A 2020 piece in the New Yorker, "My Life in Cars" detailed McCall’s lifelong fascination with vehicular transport, a topic he'd chronicle still more thoroughly in his addictively readable 2011 first autobiographical volume, "Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada.
"The originality of Japanese aircraft design was never in question after the Shirley wobbled onto the scene, albeit briefly, in the closing months of the Pacific war. This light , cheap , last-ditch gesture of a desperate Japanese High Command was in fact little more than a bicycle of the air, its propeller turned by pedal power from the pilot.
But it was McCall who took the theme and ran with it. Reprising the "Major Bixby" formula, McCall's 2001 collection, "The Last Dream-O-Rama - The Cars Detroit Forgot to Build, 1950-1960," summed up his all-too-accurate take on the post-war American automotive scene in its characteristically deft, biting, and eloquent introduction.
McCall, who lived in New York City across from Central Park, is survived by his wife, Polly, daughter, Amanda, and, we imagine, a thousand score or more heartbrokenreaders. Ourselves, we can't imagine the popular episode of The Simpsons, with its satirical ad for a gigantic mythical SUV, the Canyonero, without thinking of Bruce. He made us laugh at what we were and what we've become.