Back in the 1920s and 30s the major American brands all looked to soak up the differing and growing market segments. Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers company and also created a second brand to target the mid range price point. This article is about this creation, named after Hernandez De Soto, a Spanish explorer of the 16th Century. The original De Soto was the first … [Read more...]
Tom Tjaarda
Last year the world lost one of the most prolific car designers, Tom Tjaarda. Tjaarda was born in Detroit in 1934 - his father worked in the Lincoln division of Ford and his claim to fame was that he worked on the Lincoln-Zephyr cars from the late 1930s. He had designed a vehicle that Ford used as a basis for their Zephyr. The Tjaarda surname came from a Dutch background with … [Read more...]
Chenard et Walcker
This small company will forever be in the motor sports history books, thanks to one major race win – the first running of the Le Mans 24 hour race. The company is Chenard et Walcker. The company was founded in France in 1900 by Ernest Chenard and Henri Walcker. Chenard was a railway engineer and like many other formative car builders, he also manufactured bicycles. Walcker … [Read more...]
Iso Rivolta
This week in our history article I will describe a company that started out making a non-motoring product, was acquired and revamped into a car manufacturer and after it failed, its descendant became a successful property group. Iso Rivolta started out as Isothermos and developed refrigerators and equipment for railways. In 1948, Renzo Rivolta bought the company to move into … [Read more...]
Malcolm Sayer
This designer’s legacy can be summed up by those immortal words from Enzo Ferrari about the Jaguar E-Type: “The most beautiful car in the world”. Malcolm Sayer was an aerodynamicist at a time when aircraft knowledge was flowing straight to racing cars. Ask many people who he is and they probably won’t know his name, yet his design work lives on in the industry. Born on the … [Read more...]
