Takata Airbag Disaster Part 3: Passive-Aggressive Safety Saga Continues

Back on August 24, 2016 we interrupted our usual coverage of classic cars and roadside attractions to make a public service announcement about an ever-growing recall of cars equipped (or afflicted, as it turned out) with airbags from the Takata Corporation which, owing to ammonium nitrate propellant in the inflator mechanism, could explode in light impacts or even in sudden stops, spraying driver and passengers with sharp metal fragments and causing serious injury or death. We listed the makes of car affected by the recall, and referred readers to a website listing model names and years affected*.  As of that date, 13 people had died as a result of Takata's defective airbags. Since then, the death toll has risen to over 2 dozen people worldwide, with 18 fatalities in the United States and some 240 reported injuries. The Takata Corp. has been bankrupted by claims against it, and no automotive airbags use ammonium nitrate today.  But recalled vehicles with replacement airbags are safe, right?  Well, stunningly, it didn't turn out that way...

When I posted the first review of the recall I was waiting for a replacement passenger-side airbag for a Subaru.  I waited until November 25, 2016, when my local Subaru dealer replaced it with a safe unit...at least, that was what I'd thought.  Any illusion of safety was effectively demolished earlier this month when I received another recall notice from Subaru of America, Inc.  Their letter indicated that owing to shortages of "final remedy parts", the defective Takata airbag in my car had been replaced with a "like-for-like" airbag. Translation: It had been replaced with another Takata product with the ammonium nitrate propellant. 

The dry legal parlance of the letter is interrupted after 3 paragraphs with an announcement in bold-face italics:  "If the air bag inflator explodes, sharp metal fragments could strike vehicle occupants, potentially resulting in serious injury or death."

Some background is in order here: I'd waited 4 months while a safe bag could be sourced for my car. While waiting, I'd asked the dealer whether they could simply remove the defective passenger-side bag without replacing it...after all, an empty space above the glovebox would seem a safer bet than a fragmentation grenade waiting to go off.  The dealer's answer was an unequivocal no. The local Suburu / Honda privateer mechanics also said they were not allowed to remove the bag. So I waited for the call from the Subaru dealer, and in late November of 2016 I took the car in to get a replacement (safe, right?) bag installed.  And between November 25, 2016 and Tuesday of this week, I've been driving around thinking my passengers (family members, friends, loyal dog of the kind often featured in Subaru commercials) were immune to the Takata menace.  I had no idea this thing was lurking in my car until Subaru North America got around to letting me know...and that took them 3 years and 2 months.  It's fairly hard to believe that Subaru took 38 months to source a safe replacement, or to find the owner...after all, I'm the original owner of the car, and they found me the first time around. How likely was an explosion?  The data is not comforting. After defective Takata bags were removed from recalled cars, 650 exploded in professionally-supervised tests (see photo above). In spring 2018, a driver-side airbag in a rented Honda Civic exploded in a low-speed collision in California, killing its unsuspecting driver, a 26 year-old grad student. Test reports in trade journals indicate that Takata's "Alpha" airbags, the kind installed in the steering wheel as on that ill-fated Honda Civic, are even more likely to explode than the passenger bags, with a 50% likelihood of uncontrolled detonation in low-speed impacts. Manufacturers claim to have trouble tracing a car's ownership once the original owner sells, and the rental Civic case makes it apparent that not all rental agencies or used-car dealers stay on top of recall issues. Readers who are uncertain about the recall status of a pre-owned vehicle should see if it's on the Takata recall list maintained by the NHTSA*, and contact a dealer for service if there is an outstanding recall notice on the vehicle.  After all, human lives cannot be replaced on a "like-for-like" basis...

*Footnote:  "Passive-Aggressive Safety" appeared on 8-24-16 and "Part 2: Do Air Bags Really Work?" is in the archives for 9-1-16.  The website which will help you find if you car is affected by the recall is still operated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They post updates on the recall and vehicles affected by it, at:

www.nhtsa.gov>equipment>takata-recall-spotlight

Photo credits:

Top:  thedetroitbureau.com

The French Line Part 2: De Villars, Coachbuilder for Americans in Paris

American Frank Jay Gould, owner of hotels and casinos on the French Riviera, decided to found a coachbuilding firm in 1925. It was an optimistic time; the War to End All Wars was seven years in the past, and wealthy Americans had come to Paris to enjoy the resurgence of art, literature and the good life. Gould's idea was to cater to this clientele.  He named the firm De Villars after his son-in-law.  The firm's designers and craftsmen bodied the Bugatti Type 46 below in 1930...

This roadster on the straight eight cylinder, 5.3 liter chassis restated 1920s ideas of elegance, with deft touches like the flowing front fender shapes and the running board expressed as an oval.  You could imagine it humming along tree-lined roads to the Cote d'Azur in one of Scott Fitzgerald's fictions, or in Calvin Tompkins'  Living Well is the Best Revenge, a biography of American artist Gerald Murphy... 

The Great Depression had arrived by the time De Villars built this swooping creation on a Delage* D8S chassis in 1933, but somebody was happy to write a very large check for one of the last cars Delage designed and built before Delahaye took over the financially troubled firm in early 1935. Note that the more flowing forms than on the earlier Bugatti, with the front fenders meeting the rear ones, the chrome window sill trim echoing the fender's curve, and the forms of the fender more fully enclosing the front wheel.

De Villars produced this epic tourer on the Hispano-Suiza* J12 chassis in 1935. The fenders more fully envelop the front wheels than on the Delage, and the designers at De Villars use the covered, side-mounted spare tires and giant headlights as separate design elements.  It's a conservative design, not quite embracing the trend towards streamlining...

Three years later, De Villars showed that they were aware of the teardrop shapes coming out of outfits like Figoni & Falaschi, Graber and Pourtout with this Delahaye* Type 135MS roadster. The contrasting color swage connecting the window sill with the hood is reminiscent of Delahayes bodied by Chapron during this period.

When this car was restored after I first saw it during the early 1990s, the restorers decided to eliminate the contrasting color along the car's flanks.  The forms are strong enough to be convincing without the two-toning, but the design loses a bit of its verve. The interior stayed red.

The photo above shows De Villars' most famous creation, their Delage D8-120 Super Sport roadster, suffering the indignity of being used as mere transportation, and looking very much like a used car. This car and the Delahaye from 1938 are mechanically related. After Delahaye took over Delage, they offered Delages with new engines based on Delahaye designs, a 3 liter six at a lower price than the 3.5 liter Delahaye 135, and also a new D8 which was unique to Delage, and based on adding two cylinders to the 135 engine design. Louis Delage stayed on the board of the new company, and insisted on hydraulic brakes for his cars, so this spectacular roadster has better stopping power than the Delahaye as well as more torque. For once De Villars came up with a design theme all their own, with flat riveted plates creating a teardrop shape around the helmet forms of the semicircular fenders, front and rear.  At the front, these plates protected passers-by from contacting the hot exposed exhaust pipes...

…while at the rear, they formed a futuristic composition with the single fin centered on the deck lid. It appears that De Villars built only one of these D8-120 roadsters, and that they built their reputation on an unusually small number of mostly one-off  custom automobiles. The arrival of yet another war in Europe ended their run, but with this extravagantly streamlined Delage, the Americans in Paris cemented their place in history. 

*Footnote:  The marque Delage is featured in our post, "Delage: A Car for the Ages" from May 20, 2018.  Hispano-Suizas were featured on Sept. 25, 2017 in Hispano-Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style", "Rolling Sculpture" from Dec. 31, 2016 and "A Brief History of Singular Cars" from Sept. 7, 2015.  Delahaye automobiles are featured in our Archives in the following posts:  "Golden Days of Delahayes" posted on June 30, 2018, "Chasing the Streamline" from May 30, 2017,  "Rolling Sculpture" and also in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye" from Nov. 22, 2015.       

Photo Credits:
Top:  wikimedia
2nd:  flickr.com
3rd:  Riga Master Workshop
4th:  flickr.com
5th:  the author
6th & 7th:  Riga Master Workshop
8th:  La Vie de l'Auto, reproduced on crankhandleblog.com
9th:  the author
10th:  pinterest.com     

External Combustion from Stanley to Doble: Whatever Happened to the Steam Car?

It's hard to look a the car above and the one below and realize that they both came from the same generation, let alone the first half of the first decade of the then-new 20th century. Above is a Locomobile Runabout from 1900; below is the steam-propelled speed record car produced by twin brothers F.E. and F.O. Stanley just three years later...

In France, Bollée had produced a viable steam carriage in 1873, and his twin-engine coach carried a dozen passengers from Le Mans to Paris 2 years later. That trip took 18 hours. His vehicle was followed by the better-known De Dion-Bouton steam-powered automobile in 1883, with Ransom E. Olds (later of Oldsmobile and Reo fame) following in 1886, Peugeot in 1889, and the Stanley Brothers in 1897. They built around 200 cars over 1898-99, making them the leading manufacturer of cars for a short while, and sold a license for this early design to Locomobile, who aimed at simplicity and affordability before switching to gasoline-powered luxury cars in 1903, the same year as the Stanley racer pictured above. The Stanley racer, with its flat-bottomed teardrop bodywork and flush wheel covers, peers deeply into the 20th century, while the spindly Locomobile, a visual embodiment of the phrase "horseless carriage", looks back at the 19th. In 1902 the Stanley brothers incorporated the Stanley Motor Carriage Company and worked on improving their power plant.  One advantage of steam engines was their torque and power; by 1906 the Stanleys had built the Rocket shown below, and their chief mechanic Fred Marriot set the land speed record in January of that year by covering a mile in 28.2 seconds.  That's 127.6 miles per hour... 

The Rocket, unlike the polished alloy teardrop 1903 car, was built of fabric stretched over lightweight framing, like early aircraft, and weighed just 1,600 pounds.  Marriot lost an eye when the car flipped during another record attempt in 1907; he then retired from racing. During that year, one of Stanley's competitors, White Motors, built the steam-powered tourer shown below. It's parked in front of a 1964 Chrysler Turbine Car*, a much later challenger to the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine. 

In the first decade of the new century, steam cars were speedier than either internal combustion powered cars or electrics, and smoother than their noisy internal combustion competition. Unlike with early internal combustion engines, steam car owners didn't need the inconvenient and hazardous hand crank to get started; they just lit the pilot on the gasoline or kerosene-fueled steam generator and waited for pressure to build. That was one reason steam-powered cars and electrics outsold gasoline powered cars until the electric starter was invented. 

External combustion engines were not as fuel-efficient as internal combustion ones, however, and there was the added inconvenience of waiting 20 minutes or more to produce enough steam pressure to drive away once you fired up the boiler.  Also, early steam cars like the 1908 Stanley Model K Runabout above and the 1912 model below, might need to stop to refill the water tank every 20 to 50 miles or so. As this was still the era of horse-powered agriculture and horse-drawn carriages, the place to stop was often the watering trough used by friendly, reliable horses...

By the time the 1923 Stanley touring car below was built, the steam car and the electrics had been eclipsed in the market place by internal-combustion engines. The Stanley brothers had sold their car company in 1917, and Francis Stanley died the following year.  Freelan (F.O.) Stanley went on to found the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.  Estimated total production of Stanley automobiles was over 10,000 units. 

The same year the Stanley twins sold their car company and the United Stated entered World War One, the four Doble brothers, led by engineer Abner Doble, introduced a new kind of steam car at the New York Motor Show. This was the Doble Detroit, also known as the Model C.  Among its innovations was a key-starting system that fired up the kerosene-fueled steam generator without needing to light a pilot, using a a single spark plug.  More impressive is that the new steam generator design allowed the car to move off only 90 seconds after turning the key.  An electric fan forced air into this flash boiler to allow rapid heating.  A steam condenser greatly increased the distance between water refills.  These ideas were refined in the handful of Model D cars built to Doble's design, and then refined still further in his Model E. Common to all was the absence of a transmission.  There was no need to shift; like electric motors, the compact steam engine with its four compound cylinders mounted ahead of the rear axle developed so much torque from a standing start that gears weren't needed. There was no accelerator pedal either; the hand throttle was located at the steering wheel....

The author was happy to find this Doble Model E at the Pebble Beach Concours in 1997. It was only the 2nd Doble he'd seen, and the reason is that Dobles were always scarce.  Most sources say that Doble made only two dozen of their masterwork Model E.  

That's not a radiator at the front of the Model E; it's the condenser, located in front of the steam generator. Doble advertised that the car might go as far as 1,200 miles between water refills, but Jay Leno, the owner of two Dobles including the 1925 Murphy-bodied rumble-seat roadster below, says 200 miles is more realistic. Still, that's 4 times as far as the best Stanley.  And the car was eerily silent in operation, easily capable of keeping up with today's cars under highway conditions. 

Why didn't the Doble succeed?  One reason was that the cars were expensive; the original price of the 1925 Model roadster pictured was $25,000.  The cars were heavy, complex, and required frequent maintenance to perform well. The company required frequent financial maintenance too, and Abner Doble was accused of stock manipulation, as Preston Tucker would be in his efforts to start a new car company two decades later.  Perhaps the most persistent problem was that Doble was a perfectionist; he kept fiddling with engineering details, so that even within a given model series like the D or E, specifications varied from car to car.  The final round of refinements led to the rare Model F, but the Depression closed down the Doble adventure in 1931.

How many cars did Doble manage to make? Counting the first 3 prototypes, the last of which was the Model B, the Model C (also called Doble Detroit, no fewer than 11 built, but likely not many more), the 5 Model Ds that preceded the E, and the 7 Model F's built before Doble folded in 1931, we come up with at least 50. Even compared with other expensive cars of the era like Duesenberg, it's a small fraction of what should have been possible. It's apparent that Abner Doble was better at engineering innovation than manufacturing or marketing. His story is perhaps another chapter in our informal series on how to lose money by going into car building, but the surviving Doble steamers are instructive examples in how to solve problems with engineering.

*Footnote:  Posts in our archives review the history of the Chrysler Turbine Car, and of jet-powered cars in general.

Photo Credits:

Top:  museonicolis.com

2nd & 3rd:  New England Historical Society

4th thru 7th:  wikimedia
8th:  youtube.com, sourced from Jay Leno's Garage

9th: Nancy Collins

10th &11th:  youtube.com

12th:  youtube.com

Bottom: aaca.org

The French Line Part 1---Carrosserie Pourtout: Well, Maybe Not for Everyone...

Marcel Pourtout set up his coachbuilding firm in 1925 in the Parisian suburb of Bougival. Though in French "pour tout" means "for all", the dozen artisans who initially worked in Pourtout's shops turned out work that was not quite for everybody.  If you could afford a car like the early Thirties Delage* D8S posing proudly before the Arc de Triomphe, however, Carrosserie Poutout was for you...

In 1933, Pourtout hired dentist Georges Paulin as the firm's chief designer, and streamlined forms began to figure in the company's designs.  Under Paulin's direction, Poutout released the Peugeot 601C Eclipse shown below, perhaps the first practical retractable hardtop. Produced in limited numbers, the car was a success, and Pourtout built retractables on other Peugeot chassis. 

So was Paulin's design for the Peugeot Darl'mat*, made in 106 examples including coupe (above), roadster (below) and cabriolet forms from 1936 and 1939.  Roadster versions competed at the Le Mans 24 Hours.  Note the decorative portholes and the way the bright metal trim separates the colors on the coupe, and underlines the rakish cut-down doors on the roadster...

From 1939 to '39, Pourtout produced 3 examples of Paulin's stunning, aerodynamic design for the Talbot Lago T150C SS coupe.  The short production run makes this car about four times as rare as the better-known Figoni & Falaschi teardrop coupes on the same chassis. Headlights concealed behind grilles were also a feature of some Figoni teardrop coupes...

Paulin's spare, undecorated forms suit the car's high-performance mission.  Note the way the teardrop forms of the fenders are echoed in the curve of the roof, and the way the front fenders peak just above the car's hood line...

The tapered forms of the Talbot's tail were echoed in the Embiricos Bentley coupe below, also a design from 1938 commissioned by amateur racer Andre Embiricos.  The Bentley remained a one-off example, competed post-war at Le Mans on 3 occasions, and survives today.

At least one Delage D8-120 was bodied by Pourtout as a near-duplicate of the Embiricos Bentley, with only the Delage radiator to distinguish it.  Meanwhile, at the 1937 Paris Auto Salon, Pourtout had exhibited Georges Paulin's most radical design, an Aero Coupe on the D8-120S chassis.  The fenders followed the same teardrop shape as on the Bentley, but the curved, two-piece windshield was an advance over the two flat panes on the Embiricos car, and the thin A-pillars barely interrupted the sweep of the windshield into the side glazing, curving toward the rear fenders in a sweep unbroken by a B-pillar... 

While the front and side glazing was a preview of the "hardtop convertibles" which appeared after the war that was still on the horizon, the forms at the rear were a sleeker refinement of Paulin's design for the Embiricos Bentley. 

As war clouds darkened Europe, Marcel Pourtout shifted production to making ambulances on Chevrolet chassis. After the German invasion, Georges Paulin worked for the French Resistance as well as British intelligence.  The Nazis executed Paulin in 1942, and wrecked Pourtout's factory before fleeing Paris in 1944.  After the war, Pourtout's firm continued to make bodies like the 1946 Delahaye* 135 coupe below, but shifted to non-automotive industrial design after exhibiting their last car at the 1952 Paris Salon.  The firm continued offering industrial and advertising design services until 1994, and today concentrates on repair of bodywork. 

*Footnotes:   Delage is featured in "A Car for the Ages" in the blog archive for 5/20/18. Delahaye history is surveyed in "Golden Days of Delahayes" from 6/30/18 and in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye vs. the Third Reich" from 11/22/15, while Delahaye roadsters bodied by Figoni & Falaschi are featured in "Chasing the Streamline" from 5/30/17. For some notes on the Peugeot Darl'mat and other streamlined Thirties designs including another Figoni-bodied Delahaye, please see "Rolling Sculpture" from 12/31/16.

Photo Credits:

Top & 2nd from top:  wikimedia

3rd:  George Havelka

4th:   wikimedia

5th & 6th:  Linda LaFond

7th & 9th:  George Havelka

8th:   the author
10th: pinterest.com
11th: IGCD.net

12th: wikimedia