Mist on the Motor Car

GET A HORSE! (304 pp.)--M. M. Musselman--Lippincott ($3.95).

Turn-of-the-century Detroiters considered it a pretty good gag: a team of horses pulling a "horseless carriage" through the streets day after day, with a sign fastened to the auto: "This is the only way you can drive a Winton." The Winton agency failed to see the humor. Just because they had refused to refund a dissatisfied customer's money, the fellow was taking his revenge in this crude manner.

Winton struck back. They warmed up one of the company's two-cylinder trail blazers, hitched a wagon to the rear end, loaded a work-weary old jackass into the wagon, and attached a sign of their own: "This is the only animal unable to drive a Winton." Wherever the horse-drawn Winton went, the Winton and wagon followed. The disgruntled customer tired of it before the agency did.

Camouflage for Fear. The Winton yarn is only one of the curious gleanings that California Auto Bug M. M. (Wheels in His Head) Musselman has picked up in his lively retrace of U.S. automobile history, from linen-duster days to the present. He records all the major milestones, from the first plans drawn by George Selden of Rochester (1877), the first model of the Duryea brothers (1893), the water-cooled engine (1895), the steering wheel (1900), the windshield (1905), the left-hand drive (1909), the enclosed body (1911), the electric self-starter (1912), right down to such latter-day innovations as freewheeling (1930) and automatic transmission (1940s).

Just as interesting are the scores of engineering notions that somehow didn't get generally adopted, e.g., Uriah Smith's idea, back in 1900, of camouflaging cars with imitation horse heads, so as not to frighten real horses coming the other way. Then there was the Carter Twin-Engine car (price: $5,000), a forerunner, in a way, of the twin-engine airplane: if one motor conked out, the driver could still get home on the other.

Bates for Dates. Author Musselman lavishes all his affection, and most of his space, on pre-World War I cars, including the Stanley Steamer ("a dilly of a car"). The modern chromium-plated "monster" --"overly long, overly wide, overly powerful"--leaves him cold. Around 1900, manufacturers were afraid to make automobiles look unlike buggies; in 1950, says Musselman, "most salesmen are afraid they'll have a car that won't look like an automobile." The result: radiator cap ornaments, "despite the fact that there hasn't been an exposed radiator cap in at least 15 years," engines in front instead of in back "where [they] belong," six or eight cylinders when "four are enough for [180 m.p.h.] Indianapolis racing cars."* To the nostalgic Musselman, even modern advertising slogans sound "moronic" alongside some of the old ones: "Buy a Bates and Keep Your Dates," "Ride in a Glide Then Decide."

*But the average, non-racing driver has come to like the "smoother" feel of a six-or eight-cylinder engine.

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