By 1964, Beetles were a ubiquitous sight on US roads and a fleet of 60 cargo ships were bringing more than a quarter-million Bugs to the States each year.

But not all of them got here, and this is the story of the ones that didn’t make it.

“An earth-shaker from Great Britain” is how the influential writer Ken Purdy described the original Jaguar XK-E, a car stunning in looks and performance when it made its debut on March 21, 1961, and a car that remains stunning in looks and performance to this day.

On February 28, 1940, Mario Andretti and his twin brother, Aldo, were born in Montona, a town on the peninsula of Istria which at the time was a part of Italy.

We mention Aldo because, while today Mario is known worldwide as a championship-winning racing driver, few people are aware that Mario is a twin, and that Aldo, father to NASCAR and Indycar winner John Andretti, was a pretty good shoe himself.

On February 7, 1958, the Dutch truck manufacturer DAF introduced its first passenger car, the DAF 600, in Amsterdam.

The car is remembered for having a continuously variable transmission – the “Variomatic” transmission, a novelty for the time but proved, over the course of the next 20 years, to be a successful design for the company and an inspiration to today’s automakers.

Two events in the month of December converged to have a lasting effect on the history of the automobile – Charles Goodyear died in 1860, but on December 20, 1868, Harvey S. Firestone was born in Ohio.

It was 90 years ago, on December 12, 1925, that the Milestone Mo-Tel opened in San Luis Obispo, California – the world’s first “motel,” quite literally.

On Thanksgiving night in 1934, with no football on television, Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles played host to the then-emerging sport of midget auto racing, and the Turkey Night Grand Prix was born.