Saw this at a tractor show, yes its a car, but it was still there. A co-worker looked into this and here is the story:
Car Hoods. Now they are all FLAT.
Hoods, that is. The ornaments are GONE! I scanned a huge parking lot and there was simply a flat sea of sheet metal shimmering in the sun.
It wasn’t always that way. Hood ornaments of yesteryear were classy works of art that made an elegant statement about the car. If you were tacky enough to mount your own-maybe a monkey or a risqué lady -it simply made a statement about YOU – not the car.
Early engines did not pressurize the radiator. The Model T simply siphoned the water instead of using a pump. To get the best combustion and preserve the coolant, the motor had to operate between 170-180 degrees F. This became difficult in higher elevations as the boiling point drops a degree for every 500 feet elevation. The Boyce Moto-Meter, patented in 1912, was a thermometer that read the temperature of the radiator’s vapor. These were standard features throughout the first three decades of motoring. But auto makers wanted their name riding on the hood, so the Moto-Meters installed at the factory were incorporated into an ornament.
POST CHALLENGE 4.7?!!? WHAT?!
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Place: 372 out of 394 Avg (all users): 4.7364 Avg (commenters): 0.0000 Avg (participants): 4.6923 Avg (non-participants): 4.8421 Views since voting: 775 Views during voting: 224 Votes: 129 Comments: 4 Favorites: 0
Nice details in the hood ornament. The background is a bit 'muddy' and hard to distiguish. Being that I know what it is, I can figure it out - but a bit less blur may have provided a bit more context.
This deserves a much better score than it got - IMO. The lighting on a very shiny reflective object is superb, and the cropping is to get the steering wheel in the background. I just don't think the voters took the time to look at this one closely enough. Were I you, I'd shop this around to museums, etc. - it is that good of a shot.
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