How’s your 50s and 60s American automotive knowledge? Take this 17 question quiz and find out. And when you’re done with that, take the engine identification quiz. Post your scores, and let us know if you find any errors (an expert source tells me they have the wrong answer on question #8 of the automotive history quiz).

Back in the late 80s, I paid my way through university by driving taxis. I always enjoyed the long drives the most, because they paid the highest fares and gave me an excuse to get out of the city. For the record, the longest round trip I ever had was six hours. This pales in comparison to the trip that Douglas Guldeniz took earlier this year from New York to Arizona. However, even Douglas would have to tip his hat to Charlie Heard, whose longest trip covered a distance of 7000 miles and took three months to complete! Heard was sitting at his rank when he was approached by wealthy widow Ada Beal who asked him if he would like to take her and two companions to Darwin, which is on the other side of the Australian continent. The only thing that prevented Heard from agreeing to the trip immediately was that he had to check with his wife if he could take the job. What makes this even more remarkable is that Heard’s taxi was a 1928 Hudson soft top and the trip took place in 1930, when a large part of the journey would have been on Australia’s outback tracks that modern 4wds can still struggle to cope with. This trip still holds the record for the world’s longest continuous taxi ride. Interestingly Heard only suffered one punctured tire for the entire trip and used 505 gallons of petrol. Get the full story here.

Holden, like a so many other car manufacturers, has come close to producing what could have been a legendary car only to pull out at the last moment. Its GTR-X design was reminiscent of cars produced by Lamborghini and Ferrari, with its wedge-shaped profile and concealed headlights. Running an inline six producing 160 bhp, the GTR-X was able to achieve a top speed of 130mph and go from 0-60 in 8.3 seconds. To keep costs down, the mechanicals were borrowed from the Holden Torana, and the six cylinder was chosen over an eight due to its economy and widespread availability. Interestingly, it would have been the first Holden to be fitted with 4-wheel disc brakes if it had gone into production. There are a number of reasons why the GTR-X never made it that far, including both competition from the Datsun 240Z and restrictions faced by Holden in export markets—and Australia didn’t have a big enough domestic market for the GTR-X because of our small population base. So instead, it was the Monaro that became Holden’s first coupe in Australia. Check out this cool footage of one of the GTR-X prototypes being tested in 1970.

I was pleased to hear that Holden is going to be exporting its Ute to America as the newest member of the Pontiac lineup. Here in Australia, we have enjoyed the benefits that Utes provide for a long time: put simply, they are powerful workhorses that still give you the creature comforts of a car. What many of you may not know is that the Ute in its current form, where the pick-up bed and side panels are produced as one piece to provide a seamless body molded tray, was in fact invented here in my Australian hometown, Geelong. In what must rate as one of the best customer-service responses of all time, Ford Australia designed and built the first Utility Coupe based on the request from a farmer’s wife in 1933. The long-suffering woman wrote a letter to Ford asking why they could not produce a vehicle that could both take them to church in comfort on Sundays and take their pigs to the market on Mondays. The request was passed on to a young designer by the name of Lewis Brandt, who designed what would turn out to be a real winner in the Australian car market for generations. GM and other manufacturers quickly followed suit, though the first actual Holden Ute, predecessor of the ones that’ll soon be rolling out of Pontiac showrooms in the US, didn’t appear until after WWII. Brandt’s original design for Ford produced a vehicle that had a wheel base of 112 inches, with a rear tray that was 5ft 5 inches long and had a load capacity of 1200 pounds. Sadly, Brandt died in a collision with a commercial truck in 1987, while driving a vintage Ford Ute that he had restored.