There's a really beautiful pictorial spread of Jack Miller's Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum in Issue 308 of AmericanDriver Magazine.

Jack is well known as the founder of the annual Orphan Car Show and for being the operator of Miller Motors, the last Hudson dealership. But don't take my word for it. Try some words from The Detroit News. Or maybe Hemmings Motor News. Or The New York Times, perhaps? Or Forward Magazine. Or The Kalamazoo Gazette. Or...

Jack, can I get your the name of your publicist?

Hey, AMC fans!

I just got off the phone with a great guy. In fact, he's the subject of my next podcast.

Gerald Meyers, the former Chairman of American Motors, spent an hour reminiscing about AMC and several of the cars they built.

Check back here for some fun stories about Roy Abernethy, the Marlin, the Javelin, the AMX, and the AMX/3. (Give me some time to edit it first, okay?)

He was a force of nature at AMC in the Late Sixties. He drove the company to modernize its image. He took American Motors by the shoulders and yelled, "Wake up!!" as he shook the company out of its sleepy granny-car complacency. He helped to make AMC more appealing to the exploding youth market.

He had passion and energy and impatience that seemed almost elemental. Call it McNealium.

Now, in a Torq-O exclusive podcast, we bring you an interview with AMC's former Vice-President of Marketing, Bill McNealy. Listen in as he talks about the car that he used to create a tidal wave of good buzz for AMC: the Javelin.

A personal blog entry today.

Last week, I got my 1961 Metropolitan hard top back from MG Automotive! I took it to owner/operator Steve Miller and told him to fix every mechanical component that looked like it wanted to take the day off. (MG, you ask? Wha??? Remember that the Metropolitan was built for Nash/AMC by Austin in England. It's a 98% British car.)

Steve completely rebuilt the brakes. He had a valve job done on the engine. He fixed the rear shocks. He worked on the carburetor. He brought the car back to life. It now runs like a top.

Yesterday, I went to the local BMV to get new plates and tags. As I left, I noticed an old furniture showroom had been turned into an indoor flea market. I've always been a total sucker for that kind of stuff, so I went in and looked around.

By total chance, I found a booth that sold vintage Ohio license plates. The guy had a matching pair of 1961 plates. I bought 'em on the spot and retraced my steps back to the BMV 100 yards away to get the vintage plates registered.

Next step: insurance. I've already had a "discussion" with the insurance folks about the definition of "pleasure drive." I don't intend to keep this car hermetically sealed in the garage. I'm gonna drive it. And after that, I'm going to get that unit body restored! (Even though the photo doesn't show it, there are little rust bubbles, and the rubber is old & crusty.)

Anyone wanna go for a drive?

Friends, there are gremlins in my Gremlin/Pacer DVD.

To all of my investors, I want you to know that I've been working very diligently to burn a usable master for this project. But currently I'm stuck in the garage up on blocks.

I use a MacBook Pro and iDVD to burn my masters. This DVD is no technological marvel. Like a Rambler, the whole project is simple. It's simple to author the project in iDVD and simple to burn on my Mac. But my software just won't cooperate. I don't know why.

Stay tuned, folks. I have to switch to Plan B to burn a good master. It will take some time, but I'll do it. And all of you who are investors on my list WILL get your DVDs. I will kick these Gremlins across the horizon line. Grrrr.

I was wondering why the traffic to our site spiked on May 23rd. Now I know.

The New York Times published a story by Kit Kiefer about the 1949-51 Nash Airflytes and the Nash Car Club of America's founder Jim Dworschack.

The story reminds America that the bathtub Nashes were part sleeper sofa, part camper, and completely comfortable. You could drive an Airflyte Statesman or Ambassador off the beaten path and park it near a stream. There you could cast your line into the water and later sleep under the stars in your bedroom-on-wheels Nash. (The only feature missing was an onboard flushomatic commode!)

It's great at long last to see this story in print. Jim Dworschack contacted us last fall and asked me to provide Mr. Kiefer with a copy of our 1950 Nash Airflyte Trailer. I was happy to help, but honestly, I forgot about the whole affair until I saw the story in print. Congratulations, Jim. It's a great tribute to the Airflytes and to Jim, who founded the Nash Car Club at age 15 in 1969.

One of the most impressive elements of the story is the fantastic photo of Jim by photographer Andy Manis. (Use it as your publicity photo, Jim! Get some business cards and wallet-size prints!)

I keep coming back to the June 2008 issue of Collectible Automobile, because there are a lot of great orphans in this issue.

I always thought that CA confined itself to post-WWII cars, but I may have to change my thinking about this magazine. (I suspect it's because the content in their chosen field is finite. There are only so many old car stories out there.)

When you turn a few chapters farther back in history, you find some really interesting stuff. The Photo Feature of the 1916 Scripps-Booth Model C Roadster is a good example. Before this company was gobbled up by GM, they produced some cool Brass Era buggies. The Model C, pictured here on another web site, was a "luxurious light car" with a floor that was lower than the chassis rails. The Model C pioneered this concept 32 years before (and several hundred pounds lighter than) the Stepdown Hudsons of 1948.

They made 6,000 of these from 1915 to 1916 before William Durant bought the company in 1917.

There is a jump seat just ahead of the passenger seat. It looks like a padded toilet seat. Maybe it was a "safety feature" like the padded dashes of Kaiser-Frazers in the 1950s.

AMC historian du jour Patrick Foster (It used to be folks like John Conde and Arch Brown.) just wrote a story about the 1965-66 Rambler Classics. Look for it in the June 2008 issue of Collectible Automobile.

These cars are usually forgotten, because they weren't sexy, and they were built at a time when AMC was pursuing the disastrous policy of competing with The Big Three. But I like the clean styling. The boxy shape definitely screams, "Get out of the way, or I'm gonna clip some hippies!"

You'll get the usual ho-hum recitation of facts and figures, but I found some new and interesting items. Look for the sidebar story about the 1966 one-off Rebel station wagon called the St. Moritz. It was a winter-themed custom car built for the 1966 Detroit Auto Show. I love the tinted rear windows that wrapped up into the roof.

Also, look for the '66 Rebel hardtop owned by Christine and David McGowan (two fellow Buckeyes and friends of Torq-O). The car is a beauty.

I really like what Collectible Automobile has done with their Design Fantasy sketch series.

Basically, CA has asked, "What if Brand X cross-pollinated with Brand Y to create a car that looked a little like both?" Publisher Frank Peiler then sketches up the results.

These visual mashups are fun. Some of them force you to do a double take. The Ford/Nash mutation in the June 2008 issue almost makes me do a spit take.

Good job, Editor Biel. At least you're trying to lighten up the magazine while maintaining its scholarly credentials. (Now if we could just get CA to create a web site!)

Snap! Crackle! Pop! That's not the Rice Krispies elves, kids. That's the noise coming out of your vintage orphan car tube radio!

You'll jump on it first thing after that engine rebuild, right? Well, now you don't have to wait.

Torq-O talks with Jim Cross, the owner of Vacuum Tubes, Inc. Jim will tell you why car radios with tubes aren't that difficult or expensive to repair.

Listen here, or check out the Enhanced Version on our Podcast page!