Vanishing Roadside Attraction: America's Rural Downtowns

Driving west across Kansas in late May, the hum of the Interstate delivers monotony in a way that even a surprising public radio show mixing jazz and classical Chinese music cannot dispel.  You start looking for a place to stop for lunch, and notice a billboard advertising a technology center and a museum in Goodland.  So you stop there.  There's what may be the world's largest Van Gogh reproduction (above) sitting on an 80-foot easel, and a modest but immaculate Welcome Center (below) where a helpful staffer directs you to a good restaurant for lunch...

Driving towards downtown Goodland, you see some of the signs that have become familiar on your drive through farm country: sound but apparently abandoned structures like the gas station below, and some vacant shop fronts in solid old brick buildings.  But there are signs of hope too. The usual suspects in undermining small downtowns, such as a fleet of fast food franchises out near Interstate 70, are less evident here.  There's a Dollar General, but it seems to have been kicked to the curb out in an industrial park.  On the plus side, there's the Northwest Kansas Technical College, and the High Plains Museum, open since 1959.  And there's also the Pioneer Dog Park for exercising your pooch, not far from the Welcome Center.

You seek lunch at The Bricks,  an old establishment named after its construction material, huddled in front of vast white grain elevators at the edge of an improbably wide, brick-paved Main Street…

The Bricks, owned by a nice lady named Maria, offers good Mexican food and friendly service.  A few minutes after I sit down, half a dozen locals walk in...

The expansive width and length of Main Street, paved with brick since the early Twenties, are reminders of how prosperous farm towns were before the Great Depression, and even for awhile after it ended, when family farms were still the primary approach to farming.  The rise of big corporate farms favored by government policies and by food processing conglomerates, the expansion of fast food franchises and retail operations like Walmart along Interstate highways, and the recent rise of Amazon have all had a damaging impact on downtowns that serve farm country...

This lot filled with old cars prompted the thought that back in its most prosperous times, Goodland (pop. about 4,000 today) would have had a showroom or two full of shiny new cars, trucks and farm tractors.  Someone connected with this lot seems to have a real fondness for Mercury's offerings from the late Forties and early Fifties; the '53 two-door sedan below seems to be waiting for whoever chopped the top to come back and complete its transformation into a custom rod...

The United Telephone Building, at 1003 Main, is a reminder of the useful infrastructure and rich history that often get abandoned when an old downtown becomes vacant. It dates from 1931, when United's in-house designer Colby Hamilton selected Native American motifs to honor the Western plains location.  For reasons that probably include what was trending in the heyday of Art Deco, he chose brightly colored tiles with an Aztec theme, and decorated the ceilings with split telephone poles painted in similar patterns.   

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017, and has been under restoration since then by the Sherman County Historical Society.  Their plan is to put the building to use as a historical research center.  

Old structures, and old infrastructure, represent one of our most underutilized resources, especially in rural cities with shrinking downtowns. One element of successful downtown revivals is that historic architecture like the Telephone Building is plugged back into the life of the town by taking on some civic, commercial, or residential function.  Organizations like Main Street America (www.mainstreet.org) and Upstairs Downtown (upstairsdowntown.com) have long been in the vanguard of the movement to revive America's small and mid-sized downtowns.  Since 1980, efforts connected with Main Street America have resulted in rehabilitating over 314,000 buildings, creating over 700,000 jobs and starting over 160,000 businesses.  Upstairs Downtown has facilitated successful adaptive re-use projects in downtowns across the country, providing expertise that brings new retail and service businesses into ground floor spaces, while renovated spaces "upstairs" can provide space for living. In an era when working from home has become a trend, and housing shortages are in the news, our often vacant spaces in overlooked downtowns are an underutilized resource.

Four blocks away from the old United Telephone Building, we encountered a more recent addition to the Goodlands streetscape. The Dental Arts building dating from 2001 sits on a former hospital site in a tree-lined neighborhood where downtown businesses shade into single-family residences, including two designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's students.  In their design for Dental Arts, architects at T.H.E. Design have made a deft transition between residential scale and the welcoming public space of the entry porch, where clustered steel columns feature horizontal brackets that echo the dark courses of brick...  

Dark green steel headers above the glass and brick emphasize the horizontal feeling as well as the shade under the deep eaves.  Glazing extending to the floor in dental offices is intended  to have a calming effect on patients, who can watch well-fed squirrels at play on the tree-shaded lawn. Goodland's Dental Arts is such a careful and sensitive piece of work that I wanted to go inside to ask about the building on the day I happened upon it.  But the waiting room was full of customers, proof that this piece of architecture is doing its job, so I gave Dental Arts* a call when I got home.

If adapting old structures to new uses, as in the case of the Telephone Building, is a sign of respect for the past, providing a new and welcoming work of architecture to serve the public's heath needs is sign of hope for the future.  And hope is one of those things that our small towns and cities could use right now.

*Footnote:  We want to thank Dawn Jolly of Goodland Dental Arts for providing background information on the Dental Arts design, and on the landmark United Telephone Building.

Photo Credits:  

 

Top:  Wikimedia

2nd, 3rd & 7th:  Dr. Marcus Nashelsky

All other photos are by the author.

Anti-Ferraris Steal the Show at Automezzi 2022

A flotilla of Italian cars steamed into Anderson Park in Wheat Ridge, Colorado for Automezzi XXXII on July 17, marking nearly a third of a century for the concours.  Sponsored by Ferrari of Denver, the show was naturally host to new and old examples of that marque, which has been around since 1947.  For a few visitors, however, the show was stolen by interlopers designed to challenge Ferrari on the track and in the showroom.  This red car is one of those...

What do we have here?  It's an ATS 2500GTS, built in the wake of a walkout by Ferrari engineers in 1962, when several Ferrari staffers including engineers Carlo Chiti and Giotto Bizzarrini quit after arguments with Enzo Ferrari's wife Laura, who had invested in Ferrari's business.  They gravitated to a new company, Automobili Turismo e Sport, founded by Count Giovanni Volpi, who had experienced his share of difficulties obtaining and maintaining Ferraris for his private racing team.  With two partners, Volpi and his team of exiled Ferrari engineers first challenged Ferrari with new Formula 1 single seaters, hiring American Phil Hill, who had won the World Championship for Ferrari in '61, to drive their new 1.5 liter V8 in 1963.  Chassis design issues meant Hill's only finish that year was 11th place in the Italian GP.  Teammate Giancarlo Baghetti only managed 15th place in the same race. That same year, however, ATS showed their promising new 2500GT, like the F1 car a mid-engined design, and one of the first offered to the public as a road car, with the GTS version pictured aimed at road racing...

Carlo Chiti's SOHC V8 engine of 2.5 liters was mated to a 5-speed Colotti transaxle, and Franco Scaglione designed an aerodynamic shell to cover Bizzarrini's  space frame chassis, which was more rigid than that of the F1 car.  Braking was by 4-wheel discs.  The bodies were built in steel and alloy by Allemano, with more alloy panels going onto the racing GTS, which developed 242 hp compared with 217 for the GT.  It was an advanced specification for 1963; what went wrong?  

The failure of the ATS GP cars reflected no glory on the firm's other efforts, and the partners had trouble agreeing on approaches, as well as getting financing for the production car effort.  In addition to the two Tipo 100 Formula 1 cars, it appears that at least 8 of the 2-passenger coupes emerged from the factory before production ended in 1964.  One car was delivered to GM Styling VP Bill Mitchell, and 3 of those 8 coupes were the GTS model pictured here.  Other sources, including Stephen Bell, the owner of this car, have said as many as 14 cars were built.  Only 5 of the ATS coupes are known to survive.  This example won 1st Place in the Etceterini class, as well as Best in Show.  

Below, the Ghia Gilda Streamline X* seems to hover over the field.  The 1955 show car was intended to be powered by a turbine engine, but remained an unpowered shell during a long stay at the Henry Ford Museum which ended in 1969, and for decades under other owners.   Finally, Scott Grundfors installed an AiResearch turbine in 2005, so the car can now be driven, once one masters the hand controls; as in the original design by Giovanni Savonuzzi, there are no foot pedals.  This is in keeping with the jet aircraft theme, but may be a bit disorienting at first to non-pilots. The engine installation looks as though it was there from the beginning, like Savonuzzi's jet-themed door handles.  

The Apollo 3500GT* appeared in 1964, the year after the ATS and Lamborghini had first challenged Ferrari.  LIke those cars, it is also a sort of Anti-Ferrari. At Milt Brown's International Motors in Oakland, CA, the idea was to offer Italian style and performance with American ease of maintenance by using Buick's aluminum-block, 215 cubic inch V8. Ron Plescia's original body design was modified by Franco Scaglione (the ATS body designer) before the car went into limited production by Intermeccanica* in Italy.  Owner Kurt Brakhage took home the Best of Show trophy at last year's Automezzi, and the car was a crowd-pleaser again this year, when it received the Director's Cup.

I'd photographed this car at the Lafayette Cars & Coffee a few years ago. The Apollo story ended like the ATS story, and for similar reasons.  The car builders underestimated how much money it would take to get a promising idea into production, and the operation was under-financed from the beginning.

Styling, especially the nose and grille design Scaglione substituted for the original twin grilles, was in keeping with the Ferrari Alternative  theme.  Scaglione designed a convertible too, but only 11 of those were built, along with one 2+2.  Total production of the Apollo 3500GT and later 5000GT (with 300 cubic inch Buick V8) was under 90 cars.

Below, an Alfa Romeo Montreal, built from 1970-77 but never offered in the US, forms a link with the ATS from a few years earlier.  The reason is that engineer Carlo Chiti went to work for Alfa Romeo after ATS folded, designing 2-liter, dry-sump 4-cam V8s for the first Type 33 road racers.  In the same year they appeared, Alfa displayed an unnamed show car designed by Marcello Gandini at Montreal's Expo 67.  It was originally powered by the familiar twin-cam four from the Giulia, and shared a shortened Giulia chassis.  When Alfa Romeo decided to put the car into production in 1970, they adopted a 2.6 liter version of the Type 33 V8.  Around 3,900 Montreals were built before production ended in 1977.  At least one 3 liter car was built for road racing.  This 1972 example won 1st Place in the Alfa Romeo class for owner Jason Smith.

There were two long rows of Alfa Romeos, including the row of red, mid-engined 21st century 4Cs in the background.  But our attention was caught by this Type 750 Giulietta spider from 1958, in the same ownership since 1965.  The owner had restored it and modified it for racing after crashing the car early in his ownership, and the car now runs with a 1,750cc Giulia replacing the original 1,300cc engine.

An Alfa 1900 berlina (sedan) is a rare sight in America, as it was never imported here in significant numbers.  It Italy, though, the 1900, with cast iron block and twin-cam alloy heads, was Alfa Romeo's first mass-produced car.  Like later Alfa sedans, its lively performance made it popular with the police, as well as with those who had reasons to run from the police. 

Only two Lancias showed up at Automezzi.  A Scorpion (called Montecarlo in Europe) mid-engined coupe rests behind a maroon Fulvia.  The long-lived Fulvia (1963-76) was the last completely new design from Lancia's engineering office to go into production before the 1969 Fiat takeover.  The narrow-angle alloy V4 powers the front wheels, as it had in Lancia's flat-four Flavia, the first Italian front-drive production car.  This car had the 1,300cc engine, but the1,600 HF was the most powerful, and there was also a Zagato-bodied Sport. The early Eighties Scorpion picks up the GT idea with its twin-cam, Fiat 124 based Beta engine.  

Below, a blue Ferrari Dino 246GT gets a place in the sun next to a 355.  The 246 series was sold from 1969-'74 ('73 in the US) and features a 4-cam, 65 degree V6 with iron block and alloy heads.  The similar-looking 206GT ('67 to '69) had an aluminum block.  The F355 (mid-1994 to 1999) went with a 3.5 liter, alloy block with 5 valves per cylinder, its main innovation over the previous 348 model. The car also offered 6-speed transaxles in manual or automated manual form.  Progress, as the 20th century began to fade...

Below is an example of Ferrari's 288GTO, the Group B road racer loosely based on  the 308 GTB that Ferrari produced in 272 specimens from 1984 to 1987.  The body design is a subtle rework of Leonardo Fioravanti's 308GTB for Pininfarina, with fenders contoured for wider wheels and tires, and a welcome lack of wings and fins.  Only the doors were steel, with a Kevlar hood and Kevlar / carbon fiber roof, and fiberglass elsewhere.  Weight was thus kept down to 2.557 pounds.

The 2.8 liter, 4-cam V8 employs 2 turbochargers to make 395 bhp and 366 lb.-ft. of torque.  Unlike the transversely-mounted engine in the Ferrari 308 series, it was longitudinal, so that the 288GTO has 4 inches more wheelbase than the 308GTB.

There were plenty of 21st century Ferraris too, in both V12 and V8 varieties, to cheer those who are not thoroughly disappointed with the 21st century...

There were plenty of other 21st century cars at Automezzi XXXII too, including this row of Lamborghinis, all of which appeared showroom fresh. For many visitors, the old cars held more magnetism.  While historians would point out that brand new cars were often displayed at concours of the Thirties (where they were the whole point) and Fifties, at the end of the morning it was easy for a visitor's mind to drift back to the hand-built artistry of the six-decade old ATS, and the zany optimism of the 1955 Ghia Gilda jet car when forming a picture of this show.

*Footnote:  Previous posts in this blog reference some of the subject cars as follows.  Dates are in parentheses:  

ATS:  "Forgotten Classic Revival Show:  ATS 2500GT and GTS" ( November 11, 2018).  Serenissima:  "Forgotten Classic:  Serenissima---The Winged Lion is the Rarest Beast of All" (March 20, 2019).

Intermeccanica including Apollo GT:  "The Etceterini Files Part 28:  Intermeccanica, Sometimes Forgotten, Still in Business" (January 12, 2022).

Photo Credits:  All photos are by the author except the shot of the Apollo GT with owner holding Best of Show (Kurt Brakhage).

Forgotten Classic: Ford's Mid-Engined Mach 2 May Still Be Hiding in a Barn Somewhere...

What is the stylish couple in Ford's promotional photo so happy about?  Well, it's the Swinging Sixties, and they're about to take a ride in what is essentially a mid-engined Mustang called the Mach 2.  "Wait a minute", you may be thinking, if you're old enough to remember the Sixties, or if you've been reading this blog for awhile.  "Wasn't there a mid-engined Mustang before there was any other kind?"  Well, yeah, there was a drivable concept car based on the front-drive German Ford Taunus V4 powertrain, the Mustang 1*, but that was in 1962, and the roofless projectile seemed to be aimed mostly at SCCA racers ...

Instead of a spin in Mustang 1 (only 2 of which were built), our happy couple is about to blast down the road in a closed coupe with amenities like a radio and heater, with Ford's 289 V8 rumbling behind the cabin in front of a ZF 4-speed transaxle.  The Mach 2 was first shown to the public at the Chicago Auto show in March 1967.  How did this happen?  In 1966, the year Ford wins Le Mans with the GT40, the corporate masterminds of the Total Performance program are already thinking that they could transplant some of the GT40's mid-engined glamor to a production car.  They send a Mustang convertible chassis to Kar Kraft, and the company transforms it into a sort of concept chassis borrowing as much from the Ford parts bin as possible.  This includes Mustang front suspension, front disc brakes and Galaxy rear drums. The independent rear suspension comes not from the GT40, but from engineer Klaus Arning's patented multi-link design for Mustang 1, which includes anti-dive and anti-squat features along with a bit of dialed-in understeer.

You're probably wondering how the cost-saving move of using a Mustang (i.e. Falcon) floor pan affected the handling of the Mach 2. In addition to the bare chassis engineering mule, Ford built 2 running prototypes with fiberglass bodies styled by Gene Bordinat's team.  The first, a white car Ford proposed as an SCCA-ready weekend racer that would succeed Shelby's Cobra, had so much chassis flex that its roof made loud popping noises under hard cornering. The second car, a red example provided to car mags for test drives and sent onto the auto show circuit, had a reinforced chassis that flexed less.  These pictures show that car...

Use of the highly modified Mustang chassis resulted in a long wheelbase that would not look out of place today; 107 inches is also the wheelbase of the new, mid-engined Corvette C8. Other items taken directly from Ford's parts stocks included instruments and interior hardware, a Mustang rear bumper, and wheels.  With a weight around 2,600 pounds, performance was lively.  Ford's idea was to price the car around $7,500, a bit more than Shelby's AC 427 Cobra; 1967 was that car's final year of production. But instead of pursuing the Mach 2 program, Ford sent the white test car to the crusher, and returned the red test car to Kar Kraft, which closed in 1970, after its last show appearance. 

What went wrong?  Well, ironically, success on other fronts may have caused problems for Mach 2. Shelby was selling plenty of his modified Mustangs (some to SCCA racers), and Ford was selling every garden-variety Mustang it could make. This meant that Mach 2 joined other projects like Robert Cumberford's '66 Mustang sport wagon* (and a knock-off mocked up by Ford) in a garage full of stillborn ideas. There was briefly an attempt to revive the Mach 2 when Bunkie Knudsen came from GM to take over as Ford's president in 1968, bringing stylist Larry Shinoda, who dreamed up the Mach 2C shown below.  It was planned for 429 power, but remained a somewhat crude mock-up, unlike Shinoda's stunning mid-engined Corvair Monza GT*.  Instead of the Mach 2, Ford and Ghia were already working to adapt De Tomaso's Ford-powered, mid-engined Mangusta to US safety regulations.  The resulting Pantera would show up in Lincoln Mercury showrooms in 1971, the year after the last sighting of the red Mach 2. There have been no reported sightings of that red prototype in the decades since, but also no convincing evidence that the car was destroyed. So there's the tantalizing possibility that Ford's first prototype for a mid-engined V8 production road car could still be hiding in a barn somewhere, waiting to be discovered...

*Footnote:  Ford's mid-engined Mustang 1 was the subject of the 2nd of what has now become a series of over 300 essays, "The First Mustang: Ford's Forgotten Mustang 1", posted August 26, 2015.  The first, and best, proposal for a Mustang sports wagon is pictured and described in "The Etceterini Files Part 28: Intermeccanica, Sometimes Forgotten, Still in Business", in our archives for January 12, 2022.  And Larry Shinoda's timeless (but impractical) design for the mid-engined Corvair Monza GT show car was showcased in "Getting Over the Corvair, Part 2: Designer Visions and the Nader Effect", posted March 18, 2016.

Photo Credits:  

All photos were sourced from the Ford Motor Company, and posted at the following sites:

Top:  performanceford.com

2nd:  flickr.com

3rd & 4th:  performanceford.com

5th & 6th:  drives.today

Bottom:  performanceford.com