RIP, Mike Lavalle

Discovery Channel and TLC were one of the first cable TV networks with dedicated car programming that I was exposed to. On both channels, one painter consistently blew my mind, and that was Mike Lavalle. He never said much, he just got to work, letting his art do the talking.

His specialty was flames, blowing my mind and everybody else’s with what he could do with an airbrush, some stencils and red, yellows and whites.
Naturally, his scope of talent wen beyond his ‘True Flame’ art style, as I evidenced with my jaw on the floor as he competed in an airbrushing contest on TLC’s Rides.
There are many amazing airbrush artists out there, but Mike’s managed to airbrush himself into my memory, no mean feat considering how bad I am with names.

Mr. Lavalle passed away on April 14 at the age of 60 due to complication from a stroke he suffered earlier, not the tragically fashionable COVID-19. News of his passing news arrived to me this morning when my YouTube feed showed a clearly distraught Chip Foose delivering the news.

I’m going to miss that man.

–Tigerstrypes

Car Culture: Gille’s Frozen Custard Drive-In (and Memorium)

I originally wrote this in September of 2012 and am posting it here as the founder recently passed away.

Ah, the drive-in. . . .a magnificent piece of Americana, highlighted in movies and TV shows as the place to be on a Saturday night. Driving up in the family station wagon or cruising in with your best girl seated next to you in your first car. A friendly carhop taking your order for burgers, fries, shakes, and sodas, good old American fast food and delivered with speed and efficiency — sometimes even on roller skates. Chowing down, meeting friends, and making plans for later that night, all from the familiar confines of your car. Good times, good times. . . . .

Well, not for me anyway. You might think that this brief reminiscence of a recent trip back to my ancestral homeland of Wisconsin will be another bit of musing on some nostalgic aspect of my childhood when, in fact, that’s not really the case at all: I never visited the establishment in question until about 10-15 years ago. On the other hand, the subject does go back to my childhood years and presents something of a case study in the right way to either “do retro” or at least maintain it.

There’s been a lot of retro-styling of restaurants the last few years. Up here in the Pacific NW we (used to) have Ruby’s Diner, and nationally there’s Johnny Rockets, both capitalizing on the nostalgia of old-timey diners. We also have a place called Burgermasters with some drive-ins, although our favorite is the non-drive-in University location, made somewhat famous by the fact that Bill Gates used to hang out there. Dick’s (a rather unfortunate name if you ask me) is the Top Dog in drive-ins for this neck of the woods, but there’s also the Triple XXX Rootbeer Drive-In (another rather snigger-producing name, no doubt) which features a lot of classic car cruise-ins as well. And we have a smattering of A&W’s in the region as well.

The trouble with all of them — diners or drive-ins — is that I have hardly any nostalgia for them, at least not directly. Diners were mostly after my time and, while we had drive-ins while I was growing up, my family rarely went to them for some reason. So, no warm fuzzy memories of either one for me.

There is one, however, which fills me with joy just thinking about it, a true drive-in restaurant straight from the 1940s and largely unchanged since its inception, a staple of my hometown in Wisconsin, a true midwest heartland if there ever was one. And I was just there this past summer.

The Cars of Deutschland 83

This post was originally published on CarLustBlog.com back in 2015, when the series debuted. Minor editing has been done, details expanded a bit and, sadly, dead hyperlinks have been removed, but it’s still the same.

Taking place during the 1980s chapter of the Cold War, Deutschland 83 (‘Deutschland’ is German for ‘Germany’, ‘83’ for 1983) is a miniseries about a young East Germany soldier that went from confiscating illegal literature to becoming a spy in the offices of high-ranking West German military personnel so he can gather information on what was going on with the nuclear weaponry. Naturally, anything involving nuclear warfare quickly gets complicated, on both sides of the Berlin Wall, on a military level as well as on a personal level.

The 1935 Stout Scarab: The First Minivan?

To be honest, as I type this I’m not entirely sure whether to call this an It Rolls or an It Crawls. It’s kind of the automotive equivalent of the Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon Six: utterly fascinating to contemplate but possibly waaaaaay too much of a good thing … and not a little weird. I first became aware of this automobile when someone sent me a chain email on it. After doing a quick check to make sure it was indeed a real car, I dove in.

Having obtained a degree in archaeology and specialized in Egypt, my interest was piqued initially by the name, obviously: The Stout Scarab. Looking into it a bit more, however, made me realize it has all the things we here at It Rolls often look for: quirkiness, limited success, lots of interesting engineering and design features, and possessing numerous other qualities that make it an outstanding artifact providing insights into the culture of its time. In a lot of ways, it was way ahead of its time; in others, it seems completely outside of any rational concept of time. There’s so much about this vehicle that’s fascinating, the fact that it is often referred to as the first minivan is perhaps its least interesting feature. Whether that appellation is deserved remains to be seen and evaluated as we delve into this topic over the week.

There are so many cultural and automotive trends that converge in this wonderful vehicle that I found it difficult to avoid writing a dissertation-length post on it. It embodies early 20th century artistic trends in spades: a sleek, aerodynamic look inspired by contemporary aircraft design, elements involving archaeology and ancient civilizations, and a number of engineering novelties, many of which would eventually become commonplace, albeit not for several decades. But fear not, gentle reader, for I have forsaken the urge to compose a long, boring, and pedantic treatise on early 20th century art, culture history and archaeology, and will concentrate (mostly) on the nifty features of this vehicle, its place in automotive history, and how it fits in with the story of this week’s featured vehicle.