturer Hercules was purchased from Hupp Corporation in 1966, but spun off a decade later. In 1968, White took on General Motors' off-road brand Euclid, though The General continued to build some products under the Terex name. That same year, Western Star was created as a model of White, producing heavy highway haulers for markets in western North America.

By the 1970s, the great White fleet was coming apart. Diamond Reo, as the two makes had become, was purchased by an Alabama investor in 1971. Euclid was sold to Daimler-Benz in 1977; it's now owned by Hitachi. In 1981, bankruptcy became unavoidable. Sweden's Volvo AB bought the remains, forming Volvo White Truck Corporation. Western Star was spun off in 1983 (with Freightliner, it's now part of DaimlerChrysler), and in 1986 Volvo White took on GM's Class 8 truck business and badged the vehicles WhiteGMC. Now part of Volvo Truck Corporation (Volvo cars having gone to Ford), Volvo Trucks North America is headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina.

A number of the photos in this item have been linked from Hank Suderman's voluminous website hankstruckpictures.com, a veritable cornucopia of commercial vehicle knowledge. Access to these images is gratefully acknowledged.