Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut

PAUL NEWMAN, 83, RACE CAR DRIVER

Paul Newman was the real thing.

He died yesterday at age 83 in his Connecticut home (close to his home race track, Lime Rock Raceway).

Newman was said to have been suffering from lung cancer, for many years a heavy smoker. Still, 83, smoking or not, is not bad at all.

Here I’ll share a few memories, and offer a few anecdotes some readers might appreciate knowing.

Many of today’s obituaries are referring to him as a “racing enthusiast,” but he was not some wealthy dilettante who spent weekends slumming with gear-heads and wrenches; he was a skilled, professional and world-class race car driver as well as one of the most successful team owners in the sport’s history.

I first met him in the mid-1970s at Riverside Raceway in Southern California, once one of the greatest road racing tracks in the world, and today a down-at-the-heels shopping mall.

He was easy to spot: Those blue eyes, like little laser dots in the semi-darkness of the garage; and not very tall, but, naturally, “movie star thin.” He even let me ask a couple of questions. I never saw him voluntarily start a conversation with a stranger or fan, but neither did he shy away from anyone who approached him.

I’d speak with him a few more times over the years, mostly just trading pleasantries.

His movie bosses were never happy with his on-track activities; it’s not easy to get insurance on a production with a star who spends his weekends racing. Often he’d enter events with a pseudonym or as “PL Newman.” Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward rarely was there when he was racing, but she’d be seen when his team was racing and he was safely “behind the wall” in the pits.

As his racing skills developed he often said that he was still acting and directing to afford the costs of his racing. (Newman and wife Joanne Woodward in 1968; they lived full-time in Connecticut).

Click below for more on Paul Newman and his remarkable motor racing career.

MORE DEATH IN NHRA; STEVE ENGEL, 49

(Steve Engel's Pro Mod Corvette at Gainesville, FL, earlier this year).

There’s been another death in National Hot Rod Association drag racing, the third in just over a year. It’s received scant media coverage, though, and we think one reason for that is because racer Steve Engel, 49, did not compete in one of NHRA’s “professional” classes, but was what’s known generically as a “sportsman” racer, an amateur, his racing a hobby, not livelihood.

While there are perhaps 100 racers in those four professional classes, there are many thousands of sportsman racers across the US and abroad.

Pro Modified racer Engel died at 5 pm on Sunday, September 14, in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Engel had been involved in a serious racing accident during the recent 54th annual Mac Tools US Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, which ran from August 27 through September 1.

Funny Car driver Eric Medlen was 33 when he was killed in March of 2007 while testing his car at a Florida track; he drove for John Force, whose team is the most successful in the history of the sport. Scott Kalitta, 46 when he died, one of the few drivers victorious in both of NHRA’s fastest and most-dangerous classes, Top Fuel and Funny Car, was killed at Englishtown, NJ, on June 22 of this year, when his Funny Car exploded and went out of control towards the end of the ¼-mile track.

And John Force, the winningest driver in NHRA history and the sport’s best-known public face, was seriously injured when he crashed at the 2007 O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals in Ennis, TX. His injuries kept him out of his Funny Car for several weeks, and many in the sport hoped that following Medlen’s death and now his own serious accident, Force, 59, would finally retire from racing and spend his time overseeing his large race team. After making a substantial physical recovery, though, Force got back into his under-5 second, 330-mile per hour Ford Mustang replica Funny Car.

Death was a near-constant in motor racing in the years leading up to WWII, and even in the post-war years of the 1950s through the ‘90s, racers knew that their sport could very well lead to serious injury and even death.

In recent years, though, in motorsports ranging from Formula One to NASCAR to IndyCar and most other major racing series around the world, injuries and deaths have become the exception, not the rule. This is thanks to drivers in better physical shape than those in past years, but especially to new technologies and rules which dictate making race cars and driver protective equipment as safe as possible. Drivers today often walk away from wrecks which a decade ago probably would have left them critically injured or dead.

(Steve Engel, 49, leaves a wife and two sons; drag racing was his hobby and not a source of income).

Click below for more on the spate of recent deaths in NHRA drag racing and how other series have lowered injury and death rates.

PHIL HILL, FIRST AMERICAN "WORLD CHAMPION OF DRIVING," 81

America's first and still only US-born Formula One world champion, Phil Hill, died August 28th in a Salinas, CA, hospital as a result of respiratory problems complicated by Parkinson's disease. He was 81. (Hill driving his Ferrari to victory in the 1961 Belgian Grand Prix, the season he won the World Championship of Driving).

Hill passed on during one of his many annual globe-trotting pilgrimages from his home of over 70 years in Santa Monica, CA. This last trip was to the vintage sports car races  at Laguna Seca Raceway and the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the world’s greatest and most spectacular collector car show, both on California’s Monterey Peninsula. Hill occasionally drove in the vintage car races there and was a much-respected Rolls-Royce and Ferrari judge at the Concours for decades.

Hill won the Formula One title for Ferrari in 1961. Other highlights in his career include winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times, the 12 Hours of Sebring three times, the Argentine 1000 Km three times, the Grand Prix of Italy twice and the Belgian Grand Prix. Hill's 1961 season stands as a monument to racing victories of the kind, for many reasons, we will not see again. (Phil Hill and wife Alma in 1975 at the Laguna Seca vintage races; the car is an Alfa-Romeo built in 1937 and is the very car which Hill drove to a win in the then-prestigious Del Monte Trophy Race, near Pebble Beach, in 1951)

Mario Andretti, America's only other Formula One world champion (1978), and who was born in Italy, said,  according to Automotive News: "It's just terrible. One of those things you don't want to see happen. You want him to be around forever. He's one of those individuals who will leave a tremendous void in our way of appreciating the sport."

American driver Dan Gurney, a near-contemporary of Hill, just a few years younger and still building race cars and the Alligator motorcycle, and who also competed overseas, said Hill will always be remembered as America's first Formula One world champion. "I think in his heart, he was always very pleased about that -- justifiably. That's a terrific thing." Gurney remains the only person to have won a Formula One race in a car of his own design, the Eagle (1967, Belgian Grand Prix).

Hill was also a longtime columnist for Road & Track magazine, covering events and people and, of course, cars. Two other notable racing figures from Europe, Paul Frere and Innes Ireland, both of whom pre-deceased Hill, also wrote for that same magazine, and through their writings many American readers had their first taste of F1 racing and other motoring events “on the continent.” They learned they were not alone in their love of motorsports, and there was more to life than the Indy 500 and NASCAR.

Hill was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Novi, MI, as the sole sports cars driver in the inaugural 1989 class.

He began racing cars at an early age, going to England as a Jaguar trainee in 1949 and signing with Enzo Ferrari’s team in 1956. He made his debut in the French Grand Prix at Rheims France in 1958, driving a Maserati.

(Two American racing legends, Jim Hall, creator of the Chaparral race car, left, and Phil Hill taking a break between driving stints at a 1961 event).

Click below for more photos and much more on Phil Hill's amazing and charmed life and career.

Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, Champion Off-Shore Racer, Sportsman, Benihana Founder, Is Dead at 69

Rocky Aoki, who founded the theatrical Benihana chain of over 100 steakhouses worldwide, where Japanese chefs with flashing knives double as performers, died Thursday night, July 10, in Manhattan, NY. He was 69.

The cause was pneumonia, said a spokeswoman for the family.  He was also known to suffer from diabetes and hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion. In 1964, when Aoki opened his first Benihana steakhouse, on West 56th Street in Manhattan, he introduced New Yorkers to dining as theater, and chefs as culinary acrobats. Seated around a flat steel grill, customers watched chefs sharpen their knives, toss them in the air, drizzle the grill with oil, sizzle the chicken, shrimp or steak on the grill, and flip the food onto the plates. Children stared goggle-eyed. Benihana’s style of food is called teppan-yaki. (Aoki was a skilled and championship-winning offshore boat racer, but he was nearly killed more than once in the unforgiving sport; Below, Aoki had his own look and style, clearly comfortable with himself).

Aoki also introduced many Americans to Japanese food. “He was the first one who made it accessible for non-Japanese people to enjoy the Japanese experience,” said Drew Nieporent, whose Myriad Restaurant Group runs a number of restaurants including Tribeca Grill and Nobu. “The key thing was he made it fun,” he said.

Before Benihana opened, most Japanese restaurants in New York were styled only for the Japanese population, Nieporent said. Aoki changed the environment. (Some of the information in this posting is from the NY Times' obituary on Aoki, and let's face it, isn't that where we all want our obits to be, too?).

Living in New York with my family at that time, I can remember going to a Chinese restaurant somewhere   in Brooklyn which was known to us kids by the name, "Avenue M," though that almost definitely wasn't the place's real name. But to our family it was the height of Asian cookery, though we didn't call it Asian, we called it Oriental or used some slang term. The thought of going to a Japanese restaurant never entered any of our minds; we certainly didn't know anything about what Japanese people ate, and don't think we'd ever even seen a Japanese restaurant, and this in the world's most cosmopolitan city. If it were Chinese, though, or of course, Italian, there were always Chinatown and Little Italy, right next to each other, on Manhattan Island, and those areas are there to this day, more than 40 years later.

But when we moved to Southern California in 1969, I was exposed for the first time in my life to Japanese people, in my school and working at local businesses. Being brave (at least I thought so) I even visited a few of the Japanese restaurants in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, and liked some of what I ate, and as time went on I learned what Japanese foods I enjoyed and which I didn't. During this period, while the Vietnam War was still on, with Orange County serving as home to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base and the Marine base called LTA, because it had housed submarine-hunting dirigibles before WW II and the letters stood for Lighter Than Air (with the two largest wood buildings in the Northern Hemisphere serving as the blimps' houses; buildings so large they had their own weather!).

BERNARD CAHIER, PREMIER F1 JOURNALIST, 81

Formula One photojournalist Bernard Cahier, who began photographing Formula 1 in 1952 and was instrumental in founding the International Racing Press Association (IRPA) in 1968, has died in France at the age of 81.

Cahier was perhaps the witness to the "Golden Age" of Grand Prix racing who began his life work in 1952, using a Leica, and later Pentax, to bring us a unique and intimate description of the world of his closest friends: Juán Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Jim Clark, Phil Hill and Dan Gurney, Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi, and so many more heroes who raced when motor racing was too often deadly yet always exciting, sexy and flush with international characters and money ... always the big money.

Cahier began his career in Grand Prix racing in 1952 and was a leading figure in F1 until the early 1980s. His photographs, and those of his son Paul-Henri, also an F1 photographer of note, have chronicled the sport’s history. (One of the last of the true "LeMans starts," which had drivers run across the track to their cars, get in and belted, then take to the course; Photo by Cahier).

He was born in Marseilles, France, in 1927 and caught the racing bug early after attending the Marseilles Grand Prix at Miramas in 1932. He was 12 when World War II broke out, and at 17 he joined the resistance in Brittany. After the war he went to UCLA and became involved in the Southern California sports-car scene.

Cahier worked at Roger Barlow’s International Motors, the largest import-car dealership in Los Angeles at the time. One of his fellow salesmen was a young man from nearby Santa Monica named Phil Hill, and the store's chief mechanic was Ritchie Ginther. For non-racers, Hill became the first American Formula One World Driving Champion in 1961 and is still a force on the world's racing scene at age 81. Ginther was the US driver who piloted Honda to their first victory in the F1 in the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix. Ginther died at 59 in France in 1989. (Ginther's racing life was chronicled to some degree in the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie Grand Prix, with James Garner playing the Ginther character and Toshiro Mifune appearing as "Izo Yamura," modeled on Soichiro Honda, founder of the eponymous company; Ginther himself appeared in an uncredited role in the movie as "John Hogarth," a driver in the Japanese-funded Yamura (Honda) team. He was also acted a technical advisor for the movie).

(The infamous Mercedes "Silver Arrows" at the 1954 French Grand Prix; Photo by Cahier).

In the days before motor homes, when reporters were on a more equal level with the drivers, Cahier was one of the best-known people in the paddock, a true 'international jet-setting racing celebrity' before there were jets. One motor journalist from that time wrote, "I was at the hairpin in Sebring in 1957 and Bernard was nearby. Stirling Moss slowed and Cahier handed him a bottle of Coke. The next time around, Moss threw out the empty bottle and Bernard retrieved it and put it in a safe spot. Those were the days."

Cahier handled European PR for Goodyear when they entered road racing and his party each year during the Monte Carlo GP weekend was the social highlight of the season. For a time, he was President of the International Racing Press Association. Cahier produced a two-volume book containing many of his classic photographic images of the period, writing his own behind-the-scenes stories and photo captions. In 1952 he moved to Paris and quickly became part of F1’s inner circle. He then became the public relations consultant for Goodyear in F1. He continued to play a role in F1 until 1983, when a change in Goodyear management meant the end of his job. He stepped away from the sport, leaving the work to his son, Paul-Henri, who is one of today's leading Grand Prix photographers.

The voluminous, amazing "Cahier Archive" can be found by clicking here. It is a "must stop" for racing fans who appreciate the Web for all it offers, and for non-fans interested in the history of the sport which Cahier documented in its modern era. All of Cahier's photos and books are available there. (Phil Hill muscles his Ferrari through a corner in the 1961 Dutch Grand Prix, on his way to the World Driving Championship that year, the first by an American; Photo by Cahier).

SCOTT KALITTA, 46, CHAMPION DRAG RACER, DIES IN FUNNY CAR WRECK

In yet another powerful and sickening reminder of the dangers of motor racing in all its many forms, Scott Kalitta, a two-time former National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Top Fuel champion and one of just 14 drivers to have won in both of the NHRA's nitro categories, Top Fuel and Funny Car, died today, Saturday, June 21, as the result of injuries suffered in a horrendous Funny Car qualifying accident at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, during the running of the Lucas Oil NHRA SuperNationals. He was 46. His drag racing career began at the same track in 1982.

The Palmetto, Florida, resident's engine exploded short of the finish line and his car continued at high speed, eventually striking a wall at the end of the track and launching into the air in a huge explosion of flame and debris. NHRA emergency services officials removed Kalitta from the car and transported him to Old Bridge Township Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

In this posting, we'll present the facts as they are currently known, and, as always, our own opinion and experience where it applies.

Kalitta and his DHL Toyota Solara Funny Car were in a qualifying run against Tony Bartone's Canidae Pet Foods Chevrolet Monte Carlo when the accident happened.

Kalitta was far in the lead as his car approached the end of the measured 1/4-mile when it exploded and was engulfed in a great ball of flame. The car's entire fiberglass body blew up and into the air and pieces of it lay scattered on the track behind the race car as the fiery missile of the car's frame and engine, with Kalitta firmly belted inside, continued through the slow-down and shut-off areas then ran through a catch-net and sand trap meant as "last ditch" catchers for out-of-control cars, and finally into a concrete barrier when it seemed to literally vaporize in yet another gigantic explosion of flame. There seemed no question that anyone could have survived such an accident.

The explosion and fire were so sudden and destructive that Kalitta didn't appear to be able to slow the car at all; it was going at least 300 miles per hour when it went through the end of the 1/4-mile timing lights. Kalitta wasn't able, apparently, to hit the brakes, possibly because he was unconscious from the force of the initial explosion. (Kalitta's car exploded in a gigantic ball of flame).

Whether there will ever be a definitive "final word" on what happened on Kalitta's car to cause the wreck can not be known. Certainly the car's parts will be put together by investigators; with liability insurance and claims being what they are, the scene was probably (we hope) cordoned-off as a possible "crime scene".

Bill Stephens of ESPN.com opined in a phone conversation with a studio host that his sources at the track told him they thought the car was going at least 200 miles per hour when it hit that final wall. The car's parachute did deploy and perhaps that, combined with the sand trap, net and other slowing devices did slow the car somewhat. Stephens said Kalitta was "just a great ambassador for for the sport ... he raced for all the right reasons ... just a great guy". The best question the studio guy could come up with was along the lines of, "So, do they think he was already dead when they got to him?" (Kalitta's cousin Doug is one of drag racing's best Top Fuel drivers).

Funny Car and Top Fuel cars in NHRA drag racing run on a hellish devil's brew of nitromethane and other  volatile chemicals. The ferocity of these cars can not be appreciated ... or properly feared ... unless seen ... and felt ... in person. Whether they really produce the 8,000-horsepower it's claimed they do doesn't matter; on the track, for those of us able to get close to them when they compete, they literally suck the air out of your chest, the odor of the fuel mixture burns not only eyes but lungs, too.

People often ask where "Funny Cars" got their name. It's a simple story: When the Detroit car-makers entered NHRA racing in the 1960s with more money than any other sponsors could muster, they were more than welcome, and built special "production" cars for drag racing with many changes from "stock," including "adding lightness" whenever possible, such as drilling holes in the frames to take off weight (the so-called "Swiss cheese cars"), and lengthening the wheelbase. Many people said the cars looked "funny" and the name just stuck. Today's Funny Cars are basically the same underneath their fiberglass body shells as Top Fuel dragsters, the traditional stars of the sport, and often run faster times than the traditional "rail jobs". Only 14 people in NHRA history have won in both Top Fuel and Funny Car, and Scott Kalitta was one of that very small dual-fuel group.

NHRA's fan-pleasing "open pits" strategy allows everyone attending the races to troop through the pit area, watch as the cars are prepped and/or repaired and meet and talk with drivers, crew chiefs and everyone else associated with the sport. For this reason, and because many of the fans are racers themselves, legally or otherwise, these fans feel a special kinship with their favorite drivers.

At the same time, NHRA has been severely criticized over the years for losing its connection to the "true spirit" of the sport. Amateur racers, called the Sportsman Class in NHRA parlance, can compete at many local tracks across the nation, and NHRA claims 80,000 members and more than 35,000 licensed competitors. (John Force, arguably the most popular driver in NHRA history, has started a much-needed safety crusade within the sport since the death of a team member and his own horrific, near-crippling crash, both within the past year).

The group still stresses its roots, but the reality is that the sport's four professional series, Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock (called "door slammers" because the racer cars' doors must be able to be opened and closed, somehow making them closer to "stock") and Pro Stock Motorcycle, are populated by teams with multi-million dollar sponsorship deals and huge annual budgets. A good friend of mine who won some of the first awards in NHRA through racing the then-new 1964 Pontiac GTO, now calls the big NHRA events "the parade of the painted elephants," referring to the brightly painted professional class race cars, which are out of the reach, financial and otherwise, of the average fan.

Click below for more on the death of Scott Kalitta at Englishtown, NJ's Raceway Park ...

BEVERLY RAE KIMES, 68, MOST-HONORED AUTOMOTIVE AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN, DIES

Longtime automotive historian and author Beverly Rae Kimes died Monday, May 12. Kimes was a rarity in the field; as one of the first female authors in a business traditionally dominated by men, Kimes' expertise in classic, racing and collectible cars, and the people who made and drove them, was the exception to the rule.

Her career has helped open doors for other women, such as Denise McCluggage (Autoweek and more), Jean Lindamood (Automobile) and Judy Stropus (who covers motor racing). They and others to come in the future owe a debt to Beverly Rae Kimes which can never truly be paid-in-full. Knowing that in order to succeed in her chosen profession her work had to be better than everyone else's, Kimes went onto become certainly the most-honored auto writer in this country, maybe even the world. Someone had to be first, and in this case, she was the "one".

Kimes' body of work, found for decades in magazines, newspapers, especially in books and now through the Web, confirms that she was one of the best writers in her league, spending much of her professional life at the top of the ladder. Kimes had a visceral understanding of cars and drivers but also of the more "ordinary" people, like the marketers, engineers and assembly line workers who made cars possible and available to the masses. She quite literally "wrote the book" on the rare and expensive European and American classics, and her "Standard Catalogers" and other books and articles are used as trusted reference material for many motor writers who came after Kimes (trust me ... I know ... Visits to the local library or the Detroit Public Library or private periodical collections are still necessary for true research into auto stories, even with the existence of Web).

Beverly Rae Kimes was born in West Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 17, 1939, and grew up in Wheaton, Ill. She earned two journalism degrees, a bachelor’s from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a master’s from Penn State.

A stickler for accuracy and detail, thoroughness and patience, with liberal doses of humor and insight, the exact qualities her job called for, Kimes  was a prolific researcher and writer known for such books as “The Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1805-1942” and “Packard: A History of the Motor Car and the Company.” Most recently, Beverly was the executive editor of the Classic Car Club of America, and had been a longtime editor of "Automobile Quarterly;" in fact, Kimes was that prestigious publication's first full-time employee.

She also had a longtime relationship with Mercedes-Benz, and in 1986 was commissioned to author and  produce the large, single volume commemorating the company's first 100 years in business, "The Star and The Laurel: The Centennial History of Daimler, Mercedes and Benz 1886-1986". The magnificent book became an instant automotive and publishing industry collectible. It featured over 850 photographs and details the technical developments and achievements in the history of the automotive industry first made by Daimler, Benz and Mercedes (the company's division which was named for the daughter of one of Daimler-Benz's first board members, Emil Jellinek, who also formed the company's first racing division and was the company's French distributor).

She also frequently contributed articles to "The Star," the magazine of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America, itself one of the most-honored publications, with gorgeous, memorable prose and wonderful, warm photography dripping with Kodachrome color.

Click below for more on Beverly Rae Kimes, her life and profession.

DESIGNERS OF 1970 PLYMOUTH BARRACUDA AND 1967 NSU Ro80, FIRST PRODUCTION SEDAN WITH A WANKEL ROTARY ENGINE, PASS ON

Please check our HALL OF FAME (or click on the highlighted text to the left) section for the life stories of two important automotive designers who recently passed. John Herlitz, 65, was the designer of, among many other well-known Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge cars and concepts, the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. Also, the designer of the first production sedan to ever be sold with a Wankel rotary engine, Claus Luthe, died at age 75. The NSU Ro80 broke many engineering barriers; General Motors tried for several years to develop their own Wankel rotary, but could not overcome problems with engine reliability, among other things we write about in Luthe's obituary. (Photo --- 1970 Plymouth Superbird; the Pontiac GTO Judge was GM's "answer" to the Superbird, which started life as a Road Runner with an extended nose ... But the changes to the RR didn't end there).

PLANE CRASH CLAIMS UK RACING GREATS

A plane crash in the UK this past week killed the five people on-board the business flight, and three of those were figures in world motorsports. Two of them, David Leslie and Richard Lloyd, were well-known. Also killed were the craft's pilot and co-pilot and Christopher Allarton, 25, a race team data engineer. With reports culled from several sources, we're able to report this sad story. Although not well-known to most American racing fans, Leslie, Lloyd and Allarton were on their way to test a Jaguar racing car in France when their plane crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday afternoon, March 30th. The pilot and co-pilot, Mike Chapman and Mike Roberts, were also killed. The house the plane hit was unoccupied as the owners were on vacation; they arrived home just hours after the crash occurred, unaware of the event until they saw their ruined house. (Photos --- Above, Crash site in the UK; Below, Bentley "Speed 8" at the 2003 "24 Hours of LeMans").

Former Grand Prix racing champion Damon Hill knew Leslie and Lloyd for many years through their involvement with motor racing, and described them as "lovely guys".

The twin-engined Cessna Citation I crashed on Sunday at Farnborough, about 25 km (15 miles) southeast of London, and burst into flames. Nobody on the ground was injured as the couple who lived in the house were on holiday.

Mr Leslie was best known for his wins in the British Touring Car Championship at the height of its popularity in the 1990s, and more recently he was working as a racing commentator on Eurosport. The 54-year-old, from Banbury, Oxon, leaves behind a wife, Jane, and two sons.

Mr Lloyd ran the Bentley Le Mans 24-hour team earlier this decade and helped Audi win saloon car and touring car championships in the 1990s.He was also once a former driving partner of Sir Stirling Moss.

The 63-year-old was principal of Apex Motorsport, based in Buckinghamshire, and also once worked for Decca records in the 1960s, managing Cliff Richard and the Shadows. He lived with his wife Philippa, 56, and three daughters close to Silverstone race track in Northamptonshire. (Photo --- From upper left and clockwise, Richard Lloyd, Mike Chapman, Mike Roberts, David Leslie).

AUTOMOTIVE ADVERTISING, MARKETING GIANT HAL RINEY DEAD AT 75

An American original, a smart, intuitive and open-minded genius, Hal Riney, has died at the age of 75. Known by virtually everyone in the automotive and advertising fields, and well-known to hundreds of millions of radio and TV users because of the smooth, dulcet, calm, reassuring tone of voice he affected, Riney put General Motors' then-new Saturn brand on the American peoples' radar, both by using his phenomenal voice on the GM brand's first TV and radio spots, and the tagline which he and his co-workers created: "A different kind of company. A different kind of car". (Photos --- Above, a 2006 Saturn VUE; Below, Hal Riney).

The first campaign which put Riney firmly on advertising's international map was his use, in 1970, of the brother-sister music act of Karen and Richard Carpenter singing their own song, "We've only just begun," as the not-very-background music in commercials for California's Crocker Citizens Bank. That song is still in "heavy-request" at weddings and the like, and it was listed #405 on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of all Time," published in 2004.

Riney also produced TV campaign spots for Ronald Reagan, but it was a much-anticipated car from GM, meant to be the giant corporation's, and, by extension, America's "answer" to what many perceived as an "Asian invasion" of vehicles, not a US president, that made Riney's craft and voice an immutable part of American culture.

To learn more about Hal Riney and his contributions to American culture and the "car business," simply click anywhere on this line to visit this website's Hall of Fame section.

BOYD CODDINGTON, 63, HOT ROD ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE

When I read this afternoon that Boyd Coddington had died at the age of 63, it came as no great  shock or surprise. Coddington had gained and lost large amounts of weight during his lifetime, and they say that's tough on anyone's heart, but what struck me most about him was his tenacity, patience, ideals of perfection, and his determination to recover from adversity ... and that's not to mention his gorgeous cars, truly worthy of what someone once called "applied art with a practical purpose". Coddington saw great success, watched as it mostly disappeared, then built himself, his name and his business back up again. What he went through, the tremendous ups and downs, personally and in business, were enough to do-in ten people. I'm just happy that towards its end, his life had become, again, a pretty good success.

While custom car and motorcycle creators have today, thanks to cable TV, become big media stars, like Chip Foose and that family from Orange County Choppers, Coddington was the first.

A decade-and-a-half-or-so ago, we held the "Coolest Car in LA" contest at KTLA MORNING NEWS, which was, at the time, the by-far #1 morning TV show in Los Angeles (and KTLA being one of the first "Superstations", it was also seen nationally). We producer- and on-air types sat down to plan the event, including who we might want to be judges of the contest's finals. The contest ran for about five weeks; there were some 700 entries and all sent a tech sheet about their vehicles along with photos, and the photos were real photos, as this was well before the ubiquity of the Web, and certainly way before digital cameras were priced so to be available to the general public.

As for these judges, one name we all instantly agreed upon the first time it was mentioned: Boyd Coddington. (Photo - "Boydster 2").