(It’s wonderful how comments appear years later that put a picture we’ve posted into context. This was originally titled “Why Couldn’t I Have Been Wally Schirra’s Son?“, a lament on the lack of cool cars I had to wash as a kid. Well, it turns out Wally’s son wasn’t all that lucky either, in terms of the Maserati. Two years later, the following comment was left by FRLIII):
It’s a ’63 3500 GT – Superleggera body. I was the lucky kid who’s dad bought the Maser from Wally Schirra the day this picture was taken.
My mom, dad and fellow Apollo 7 astronaut, Walt Cunningham were standing next to the camera man watching this Life magazine photo shoot. Wally sold the car to my dad because he was afraid his 16 year old son would get himself hurt in it, or possibly worse. Wally had bought it from the first owner, who was also the owner of Churchill Downs. It was an amazing car with an amazing exhaust note. My dad loved it, but mom didn’t enjoy driving it because it had no power steering and “took an acre to turn around”, as she would say. She did wind up owning Walt Cunningham’s Porsche 911S, (also featured in the same Life magazine article as this picture), and thoroughly enjoyed that car, (who wouldn’t). It was an awesome garage with the Maserati, the 911S, a Shelby GT350, and Gus Grissom’s Cadillac Sedan DeVille. Lots of great childhood memories with all these wonderful cars!
Wow, that’s awesome! Not at all the same thing but sort of a CC effect – I was rereading one of my old COAL’s early this morning (The Audi Coupe GT one) and there was a comment left a couple of months ago, more than a year after the post ran, from a guy that owned the car in one of the pictures I found on the ‘net and used explaining what he has done to the car since including a current picture of it many years after the original pic was taken. It’s got to be weird running across a random article with a random picture of a car you owned but I know it happens here all the time.
Fabulous! I too have seen some long-delayed comments from people with a personal connection to a car I have written up.
Even more, I am of the age when EVERYBODY knew those early astronauts’ names. After all, it was the space age! Gus Grissom was a local boy, from Mitchell, Indiana, and Neil Armstrong was from Principal Dan’s old stomping grounds of Auglaize County, in northwest Ohio.
A special thanks to FRLIII for sharing that personal memory with the rest of us.
I have always had respect for the US space program and also respect for the Soviet Union’s space program.
Those early Astronauts and Cosmonauts were true pioneers of space travel.
While space travel has always been unpredictable, today we have computer models and the benefit of years of study on the effects of space and space craft. Not so when Yuri Gagarin orbited the moon in 1961 or when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon in 1969. I am sure as excited as they all were to try to accomplish their goal (whether it be to be the first person in space or to land on the moon), that they also woke up that morning wondering if they would even be still alive at the end of the day.
Yuri may have looked at the moon as he orbited in 61, but it was our ball he went around.
I can attest to your point. I toured the Kennedy Space Center some years ago, which included the Redstone bunker and complex where the first suborbital flights (Shepard & Grissom) launched. There was a truck stop scale beneath the pad where the Redstone was weighed after fueling, and launch trajectory calculations were made using slide rules and sextants. Rockin’ the old school.
Gee, why does Wally’s son look EXACTLY like Anthony Michael Hall, from the 80’s movies The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles? Lol
No… seriously.
Doesn’t help that the Maserati uses the same emblems as the family truckster
Tom Wolfe observed that hot pilots drive hot cars, for the Right Stuff, as he said, supposedly translates to skill in all forms of locomotion. My sister confirmed this when she learned that USAF Academy cadets drove Trans Ams while she was at college during the late ’70s. And it was actually true for Eddie Rickenbacker.
The astronauts got special lease terms on Corvettes from dealer Jim Rathmann. John Glenn was an exception, he was the “square” who continued to drive a family car.
Trivia: Armstrong’s favorite prop fighter was the Grumman Bearcat.
In the book, Glenn initially drove a Nash Metropolitan while everyone else drove Corvettes. Supposedly, this caused him to be the object of mild scorn and derision when, one day, someone wrote something like “The American sportscar: hedge against male menopause” on a blackboard.
More believable is that Glenn got the same Corvette deal as the other Mercury 7 astronauts, but decided to get a more practical Impala wagon, instead. Maybe he kept the Nash as a second car. Plus, there are pictures of Glenn in a Mercury convertible but it might have been later after the lease on the Chevy expired. It could also be that Glenn had the Mercury all along and it’s just another case of Wolfe playing fast and loose with the facts to punch up his story, just like the whole Gus Grissom ‘Honorable Squirming Hatch-blower’ fairy tale. Decades later, it would eventually be determined he did nothing wrong.
That aside, the section of the book that deals with the astronauts and Corvettes is interesting, if not entirely accurate. It goes on to say that they would go out racing in the desert, regularly crack up their cars, and the dealer would happily give them replacements.
Thanks. While Wolfe can be entertaining (& is a master of the run-on sentence), I’ve likewise concluded he’s not always careful about his facts. One doesn’t need to exaggerate about the Space Program or pilots to make them interesting.
Just occurred to me: Maybe Grissom’s hatch blew due to Electrostatic Discharge, if the relative humidity was still low inside.
Yeah, while ‘The Right Stuff’, in either book or movie form, does a tremendous job of capturing the spirit of one of the highest periods of American history, it’s definitely not a work of non-fiction and many things need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Another great anecdote that specifically refers to Wally Schirra was that he was quite a practical joker and may have originated what was known as ‘The Turtle Game’. The way it was played was that whenever two pilots met, if one asks, “Are you a turtle?”, it was required that the other reply “You bet your sweet ass I am”, regardless of the company, lest he befall some punishment (like buying the next round of drinks).
Supposedly, this was played out with Alan Shepherd before the first space flight when Schirra asked him the question, over a live mike. Shepherd deftly switched to a secure channel and gave the appropriate answer.
Although this exact exchange is not in the movie, it’s alluded to when Gordon Cooper hears Shepherd say the pilot’s credo (according to Wolfe) say, under his breath, “Please, God, don’t let me fck up”. Cooper asks him what he just said, and Shepherd replies enthusiastically, “Everything is A-OK!”, which is what was actually broadcast to the world.
I’ve read some of that recently; actually, I think John Glenn’s car was a Prinz, even more preposterous, perhaps, than a Nash Metropolitan!
Same Jim Rathmann who was the Indy 500 driver back in the day? I think he drove several Pace Cars after he finished his racing career.
Not much of a fan of the Maserati, but Wally’s Olds Tornado is superb!
I’ll take the new, first generation Oldsmobile Tornado over the temperamental Italian any day of the week.
Just glad to know astronauts owned something other than Corvette’s
Like many celebrities, I think the astronauts drove vehicles from whomever gave them the best deal. Other good examples are Johnny Carson who always drove a white Corvette, and Frank Sinatra who, during the years Iacocca was at Chrysler, always drove one of those. If Ford had given the Mercury 7 a better deal, they probably would have been driving the hottest Fords they could get their hands on at the time.
Likewise, when the fame begins wearing off, so do the sweetheart deals. Burt Reynolds used to have a deal with some GM exec to get a free Trans Am every year after Smokey and the Bandit was such a hit. But, a few years later when he wasn’t such a hot property, and the GM leadership changed, that deal was nixed and the free Trans Ams stopped coming Burt’s way. It’s worth noting that the Mercury 7 had cheap leases so, at some point, they had to give the cars back and/or renegotiate their leases. When the Corvettes began costing them more, I’m sure they shopped around for other, more lucrative deals.
A notable exception might be Alan Shepherd, who actually campaigned a modified Corvette on the dragstrip. I doubt that was any kind of official GM lease.
I have seen some video of Al Shepherd loading the family into a 61 Belair or Biscayne…Must have been the wife’s car.
It’s Toronado, NOT Tornado…
Oh, whatever… I’m with you guys on that one. Lol
Leave the Maserati to Wayne Carini.
For a minute I thought he was washing a Volvo P1800.
Thank you!
You are SO correct, Sarcasmo. My i-phone’s “auto correct” seems to have problems with old car names. My apologies.
Remember when we actually did things in bare feet? There is the son washing the car sans footwear. As a kid I used to mow lawns, wash cars and walk around like that and do did everyone else. Not now…
I love both of those cars! The Maser woud be great fun, between services, and that Olds would be great fun whenever you wanted!
‘Maybe if I wash reeeaaaaaal slowly, all these people will get sick waiting around and Dad will lose a buyer. ‘
” Life magazine photo shoot”
I remember when I was about 13, I found, in my parent’s attic, several huge stacks of magazines and newspapers from the 1950s. The magazines were “Life”, “Saturday Evening Post”, and “Look”. I will never forget reading every mag cover to cover especially the ads. “Look” was most interesting to me. It was a teen version of Life if I remember correctly. It took us all about a year to read through every page of every publication including the newspapers. I wish I had those still.
What I found most fascinating were the articles about the troublesome youth culture, their hair and clothing styles, their music, and their lack of respect for authority. What still sticks in my mind is flat top hair, ducktail hair, penny loafers, cuffed blue jeans, leather jackets, loud cars, sweater girls, and poodle skirts.
I liked the pics of the sweater girls.
The Maserati would be fun to drive a time or two….until something expensive went wrong. Call me a philistine but I could enjoy the first generation Toronado just as much, for a much longer time and afford to repair it when things went amiss.