Um . . . horsey?
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
The word you best mind your P's and Q's about using in the future? Mustang. Ford ain't kidding about its new obsession with protecting the Mustang trademark. Companies such as Mustangs Plus (a 25-year-old business) are facing potential lawsuits from Ford if they don't cease and desist using the trademarked word in their business names and as part of their Web site addresses.
Donald Farr, editor of our sister mag Mustang Monthly, says companies are being told-through lawyers-they need to turn over Internet domain names to Ford; change company names; cough up business cards, stationery, signs, and related items; and provide a cashier's check for $5,000 in damages, among other requirements. Such letters to Mustang-named companies are being rolled out slowly. Wouldn't want to make life difficult for the lawyers, now would we? So what is this all about? As Donald says, "Ford fears the usage might be construed as an affiliation with Ford." Lame. Companies with a Ford licensing agreement are exempt from all this.
Ford is likely to enforce its trademarked "Pony" and "'Stang," too.
Cadillac Race car Re-Creation
The GM Performance division has cloned the '54 Cadillac Series 62 Carrera Panamericana, a competitor in the same-name historic road race held in Mexico. The frame-on restoration was done on a vintage Caddy that someone apparently stumbled upon in the GM garage (the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark comes to mind). While the Caddy is nearly identical to the original racer, it does have a freshened interior, safety items, and a later 390ci V-8, since it has been built for a restaging of the Carrera Panamericana later this year.
In Theaters Now...
Hollywood has a saying: A good movie idea can be pitched before a match burns out. We'd have to say we too would have been sold on this one: "Will Ferrell as a NASCAR driver." Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a "story of a man who could only count to #1," is a flick that even made a little history. Sure, it's trivial information, but you can't spell trivial without trivia: The cover of the August issue of Stuff magazine featured star Ferrell, the first time a man has made the front page. The power of NASCAR (OK, and that guy).
"On a late summer day in 1899, a 68-year-old real estate broker, ironically bearing the name Henry Bliss, stepped off a trolley car in New York City and was killed by a passing automobile, thereby acquiring the dubious distinction of becoming our country's first automotive traffic fatality."
From the book How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland. We're sorry to have been seven years too late to acknowledge anniversary 100.