The Heritage Center and Thanksgiving

Last Wednesday, I got a huge treat.  My work group went to see the GM Heritage Center.  We had to make reservations since the Heritage Center paces their guests throughout the day and year.  Since they have this policy, between our group and a few other visitors, we had ~150 cars for only about 15 people.  Excellent!  One of the standouts, the Cadillac Sixteen, was a concept car featured on an episode of Top Gear (Series 2, Episode 10 for those of you who want to go look it up), but the Heritage Center also had the  1931 Cadillac V16 that it pays homage to.

The 2003 Cadillac Sixteen - giant and pretty amazing - my arms, spread, are around 6 feet

The 1931 version - V16, the lower large headlights turn when you turn the steering wheel!

The Heritage Center basically manages GM’s history – besides a fleet of ~450 cars (only a selection are shown at one time), they also have more of a standard library of old advertisements, manuals, photos, etc.  We spent basically the entire time in the warehouse/garage space where all the cars were though, looking at everything from 1900s to 2000s as well as quite a number of concept cars that never made it to production.  After seeing a video earlier in the internship of a 1959 car crashing head on into a 2009 car, I will never have an antique for my daily driver.  Those cars were definitely cool, but much more suited for art than commuting.

An experimental 1987 Oldsmobile, yes, Oldsmobile, that could go over 290 MPH in a straight line and came in a twin turbo version with 1000 HP 

A 1938  Buick Concept estimated to be worth $20M, not only because it's rare just because it wasn't scrapped for WWII, but also because it had an automatic transmission - 3 years before it was available in vehicles for sale

Unfortunately, this is blurry, but the 1969 512 Gasoline Experimental is pretty much the opposite of the Cadillac Sixteen - seems like a good alternative to a golf cart

There were more cool cars, but I wasn't sure when to stop :-)

For Thanksgiving, I flew back to Massachusetts and so I saw my family for the second time in less than a month.  It was nice.  I slept in, ate well and gave and received a large number of hugs!  In addition to spending time with my immediate and extended family, I was invited to an east coast party/reception for one of my high school friends who got married in August in Seattle.  Hooray!

Flew back to Michigan on Sunday, came to work and gave my final presentation on Monday even though I have three weeks left.  Interns and co-ops always present at the staff meeting of someone one level above their boss and so it worked out that Monday was when the Executive Director’s staff meeting was.  There was little guarantee of good attendance at the December one, so we figured I’d just do it now.  One step closer to the next phase of things.