Admittedly, this one fell right into our laps. It was on our old boss’ desk, a gift from a reader he left behind after going out for cigarettes and not coming back. (He also left two pairs of cop sunglasses, which he can claim at any time.) But glimpsing into The Great Auto Trivia Book, by Mitch Frumkin, was enough to blow our minds.
The “our” in this is me, Raphael Orlove, and Jason Torchinsky. We are both auto trivia nerds and have spent I don’t know how much time trying not to laugh at William Durant’s middle name in old history books and painstakingly committing to memory the exact headlight changes of 1980s FoMoCo products for spotting them at a great distance. Why do we do these things? We can’t say, but we never expected to have our useless knowledge so greatly tested as we were by sweet, strong Mitch Frumkin.
Frumkin got this thing published in 1985, and the trivia in it was, I’m sure, difficult for the time. A good few decades and a half later and they have only grown more difficult.
This is just a starter for a multi-round slugfest between Jason and me, but the main takeaway on this first section is that the Amphicar was way nicer than we thought it was. Why wasn’t everyone buying these things? Our grandparents were all lame.