This section includes interesting facts about cars and car parts.

Did you know...

On June 21, 1947, Martha Firestone, daughter of Harvey Firestone, married
William Clay Ford, son of Henry Ford. The fathers of the couple had been
good friends durning their lives after Firestone received the exclusive
contract to supply tires for Ford's Model T. Unfortunately, neither man
lived to see this wedding.

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On June 6, 1932, Congress levied the first gasoline tax as part of the
Revenue Act of 1932. It was actually part of a wider tax on many consumer
goods. The original tax was one cent per gallon.

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On July 19, 1935 the first automatic parking meter in the United States
invented by Carlton Magee, was installed in Okahoma City by the Dual Parking
Meter Company. The original spaces were 10 ft. wide and the meters accepted
nickels. The meters were paid for with the money collected from them.
Today,parking meters are big business and generate a great deal of money for
the cities.

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On April 1,1970, AMC introduced the Gremlin. AMC had been the first to
introduce the compact car in the '50's. The president of this independent
company knew that to compete with the "Big Three", AMC would have to offer
smaller, more efficient alternatives. He personally appeared in
advertisements promoting the Gremlin as the "first sub-compact" car.
However, the Big Three soon came out with versions of their own.

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On May 27,1927,the production of the Ford Model T came to an end after
15,008,033 vehicles had been produced. It sold more than any car in
history--until the Volkswagen Beetle surpasses it in the 1970s. The first
"Tin-Lizzie" was priced at $850 and sold 6,389 units in 1908. By the 1910,
the price had dropped to $690 and 34,528 were built. By 1915, the price had
dropped to an amazing $350 when 472,350 were sold. It came with many color
options, as well--as long as your choice was black.

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On February 9, 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation was
incorporated with Carl Fisher, its president. Shortly thereafter, he
replaced the original track with bricks, earning the track the
nickname--Brickyard. In 1912, total prize money was $50,000, making it the
highest paid sporting event in the world. After WWII, the track was sold to
Tony Hulman, who restored and remodeled the track. Today, it is the largest
single day sporting event in the world.

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On March 10,1964, the first Ford Mustang was produced. It would not be
until April 16 that it would be introduced to the public. While Lee Iacocca
has received most of the credit for being the brainchild of the Mustang, it
was Do Frey who was the genius behind it. the Mustang was developed to use
many of the Falcon parts. The car was developed to attract a much younger
clientele, a growing consumer group. The first car cost $2,368. In its
first two years, it earned Ford $1.1 billion in profits. With Iacocca's
push for publicity, the car made the cover of Time and Newsweek to say
nothing of the trade periodicals.

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The real reason the OEM doesn't want you to drive more than 30 miles on a temporary spare? Most people think it has to do with the tire wearing out, or with a control problem. But the real reason is that the spare tire is an important part of the inner structure of the rear of the car. The spare is actually figured into the crash ratio of a rear end collision. If the spare is missing, the integrity of the vehicle is compromised and there are changes to the safety of the vehicle.

**Excerpted from "Inside the Hollander Interchange"