(January 2011) — The envelope had been forwarded twice by the time it got to me. I tore open the top seal and pulled out a worn 8½- by 11-inch color brochure, its binding coming apart, with a cryptic note paper-clipped to its top edge, asking for the brochure to be forwarded on to me. I took the note off and saw a color image of two Grumman aircraft in front of a large executive hangar beneath a headline that read “If you do your thinking on the ground, you’ll do your flying in a Gulfstream American.”
A Gulfstream American — funny. Tigers and Cheetahs have been casually referred to as “Grummans” for so long that I’d all but forgotten that, for a time, they were actually produced by Gulfstream. (The exact lineage starts with American Aviation, which produced the first two-seat AA-1 Yankee Clipper and the first four-seat Traveler. American was then sold to Grumman, which changed its name to Grumman American. In 1978, Grumman sold that division to Gulfstream, which renamed it Gulfstream American. Gulfstream produced the aircraft for only a short time, however, before it shut down production of all its piston-powered aircraft in 1979.)
