Who’s ready for a movie? Image courtesy www.neatorama.com

Welcome to the last installment of Trivia Tuesday for October. How have we been doing on stumping you with automotive trivia items? Drop us a line and let us know what we can do to keep improving this column.

Today we’re going to find out about the first production car to make use of hydraulic valve lifters. Hopefully we are able to surprise at least a few of you with the answer. As for the movie buffs, we’re also going to find out about the first drive-in movie theater in the country. Lastly, we’re going to discover what car appeared simultaneously on the cover of two of the most famous magazines at the same time.

A pristine example of the first production car ever to use hydraulic valve lifters. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

What Car Was the First to Use Hydraulic Lifters?

Hydraulic lifters are fairly ubiquitous these days. They help take care of minor “slop” in the valve train. However, they haven’t always been used, especially in production cars. Cadillac was the first automaker to make use of hydraulic valve lifters in a production car in 1930 and the vehicle that debuted the production lifters was the Cadillac 452.

The hydraulic lifter equipped 452 cubic inch V16 that was in the 1930 Cadillac 452. Image courtesy ConceptCarz.com

This car, by the way, was also the first production car to make use of a V16 engine. The engine itself was introduced to the world on December 27^th, 1929. Another little tidbit of watercooler info: The car was named after the engine. The engine size was 452 cubic inches. Your parents or grandparents might remember that at the time, Cadillac’s tagline, or motto was “The Standard of the World.” That is a pretty large standard.

Where Was the First Drive-In Movie Theater Located?

The marquee outside the first drive-in theater in the US. Image courtesy goodson.com

By a show of hands, who knows where the first drive-in movie theater in the U.S. was located? No cheating and heading off to Google or Bing to search for the answer. Nobody? Ok, we’ll give up the deets. The year was 1933 and the location was Camden, New Jersey. As you can see by the image, admission prices were quite a bit lower back then. Our friends used to sneak friends into the movies in the trunks of cars because the local theater had a four person per car limit. If you are wondering what the first movie to be shown at a drive-in was, drop us a line and we’ll give you credit in the next Trivia Tuesday edition.

What Was the Only Car to Appear on Two Magazine Covers at the Same Time?

Both Time and Newsweek featured the ground-breaking 1964 1/2 Mustang at the same time. Image courtesy autonews.com

Only one car in the history of motoring has appeared on the cover of the two national news/business magazines with the largest readership at the same time. Lee Iococca was the then CEO of Ford Motor Company (FMC). The magazines in question were Time and Newseek, both were (and are) highly-respected and well-read magazines dealing with politics and business news. The car in question was Ford’s at-the-time brand new Mustang. More than 50 years later, she’s still a beautiful car, wouldn’t you say?

The 1964 1/2 Mustang. Ain’t she a beaut? Image courtesy Wikimedia

That’s it for this week and as always, we hope you enjoyed this installation of Trivia Tuesday. If you’ve got any car trivia questions you’d like us to tackle, drop a line. We’ve recently made it easier for readers to contact our authors. Simply click the button at the top of the article and leave a short message. We look forward to hearing from you.