- Description
- Art Center grad with automotive product planning, development, and research experience over 34 years with Volvo and Ford. Former Petersen Museum vault docent and freelancer for Bring a Trailer. Monthly EV sales reports and curated alternative powertrain news reports for Motor Intelligence. Still playing with cars after all these years, from a Sunbeam Tiger to a stick-shift Mazda5 van...
![Last week’s post described a fifth-semester Art Center design assignment involving a domestic automaker investigating the use of a “not invented here” powertrain for use in several of their vehicle […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Captura-de-pantalla-2024-02-15-16.33.58.png "Auto-Biography: The Art Center Years – Have You Designed a Ford Lately?")
![Strangely enough, two of the transportation design projects during my Art Center years involved assignments to develop a vehicle powered by an engine supplied by a different automaker. Remember, this […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Captura-de-pantalla-2024-02-08-16.31.40.jpg "Auto-Biography: The Art Center Years – Wouldn’t You Really Rather Airbrush a Buick?")
![Return with me now to those bygone days… long before the PC, the internet, and the cellphone. In May 1972, when it came time to replace the ’66 Comet, I […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/69-Mustang-partial-brochure-cover.jpg "COAL #15: The ’69 Mustang – My Little Pony (Car)"){kind=small}
![Which car replaced the trusty Comet? I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you in suspense for another week. You see, the Caliente convertible’s last trip from Art Center back to […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/VESC-2.jpg "COAL #14: More Volvo Imprinting – A Trip to Transpo 72")
![Before we leave my first car in the metaphorical Curbside Classic dust, it may be worth relating some snippets of cross-country adventures successfully completed during my college years at Art […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Cross-country-Comet-e1705538544736.jpg "COAL #13: One Last Mercury Caliente Story: Cross-Country Comet Capers")
![Time for a short break in the COAL series. When we left our protagonist, he had completed his first coast-to-coast trip in his trusty ’66 Caliente convertible. Figures just-unearthed […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Art-Center-article.jpg "The Art Center Years: Settling In, Out West – Arriving To The School Where Cars Are Born")
![I’d like to offer a brief update for my COAL #6 post describing the ’64 Ford Galaxie 500 two-door hardtop that was my mother’s last car. In that post, I […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Laurie-Ford-logo.jpg "COAL #12: Notes From a Galaxie Far, Far Away"){kind=logo}
![I’m of the firm belief that driving across the country should be on everyone’s bucket list. Not necessarily the way I did it for the first time – traveling solo […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Rand-McNally-Road-Atlas-e1703873701132.webp "COAL #11: A Coast-to-Coast Comet")
![In last week’s post, I briefly mentioned the sweet feeling of freedom when I slid behind the wheel of my ’66 Comet Caliente convertible for the first time. Driving […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/66-Comet-brochure-cover-e1703369684958.jpg "COAL #10: Not so Caliente – My First Accident"){kind=small}
![Dad was well aware that his seventeen-year-old son was certifiably car-crazy long before I turned seventeen in the spring of 1970. Fortunately, the question was not whether I would have […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/66-caliente-badge.jpg "COAL #9: ’66 Comet Caliente Convertible – You Never Forget Your First…"){kind=icon}
![According to most sources, one of the first modern driver education programs was created by Penn State professor Amos Neyhart in 1934 and debuting at a nearby high school. However, […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Student-Drive-Sign.webp "COAL #8: Driver’s Ed – Instructing the Invincible on the Inevitable")
![Looking back on 1966, it was a year of change. Two years after Mother’s passing, our home in Morris Plains still felt different and emptier than before. Perhaps that was […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1964-T-Bird-Front-View-Hemmings.jpg "COAL #7: 1964 Ford Thunderbird – Another Avian Ford")
![With apologies to the famed lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, who penned those words as part of the “book” for the Broadway musical Camelot, that phrase could be used to […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/64-Galaxie-front-fender-emblem.jpg "COAL #6: 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 – For One Brief, Shining Moment…")
![We’re going just a bit out of strict chronological order here, for which I apologize. This COAL deals with the first “foreign” car I was ever exposed to, a car […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_20231029_164324473.jpg "COAL #5: A Volvo PV544 In The Springtime, 1964")
![If you’ve been keeping track of the evolution of our household fleet so far, as of mid-1961 it still included my father’s ’58 Plymouth station wagon (already showing the […]](https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,format=auto,onerror=redirect,metadata=none/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/62-Falcon-base-two-door.jpg "COAL #4: The ’62 Falcon – The First Ford in Our Future")
