Drives Like a Dream by Porter Shreve Page B

a 1952 Henry J, the compact car made by the fleetingly solvent Kaiser-Frazer Company. Like the squat, orbicular 1946 Crosley, which hunkered next to it, the Henry J had gone on the market more than a decade too soon, well before the country showed any concern about emissions or fuel efficiency. In the 1950s, people had wanted styling and power, and GM had found a way to make them feel as if these features were indispensable: two-tones, tailfins, high-compression V-8 engines—each year's model a little different from the one before.
    Lydia had always been fascinated with the period in the 1940s when the American car industry converted from a consumer market to a war supplier, then back again. She'd devoted several chapters of her assembly line book to this very subject, and she still wondered what might have happened had one or two of the smaller companies survived beyond that moment when the Big Three were shifting back from planes and tanks to cars.
    When she looked up from the window of the Henry J, she realized that the man holding his glasses now stood beside her. He didn't smile or say anything, just put on his glasses, and followed her to the next display—a row of sedans from the forties and early fifties made by various companies like Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker. The struggling Nash and Hudson had agreed to a merger in 1954, creating the American Motors Corporation. AMC would update the economical Rambler, add the Ambassador, the Metropolitan, and later such seventies emblems as the Pacer, Hornet, and Gremlin, before being absorbed by Chrysler in the late eighties. Nineteen fifty-four could have been the year that Packard and Studebaker joined Nash and Hudson to create a powerful family of American Motors cars, with a full range of makes and models that might have even rivaled GM. But competition and clashing interests had barred the way. Packard and Studebaker held on too long to their independence, and eventually, unable to make it on their own, went the way of the Marvel, the Miller, the Flanders, the Hupp, the many thousand orphaned cars.
    The man now turned to Lydia. She noticed he had gray hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Over his purple T-shirt he wore a vest the color of birch bark, and his sandals were made of hemp or some ropelike material. "These are beauties," he gestured. "But the prize of them all is over there."
    Lydia followed him to another corner of the museum, where under the banner "Preston Tucker: American Dreamer" sat a shiny blue rocket on wheels, perfectly preserved from 1948, when it was billed as the original "car of tomorrow."
    "The Tucker," Lydia said.
    "The Tucker '48,'" he corrected her. "Now this is the ultimate. It's got an aluminum engine, in the rear so it held the road better. One of the first to do that, well before Volkswagen." He spoke as if he were giving a lecture or trying to sell the car. Lydia knew more about the Tucker than this guy could possibly realize, but for now she did not interrupt him.
    At first she wondered if he worked for the museum, but he seemed too earthy to be a car fanatic. "And inside. Here, look." He peeked into the window, then stepped aside so Lydia could do the same. "See those crouch spaces under the dashboard? That's for when you're about to crash. Everything in there is padded—the dash, floors, doors, and steering wheel. It was the first car with seat belts, and that was just the beginning. It had disc brakes, a shatterproof windshield, side windows that popped out on impact. In terms of safety and engineering, this car was decades ahead of its time."
    Lydia was used to men assuming that she knew nothing about cars. She'd been to scores of conventions and auto shows, had endured the double takes, patronizing voices, and predictable jokes about dangerous women drivers. They didn't understand that her interest had little to do with horsepower or intake manifolds, but with consequences, with the world the car had created.
    "My