1930s Snowplow, via Michigan Highway Department (now MDOT)
The Michigan Department of Transportation shared this awesome newsreel from the 1930s featuring all kinds of winter fun including ski jumping. Their predecessor, the Michigan Highway Department also used the video to talk up Michigan’s road system and winter road maintenance.
It was discovered by Nancy and Barbara Sleeper of Newberry, daughters of former Luce County Road Commission superintendent Sanborn Sleeper, and it’s super awesome!
Marty McFly Is Back, photo by photofrenzy2000
Well, we’ve finally reached the future … or at least the future according to Back to the Future II because October 21, 2015 is Back to the Future Day! You can watch this video for a look at some of the predictions for 2015 that Back to the Future got right and also watch “Back to the Future New Years” – a music video that my friend Ben of The Rock Stop music school in Traverse City created in honor of this momentous year.
I should also add that while the iconic DeLorean was manufactured in Ireland, John DeLorean – an engineer who was youngest person to become a General Motors exec – founded the DeLorean Motor Company in Detroit on October 24, 1975.
View Gary’s photo bigger and see more from the 28th Street Metro Cruise in Grand Rapids in his slideshow.
More cars on Michigan in Pictures.
Infiniti Q30 Concept Car, photo by Rich
The 2015 North American International Auto Show starts this Saturday (Jan 17) and runs through next Sunday (Jan 25). Held at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit, it remains the premier show for car enthusiasts. For a sneak peek, have a look at CNN’s highlights which appear to be split between “muscular” and “efficient” (unsurprising spoiler: muscular wins 70/30).
If you do attend, consider going on their photo day (Jan 20) for early access. In any case, if you are packing a camera you might want to enter their 2015 Photo Contest which offers five different prizes of $200 each.
View Rich’s photo from last year’s show background big and see more in his Detroit – 2014 NAIAS slideshow.
More about NAIAS/Detroit Auto Show on Michigan in Pictures.
The Dunesmobiles, by Phil Balyeat
Don Harrison operates UpNorth Memories and shares many of the historical post card photos I feature on Michigan in Pictures. Yesterday in honor of photographer Phil Balyeat’s 99th birthday he posted an incredible collection of photos Phil had taken over the years from the Traverse City area including this one.
View Phil’s photo bigger on Facebook and see LOTS more via UpNorth Memories here, here and here!
More about the Dunesmobiles at Leelanau.com!
School Bus Heap, photo by Rust and Roses
Out for summer, Out till fall
We might not go back at all
~Alice Cooper (School’s Out)
Not in these buses at least…
Rust and Roses shot these retired school buses in Elsie, Michigan last September. View the photo background bigtacular and see more in their awesome slideshow.
Because half of you were probably going to Google it anyway, here’s Alice Cooper doing School’s Out for Summer on BBC’s Top of the Pops in 1972.
2013 North American International Auto Show – Hot Wheels Camaro, photo by memories_by_mike
The 2014 North American International Auto Show takes place January 13-26th in downtown Detroit (consumer show Jan 18-26) and features the new models and a whole lot of sizzle and creativity as manufacturers seek to make the biggest splash. The NAIAS site includes Detroit Auto Show history page that takes you all the way back to the first Detroit Auto Show in 1907!
The first Detroit Area Dealer Association (DADA)-managed Detroit Auto Show was held in December 1907, at Riverview Park after the formation of the DADA in the same year. Since then, the show has grown from a regional event with 17 exhibitors to a world-class showcase featuring more than 60 exhibitors.
As the years passed, the show became increasingly popular as the demand and interest for automobiles grew. The show grew and moved to several new locations, including the Light Guard Armory on Eight Mile, the Wayne Gardens Pavilion and the Michigan State Fairgrounds.
Check Mike’s Photo out background big and see more in his 2013 North American International Auto Show-Detroit, MI slideshow.
More Detroit Auto Show and more cars on Michigan in Pictures.
Junkyard Dogs 4, photo by Charles Crawford
In Old Webster’s Junkyard Chuck writes (in part):
I visited this “junkyard” some 25 years ago having read about it in the Detroit Free Press. Mr Webster had been buying junk cars for years primarily for storage. He would put one type of item in each car: toasters in one, tires in another, generators in still another. When I first saw this curious wonderland of castoffs Mr. Webster had accumulated hundreds of cars. They were jammed chock-a-block through acres of woods behind his General Store, each car with its assigned treasure. Mr Webster would repair many of these small parts or appliances for resale, but clearly at some point this process got out of hand. There were more items than a small army of workers could fix in ten years of non-stop labor.
For my part, I could only hope to document a very small part of Mr Webster’s amazing collection. Those pictures from years ago I’m afraid I have misplaced, but the visual experience of the hours I spent with Mr. Webster was still fresh to me, and I still had a yellowed copy of the original newspaper article that urged me to return.
Now 25 or so years later, the woods was slowly being cleared of the junk and the wonderland was only a shadow. It’s this shadow that I tried to capture in this series of photos.
You can click through to his website for more, and though he asks you to register, I think it’s worth it.
Good Morning Brockway, photo by Jiqing Fan
Today’s post might win the 2013 Incomprehensible Garbledegook Award…
Almost all of the photos on Michigan in Pictures are those added to the Absolute Michigan pool on the excellent photo sharing site Flickr, with occasional photo posted to the Michigan in Pictures Facebook mixed in. While that’s very convenient for me, there’s a whole lot of great photos on Twitter and Instagram too.
If you’re interested in sharing your photos and aren’t into Flickr, please feel free to use the “michpics” hash tag: #michpics on Twitter and #michpics on Instagram. If your photo is in some other place, you can tweet it with that hash tag.
Thanks everyone for sharing and I hope you get a chance to enjoy some of Michigan’s beauty this weekend!
Jiqing Fan took some amazing photos this fall. View his shot from Brockaway Mountain on the Keweenaw Peninsula bigger and see more in his slideshow. Past features of Jiqing Fan on Michigan in Pictures.
Kennedy Assassination Car, photo by Mr. History
As everyone is no doubt aware, today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Henry Ford in Dearborn has a feature entitled JFK Remembered: The X-100 that begins:
The car, code named X-100, started life as a stock Lincoln convertible at Ford Motor Company’s Wixom, Michigan, assembly plant. Hess & Eisenhardt, of Cincinnati, Ohio, stretched the car by 3½ feet and added steps for Secret Service agents, a siren, flashing lights and other accessories. Removable clear plastic roof panels protected the president from inclement weather while maintaining his visibility. The car was not armored, and the roof panels were not bulletproof. The modified limo cost nearly $200,000 (the equivalent of $1.5 million today), but Ford leased it to the White House for a nominal $500 a year.
It was a perfect marriage between car and passenger. The Lincoln’s clean, modern lines broke away from the showy chrome and tail fins of the pervious decade, and they seemed to mirror the young president’s turn toward a “New Frontier.” Kennedy used the limo many times during his thousand days in office, and it became tied to him in the public consciousness even before the tragedy in Dallas.
You can read much more about the X-100, which served Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter before being retired in 1977 and see a lot of photos at The Henry Ford.
Check this photo out background big and see more in Bob’s Automobiles slideshow.
Many more cars and lots more history on Michigan in Pictures.
Low-Rider…, photo by Kenneth (Off/On)
Two interesting auto-related tidbits came across my desk in the last couple of days.
The first is from Deadline Detroit, and shows an excerpt from a 1917 newsreel with a Detroit Police Department driver-safety campaign trying to persuade drivers to slow down.
Fast forward to today and beyond with Michigan Senate approval of self-driving vehicle testing on Michigan roads. The Detroit News reports that (pending House approval):
Under the Michigan rules, a driver would be required to be in the driver’s seat at all times during testing to take over in the case of emergency. Manufacturers and suppliers would use an “M” license plate for automated vehicle testing. “Upfitters” of automated vehicles, such as Google, would be permitted to test vehicles along with manufacturers.
The action comes as the U.S. Congress is set to hold a hearing Tuesday on autonomous vehicles amid growing interest among automakers. They will hear from General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co. executives along with the Michigan Department of Transportation.
…The University of Michigan says that by 2021, Ann Arbor could become the first U.S. city with a shared fleet of networked, driverless vehicles. That’s the goal of the Mobility Transformation Center, a cross-campus U-M initiative that also involves government and industry representatives. Ann Arbor has been home to a 15-month-long ongoing study of 3,000 vehicles that are linked to one another in a test of technology to see if connected cars can help each other avoid crashes.
I love it when the perfect photo shows up at the perfect time! Kenneth took this HDR shot in Mustang Alley at the Woodward Dream Cruise. See it bigger and check out more in his HDR slideshow.
More automotive features on Michigan in Pictures.
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