Chapter One

I met Jim and saw portions of the collection in fall 2004. I was working on my first automotive commission piece for a gentleman that owned a Tucker. In my mind, I designed a large work that would have current pictures I had taken of the Waltz Blue Tucker made to look like old Polaroid�s along with historical images and editorials surrounding the struggles Preston Tucker faced to build his innovative automobile. I met Jim through a former co-worker and went to see what he might have that I could borrow, and digitize for my artwork. I sat with him and looked at the extensive collection of just Tucker material and I was intrigued & captivated. As time went on, Jim would begin to show me more and more albums of other cars.

Here is where I will share with you that I was not born an auto buff. Unlike Jim, I couldn't always tell what car was coming down the road based on the headlights and shape of the front of the car. I wasn't the kid who knew the difference between a GTO and a Charger, I only knew which one was my favorite color. I always knew the difference when I saw a convertible because that was the car I wanted - at any age. Jim, on the other hand, could sit down with an album and show me ads of cars and tell me stories about those cars. He would talk about when they were new, or friends that he had growing up who had bought the first one in town. He could tell me about the changes in the cars that worked and the ones that were flops. I could flip through an album and Jim could tell the model year of the car I was looking at because of the miniscule changes in the bumpers, or the grill. Jim is the best story of all. Jim is the best storyteller as well.

Each time I stopped to see Jim and I got the chance to see more of the albums I was enchanted. I was captured by the nostalgia and delighted by the artwork with each new page and different car. Every time I sat with these albums I got the rare chance to look through page after page of our American culture, our trends, our new developments in technology, our improvements in marketing and our love affair with the automobile. This is a pictorial history of not only our love affair with the automobile but the freedom those automobiles represent.

In the summer of 2007 Jim shared with me he was meeting a gentleman from Chicago in September and he was going to sell the collection to this man. Jim wanted to make sure I knew so I would have time to get any pictures or copies made before then. This gentleman certainly had the money to pay the $150k that Jim wanted but he didn't have any interest in sharing it, or allowing us to digitally archive it. The collection was to become a part of this man�s private library, to be enjoyed by himself and his select friends. I felt so deeply convinced that there are many more like me that would love to see this collection, enjoy it, study it, and even buy reprints of their favorite ads. At that point I knew I had to find the money, I had to find a way to save this collection and get it to the people that would enjoy it. Not only did I think that the collection needed to be saved from being a conversation piece, but I was convinced that I could do it. I accepted this mission late June 2006.

Jim has spent the last 50 years of his life collecting, cataloging and preserving this wonderful ad collection. Our goal is to save it for another hundred.