Connecting DC Electrics (Not what you think,), little GEMs, Matra (The French Connection), Road & Track and Saddam Hussein . . . Just for the El of it

Nobody asked me but . . .
Are you aware that a few years ago DaimlerChrysler bought an electric vehicle company called GEM (Global Electric Motorcars) because by selling a glorified golf cart DaimlerChrysler accrued emissions credits in California that allowed the company to continue to market conventional vehicles in the state?

Okay, I’m being a little cavalier here. (And don’t forget a Cavalier is a small Chevy, not a DC automobile. And a “little cavalier” would be a very small car indeed.)

And doesn’t DaimlerChrysler have the best abbreviation for the name of an automaker doing an electric car short of AC Delco?

Zero emissions GEM vehicles provide clean, quiet, efficient, affordable and (mildly) fun-to-drive transportation. I have driven various 2- and 4-seater GEMs around the beach city of Santa Monica, California. They are limited to a top speed of less than 25 mph so that certain safety features required of “real cars” don’t have to be installed. As an alternative to conventional vehicles, a GEM does have an impact on air quality.

Over 30,000 GEM vehicles have been produced and distributed across the United States and internationally, and they are in use in settings such as city centers, master planned and beach communities, rural areas, military bases, local, state and national parks, industrial developments, airports and college and university campuses.

In fact, if you are a car guy, you might be interested in this factoid: DaimlerChrysler is partnering with Matra Manufacturing and Services to market all-electric GEM vehicles in France. I’d assume it’s a division of the Matra car company, famous for its open-wheel race cars and 12-cylinder racing engines and a three-across (it’s French remember) Matra Bagheera sports car that I tested in France during the 1970s.

Here’s a short sound bite of Matra history from Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia: Mécanique Avion TRAction or Matra was mainly a French aerospace concern which took over the Rene Bonnet racing car company in 1962. At the time Rene Bonnet was building a sports car called the Djet and Matra took this over. Sales were slow and in October 1964 it was decided by one of Matra's directors, Jean-Luc Lagardere, that the company should use motor sport to advertise its products. In October 1964 he established Matra Sports. Initially Matra used Cosworth and BRM engines but funding from Elf in 1967 enabled Matra to begin work on the construction of a 3-liter V12 engine for Formula 1.

My discussion now becomes even more convoluted and personal . . . but stay with me here, because you might find the following interesting, entertaining and mildly amusing.

In the early 1990s a French publisher, Hachette, known worldwide for a women’s magazine, Elle, purchased the U.S. magazine group then owned by Diamandis Communications, but earlier spun off from CBS Publications.

There is no truth to the rumor that executives of CBS Publications, based in New York City, thought that Elle was short for “elevated” a term associated with subways that ran on elevated tracks.

Remember the Third Avenue El? It was memorialized in a poem that I had to memorize during a sophomore college English course. The author, whose name I have forgotten (Surely someone out there in WheelsTV Land must remember!), waxed poetically about “a Nipponized piece of the old Third Avenue El,” a reference to the fact that the elevated line had been torn down and sold as scrap iron to the Japanese who turned around and fired it back at us during WW II. Isn’t it amazing (and amusing) what one remembers from college?

It turns out my unknown poet took some broad poetic license in his poem.

Thanks again to Wikipedia, I can now share with you the rest of the story. In the 1940s, as part of the integration of the different subway companies in New York City, the Third Avenue El and its counterparts on Second, Sixth, and Ninth Avenues came under criticism from New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and his successors. The Els were regarded as blights to their communities and obsolete, given that subways were being built, or were on the drawing board, to replace them.

The IND Sixth Avenue Line and the IND Eighth Avenue Line did render the Sixth and Ninth Avenue Els obsolete. Except for a small shuttle service for the Polo Grounds on the Ninth Avenue Line, the Sixth and Ninth Avenue Els were closed by 1940 and demolished by 1941. Whether any portions of these two lines made their way to Japan before war broke out in December 1941, I have not been able to determine. The Second Avenue El was also gradually demolished from 1940 to 1942, leaving only the Third Avenue El, which was closed in sections from 1950 to 1973.

If you are a film buff you might remember seeing the Third Avenue El's in the 1947 film The Lost Weekend, in which a desperate Ray Milland struggles down Third Avenue, looking for a pawnbroker to hock his typewriter, desperate for money for another drink.

In the 1992 remake of that movie, a buff Arnold Schwarzenegger hocks his desktop computer, desperate for money to join the local Jack LaLanne health club.

Okay. Where was I? Right. Matra, Elle and Lagardere. The flagship of the Diamandis magazines was Road & Track, a magazine I worked for at the time. Jean-Luc Lagardere of Matra was one of the key investors that funded the Hachette organization in America. (There is also the sneaking suspicion that Saddam Hussein also had money in Hachette, but that’s a story for another time.)

And don’t me started (plug for electric vehicles to come) on why this somewhat convoluted piece of automotive past-, present- and future-think doesn’t include something on Carmen Electra. If I cogitate for more than a nanosecond, it just might . . . just for the El of it!