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Debuting in January of 1928, Chevrolet’s National Model AB introduced new features like four-wheel brakes, a thermostat, indirect instrument lighting and Alemite fittings to make chassis lubrication easier. Powered by a 171-cu.in. four-cylinder engine rated at 35 horsepower, the Chevrolet National was available in a total of eight body styles, ranging from two-door roadster through four-door imperial landau. This 1928 Chevrolet National Utility Coupe, for sale on Hemmings.com, may be among the nicest remaining examples, especially when the asking price is factored in. Described as in excellent condition with a reupholstered interior, all gauges and lights are said to be functional. The only modern amenity appears to be a six-volt fuel pump, added to make starting a simpler task. From the seller’s description:

Take a long look at this beautiful example of Chevrolet history, this remarkable 87 year young Chevy Utility coupe is in excellent condition. All gages work as they should, speedometer shows just under 36000 miles which I believe to be original. All lights including the stop light works, also the “ahooga” horn. Interior has been re-upholstered, absolutely no rust and the wood is rock solid. Engine compartment is very clean as is the underside of the car. Last year for the 171 cu. in. engine and it runs just like it should. I’ve added a 6 volt fuel pump to help pull the gas from the rear tank to assist in starting. This is a beautiful car for all you “bow tie” lovers.

1947 Chrysler Town and Country. Photo by David LaChance.

Appropriately, and unlike pretty much every other car, one of the most celebrated nameplates in Chrysler’s history, the Town and Country, originated not with a sketch or a design brief, but with a name that eventually became a car. That nameplate has also proved one of Chrysler’s most versatile and longest lasting, with its 75th anniversary approaching next year.

While credit for the original Chrysler Town and Country goes to then-Chrysler president David Wallace, the name originated with the Boyertown Body Works, as Donald Narus related in his book “Chrysler’s Wonderful Woodie – The Town and Country, 1941-1950.” In 1939, Chrysler had hired Boyertown to build a series of prototype station wagon bodies for Dodge, one of which bore the Town and Country name, inspired by its “town” front and “country” back half. (For posterity’s sake, the other suggested names – Country Club Sport and Country Gentleman – fell by the wayside.)

Boyertown didn’t get the contract for the Dodge station wagon, but the Town and Country name rattled around in Wallace’s head for a while until he decided to build a Chrysler station wagon that would embody that “town and country” dichotomy. So he gathered a number of his engineers together in Chrysler’s Jefferson Avenue plant and worked with them to hammer together a wood-bodied station wagon prototype out of a 121.5-inch wheelbase Windsor chassis, Windsor front clip, a seven-passenger limousine roof, and a couple cords’ worth of white ash and Honduras mahogany.

Archive photographs courtesy Chrysler.

After seven weekends of their own time Wallace and his group turned out a prototype that he then drove to Highland park to show to his bosses, who reportedly had no idea what Wallace was up to. “There was nothing about the lines of this newest Chrysler car to suggest a truck or something makeshift,” Narus wrote. “The finished product was a handsome wagon sedan that, indeed, did follow the line of the steel-bodied sedans.” The board of directors approved and Wallace put the Chrysler Town and Country into production in March 1941 as a mid-model year addition. Pekin Wood Products of Helena, Arkansas, provided the wood parts, Briggs supplied the sheetmetal, and Chrysler assembled it all at the Jefferson Avenue Plant.

While the barrelback bodystyle with the half barn doors garnered plenty of attention when Chrysler first released the Town and Country – the brand’s first station wagon and the first station wagon at all to feature a steel roof – perhaps the most unique feature of the first Town and Country models was the available three-row seating, made possible by a rear seat that slid fore and aft to make room for a center seat that folded down from the back of the front seat. Total production for the 1941 and 1942 model years, which ceased with the intervention of World War II, amounted to 1,997 cars, two of them one-offs built on the 127.5-inch wheelbase chassis.

The Town and Country nameplate continued after the war, but not as a station wagon. Rather, Chrysler developed a number of other bodystyles: a four-door sedan, a two-door sedan, a two-door hardtop, a convertible, and a roadster. Aside from a limited run of seven two-door hardtops, only the four-door sedan and the convertible went into production. As Narus wrote, the postwar Town and Country became a status symbol almost overnight.

“The Hollywood set immediately took to the Town and Country convertible… everybody that was anybody had to have one,” he wrote. “The sedan, while it did not share the glamor of the convertible, was perfectly at home on any of the swank estates of Long Island. If you had a country place in Connecticut and were anybody at all, you surely had a Town and Country sedan to go along with it.”

That heyday lasted until 1948, when Chrysler returned the Town and Country nameplate to its station wagons but retired the wooden bodies for all-steel versions decorated, at first, with ash trim and Di-Noc inserts. It continued as Chrysler’s top-level station wagon on the full-size chassis and what would become the C-body platform over the next few decades, then in 1978 switched to the mid-sized M-body’s LeBaron. Another switch came four years later, when Chrysler applied the Town and Country to its front-wheel-drive K-car, in the process bringing back the Town and Country convertible and the woodgrain trim.

(At one point, the nameplate even graced a Chrysler ute built for the Australian market. How’s that for flexibility?)

For one year only, 1989, the Town and Country nameplate didn’t appear in the Chrysler lineup. It then returned in 1990 as Chrysler’s entry into the then-burgeoning minivan market, where the nameplate has remained ever since. Woodgrain went away fairly early in that run.

Over the years, the pre-1949 wood-bodied Town and Country station wagons, sedans, and convertibles have generated a good amount of praise and gathered a significant following, enough to warrant a chapter of the National Woodie Club and secure their designation as Full Classics by the Classic Car Club of America in 2010.

Chrysler appears to have no plans to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Town and Country nameplate, though it has released a 2016 anniversary edition of the Town and Country minivan that marks 90 years of the Chrysler brand sans Maxwell.

Corvette Museum Motorsport Park in August 2014, prior to garage and pavilion construction. Images courtesy National Corvette Museum.

The National Corvette Museum Motorsport Park is quiet these days, as winter has brought an end to track season, even in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Despite the pause, the conflict between the track and its neighbors on Clark Circle isn’t going away, and as the Bowling Green Daily News (via CorvetteBlogger) reports, a Warren County Circuit Court judge has denied a request from area homeowners for a temporary restraining order on the track.

Though the ruling sounds like good news for motorsport fans, it comes at a cost. To settle the matter once and for all, Judge John Grise stated that the court will hear a jury trial between Clark Circle residents and the track, scheduled for the fall of 2016. In the interim, the track is allowed to continue operations, at least once the season resumes in March of 2016.

In October, the track completed the noise abatement berm called for in the original Binding Elements document. Per National Corvette Museum marketing and communications manager Katie Frassinelli, the facility has also installed Acoustifence, a sound absorbent barrier applied to traditional fencing, at various locations around the track’s property. The park continues to work with a sound engineering company Bowlby & Associates to determine the best solution to the noise complaints of Clark Circle residents.

The jury trial was originally scheduled for March of 2016, but area residents requested additional time to prepare their case, delaying the court date until the fall of 2016. At issue is whether or not the park has violated the “substantial increase” noise standard established by the planning commission when approval was granted for the facility’s construction in 2014. Should the park be found in violation, monetary damages, up to the fair market value of each complainant’s property, can be levied.

The track has another court date in its future as well. On December 10, the track will appeal the $100 per day fine issued by the Warren County Code Enforcement Board, issued due to ongoing operations without a certificate of occupancy. Judge John Brown is expected to rule on whether the conditions for a certificate of occupancy have been met, as well as whether or not the code enforcement board has the authority to issue the fine.

How is it that we have two realities out there in healthcare… in parallel, Lean is awesome and Lean is horrible. It depends on where you are, unfortunately.

I had an amazing day yesterday with a major health system… I’ll blog more about them later. I was their guest to see their progress with Lean and continuous improvement (Kaizen).

I saw staff members enthusiastically explaining their continuous improvement approach. Nurses in multiple departments, environmental services, patient transporters. They’re doing A3s and structured problem solving. They’re identifying problems and implementing staff ideas in visual ways.

Staff members are telling management what problems they want or need to fix and they’re being given time to work on things, with the support of coaches. These coaches are their managers and continuous improvement professionals.

The staff members demonstrated a high level of mastery of not just the tools and methodology, but the mindsets, saying things like:

Banthrico’s 1937 Rolls-Royce; image by the author.