Tom McCahill

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Thomas Jay McCahill III (1907–1975) was an automotive journalist, born the grandson of a wealthy attorney

Jaguar and other high-line luxury cars. The depression and his father's alcoholism wiped out his family's fortune.[citation needed
]

Journalist and automobile critic

After graduating from Yale, McCahill managed and later owned Murray's Garage in

1946 Ford. His opinions were fearless and this endeared him to some in the automotive world but created enemies too. Ever the sportsman—at six foot two and 250 pounds—he once fought off goons hired by (as was believed at the time) General Motors. It is alleged that he sent two to the hospital and the third running.[citation needed
]

McCahill was a personal friend of

torsion-bar suspensions (combined with rear multi-leaf springs) for flatter cornering, powerful V8 engine options across the board and positive-shifting three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmissions. In a 1959 road test of the Plymouth Sport Fury (which he referred to as the "Sports Fury"), he claimed that the torsion bar suspensions were the finest in America. Few European sedans, said McCahill, could match the handling performance of the Plymouth.[citation needed
]

On the other hand, many of McCahill's opinions about vehicles were far less favorable. For example, he reported in a 1949 road test that the new Dodge, with its semi-automatic transmission, was a "dog." He considered early 1950s Chevrolets mundane and utilitarian.[citation needed]

On the road

On many of his earlier road tests, his wife Cynthia would accompany him as his photographer and almost always his black Labrador Retriever, "Boji".[citation needed] His later assistant was professional driver and photographer Jim McMichael who was photographed sitting—or lying—in the trunk of so many test cars McCahill eventually began calling him the " official trunk tester".[3]

His prose

McCahill frequently used extreme metaphors and similes in his prose. For example, in M.I. he described the AC Cobra as "hairier than a Borneo gorilla in a raccoon suit".[citation needed] He proclaimed the ride of a 1957 Pontiac to be as "smooth as a prom queen's thighs".[citation needed] The 1957 Ford "cornered as flat as a mailman's feet" and the 1954 De Soto is "as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar and just as fast." He described one model of Studebaker's gray-painted hubcaps as a feature "only an engineer could love."

Racing

In 1952 McCahill entered his own

Daytona Beach NASCAR speed trials and won in the Sedan class. Each year he attended and reported on world-renowned speed events, especially the Le Mans 24 Hour in France. He purchased the first Thunderbird built and raced it successfully in the 1955 Daytona speed trials. The Tom McCahill trophy was named for him. As director of the yearly speed trials at Daytona beach,[3] he was responsible for overseeing the rules as well as the safety of the drivers and spectators. He was a personal friend of Briggs Cunningham and drove the fastest cars in the world.[citation needed
]

Effect

McCahill reported in detail on every car imported to the U.S. during the early 1950s, all the while ridiculing the U.S. automakers for their excesses, including soft suspensions

handling qualities. An example is provided by one of the first road tests of the 1958 Edsel
in the September 1957 issue of M.I.: McCahill criticized the standard suspension as being too "horsey-back" and strongly recommended that Edsel buyers "pony up" a few extra bucks for the optional, heavy-duty (i.e. export) suspension package, which included heavier springs and shocks. He went so far as to tell his readers that "I wouldn't own one except with the export kit; without stiffer suspension, a car with so much performance (his test car had the 345-horsepower, 410 cubic-inch V8) could prove similar to opening a Christmas basket full of King Cobras in a small room with the lights out".

McCahill was in favor of lifting the Automobile Manufacturer's Association ban on factory backed stock car racing;[citation needed] although the ban was agreed upon by GM, Ford and Chrysler in June 1957, manufacturers continued under-the-table efforts to provide performance parts and engines to racing teams or performance-car enthusiasts. McCahill chose to live in Florida as its climate permitted owning such cars as his Jaguar sedan, as corrosion problems inherent with this type of car would have been compounded by the Eastern climate.[citation needed]

On the Chevrolet Corvair

McCahill conducted and reported on the first road test of the

Unsafe at Any Speed criticizing the Corvair's handling. At the time Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, it is to be remembered he had neither an automotive engineering degree nor a driver's license.[4] In response to Nader's book, McCahill tried to get a 1963 Corvair to flip, at one point sliding sideways into a street curb, but could not turn over the vehicle.[5]

Favorite vehicles

In the 600 road tests he performed and reported on,[

M.G. McCahill purchased the first Ford Thunderbird built in 1954 and proceeded to race the car at Daytona Beach.[citation needed
]

Sounding Off

In a 1958 M.I. article McCahill accused the U.S.

used car for those who could not afford a new domestic car. McCahill railed against unfair trade with Canada and Europe. He demanded that the U.S. stop accepting imports and, in lieu of war reparations, force England, Canada and France (where one could purchase an English or German car, but no U.S. makes) to accept the forced sale of hundreds of thousands of used U.S. cars, a plan which he claimed would increase the sale of new vehicles by more than six million annually over the following five years, thus significantly accelerating the U.S. economy
. McCahill had become Mechanix Illustrated public face, and the industry quickly realized that his review could make or break a product instantly. When he tested the 1948 Oldsmobile Futuramic 98 powered by a flat-head eight-cylinder engine of prewar design, he claimed that depressing the accelerator was like "Stepping on a wet sponge". General Motors was incensed over his review of the '48 Olds and scores of angry letters from the corporation, as well as from Olds dealers and owners, came into MI's 'office demanding his firing. However, it was widely known that McCahill's report motivated GM into development of Oldsmobile's new overhead-valve, high-compression "Rocket V8" engine, which made its début the following year in the 1949 "98." The format of the engine was filtered down to the smaller and lighter body/chassis used for Oldsmobile's lowest-price "76" series (powered by six-cylinder engines) and to create the Olds "Rocket 88." The Rocket V8 performed even better than in the bigger and heavier 98, thereby creating a whole new image for Olds and set the stage for similar designed V8 engines throughout Detroit over the next few years.

Personal details

McCahill was married a number of times but died without issue.[6] In a 1956 interview with Playboy magazine McCahill stated that he had "more cash than hair". The statement was in response to a question as to how he had been photographed in two separate issues of Mechanix Illustrated with two different wives. McCahill had homes in Florida and New York, where he would receive cars to test. He traveled all over the United States and Europe to facilitate testing. His stepson with his fourth wife, Brooks Brender, served as McCahill's assistant in his later years. McCahill was a personal friend of band leader Paul Whiteman, with whom he shared his love of hunting and fishing. Every year, McCahill would make a ten-day boating trip from his home in New York to his home in Florida aboard his thirty-foot Egg Harbor Cruiser the "Rooster" (McCahill was forced to sell the Rooster in 1967 to pay off back taxes to the IRS).[citation needed] McCahill was an avid fisherman, hunter and deep-sea diver.[citation needed]

At age 68, McCahill died at the Daytona Community Hospital on May 10, 1975.

Rob Roy. According to Canadian automotive historian Bill Vance, McCahill had lost a leg that became gangrenous after a thorn penetrated it during a duck hunt, forcing its amputation.[citation needed
]

Books

References

  1. ^ a b c "'Famed Automobile Writer, Tom MaCahill, Dead At 68". Daytonia Beach Journal. May 10, 1975. Retrieved 2013-02-05.
  2. ^ "Uncle Tom McCahill - Icons - Motor Trend Classic". Motor Trend. 2006-07-14. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
  3. ^ a b c Neil Pooser (March 22, 1964). "'Uncle Tom's Work: Torturing New Cars". Daytonia Beach Sunday News-Journal. Retrieved 2013-02-06.
  4. ISBN 978-0-87795-034-9
    .
  5. ^ McCahill, Tom (March 1967). "Is the Corvair Really Unsafe?". Mechanix Illustrated. Greenwich, Connecticut: Modern Mechanix. pp. 23–28.
  6. ^ "'Jeanne de Candoya, Writer Tom MaCahill, Wed in Brunswick'". Daytonia Beach Morning Journal. September 22, 1962. Retrieved 2013-02-05.
  7. ^ Open Library website under Fawcett Crest Titles.
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