You don?t need to travel at the speed of light to witness time travel. In fact, all you need is a subscription to Car and Driver to see the theory at work. How else can you explain the way we always send you a magazine dated at least one month ahead of the month of receipt"
It?s not just magazines that appear to bend the space-time continuum. Vehicle model years frequently differ from the official calendar year. Your calendar may display the year 2016, but somehow new-car dealerships across the country are already stocked with 2017-model cars and trucks. What gives"
Blame Franklin D. Roosevelt. Originally, automobile model years tracked calendar years. However, that practice changed in the mid-1930s, after FDR signed an executive order that dictated automakers release their new vehicles in the fall of the preceding calendar year ?as a means of facilitating regularization of employment in the [automotive] industry.? Auto assembly-line workers are typically idled during a new-model changeover, and the president reasoned that if their idle period were to happen earlier in the fall, autoworkers would be able to maintain employment through the holiday season and would thus be able to spend more. Some 80 years later, the tradition of releasing new vehicles in the final months of the preceding calendar year remains common. This custom, however, is by no means set in stone. Under Environmental Protection Agency rules, manufacturers can introduce a next-model-year vehicl...