A Time for Calendars

…Or can we live without an analog calendar with space for a to-do list, are cars, calendars and girls forever inseparable (at least in our minds,) and wouldn’t you like a free copy of the “Ferrari Myth Calendar” by Raupp?

By now, traditional calendars should have gone the way of bison, elephantine cell phones, CRT tvs, newspapers, music stores, Oldsmobiles, Kodachrome and good movies. There is one on every PC, iPad, cellphone and Blackberry. But the ancient analog made-from-a-tree calendars still have a habit of hanging around, usually on garage walls, dens, and under phones in the kitchen. They are thrown out every January and magically renewed. Some habits die hard.

The more I researched the subject of calendars, ignoring flowers, cats, plants, dogs, lighthouses and other similar non-offensive subjects, the more I thought about what we do with calendars and where we get them from. Most annoyingly, for this is a decent, upright, socially correct journal, I kept coming up with cars and girls, a consistent theme that lurks in the dark corners of our memories. I tried to avoid it, honestly I did. But visions of Marilyn Monroe circa 1955, nude of course, on a grimy calendar hung above a desk littered with invoices and car parts in the back of a greasy garage, the calendar itself having a once blank rectangle in which was now stamped “Pete’s Garage” Duluth, GA, an address without a zip code, a telephone number letter prefix without an area code. Since kids and women and good folk would probably never set foot into the boss’s office in those days, this was perfectly permissible even in the prudish fifties.

Producer and VeloceToday contributor Stephen Mitchell reminded me that the Albert Vargas calendar girls (below) were even sexier than Marilyn’s calendar and being more ‘art’ may have been permitted in the dealer showroom, even though Playboy magazines were still sold under the counters only.
And where the rubber meets the road, the Pirelli Calendars shone and still shine, somewhere in our universe, the kind of cheesecake consumed by the elite. Certainly more attractive than the Michelin Man, unfortunately only girls grace the months, no cars–or tires. A line of bouncing buxom beauties running full tilt toward the camera still haunts the mind’s eye, even if the date is long forgotten. Neil Sedaka sang of a calendar girl in the song of the same name, although he probably pre- dates the Gregorian calendar itself.

With or without girls, calendars are not only attractive, but handy, especially the large box write-in variety like desk calendars, which are both forward seeing and past history. Putting down what is to be done each day provides a suitable record of past events. But the problem with old paper calendar pages is that they must be stored somewhere out of the way… not practical for those occasions when the question of Ah yes, I remember it well” comes up.

Using a calendar as a notepad is also good, except when, like my wife, one writes things that really don’t help, like penciling in the word “Today” under today’s date. I’m still not sure why that works but she claims it works for her and who can question that, particularly moi. Our fav layout person, Jodi Ellis is of the computer generation, superpc literate and yet creates traditional calendars for Maserati Club International (right). She too uses the age-old method of writing on an “old-fashioned write-on day planner”. She says, “I don’t use PC calendars, I like to write on my planner. It’s almost like a diary to me, I jot notes and ideas in it and it gives me much satisfaction to manually scratch something off my ‘to do’ list.” Scratching things off a PC calendar may be possible but never quite so satisfying.

Another relative youngster is Roberto Motta, our Italian Editor. So what do they do in Italy I asked? “Give me the old calendars, the ones with the older race cars. I never use the PC calendar. Now I have the Route Classiche calendar and I just received the 2012 Targa Florio Centenary calendar.”

The trouble with calendars is, like show business, everyone wants to get into the act. Since calendars are relatively easy and cheap to produce, they are produced by the millions. Most, of course sit unmoved in someone’s basement until so many years have passed they become fodder for Antiques Roadshow, circa 2050. Some are really neat but simple, like Jeff Hill’s calendar with photos from the 2011 Mille Miglia, not an official calendar but his own take on the event. He doesn’t sell them or have a website. “ I’ve been printing them for a few years to give to car friends here in California as gifts.” (top image) And that’s Pirelli’s trick…you can’t buy a new one, they are only given away. Maybe Jeff has got something there.

The Editor, being a born pessimist, and cheap as well, gets his favorite calendar free in the mail, disbursed as a PR effort by our local Nuclear Power Plant, who attach nice photos of the bloom of spring while indicating to the reader the days when the emergency test sirens will be heard. Clearly, the message is that if you hear the sirens and the calendar with the beautiful layout does not indicate a test day, it will probably be the last thing on your calendar.

There are the high-end calendars, like the Ferrari Perptual Calendar, (left) not really a traditional calendar but worth a great deal of money. Morry Barmak of Collectorstudio.com sold one of these fifties gold mines for $13,000. He has a few calendars for sale at his shop but demand for car calendars is low. Morry’s favorite calendar is the one his wife made of him with the kids.

Which brings us to the story of the Official Ferrari Calendars, which we will take up in-depth on another page. With all those choices out there, how does a car manufacturer like Ferrari choose who will create their official, and pricey, calendars? What makes them different? What do they cost and where can they be found? How does one make them more collectable?

To find out the answers to these questions, as well as what day it is today read our article on how to win a Ferrari Myth calendar.

In the meantime, gazing at my handy-dandy blow-up-the-whole-earth calendar, I keep wondering when that Ultimate Car Calendar will be marketed…with time and date, a full video format of one’s favorite cars (or other themes), fully programmable with all the coming car events listed in red, and space to write your own agenda on each daily block, notices when the oil should be changed and when the belts should be replaced. It could do all sorts of wonderful things and hang on the wall as decoration, just as in the days of pulp. In January one could see a run of the Monte Carlo Rallys, with Paddy Hopkirk all sideways in the Mini; for March, Sebring would be nice, Le Mans in June and so on. On F1 weekends it would automatically switch on the race and Turn Up The Volume. The linkage between cars, girls and calendars of course continues and presumably will not end, even with the arrival of the super computerized car calendar that would automatically change the image when the one who must be obeyed walks into the sanctum sanctorum. They will probably be much more graphic than the Vargas girls but somehow not as sexy.

I suppose these things do exist already, probably in the iPad, but I’ve never really looked, meaning that the old analog calendar I get free in the mail will probably suffice until my calendar days are at the end.