Kit Foster bought his first automobile, a 1937 Ford, for $7 when he was 7. His father towed the Ford home with his Jeep. Foster will never forget the joy he felt sitting in a car all his own.
But it never ran because the youngster lacked the knowledge to fix it. That didn’t stop Foster from obtaining another Ford, a 1947 model, when he was 14. He drove that car through the fields and woods in rural Connecticut.
Those cars fed Foster’s interest in automobiles, one his parents and siblings never understood. They were consumed by horticulture, even publishing a periodical on herbs. Foster forgot his love for automobiles after college and didn’t rekindle it until he was 30. His interest was later spurred by the Society for Automotive Historians (SAH), a group based in Gales Ferry, Conn.Foster felt like he found colleagues who understood him.
“By this time I was reading more widely and found it wasn’t just the sound, feel and smell of cars that attracted me; the history behind them became more and more pertinent,” says Foster, now the society’s treasurer. “And that history didn’t involve just proper colors, the size of the engine, the `specification’ issues, but also the people who designed and built them, the companies formed to manufacture them, the dealers who sold them and the people who bought them.”
While he found like-minded colleagues in the society, he also found a diverse group of autophiles, including journalists, academics, engineers, mechanics and others. Not all have vintage cars, though many once did.
“As it happens I do have several old cars, a 1925 Hudson that’s been in the family longer than any of my children and a 1930 Model A Ford that my father bought new, but that’s not what SAH is about,” Foster says. The group is about the history, finding, preserving it and passing it on.
Writer Darwyn Lumley agrees. “Automotive history is much more than the listing of various makes and models, along with production figures, of the various auto companies,” he says. “Consider the importance of the automobile on modern life, and you will gain some notion of the importance.
“However, automotive history is relegated to the back corners of professional historic study. With the present trends in professional historic preservation, it may very well remain considered obscure and not worthy of study.”
The Society of Automotive Historians founders Marshall Naul and Richard Brigham wanted to ensure that auto history didn’t remain obscure. Naul, a chemical engineer, and Brigham, a printer, had been corresponding on various topics related to auto history. The men found other people who shared their interest. They formed a group in 1969. There were 11 people at the first meeting, membership grew to 100 in 1970; 1,000 are in the organization now. Dues are $40 a year; aspiring members can join at the group’s Web site, www.autohistory.org.
“The store clerk who’s avidly studied the history of the Acme car is just as welcome and as valued as the high-profile author who specializes in mighty Duesenbergs,” Foster says. “This causes some professional and academic historians to look down upon us as mere `buffs,’ but in truth the lay historian often has as much or more to offer as the tenured and much-published professor.”
The society publishes SAH Journal and Automotive History Review. It also gives awards to writers and publishers of the best books, magazine articles and papers on auto subjects. Last year, Karl E. Ludvigsen was honored for his book “The Battle for the Beetle,” which chronicles the history of the first Volkswagen, and Cornell University doctoral student Jameson Wetmore for his paper, “Driving the Dream.” It also sponsors a meeting every two years for members to hear technical papers and presentations on automotive topics by authors and publishing executives.
Connected on the Web
Members keep in touch via the society’s listserv and the autohistory.org site. Questions posed on the listserv are answered within a couple weeks.
Foster has benefited from this listserv. He is writing a book on the Stanley Steamers, early 1900s steam autos invented in Massachusetts by the Stanley brothers. Foster knew from the brothers’ catalogs that they used Mayo and G&O radiators, but he didn’t know who made the radiators or who else might have used them. He put his query to the SAH membership. Six people responded within two weeks that both firms operated in New Haven, Conn.
Author Michael Berger got help for his book, “The Automobile in American History and Culture” (Greenwood Press, 2001), through the listserv.
“Unlike most SAH members, it’s not cars per se that fascinate me, but rather their impact on social behavior and mores,” he says.
“With the possible exception of television, I can think of no technological artifact that has so changed and dominated our society over the past century,” he says. “Fundamental social and economic relationships among family members, within communities, and even between countries [e.g. our relationship to OPEC] have been changed forever.”
It would appear there is a car angle to just about any U.S. event in the 20th Century. Lumley is researching the Detroit banking crisis of 1933. The Detroit banks’ failure created a domino effect, leading to enormous financial and social problems, he contends.
This crisis occurred in the last days of Hoover’s administration and led President Franklin Roosevelt to close all banks in the U.S. upon his inauguration. “The automotive community in Detroit had basic responsibility for the bank failures in Detroit, a responsibility that has not been well documented,” Lumley says.
Knowledge helps others
On a more mundane level the society has occasionally aided former body shop owner Dottie Balzer in her Maryland appraisal business. “I use my past knowledge of restoration along with other various methods to determine a fair market value for antiques and classic cars and trucks,” she says.
But not all the society’s research is for the books or appraisals.
About two years ago Foster learned that a local art museum had acquired some old home movies showing the museum’s founder and the artists that frequented her home. The museum director said in a newspaper article that he figured the movie dated to the 1920s from the clothing styles and the cars. Foster questioned that.
“It’s the combination of cars, clothes, street furniture that tells the story,” he says. “We’re not historians or journalists, we’re detectives.”
He called the museum director, who invited him to a screening. There were two recognizable cars, a 1930 or ’31 Ford Model A and a 1933 or ’34 Packard, in the movie. A close-up of the Packard showed what Foster thought was a 1935 license plate.
“So the films were about 10 years newer than previously thought, but more important, Miss Florence, as the woman was called, was then in her late 80s and in wonderful shape, not her 70s as they thought,” Foster says.
“It’s my demonstration that automotive history is not just a fetish, but has redeeming social value.”
New member Dale Stevens of Kalamazoo, Mich., concurs.
“I feel automotive history is so important as it relates to the development and growth of personal transportation during the 20th Century,” he says. “The spin-off from the industry has been one of the major business-economic factors in making our present society what it is–whether for the good or the bad will be judged by future generations.”
