Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for March 26, 2010

He should have taken advantage of “Cash for Clunkers”

I think the Smithsonian made him a better offer.

Once you are in PARK…no more clunks.

That was funny Yukoner and more spot on. :-))

NO, NO, it’s not a Chevy ( “shovel it up and let it lay” ), it’s a Chrysler product!!!

Now there’s a style change!

Charles Brower, one of the greats of the ad business and for years a top executive at Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osbon, has been writing his memoirs in Advertising Age.

A yarn he tells is of young Bruce Barton’s encounter in 1931 with “impatient, impulsive, brief”, William Knudsen, then head of Chevrolet and subsequently chairman of the board of General Motors.

Barton and Knudsen had trouble communicating. Knudsen’s engineering mind didn’t savvy the ad business and Barton didn’t savvy the car business.

Finally, Barton blurted out “What is your real opinion of the 1931 Chevrolet?”

“Is an almost perfect car,” said Knudsen in his Scandinavian accent. “Next year we make one little change. Then will be perfect.”

“And what will that be?”

Brower says that Knudsen shook his head, as though despairing of explaining it all to this New Yorker.

“You know what is the chassis?”

“Sure,” said Barton.

“Well, on each corner of this chassis, we are putting little hooks.”

“Yes?”

“And from these hooks we are hanging a big piece of canvas.”

“Why?” asked Barton, fascinated.

“Catch all the goddamn parts that fall out!”

I think the Statute of Limitations is up on that old clunker.

Heck, the price should be going up from now on!

In the same vein: “The parts that fall from this car are genuine, British-made” my 2nd favorite bumper sticker from the days when I was fixing and sometimes driving Sunbeams.

Chief and Joe. I won’t be able to google for a month.

On the cartoon: “Prof. the company says it doesn’t recall making the car.”

and if the pieces taper off, just follow the trail of oil

“On the road again! I left my transmission on the road again!” (Willie’s first version of the song…)

For those who remember Euell Gibbons, I once made a bumper sticker for my brother’s motorcycle: “Most parts are edible”

I worked with a guy named Eric Okamoto who had a license plate frame on his 1967 Mustang that read, “Made from bleeep beer cans”.

OK - They bleeped the common slang term for a Japanese person during WWII - but that’s what the frame read.

Cash for clunkers…. we’ll give you a buck fifty for it if you throw in the little pine scented air freshener

Reminds me of an incident when I was young : I had an 84 Camero and was just driving along one day , I stopped at at red light and another young guy pulls up in an old ratted out Chevy nova. he starts gunning the engine like he wants to race even though I was ignoring him and it was mid afternoon.

The light turns green and he peels out smoking tires all the way.. I just shook my head and started normally .. as the smoke cleared I passed him on the side of the road… his entire exhaust system.. muffler and a section of tailpipe were right in the middle of the road and a big truck came by and squashed em flat.

I laughed all the way home :o)

sounds like a country song title.

No that would be” My ma got run over and my dog left me while I was racin a guy who’s muffler fell off”.. I think Buck Owens did that one back in the 60’s

I remember dropping my tailpipe and muffler (in my late teens) as a guy was chasing me off his property with a shotgun! I had forgot all about that. Although it was a Ford, not a DeSoto…

The Old DeSoto probably stops better than a new Lexus.

Why is he driving? He’s a bird!!