Jil McIntosh

Beverly Rae Kimes: In memorium

Beverly Rae Kimes has passed away. If my calculations are correct, she was 67. To say that the automotive world has lost a giant in the field is an understatement.

A writer and editor since 1963, Kimes had the helm of Automobile Quarterly for many years, and was a contributor for decades. She was the author or editor of more than twenty books, including the definitive history of such makes as Packard and Mercedes-Benz. She was also a rarity, a female writer and historian in a male-dominated field.

I had the opportunity to interview her by telephone in 2002 for Old Autos newspaper, and the first thing I mentioned was that when I first became aware of her writing, I assumed from her ambiguous name that she was a man. She said that just about everyone made that mistake, but in the early days, it was to her advantage: her meticulous work earned her a place on the page, and "By the time they found out I was a woman, (at a time) when women weren't regarded as favorably as they are today with regard to the workplace, I had already established myself," she told me. "I had been writing for several years, so they couldn't really take that out on me at that point."

Although she would gain a reputation as one of the top historians in her field, she told me that she'd known nothing about cars when she started. Fresh out of college, she first got a job with a theater magazine that folded shortly thereafter. Sent on a lead by her agent, the job turned out to be the fledgling Automobile Quarterly. Although she admitted her ignorance of automobiles, the editor hired her anyway, on the basis of the research she did for her Master's thesis. Her first story, on the Curved Dash Olds, sparked an interest in finding out the story behind the vehicles.

My story on her contained a minor error, which most readers would never have caught, but Kimes was mortified, especially when I showed her the transcript of our interview and she found the error was hers. I didn't realize it at the time, but she was recovering from a serious illness, which left her a little fuzzy at times. She requested (and received) a correction; her attention to detail would have allowed nothing less.

Kimes entered the field during the infancy of writing about automotive history, and along with a small handful of peers, she set the standard both for research, and for the stories that resulted. Every auto writer who's ever turned a key owes a debt to her, especially women writers, for whom Kimes put a foot in the door. I know I certainly do; all I can say is, thank you.

Why I don't like car auctions

Last year, at a cruise night, someone came up and looked at my 1947 Cadillac. "That's worth about $80,000, right?" he asked.

That's about four times its value, but rather than give him a deal at $65,000, I asked what made him guess so high. Well, he said, one went at Barrett-Jackson the other night for that.

I don't like car auctions. They're too big, too noisy, and after a half-dozen go over the block, far too monotonous. But what I really don't like is that I think they're detrimental to the old-car hobby. Just as celebrity chefs have sent trendy fish to near-extinction, car auctions have sent otherwise ordinary vehicles into the stratosphere, from which they seldom return. Instead of people driving their cars to shows and cruise nights, piling in the family to go for an ice-cream run, and having fun with the old-car hobby, buyers have become speculators. They treat these machines like mutual funds, storing them away until the next sucker pays $150,000 for a 1958 Chevrolet and they bring them out in the hopes of getting rich.

Look around you: old-car owners are old. When I ask what it'll take to keep this hobby going into the next decade, the answer's always the same: "We need younger people to get involved." But if you're determined that your hot-rodded '32 Ford won't change hands for less than $75,000 -- because that's what they're all asking in the National Street Rod Association's classifieds -- what younger person do you think is going to buy it? And if they do invest that much into it, where do you think they're going to drive it?

I saw it in the money-soaked 1980s, when cars ran on cash instead of gasoline; it wasn't uncommon for speculators to buy and flip them without even seeing them. In 1982 I turned down a 1959 Cadillac at $5,000 because it was overpriced; five years later, they were trading at $60,000. Not every car that crosses the auction block is ridiculously priced, but these are soft-porn TV shows, and they're going for the money shot. If you can get someone to pay you eight times what your car is worth, well, good for you. But then don't complain when you go to a "classic" car show, and a Chrysler K-Car is the oldest thing there.

In "loo" of anything else to say ...

You have to admit, it isn't every day someone shows you pictures of her bathroom ... 

... but I will. I thought I'd have some fun showing off what originally started as a single taxi-themed coffee mug. This is my taxi memorabilia collection. (Most of it, anyway. There's a bit more on the walls, and a rooflight on top of the toilet.)

Back in 1977, I got my taxi license, and became the youngest driver in Toronto; I drove for six years for East End Taxi. I originally wanted to be a driving instructor, but you had to be 21 years old. The city fathers figured I wasn't old enough to sit in the passenger seat, but was mature enough for other people to put their lives in my hands as I sat behind the wheel. I never hurt anybody, although a few passengers did threaten to hurt me.

Much of my collection consists of run-of-the-mill toys, but I've got a few gems in there. Among them are a cardboard checker game, sent by Checker to its clients, still with checker discs untouched (I don't dare pull the sheet out) and matching Christmas envelope; a "Safe Driver" cap badge from Yellow Cab; the fare sheet from my own taxi; a sill plate that went on taxi-specific Dodge models, with "Dodge Taxi" embossed in it; and a porcelain Checker made by Limoges, a generous gift from my best friend (who drove alongside me back then, and we've been best buds ever since).

I've also got taxi pencils, taxi rulers, taxi ashtrays, taxi lighters, taxi licenses, taxi magnets, taxi Christmas ornaments and taxi tin toys. I buy many of my items from the big automotive flea market in Hershey, Pennsylvania each year (I don't do eBay) and taxi memorabilia is surprisingly rare, but I always manage to find something.

Why the bathroom, you ask? Well, our house is very small, we don't have a recreation room, and my office -- the only spare room in the house -- is crammed with books. So we figured, if you're sitting there anyway, you might as well have something to keep you occupied.

Besides, the garage already contains 3,000 Hot Wheels and 200 die-cast cars. Did I mention I married a collector, too?