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Fast Lane

When Terry was behind the wheel of a fast car, he felt freedom.  He didn't feel it anywhere else.  Not even at his day job.  And that’s kind of surprising, because he was very good at his regular job.  He had earned the respect of a lot of people.  But when it came right down to it, it was just a job. 

Only on the road or the race track did Terry feel completely right.  And it had been a long road to get where he was.  A product of a broken home, he moved around a lot as a boy.  He got into a little trouble with the law too, and spent a little time in reform school.  But as so often happens, the U.S. Marine Corps straighten him out.  

Well, it even took the Marines a little time.  He once went AWOL for two weeks.  He did time in the brig for that little stunt.  By all accounts he started to settle down after that, but Terry was still restless. 

That's when he discovered the freedom of fast cars.  He even started to race on a semi-professional basis.  It caused a bit of a stir, and people who knew him from his other job began to wonder if Terry had some kind of a death wish, driving cars at dangerous speeds the way he did.  He certainly didn't need the money, but he couldn't help it. 

He even started to design and build race cars, always looking for ways to make them better.  And to everyone's surprise, including Terry's, he turned out to be pretty good at it. His cars, whether driven by himself or other drivers, started to win races fairly often. 

But see, it wasn't just the speed, or the race itself, but rather the image that Terry liked.  This was the fast lane, and this was where he wanted to be.  And he started to wonder about ways to increase that sleek, fast image in his cars.  He went to work, and he threw himself into his creation so completely that he turned down some very lucrative projects from his other job.

But, in a few months, he had it.  You see, Terry thought the sports cars were all great except for one thing: the seats.  That’s right.  I said the seats.  He thought car seats all looked the same, a bit like the couch in your grandmother's living room.  It didn't fit the image the sports cars should project. 

So Terry came up with the idea for a new kind of seat, something perfect for a new age of automobiles, for the freedom that went with a fast car.  He called it a "bucket seat."  And the auto world loved it.  Even the people at his day job had to admit that Terry had come up with something pretty special. 

You know it’s a shame we don’t remember Terry as the inventor of the bucket seat, because he did invent them.  No.  We remember him now as the star of such movies as "The Great Escape” and "The Towering Inferno” Yep.  It’s a Little Known Fact that the bucket seat was invented by the great actor, Terrence Steve McQueen.
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