The number one song today in 1965:
Three years later, the singer of the number one song in Britain announced …
Today in 1976, Chicago released what would become its first number one single, to the regret of all true brass rock fans:
Rich Lowry has interesting observations about what is derisively called the “prison–industrial complex”:
Prison is one of the most important institutions in American life. About a quarter of all the world’s prisoners are behind bars in the United States, a total of roughly 2 million people. It costs about $60 billion a year to imprison them.
This vast prison-industrial complex has succeeded in reducing crime but is a blunt instrument. Prison stays often constitute a graduate seminar in crime, and at the very least, the system does a poor job preparing prisoners to return to the real world. Since 95 percent of prisoners will eventually be released, this is not a minor problem. …
In an essay in the journal National Affairs, Eli Lehrer sets out an agenda for reform geared toward rehabilitation, and the conservative group Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, advocates a similar program.
Most fundamentally, prisoners should be required to do what many of them have never done before, namely an honest day’s work. Fewer than a third of offenders hold full-time jobs at the time of their arrest, according to Lehrer. They won’t acquire a work ethic in prison. University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Stephanos Bibas notes that only about 8 percent of prisoners work in prison industries, and about 4 percent on prison farms.
Labor unions and businesses have long supported restrictions on productive work by prisoners for fear of cheap competition, but their self-interested concerns shouldn’t obstruct attempts to instill the most basic American norm in people desperately in need of it. Prisoners should be made to work, but be paid for it and rewarded if they are particularly diligent and skilled. As Bibas argues, some of the proceeds can go to restitution for victims, to paying for their own upkeep, and to support for their families.
Prison should align itself with other norms. Inmates with drug and alcohol addictions should be forced to get treatment. There should be maximum openness to faith-based programs, such as those run by the splendid Christian organization Prison Fellowship. Prisoners should be encouraged to keep in contact with their families rather than cut off from them through what Bibas calls “cumbersome visiting policies and extortionate telephone rates.”
Once offenders get out, there’s a good chance that they are going back. Lehrer notes that about 40 percent of ex-prisoners are rearrested within three years. The goal should be to reduce recidivism as much as possible. Offenders shouldn’t be discharged directly from solitary confinement, or discharged without a photo ID. In the job market, they shouldn’t be denied occupational licenses when the job in question has nothing to do with their crime. They should, if their crime wasn’t too serious, eventually have it expunged from the records for most purposes. …
We have proved in the past several decades that we can lock a lot of people up. The challenge now is if we can do it more humanely and intelligently and, ultimately, create less work for the prison-industrial complex.
The number one issue that comes up when claiming that too many people are in prison is the drug war, as one commenter notes:
Stop treating drug abuse as a law-enforcement problem.
We should have learned that lesson from alcohol Prohibition.
Over the years, hundreds of thousands of young men, particularly young black men, have ended up in prison on nonviolent drug offenses. Caught by the “three strikes and you’re out” laws, all it takes is three drug offenses and it’s prison for years.
Rand Paul is right about this. The “three strikes and you’re out” laws should be amended to deal with violent crime, NOT drug offenses.
Our drug laws don’t take into account anything that scientists have learned about the effects and addictive potential of various drugs. Instead, they are a cultural statement about society’s moral disapproval of certain drugs (marijuana) more than others (alcohol).
Regarding occupational licenses, one commenter points out …
Only the potential employer has the right to decide if a criminal’s crime “has nothing to do with” the qualifications of a job or that the crime in question “wasn’t too serious.”
People tempted to commit crimes need to know that not only do they end up in prison but that they are forever restricting their options for the future to jobs that involve no handling of money, no being trusted with any responsibility, and no working without direct supervision. You do the crime, the consequences are your own fault and no one is obligated to hide the fact that you CHOSE to put yourself into the situation that you’re in.
… followed up by:
Why would anyone want to hire a convict?
Would YOU?
Stealing costs businesses a lot of money. Would you hire a known thief?
It is not the employer’s responsibility to provide employment for a convict. If you are worried about their job prospects, then instead of manipulating employers into hiring them, why don’t you start a business or nonprofit and YOU hire them?
The office of state Rep. Howard Marklein (R–Spring Green) passes on this news from the state Department of Transportation:
1. What is license plate reissuance?
Reissuance is the replacement of a complete series of license plates that have exceeded their life cycle. Once a license plate series has been identified for reissuance, it occurs automatically at renewal, and is done at no cost to the motorist.2. What license plates will be reissued?
DMV will reissue all sesquicentennial plates and all remaining auto plates that have red letters. Auto plates with black letters are not being replaced at this time. Both plate types will be replaced with a standard, black-letter auto plate of the current “sailing farmer” design. …6. Why are we doing this?
Both the sesquicentennial and red letter series of plates are beyond their projected life cycles. As license plates age their reflectivity decreases and they fade. Reduced reflectivity means the plate is less visible to other motorists at night and faded license plates become difficult for law enforcement to read.The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators provides standards for license plate design. AAMVA recommends that license plates be designed with white backgrounds and black letters in order to provide the best contrast and visibility to law enforcement. Red letters are the least desirable as recommended by AAMVA.
This requires some history, which serves as a demonstration of how government and politicians can screw up the simplest things.
Before Wisconsin’s current license plate design, this is how Wisconsin license plates looked:
These are actually the three previous license plate designs. The black-on-yellow plates were replaced by the red-on-white plates, which in turn were replaced by the black-on-yellow plates. The white plates served as Wisconsin’s Bicentennial plates in 1976, instead of other states’ more patriotic designs:
The white places were replaced with the yellow plates, perhaps because police said they liked the visibility of the yellow plates. No one with any sense of aesthetics liked the yellow plates, however, including state Sen. John Plewa (D–Milwaukee), who was quoted in, of all places, the New York Times as saying, ”Ugly and boring license plates should not be accepted as a fact of life.”
The Times further reported about the statewide contest held for a new plate design:
Among the rejected offerings were a design shaped like a milk can and one shaped like a piece of swiss cheese with the slogan ”State of Udder Beauty.”
Governor [Anthony] Earl chose the five finalists, which were published in ballot form in newspapers around the state last month.
The offerings are these:
* ”We Like it Here” in white letters on a red background.
* A blue, green and red design of a sailboat and barn on a white background, with no slogan.
* The slogan ”America’s Dairyland” on white background with red stripe on top and bottom and an outline of the state in upper left corner.
* ”America’s Northern Escape” in white letters on a green background
* ”America’s Dairyland” on white background with red stripe on top and bottom and a design of sailboat and barn.
The sailboat/barn design won to represent, I suppose, agriculture and tourism. (Which demonstrates the pervasive anti-business attitude of this state, since smokestacks to represent manufacturing didn’t get included.) The problem with the first new plates, however …
… was that the blue numbers (upper right) were judged to look like neighboring states’ plates with similar blue numbers, so they were changed a year later to red.
But red was judged to fade too quickly …
… so black replaced red in 2000.
It is interesting to note that, unlike, say, Iowa, the listing of what county the vehicle is registered in doesn’t appear on Wisconsin plates. (I assume that counties get a cut of vehicle registration fees in some states, hence the county listing. Apparently not here.) Unlike in Minnesota, an opportunity to show off the state’s shape in place of a plain, boring dash was wasted here.
The one time that the state actually got it right was when the state rolled out the license plates in honors of the state’s 150th anniversary …
… which (hence the headline) are being retired in favor of the generic miniature farm design because of the same fading-red problem …
… thus throwing away only the best license plate in the history of this design-challenged state.
Are there other license plate choices? Too many to list here, in fact, but that’s not the point. The bucolic scene from a wetland somewhere is fading away to be replaced by the looks-like-any-state-anywhere license plate.
The number one song in Britain today in 1964 was brought back to popularity almost two decades later by the movie “Stripes”:
That same day, the Kinks hit the British charts for the first time with …
This was, of course, the number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
Gov. Scott Walker threw out an interesting idea quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday that he would be interested in exploring the idea of repealing the state income tax, but added that a lot of work would have to be done to explore how that would be accomplished.
Walker, speaking to reporters at the Wisconsin State Fair, was asked by a reporter if he was thinking about repealing the income tax. Walker said that he gets asked that question a lot.
The governor said he wanted to move forward on tax reform. Asked specifically about repealing the income tax, Waker said: “That’s an area I would be interested in, but there’s a lot of ground work that would have to be done. Everything from deciding what would replace it to how to do it.”
Walker said he was not making any recommendation “one way or the other.” But he acknowledged that in his expected run for re-election next year, a “comprehensive tax-reform package” would be included in the campaign.
This requires a brief review of Wisconsin’s (excessive) taxes. The income tax, which “celebrates” its 102nd anniversary this year in Wisconsin (and became law in the U.S. 100 years ago last February), was created in part to reduce the state’s first widespread tax, property taxes. When, nearly five decades later, property taxes and income taxes were adjudged to be insufficient to fund growing state and local governments, not to mention further complaints about property taxes, the sales tax was created — first at 3 percent before increases to 4 percent in 1969, and 5 percent in 1982. The Legislature allowed counties to institute a 0.5 percent sales tax after that, and predictably all but 10 counties have sales taxes, supposedly to reduce property taxes too. Brown County has a 0.5 percent sales tax to fund the Lambeau Field renovations, and five Milwaukee-area counties have a 0.1-percent sales tax to fund Miller Park.
Taxes are dropping by $704 million during the 2013–15 budget cycle, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. That, however, is only one-third of the $2.2 billion foisted upon us by Walker’s predecessor, Gov. James Doyle, and the 2009–10 Legislature, then controlled by Democrats. And that isn’t going to change Wisconsin’s well earned reputation as a tax hell anyway. That won’t happen until the state enacts the biggest tax cut in its history, something that will dwarf any tax cut or tax increase in this state’s history.
The first thing Walker should propose, as you know from this blog, is eliminating corporate income taxes. That would be an incentive to businesses here as well as businesses contemplating moving out of their current states. Businesses are the government’s tax collectors; taxes assessed on businesses are paid by businesses’ customers, which is a violation of the concept of tax clarity. People should be able to see clearly the taxes they’re paying.
Media Trackers finds a common theme among GOP governors:
Walker is not alone among Republican governors looking to end state income taxes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal floated an income tax elimination plan to his state legislature earlier this year. Jindal momentarily stopped pushing for the plan for now, but has indicated he wants to bring it up again in the future.
The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman also proposed terminating his state’s income tax. That same story also pointed out that a study conducted by noted economist Art Laffer found that job creation in states with zero income tax far outpaced job creation in states with an income tax.
A new analysis by economist Art Laffer for the American Legislative Exchange Council finds that, from 2002 to 2012, 62% of the three million net new jobs in America were created in the nine states without an income tax, though these states account for only about 20% of the national population.
The looming presidential contest could also influence Walker’s tax reform calculus. By enacting a tax cut in this budget, and talking about further reform – particularly such a bold step as eliminating the income tax – the Governor puts himself on a more than equal footing as potential GOP presidential nomination rivals. This, of course, all depends on Walker actually choosing to run.
So is it a serious proposal (lacking significant details, about which more momentarily) or not? One thing that makes you wonder is that even if Walker succeeded in getting the Legislature to kill the income tax doesn’t mean income taxes won’t come back someday. Wisconsin survived its first 65 years without income taxes, and its first 114 years without sales taxes. As far as I know, though, Walker is the first, and if not certainly the highest ranking, politician to propose eliminating roughly one-third of the state tax system. (I was taught in two state government classes at UW–Madison that property, income and sales taxes are kind of the three-legged stool of Wisconsin taxation, each taking up roughly one-third of our tax bill, though that has shifted from one tax to another over the years and with the economy.)
If you are going to get rid of state income taxes, you must not merely set income tax rates at zero, because a future Democratic governor and Legislature could easily bring them back. Voters would have to vote by referendum (following approval of consecutive sessions of the Legislature) to amend Article VIII of the state Constitution, which includes the sentence “Taxes may also be imposed on incomes, privileges and occupations, which taxes may be graduated and progressive, and reasonable exemptions may be provided.” (And while you’re at it, the state Constitution badly needs provisions with mandatory limits on spending and tax increases.)
The other sticky issue is whether Walker is ready for the political fight of the government cuts that would be necessary to match spending cuts to eliminating the revenue from income taxes, or raising the other two major taxes to make up the difference. A 50-percent increase in sales taxes would increase the rate to 7.5 percent, before the 0.5-percent sales tax in all but 10 counties. Polls indicate that Wisconsinites complain about sales taxes the least, but there’s a bit of a difference between 5.5 percent and 8 percent.
As for property taxes, about which Wisconsinites complain the most: Consider these statistics from Tax-Rates.org:
(See? We are still a tax hell.)
That property tax bill translates to a net mil rate — the total of school district, municipal, county, technical college and state property tax mil rates — of $17.605 per $1,000 valuation. (Assessed or equalized? For purposes of this comparison, it doesn’t matter.) If you own a house that generates a $3,000 property tax bill, how would you feel about paying not $3,000 in property taxes, but $4,500 in property taxes? Of course, you can write off property taxes on your income taxes, but (1) not if state income taxes don’t exist, and (2) not if the proposed federal tax reform (assuming it ever happens) includes eliminating the ability to deduct state and local taxes. (Of course, the latter may happen anyway, because the state and local tax deduction is a subsidy to high-tax states such as Wisconsin.)
I am skeptical as well because of the obvious (based upon the last half-decade or so, though it’s much, much older than that) animus toward wealth in this state. The spittle generated every time the words “tax cut” are brought up should be enough to short out the state’s entire electric grid. Doyle and his Democrats increased taxes by $2.2 billion stupidly believing that the “rich” wouldn’t do anything to reduce their tax burden. They discovered to their surprise that “rich” people have resources to avoid taxes, with resulting nine- and 12-digit budget deficits.
The other inconvenient part of this discussion is that for all the talk of chopping up government (and government does nothing to contribute to our quality of life), and for all the legislative successes Walker has had, government is not smaller, and taxes aren’t really lower in this state. The Department of Natural Resources apparently has enough employees to staff baby deer-killing SWAT teams. “Executive assistant” positions still exist in state government. The state still has 3,120 units of government. State and local governments still have redundant levels of police. (Two words: “State Patrol.”)
So you’ll have to pardon my skepticism about eliminating state income taxes. Until Walker comes out with a plan, it’s just election-year (or election-year-eve) talk.
If you want to drive Wisconsin liberals insane, you can do one of two things: (1) mention the words “President Walker,” or (2) talk about Texas.
Hollywood Republican does the latter:
Erica Grieder book, “Big, Hot, Cheap and Right: What America Can Learn From the Strange Genius of Texas” lays out an interesting case for why the Texas miracle of this young century is worth looking at. …
The first aspect that she discusses is Texas history, in which limited government became ingrained in most Texans DNA. From the beginning of The Texas story most Texans were governed by incompetency. Griede covers the rule under Mexican dictator Santa Anna, and a brief history with the confederacy and reconstruction after the Civil War, when Texans saw government at its worst. Ms. Grieder makes the point that many Texans found themselves depending upon each other as opposed to a central government and when given a chance to write their constitution, they restricted the power of their state government. …
The first is that the Texas ideal of limited government works and while many critics view the Texas miracle as a mirage, it is a fact. For every low wage job earner created, a high pay job earner has been created as well. The Texas job creation has increase jobs from the top to the bottom. As workers come to Texas for opportunities, they added to the economic strength of the State. So the idea that Texas is nothing but McJobs is false as many high paying jobs have been created. If anything, Texas has done a better job of creating higher paying in the United States than Obamanomics has been doing creating temporary and minimum jobs. Many of Texas critics have been responsible for promoting an economic theory responsible for the creation of McJobs than Texas.
While many would say that Texas oil is the key to development, they would be right but not for the reason they state. The reason is that oil has played a role into Texas economic development is because Texans love business and they love making money. They have chosen to develop their resources and they don’t feel guilty about it. States like Illinois and California have similar access to energy resource but they have failed to develop those resources for the benefit of their state.
Grieder makes a great point that one key to Texas development is that Texans view business being profitable a good thing and since Texas has limited restraint on their government, they have appreciated the need for a vigorous private sector. Texans don’t expect much from government and there is many private-public cooperation and while Texans do benefit from Federal matching funds, they contributed far more to the Federal government than they take out. …
Texans may be viewed as bunch of right wing extremists but as Grieder noted, there is a pragmatic nature to Texas politics. On immigration policy, most Texans including many Republicans have taken a more moderate approach toward immigration reform and there were times in the 2012 primary that Perry was attacked by immigration restrictionists. Texans never viewed the Arizona approach as one that won’t work for them. …
The real lesson that we can learn from Texas is government should be limited and more importantly we should accept that for economic growth to happen, you have to respect the business class, not to mock them. Grieder observed that one thing that a business operating in Texas knows, government is limited and the rules are consistent year in and year out. If you love your business class, you will have economic growth. By limiting government by fiat, Texans forced themselves to depend upon each other through their various civil societies such as Churches or local community organization. The Texas Rangers started out as an independent force, not really associated with the government but a quasi-paramilitary organization to enforce what laws that existed. The other aspect is that Texans learned not to depend upon government for their salvation but instead allow their private sector to grow not just in the economic sphere but the civil sphere beyond the government. For Texans, government is but one actor in a greater society as oppose to being the state. As the bureaucratic state collapses, the Texas ideals will be the prevalent idea to draw from.
“Love business” and “love making money”? “Business being profitable” as “a good thing”? “Don’t expect much from government”? Yes, Texas is definitely the anti-Wisconsin.
Today in 1968, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time when they rehearsed at a London studio. You know them as Led Zeppelin:
We begin with a non-musical anniversary: On Aug. 11, 1919, Green Bay Press–Gazette sports editor George Calhoun and Indian Packing Co. employee Earl “Curly” Lambeau, a former Notre Dame football player, organized a pro football team that would be called the Green Bay Packers:
(Clearly the photo was not taken on this day in 1919. Measurable snow has never fallen in Wisconsin in August … so far.)
Today in 1964, the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s Night” opened in New York:
Two years later, the Beatles opened their last American concert tour on the same day that John Lennon apologized for saying that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus. … Look, I wasn’t saying The Beatles are better than God or Jesus, I said ‘Beatles’ because it’s easy for me to talk about The Beatles. I could have said ‘TV’ or ‘Cinema’, ‘Motorcars’ or anything popular and would have got away with it…”
Today in 1976, the Who drummer Keith Moon collapsed and was hospitalized in Miami.
You might have the knack for music trivia if you can identify the number one today in 1979:
Today in 1984, President Reagan either forgot or ignored the dictum that one should always assume a microphone is open:
Birthdays start with Manfred Mann drummer Mike Hegg:
James Kale of the Guess Who …
… was born the same day as Denis Payton, one of the Dave Clark Five:
Joe Jackson:
Who is Richie Beau? You know him better as Richie Ramone:
Today, this would be the sort of thing to embellish a band’s image. Not so in 1959, when four members of The Platters were arrested on drug and prostitution charges following a concert in Cincinnati when they were discovered with four women (three of them white) in what was reported as “various stages of undress.” Despite the fact that none of the Platters were convicted of anything, the Platters (who were all black) were removed from several radio stations’ playlists.
Speaking of odd music anniversaries: Today in 1985, Michael Jackson purchased the entire Beatles music library for more than $45 million.
Since I have entered a Quaker State contest to win a 1972 Corvette, I am motivated to put together a few separate items about America’s sports car.
We begin with Jalopnik, which found this:
The voiceover and constant musical refrain reminding us that we have never, ever, forever, ever never never ever seen a car this advanced before is just downright laughable. Remember, this is a 1984 Corvette. Yes, I suppose the world hadn’t seen the next generation of Corvette, but the most advanced car on the planet? This was years after the Group B-dominating Audi Quattro came out, while the first year of the C4 ‘Vette was stuck with a 5.7L V8 pumping out 205 horsepower and 290 lb-ft of torque through the rear wheels. …
Then there’s the claim that it’s “A new Chevrolet Corvette like never before.” Well, yeah, I suppose it was a clean-sheet re-design over the old C3 Corvette, but it was still recognizable as what it was. Maybe if they’d actually put one of those mid-engined concepts into production, I’d be more willing to believe this one.
The ad goes on to say that there was a never-before-seen computer-activated manual transmission (think more like an overdrive than a flappy-paddle setup), COOL WHEELS, and even tires. All of that is very advanced.
Oh wait – is that an LCD dash? Now that, my friends, is very neat indeed. Like those Casio watches that also had a calculator on them.
To be honest, seeing ads like this makes me miss that illustrious decade. It reminds me of a simpler time, when Reagan was President, we all feared instant atomic fiery death, our Corvettes had similar outputs to a modern European diesel, and we could all believe in America and everything its factories churned out as long as we heard the news with enough screaming Stratocasters laid over it.
The commercial appears to have screaming synthesizers, not Stratocasters, laid over it, but never mind that. The music is overwrought by 2013 standards, but it’s also inappropriate for a car ad, even if you’ve never seen anything like this before.
Recall that the C4 came out 15 years after the C3 debuted, so the C4’s debut was, to quote Corvette owner Joe Biden, a big f—ing deal. However, the wheels look like wheel covers for a decade-old land yacht (which might not be a bad idea for someone resto-modding, say, a 1975 Chevy Caprice, although the Vette’s 255/50R-16 tires are 2 inches shorter than the Caprice’s original 225/70R-15 tires, so speedometer error would result). The 4+3 manual grew to be universally reviled, and either version of the C4’s digital dash is an abomination. The car handled well, but it took until year two, 1985, for a horsepower upgrade.
I noted before that Motor Trend magazine has been known for making the most spectacularly wrong predictions about the next Corvette. Autos of Interest chronicles one:
If you haven’t yet guessed what the subject car is, it’s a Corvette. Or, it’s supposed to be. Midway through 1975, Motor Trend’s Bob Hall wrote an article entitled, “The 1977 Corvette!” (Exclamation and all.) …
Keep in mind that the C3 (or, third-generation Corvette) had been introduced as a 1968 model year car. It had trudged on largely unchanged over those years and by 1975 enthusiasts were understandably anticipating a replacement at any time. After all, Chevy had been showing off some mid-engined concepts and the speculation was ripe.
However, amazingly Motor Trend kept their cool and was calling for this heir apparent C4 to be front-engined. In fact, they were predicting just a re-skinning. Well, a major re-skinning. They compared the “rejuvenation” to what the line had gone through from C2 to C3. Although, I’m not sure where the artist came up with the idea that Corvette’s taillights would be horizontal slats. Strange.
They did call one thing correctly, the rear glass would go from ‘sugar scoop’ to fastback-style glass. However, that didn’t occur until the year following their prediction, in 1978, when Corvette celebrated its 25th anniversary and enjoyed a mild refresh and new dash layout.
Motor Trend also forecast an engine that never saw the light of day in Corvette. A turbo V-8 engine. They did preface the prediction by saying it was merely being considered but was clear that it was more than a casual consideration. …
As we know, the 1977 model Corvette came and went without any noteworthy changes. No flashy new body. No turbo V-8 engine. As mentioned above, it was the 1978 model year that got the biggest changes inside and out until the 1984 C4 debuted.
For what it’s worth, the 10-year-old who saw this Motor Trend thought it was an excellent-looking car. In many ways it looks better than the car that actually replaced the C3 Corvette …
… although comparing drawings to actual cars is usually an apples-to-oranges comparison. (Until computers started drawing cars, drawn cars always looked lower and longer than the actual finished product.) The taillights are wrong, and the doors should have had thinner window frames. Many sports car fans have an irrational hatred of hatchbacks (which the C3 adopted in 1981, two years after the rear window returned), but the C2 and C3 had neither hatch nor trunk (other than C2 convertibles), which severely limited their utility. (Owners had to drop a seat and throw behind it the suitcase for themselves and their fabulous babes, then reverse the process.)
Motor Trend isn’t the only offender in this regard. Consider Car and Driver magazine from 1973:
Never mind that the Corvette 4-Rotor looks like the wildest imaginings of some ivory tower stylist. It happens to be a very real car. And [Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus] Duntov, known for his circumspection, is openly enthusiastic about it. “Looking back at my twenty-year association with styling, this is the best design ever produced. It is exceedingly beautiful.” That, coming from Duntov, is like hearing Barry Goldwater say that he has always admired Democrats. And if you know Duntov, that statement has a special meaning because, in the past, he has never shown more than a passing interest in the aesthetics of a fender. Apart from the normal considerations that must apply to production Corvettes—reliability and safety to name a couple of the major ones—he cares about one thing; capacity for speed. That boils down to aerodynamics and horsepower. And as the conversation progresses, you find that the Corvette 4-Rotor has both. …
What does that add up to on the road? Duntov smiles. There is a short test track at the GM Tech Center, less than a mile long. “Performance of this car? One-hundred forty-five mph . . . and that is leaving room for braking.
“The feeling of this car is a steady torque, no humps like a 454, no decline, and by virtue of its large displacement, you don’t feel that it’s sluggish from the line. Humans only know change of acceleration. But this car is like gravity . . . you don’t feel the acceleration. There is no high torque kick. But looking at the speedometer, it’s climbing, climbing, climbing. And looking outside, you know you’re going fast. This Wankel car is faster 0-100 mph than 454.”
That’s not a surprising statement, because the four-rotor was rated at 420 horsepower, while the 454 V-8 available in the 1973 Corvette was rated at just 275 horsepower, thanks to smog controls. However, the rotary engine concept never got to the starting line, because of the rotary’s poor fuel consumption. As you know, Chevrolet replaced the rotary with a 400 V-8, and thus was born Aerovette.
The reason Aerovette didn’t happen either is explained by Autos of Interest:
There is one very interesting part to the story that, if true, sheds some light on some of the internal resistance to the seemingly perpetual idea of a mid-engined Corvette. Apparently a Motor Trend staff member was told by a Chevrolet engineer, “Suppose you own a company that makes one-dollar bills. The cost to print the bills is 50¢ including paper, ink, and labor. One day, one of your product planners comes to you with the idea of printing two-dollar notes. Think of it… instead of a 50 cents profit, you’d be making an easy $1.50 profit. After consulting with the accountants you see another view. It seems that after you take into account the cost of the new printing plates, and the conversion of the presses, it would cost you $1.50 to print the new two-dollar bills. That’s still only a 50 cents profit, and since there is still a great demand for the one-dollar bill, you fire the product planner, and keep on printing the ones. If you’re not an accountant, you can’t win. You can at best draw.”
Autos of Interest (which I just found; it’s a great site) has additional details about the C4’s design process:
Framed by a seeming inability to recognize the value in Corvette’s iconic image for the brand, let alone increasing popularity, the so-called experts (otherwise referred to as “bean counters”) were hounding Chevrolet’s general manager, Mr. Bob Lund, to make a change. The most drastic of those proposed changes called for an end to the Corvette model.
It’s reported that, at a meeting, Mr. Lund had just finished stating how ending low-volume Corvette production would allow for greater high-volume Monte Carlo production when Chevrolet’s Director of Public Relations, Jim Williams, stood and said to Mr. Lund, “I don’t know about you, Bob, but I don’t want to be known as the PR chief who worked at Chevy when they dumped the Corvette.” …
This is a full-sized clay model from December of 1976 that, at first glance, looks just like the Aerovette. But, upon comparison, you’ll see several changes.
That’s because this clay model was the “productionized” version of the Aerovette that accounts for things necessary if it were to be built.
At this time, the mid-engine program was getting the majority of the attention. So much so that a mid-engined mule (built on a Porsche 914 platform!) had been constructed for testing. That’s where the mid-engine program lost its steam. Why?
Two problems were exposed by the mule. First was handling and Chevy recognized that Corvette customers had specific expectations about how their car should feel. The engineers ceded they didn’t feel they could meet those expectations with the new configuration in time for the debut.
The second problem had to do with power. In what seems a colossal oversight, the mid-engine proposal was planned from the start to be powered by the same engine/transmission combo as the upcoming X-cars (Citation/Phoenix/Skylark/Omega). That meant a 2.8-liter V6 pumping out a wheezing 110 HP. Boosting the engine’s output with a turbocharger was naturally considered but excessive costs (due to the unique design) and added component stress (which raised serious durability questions) were mortal blows to the doomed plan. …
The head of Chevy 3 design group, Mr. Jerry Palmer, had set five requirements for the epic model being redesigned under his watch: more passenger room, increase cargo space, reduce the drag coefficient, reduce the car’s height, and modernize the firewall-to-axle proportion. Some of those requirements would seem to conflict with another.
For example, in considering reducing the car’s overall height, they determined the ride height (the space between the body and the ground) couldn’t be reduced much compared the outgoing model.
To resolve the dilemma, Mr. Palmer and his team devised an interesting approach. By relocating the lowest components in the old design, the exhaust, including the catalytic converter, out from under the occupants’ seats and into a center tunnel, designers could lower the roof–and occupants–without affecting the car’s ride height.
This is the reason the C4 has what some consider to be an awkward ingress/egress design; others, myself included, feel it adds to the exotic appeal.
The interior design, with the hated digital instruments, combines two interior design concepts:
I believe the second steering wheel ended up in the mid-’80s Camaro. They should have stuck to the analog gauges.
Finally, here’s something you hardly see anymore, but used to see often in car magazines. This is remarkable to see for those of us who remember publications put together before desktop publishing, digital cameras and color availability on every page:
The Corvette C2 Registry passed on this story from the November 1962 Car Craft magazine. Cool detail.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 