Among the inductees for the Automotive Hall of Fame's class of 2023, announced late last week, was McKinley Thompson (pictured), the first Black designer that Ford Motor Company hired and one of the designers behind the original Ford Bronco. While Thompson's career spanned decades, included contributions to many concept and production cars, and earned him multiple accolades, his selection is also part of a growing movement at the hall not just to recognize the contributions of Black people to the automotive industry but also to address the shortcomings of the institution dedicated to celebrating those contributions.

"We're really pushing the awarding body of our institution to look at diversity and inclusion through a broad lens," said Sarah Cook, the president of the Automotive Hall of Fame.

This initiative started, according to Cook, in 2019 when the hall performed a diversity, equity and inclusion assessment on itself and found several areas in which it was not living up to its ideals, including the awards that the hall gives out and the list of inductees in the hall. Of the 297 total members of the hall of fame at that time, chosen over the previous 52 years, just two were Black people. "We don't mean to say that awarding by the hall is everything, but we looked at that number and said that can't possibly be the whole contribution, it's not the full story," she said.

Indeed, in the search for other Black automotive pioneers and leaders to consider for induction into the hall of fame, Cook said hall officials first had to contend with the question of whether so few had already been inducted into the hall due to racism that kept Black people from participating in the early automotive industry or due to racism that kept those who did participate in the automotive industry from being recognized.

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The designation's so widespread, it's almost become gospel among Mustang enthusiasts and the collector car world in general. You'll see 1964-1/2 as a model year in the titles of Mustang books, in prior Hemmings articles (nostra culpa), even on Ford's own website. Except, officially, Ford never designated any Mustang as a 1964-1/2 model year car.

"All of the first production Mustangs built from February 10, 1964, through July 31, 1964, were titled as 1965 model year cars," according to Robert Fria, an expert in pre-production and early production Mustangs who wrote the definitive book on the subject, "Mustang Genesis: The Creation of the Pony Car." As Fria and many others have pointed out, just looking at the VIN of any early production Mustang should bear that out: All of them - whether the one Fria discovered with serial number 100002 or the one that Captain Stanley Tucker bought with serial number 100001 - start with the digit 5 for the 1965 model year.

Case closed, really short article, right? So then why did the 1964-1/2 "model year" become so widespread to the point where it gets its own entry in year-by-year Mustang reference books and where the Mustang Club of America reportedly considers 1964-1/2 as a separate model year?

Part of it comes down to the introduction of the Mustang in April 1964, well out of line with the traditional model year cycle: The rest of the 1965 Fords didn't debut until that September. While unusual in comparison with prevailing trends through the rest of the industry, it was actually in line with Ford's mid-year introductions of the Falcon Futura and Galaxy 500XL Sports Hardtop the year prior, as Brad Bowling pointed out in the "Standard Catalog of Mustang" (which, incidentally, has an entire section on the "1964-1/2" Mustang). Indeed, given the success of such introductions - the Mustang essentially had the field to itself when it came to new-car publicity that spring, and that introduction date may have even been key to the avalanche of first-year sales - one has to wonder why we haven't seen many subsequent mid-year introductions. (Outside of unintentional ones like the 1970-1/2 Camaro, its introduction delayed by a strike.)

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If you find yourself blinded by the lights while driving at night, you aren’t alone. Complaints from drivers who are being blinded by oncoming traffic is becoming a regular topic of conversation, with some folks avoiding going out at night whenever possible to remedy the situation. Sometimes turning mirrors away from the glare isn’t enough. For driver’s piloting shorter vehicles, the passing of a large truck or SUV can easily light up the other car’s interior like an aquarium on display.

Today’s headlights are faster than the speed of dark. The LEDs in new vehicles can turn nighttime into daytime with the flick of a switch, but how safe is it, really? Regulations on headlights hasn’t changed in decades, while vehicle design and bulb technology has advanced. There are active online communities and petitions dedicated to discussing the causes and solutions to blinding headlights. A quick internet search for “ban blinding headlights” will reveal several pages of results.

According to John Bullough, the Light and Health Research Center’s Program Director at the Icahn School of Medicine, there are three primary issues that have added to bright beams causing temporary blindness on the roads, the most obvious being America’s love for big, tall vehicles. The rising placement of headlights on supersized pickup trucks and SUVs creates a more direct line of glare right into the eyes of those who opt for cars that sit lower to the ground.

The second cause of being blinded by the light is the changing of bulb technology and varying color hues. Vehicle manufacturers have long moved away from the standard halogen bulbs which produce a yellowish ray of light that is easier on the eyes. The move to LEDs introduced a brighter, harsher blue or white light that seemingly reaches farther to cut through the darkness, but commonly causes drivers to see spots after the vehicle passes even if eyes are averted to avoid the glare. The main issue is how the regulated lighting is measured: The human eye is sensitive to an LED’s blue hues vs. the warmer yellow halogen lights, but the light meters are not. Perhaps continuing the use of the old method of measurement isn’t too bright.

The third and most easily fixed issue for light blindness is headlight alignment. Bullough states that is it increasingly common for vehicles to have headlights out of alignment, even in new cars from the factory; “We actually did some measurements not too long ago and found that probably about two-thirds of every car had at least one headlight that was either aimed too high up, which is something that creates a lot of glare for other drivers, or too far down, which essentially limits their visibility."

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Aerial combat advanced at an astonishing rate during World War I, and though it seems unimaginable today, there were no American-designed aircraft deemed suitable for battle in the skies over Europe. There was a U.S.-designed engine in the fight, however: the Liberty V-12, or L-12.

The L-12 engine was America’s greatest technological contribution to the aerial war effort. Its initial assignment was powering the “Liberty Plane” — a version of the British-designed De Havilland/Airco DH-4 bomber produced in the U.S. by Dayton-Wright in Ohio, Fisher Body Corporation in Michigan, and Standard Aircraft in New Jersey. In addition to powering the DH-4 and a variety of other airplanes, over its long service life the L-12 powered tanks, high-speed watercraft and land-speed racers.

The L-12 came about because Packard’s head of engineering, Jesse G. Vincent, recognized the need for a standardized line of aircraft engines that could be mass produced during wartime. The government assigned Vincent to the task of creating this engine and teamed him up with Elbert J. Hall of the Hall-Scott Motor Company. The two met in Washington, D.C., on May 29, 1917, and with the help of volunteer draftsmen, created detailed drawings and a full report by May 31. This original design was a V-8, but in their report Vincent and Hall outlined how the engine could be configured as a 4-, 6-, 8- or 12-cylinder.

By July 3, a V-8 prototype assembled by Packard was running, and a V-12 soon followed. Due to its superior horsepower potential, the 1,650-cu.in. V-12 was given the nod for mass production.

Not only did the Liberty engine mark a great achievement for American aviation, it was responsible for creating a landmark car company: Lincoln. Henry Leland, who founded Cadillac, and his son Wilfred started Lincoln with a $10 million government contract awarded to build Liberty engines. The Lelands left Cadillac to form Lincoln because General Motors President William C. “Billy” Durant was a pacifist and initially rejected the government’s call for GM to build L-12s. (Liberty engines were later manufactured by GM). Production numbers seem to vary for output before and after the war but, in total, Ford, Lincoln, Packard, Marmon and Buick produced 20,748 L-12 engines.

The L-12 was a liquid-cooled, single-overhead-camshaft, V-12 rated to make 400-plus horsepower. The deep box-section crankcase was two-piece — upper and lower — and cast out of aluminum. The cases were joined together by bolts around the perimeter as well as by bolts on each side of the main bearings. The cylinders were individual with welded-on cooling jackets and they extended down into the crankcase for increased rigidity. The stroke was 7 inches while the bore was 5 inches, and aluminum pistons on floating pins helped pump up 5.4:1 compression. The cylinders breathed through 2.5-inch valves (one intake, one exhaust) with exposed rockers and valve springs, while carburetion was handled by a pair of Zenith model US52s.

The Liberty is a fascinating engine built with many advanced features. A full report about the L-12 presented in 1919 to the Society of Automotive Engineers by Jesse G. Vincent is available as a free download.

Who invented the radio-control (RC) car? It should be a simple question to answer, and indeed, if you plug that question into all-knowing Google, it spits back an answer: Italian electronics company Electronic Giocattoli, with a 1/12th-scale Ferrari 250LM that it offered in 1966. Case closed, move on to the next article, right? Except that's not the case at all, and the correct answer may have to do with an infamous incident of goofing off at one of America's largest carmakers.

Why RC planes before RC cars?

Curiously, RC aircraft predated RC cars in both full-scale and model formats. British drones described as Aerial Targets flew as early as 1917 while the earliest RC car, a Chandler sedan converted as a publicity stunt, drove the streets of New York City in 1925. (For what it's worth, the first documented RC watercraft was demonstrated in 1898 at Madison Square Garden by Nikola Tesla.)

In the world of scale RC aircraft, twin brothers Walt and Bill Good are widely regarded as the pioneers of the hobby after their initial test flight in 1937 and subsequent development of their Big Guff a year later. The powered scale car hobby, however, tended toward tether cars and slot cars over the next few decades just as full-size remote-controlled cars tended to follow Norman Bel Geddes's example toward roadway-embedded guidance wires.

Two major factors - one organizational, one technical - created that gulf, according to David Palmeter. The Academy of Model Aeronautics, a strong international organization dedicated to the pursuit, has been around since 1936 while the largest organizations dedicated to RC cars, ROAR and IFMAR, date only to the late Sixties and late Seventies, respectively.

"Also, flying an airplane can be done with the early RC equipment with nothing to hit - except the ground," Palmeter said. "Cars are generally run in limited space and needed quicker reacting equipment, which improved significantly with the availability of digital proportional RC in the Sixties."

Palmeter's experience bridges both the worlds of RC aircraft and RC ground vehicles. As a teen in the mid-Fifties, he had flown model airplanes with .049 and later .099-cubic-inch gas engines and, after numerous crashes, "I began to contemplate sticking closer to the ground with a gas-powered car." By the late Sixties, his sketches and dreams culminated in a 1/8-scale gas-powered RC car using a Monogram 1965 Corvette body, and he went on to get involved in ROAR and RC car racing soon after.

He stuck with the hobby, and about five years ago became increasingly curious about its roots, enough to start digging through old magazine articles and documenting his research on his website.

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