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Originally the Hollywood sign said “Hollywoodland.” The last four letters were removed in 1949, during refurbishment.
Trapped in a moment of time, such as we are, it would appear that everything around us is as it has always been. The Hollywood Sign, for example, is a seemingly timeless icon that stands for not only a city but a whole industry known worldwide. Those nine 50-foot-tall letters have been perched on Mount Lee above Tinseltown since 1923, but as enduring as they appear, they have changed drastically over the years. Originally, they said “Hollywoodland” because it was used as a real estate advertisement. The letters were covered in 4,000 lightbulbs. The H was completely destroyed by Albert Kothe, who ran into it with his car while drunk (ironically, he was the sign’s caretaker). Most of the sign fell to pieces in the 1970s and was completely replaced in 1978. The letters of the new version, though they sit on the foundations of the original, are only 45 feet tall and made of metal, not wood.
See, many changes can take place over the course of nearly 100 years while the original concept still remains. Given enough time, this is true for car logos as well. The Peugeot lion, Porsche’s stallion, Alfa Romeo’s snake, the BMW propeller, the shields of Buick, and the rings of Audi, to name a few, have all seen alterations, either from changes in the company, changes in the design, or changes in how society perceives the company.
Here are a few examples:
Buick’s logo has evolved over 116 years.
Buick
The current tri-shields of Buick is a relatively recent incarnation of the company’s logo. Started in 1899 by David Buick and named Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company, Buick is currently the oldest active American car maker. David Buick, at first, wasn’t interested in making cars at all, instead, he wanted to build ship engines. In 1903, Buick incorporated his company, and his chief engineer Walter Marr began building cars. Buick himself quickly ran the company into the ground as was forced out by his partner William Durant in 1906. Buick died penniless in 1929.
Early Buick logos were just a variations of the word “Buick” set in a cursive script. In the 1930s a researcher in GM’s styling department, Ralph Pew, discovered a Scottish crest for the Buik family and decided it should be used as a grille decoration. In the 1940s, the shield gained a series of flourishes, and in 1959, it was divided into three shields, each representing the three models Buick offered at the time: LeSabre, Invicta, and Electra. In 1975, the logo became a hawk named Happy, which lasted too long well into 1990 when the tri-shield emblem returned.
For 90 years, the elements of Cadillac’s logo remained relatively unchanged.
Cadillac
Turn-of-the-century car manufacturers were an incestuous lot. All related, their careers ebbed and flowed from one company to another. When we hear of Henry Ford, we can only think of the Model T and today’s best-selling trucks. However, by 1902, Ford had two companies in his wake and was on to his third. The first, the Detroit Automobile Company, went bankrupt in only two years, and he left his second venture, Henry Ford Company, after just a single year. The investors in Ford’s second company attempted to liquidate the assets, but an engineer named Henry M. Leland convinced them to keep the company solvent. They named the continued venture Cadillac in 1902 after Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, the founder of Detroit in 1701. Cadillac Automobile Company used the regal appearing de la Mothe coat of arms as its logo.
Interestingly, Laumet was never part of the de la Mothe family and he cobbled together this coat of arms from several different ones. He left France under dubious circumstances and arrived in the New World with a whole new identity around 1694.
The first logo for Cadillac was trademarked in 1906 and consisted of de la Mothe’s crown which represented the ancient Counts of France, the six merlettes (some say ducks) that stood for the Holy Trinity, and some color elements of the shield. For the next 90 years, the elements of the logo remained relatively unchanged, just presented in a variety of ways.
The current logo is a streamlined and watered-down version of the original. The crown, its points and the ducks—ahem, merlettes—are gone. Left is a colorful pallette of boxes in a shield reminiscent of the Autobots from the Transformers.
Rei Yoshimara completely re-stylized Mazda’s logo to its current incarnation.
Mazda
In the 1920s, there was a cork shortage in Japan because of World War I, so Toyo Cork Kogyo Co. started to process a cork substitute from the bark of the Abemaki tree. Since Japan would soon be able to get real cork, the company fell on hard times and needed to be rescued from bankruptcy. In 1927, Jujiro Matsuda joined the company and persuaded diversification, branching out into the tool making industry as well as producing three-wheeled trucks. During World War II, the company produced war material. The name Mazda was adopted after World War II and applied to every car the company ever made, but the company’s name had been Toyo Kogyo until 1984 when it formally switched to Mazda, a name that either came from Jujiro Matsuda himself or was a reference to Ahura Mazda, an Asian god of wisdom.
Early logos were just the Mazda name in a simple script. In 1936, the logo changed to the triple-M, which harkened to Hiroshima city’s emblem (Mazda’s hometown), the Ms standing for Mazda Motor Manufacturing. A major change occurred in 1991 when it introduced the diamond inside an oval, representing wings, the sun and circle of light. The folks at Renault complained that it too closely resembled its own logo, so Mazda altered if somewhat the following year. Five years later, Rei Yoshimara completely re-stylized the logo to its current incarnation. Dubbed the “owl” logo, the M was designed to look like outstretched wings. Many see a tulip instead.
There is no more famous prancing animal than the rearing stallion of Ferrari.
Ferrari
Prancing animals are a common theme among automakers, especially horses, considering early automobiles were marketed to replace the horse. There is no more famous prancing animal than the rearing stallion of Ferrari.
The Cavallino Rampante, the prancing horse’s official name, was the symbol of Count Francesco Baracca, a wealthy pilot who became a household name during World War I. After 34 successful engagements during the war, Baracca and his Spad VII was shot down on June 19, 1918. On the sides of every plane he flew during the war was painted a large prancing horse that he felt provided him good luck.
Enzo Ferrari formed Scuderia Ferrari, which means Ferrari stable, in 1929 in Modena, Italy. He initially prepared Alfa Romeo racing cars for various amateur drivers. When Alfa Romeo discontinued its racing team, Ferrari took over. However, in 1938, Alfa Romeo brought its racing team in-house again and hired Ferrari as the manager. Scuderia Ferrari was in hiatus.
The first Ferrari-badged car was the 1947 125S and was only made because Ferrari wanted to fund his racing efforts. That logo was the black prancing stallion over a field of yellow. Enzo Ferrari explains its introduction in his own words:
“The horse was painted on the fuselage of the fighter plane of Francesco Baracca — a heroic airman of the first World War. In ’23, I met Count Enrico Baracca, the hero’s father, and then his mother, Countess Paulina, who said to me one day, ‘Ferrari, put my son’s prancing horse on your cars. It will bring you good luck.’ The horse was, and still is, black, and I added the canary yellow background which is the colour of Modena.”
The yellow background represents Modena, Enzo Ferrari’s birthplace and the colors of the Italian flag span the top of early renditions. Coincidentally, the very same horse is used on the Ducati motorcycles. Ducati engineer Fabio Taglioni’s father was one of Count Baracca’s fellow airmen in the 91st Air Squad during World War I.
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Undoubtedly, the transcontinental record posted last year will not stand for long, as there are probably teams of people right now plotting their strategy to traverse the country in less time. They will certainly achieve this with new routes, higher speeds, and/or better luck. Throughout the history of transcontinental travel, the limitations on closing the time gap was technology and the infrastructure: Wagons, trains, motorcycles, and cars traveled across everything from the barren wastelands of the Southwest to pristine asphalt freshly laid west.
The very nature of the automobile and railroad industry may change the environment of future attempts, as technology and the imagination of engineers and scientists endeavor to create safe, faster, and better travel. Autonomous vehicles, magnetic levitating (Maglev) bullet trains, and commercial airplanes complete with auto pilot, are the future. Imagine riding in a car that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input; what’s more, imagine being surrounded by like vehicles. Perhaps the highways of the near future will be dominated by such cars and trucks that can run at high speeds for long durations in close formations, hampered neither by traffic, speed laws, or fuel constraints.
2016 Mercedes S Class autonomous features
For example, the 2016 Mercedes S-Class has options for autonomous steering, lane maintaining functions, acceleration/braking, parking, accident avoidance, and driver fatigue detection, in both city traffic and highway speeds of up to 124 mph. With adaptive cruise control (monitors distances to adjacent vehicles in the same lane, adjusting the speed with the flow of traffic) it has the earmarks of a completely autonomous vehicle.
Google’s self-driving car project
Not to be outdone by Mercedes, Audi and BMW have done extensive research on self-driving cars, but nothing like what Google has been working on. Sebastian Thrun is head of Google’s Self-Driving Car project at Google X (its experimental branch). Working on legislation passed in four states and Washington D.C. to allow driverless cars, Thrun’s team, along with Toyota, modified a Prius with driverless technology. In May 2012, it was the first such car to obtain a license for an autonomous car.
By 2020, Google plans to offer its version of a driverless car (it has no pedals nor a steering wheel) to the public. As of September 2015, Google’s fleet of experimental prototypes have traveled nearly 1.3 million miles of public roads (with only 14 minor traffic accidents).
Highways of the Future
Smart Highway by Daan Roosegaarde
Imagine a highway not dotted with road signs or streetlights, but brightly lit and well annotated. The lines on the road itself glows, and the road signs appear on a monitor inside the cabin of your car (or not at all; the car’s computer knows where it is and where it is going so you don’t have to). Sounds a little far fetched, but right now there are about three miles of Highway N329 outside of Amsterdam that use glowing green paint to mark the lanes. Developed by Daan Roosegaarde, the paint glows indefinitely, and he has big ideas to make it able to change colors depending on road conditions.
Solar Roadways
In Sandpoint, Idaho, Solar Roadways, owned by Scott and Julie Brusaw, has developed interconnected road panels to form a “smart” highway. Harnessing the power everywhere there are roads, can power lights, signs, and even electric cars using the roads themselves. In addition to the potential to power nearby homes, businesses, and electric vehicles, the panels also have heating elements for convenient snow and ice removal, as well as LEDs that can make road signage.
Take the Train
Japan’s high speed rail line
For years, countries like Japan and England/France have utilized high-speed rail in their countries. Japan’s Shinkansen line is the world’s busiest high-speed line, carrying nearly 151 million passengers a year between Tokyo and Osaka, while China’s high-speed system ferries over 370 million annually. Though they travel at approximately 150mph, this is by conventional railway trains (steel rails and a wheeled trains), but the future is Maglev train systems that travel on superconducting magnets that not only drive the train forward at incredible speeds but keep it planted on the tracks. In 2009, the Maglev Technological Practicality Evaluation Committee under the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism deemed the SCMaglev system ready for commercial operation. In 2003, the Maglev train with three passenger cars (unoccupied) set the land speed record for railed vehicles at 361.0 mph. Completed systems will be online by 2027 in Japan, and at that rate, one could travel from New York to Los Angeles in 6.7 hours.
Beyond the Wheel
With cars communicating with each other along the highways, dangers ahead can be shared among the cars on the road. The speeds can increase, the distance between cars can decrease, and accidents can become nearly a thing of the past. As many automakers have shown, a computer is much quicker than any human in detecting a situation, deciding on what course of action to take, and taking that action. A deer crossing the road can be detected by a computer in pitch black darkness hundreds of feet away and a solution formatted long before the deer knows there’s a car approaching.
Production cars today are capable of sub-200 mph speeds; now imagine those speeds with the confidence of a well-engineered road and a computer at the helm, the time it would take to travel from New York to Los Angeles would be just over 12 hours.
The Transcontinental Record?
It is hard to say what the future holds, but one thing is clear: As long as there is a record on the books, someone, somewhere will try to break it. After all, when the first person set foot on this continent, negotiating a path to the other side was made impossible only by his or her own limitations.
The quickest way from the East to the West Coast was via Clipper ship around The Horn, taking about 150 days. By land, that time was nearly six months. Today, it is five hours by plane and, now, only 28 hours by car.
What will the record be in another 10 years? Twenty? And will it have been made by a human driving a car or a car driving the human? If it is the latter, will it still be a record?
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Throughout the history of American transportation, cross-country migration had been based on three things, imperialism — to conquer new lands and expand the country’s boundaries; on necessity — to farm land and achieve prosperity; and on recreation and education — to see the sights and explore new vistas. Late in the 20th century, a new aspect of cross-country travel emerged: racing, not just getting there, but going faster and getting there quicker.
The Cannonball Run
Dan Gurney and Brock Yates
Known officially as the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, the unofficial race was run five times in the 1970s and was the subject of several movies in the following decade. Car and Driver editor Steve Smith and magazine writer and racer Brock Yates devised the event as a celebration of Erwin George “Cannon Ball’ Baker’s previous record setting trips, as well as a protest against the National Maximum Speed Law being enacted in 1974 (which Yates and Smith argued was slower than the average speed of Baker’s 1933 New York City to Los Angeles trek). Yates and Smith were also inspired by various “road movies” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, specifically Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop and Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (both released in 1971).
Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash vehicle: a 1971 Dodge Custom Sportsman, called “Moon Trash II”
The object of the race was simple: Leave the Red Ball Garage in New York City and be the first person to reach the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach in the shortest time possible. There were no other rules.
The first race began on May 3, 1971, using a 1971 Dodge Custom Sportsman van called the “Moon Trash II.” The race was run four more times over the next few years. In the 1975 running, Jack May and Rick Cline drove a Ferrari Dino in a record time of 35 hours and 53 minutes, averaging 83 mph. The second race was won by American racing legend Dan Gurney (winner of the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans) in a Ferrari Daytona. Dan later remarked, tongue in cheek: “At no time did we exceed 175 mph.”
After five runs, the official record for the Cannonball was 32 hours and 51 minutes (about 87 mph), set in the final run by Dave Heinz and Dave Yarborough in a Jaguar XJS in April 1979. Over 250 racers participated in the Cannonball Run races in anything from a Travco Motorhome (44:42) and a Honda 600 (DNF) to a Ferrari 308 (35:58) and a Mercedes Benz 450 SEL (32:59).
The race entered mainstream consciousness after a series of movies depicting the Cannonball Run debuted, all featuring illegal coast-to-coast races. Cannonball was directed by Paul Bartel and released in 1976, the same year as Charles Bail’s Gumball Rally, a more accurate depiction of the event. In 1981, Burt Reynolds joined an all-star cast in the movie Cannonball Run, based on the exploits of the original race. Cannonball Run was followed up in 1984 with a less-than-successful sequel. Both movies were written by Yates and directed by fellow car enthusiast and career stuntman Hal Needham. The movie uses the actual ambulance they both drove in the 1979 Cannonball Run (complete with a “doctor”). Speed Zone, considered the final installment of the Cannonball Run series of movies was released in 1989, and has a completely different cast (with the sole exception of Jamie Farr).
At Tire Rack One Lap of America, May 2014, via Tire Rack
After Car and Driver succumbed to the risks of sponsoring an illegal event, the editors chose to abandon any further attempts and started a successor race, the “Tire Rack One Lap of America.” Instead of a coast-to-coast straight shot, racers must compete various time trials on public roads and/or racetracks around the country. Started in 1984, the length of a typical race can be up to 10,000 miles. The 2015 event features 7 days of competition over 3245 miles and begins in South Bend, Indiana on Saturday, May 2nd.
Further Attempts
With the Cannonball Run as its inspiration, one of its former racers, Rick Doherty, organized the U.S. Express with similar aims. The only difference is that the U.S. Express terminated at the beach in Santa Monica, making it slightly longer than the Cannonball Run. The results of the 1983 race broke the previous record, clocking in 32 hours, 7 minutes by David Diem and Doug Turner at the wheel of a Mazda RX-7.
Alexander Roy
Though the U.S. Express record was never official nor was it documented or confirmed, it was still regarded as the record. Alexander Roy is an American rally driver and winner of the very Cannonball-esque Gumball 3000 around-the-world rally from England. A not-too-serious event, Roy regularly attends the rally in various police livery (in 2003 he was dressed as a Canadian Mounted Police driving a 2000 BMW M5). Roy meticulously prepares for rallies with the goal of avoiding police stops by using maps, GPS navigation, and spreadsheets. During the 2004 rally, he impersonated a police officer complete with mounted lights that he used to perform traffic stops against his competitors during the rally.
After hearing about the U.S. Express record from 1983, Roy set out to break its record in 2006. A practice run in December 2005 yielded a finishing time of 34 hours and 46 minutes, and the addition of a spotter plane. The following April ended in a fuel pump failure. The successful run took place over Columbus Day weekend in 2006 with co-driver David Maher (another Gumball rally driver). He traveled 2,794 miles in 31 hours and four minutes with an average speed of 90.1 miles. From New York to Santa Monica, he only encountered four traffic lights and four toll booths.
Dave Black, Ed Bolian, and Dan Huang
A three-man team led by Ed Bolian claims to have driven the 2,813.7 mile route from the Red Ball Garage in New York to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach on October 19-20, 2013, in 28 hours and 50 minutes, averaging 98 miles per hour, including the 15 minutes it took to get out of Manhattan. Driving a 2004 Mercedes-Benz CL55 AMG, and stopping only three times for fuel because the car was equipped with two specially installed 22-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks in addition to its standard 23-gallon tank, Bolian offered GPS logs as proof of his accomplishment (read more about it here: Doug DeMuro, “Meet The Guy Who Drove Across The U.S. In A Record 28 Hours 50 Minutes,” Jalopnik, 30 October 2013, Web.)
It is interesting to note that Brock Yates, the original founder of the Cannonball Run doesn’t acknowledge any further attempts, claiming, “Someone was going to get killed.”
Up next: Coast to Coast. The History of Transcontinental Travel, Part 5: The Future of Car Travel
Previous: Coast to Coast. The History of Transcontinental Travel, Part 3: Better Roads, Please
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