Moved (or new) to this Automotive Continuation Page 1:
  Automotive Apocrypha - continued.
  Amphicar.
  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!, and
  Old 16 Locomobile

Moved (or new) to Automotive Continuation Page 2:
  Gasoline Brands (moved from main page 25 Jan 2003 and to Cont. Page 4 on 23 May 2007)
    (see also Old Gas Stations on Cont. Page 4.
  Automotive Slogans (moved from main page on 25 Jan 03),
  Nomenclature - automotive terms (moved from continuation page 1 on 25 Jan 03).
  Classic Cars.
  Woodlites.

On Automotive Continuation Page 3:
  K-R-I-T   (04 Aug 08)
  Classic Cars Continued, with
    Australian Phantom I with Mystery Body.
  Porsche Patricide

On Automotive Continuation Page 4:
  Gasoline Brands (moved from main page 25 Jan 2003 and to this Page 4 on 23 May 2007),
  Old Gas Stations

Odd Streets - highways and byways.
    An Odd NY City Street
    Nassau Boulevard.

There was a farmer in Delaware in the '50s who had a whole barn full of crated Model T Fords, one for each year he had expected to live!  What a find for T fanatics!  Incidentally, I have (somewhere) an original blueprint for a T rear axle, courtesy of Ford (I have little interest in T's); want it?

Who remembers the college kids ca. 1960 who put a propellor on their VW bug fan shaft, removed the engine compartment lid, sealed the doors, and went for a cruise in the water, using the front wheels to steer the craft?

DAMN! - I saw that photo ~04 Sep 99 and forgot to note where!  AHA!  On 01 Jul 02, I ran across a similar one
(this one retained the deck lid - wonder what propelled it; the wheels, the exhaust?):

(photo from René Pohl's Schwimmauto pages)

Not to mention the bumper stickers (which almost always ended up on those same rear deck lids):

That was also when the 1939/40 World's Fair Lincoln Zephyr show car was tipped over and rolled side-for-side down Burdick Street (inconceivably steep) by some "townies" while the owner was away on vacation; that was the car with a pointed tail, the trunk of which presented the spare wheel on a linkage when the lid was raised.  That collector car ended up in downtown Troy as a light green sausage some 18' long and 4' in diameter.

Also "speaking of" and floating cars, who remembers the Amphicar?  They had a whole bunch of these little amphibian convertibles, built in Berlin, Germany, from 1961 to 1968 on an Austin A-60{?} chassis with a rear-mounted 43HP Triumph Herald engine, running in and out of the water on the eastern shore of Meadow Lake (at the boathouse ramp) in Flushing Meadow Park at the (so-called) World's Fair of 1962-63 in New York City.  I was reminded of this old oddity (they still run!) by running across a devotée's Amphicar Website and, from that, the Official Website of The International Amphicar Owners Club.  I rode several times (for a small fee).  These little gems had twin (NYLON) screws and steered with the front wheels on/in both media.  They had normal doors with double seals to maintain water-tight integrity and electric sump pumps and bilge blowers.

For a good, if brief, history of the Amphicar, see The Car that Swims; for a really full history, see René Pohl's Schwimmauto pages.

Here are some representative old photos of Amphicars courtesy of Mark Schlemmer, President of The International Amphicar Owners Club, endless cars on the road and afloat at the 2001 convention in Celina, Ohio, plus those props (cropped from an old ad) and a crop from Paul's photo of massed Amphis at their 2000 Convention, also in Celina, Ohio:

(old photos from M. Schlemmer - by kind permission - all rights reserved)

(Celina 01 photo from M. Schlemmer - by kind permission - all rights reserved)

(Celina 01 photo from M. Schlemmer - by kind permission - all rights reserved)

[cropped from photos from M. Schlemmer (props in ad, left) and Paul (Celina, 00, right) - by kind permission - all rights reserved]

During WWII Chrysler's Dodge Division built an amphibious 4x4 truck called the Cheetah:

(photo from René Pohl's Schwimmauto pages)

BIG NEWS! - a Manx firm in England, Alan Gibbs's Aquada Corporation Ltd., in Douglas, is offering a new HSA (High Speed Amphibian) vehicle, the 100mph Aquada, which relies on folding its wheels after entering the water to become a 30mph planing hull; this concept may lend itself admirably to towing water skiers but fails miserably on the convenience of just driving in and out of the water the way the Amphicar, Seep, and DUKW did; God help the hapless motorist who planes up onto the land!  Their Website features lots of flack but little substantive technical information and I have requested same.

The Aquada site offers a short, but interesting, video clip, showing a very odd entry and landing sequence - they never show the wheels retracting nor redeploying and the wheels do not appear to be turning in the landing (beware - the clip's "Close" button did not function)!

Odd New York City Street! (moved to Odd Streets page on 16 May 02).

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

One of those gigantic racecars, powered by a WWI 27-litre, V12, 500bhp, Liberty aero engine, crashed in 1927 while trying to break the world's Land Speed Record on Britain's Pendine Sands, a huge tidal flat exposed at low tide and much favo(u)red for racing.  Its driver, J.G. Parry-Thomas, had broken the record the previous year with speeds of 168.074mph and 170.264mph, and was killed while trying to better Malcolm Campbell's speed of 174.223mph.  The car, known as "Babs", was buried in the sands by Parry-Thomas's mechanics and lay there until 1969, when Owen Wyn Owen, now a vice-president of British Ford, found it.

Photos of the wreck and Parry-Thomas and such are on the various Brooklands Archives pages.

After much effort, Owen persuaded the Ministry of Defence to allow him to dig up the car, carried out a painstaking restoration, and actually drives Babs at many motoring events.  Unfortunately, he had (as of 08 Jul 01) to replace a broken layshaft in the transmission*.

1921 Chitty II, with an 18.8-liter, 230HP, Benz aero engine, survives, and while legally belonging to the Western Reserve Historical Society/Crawford Museum in Cleveland Ohio, had, since 1992, been on loan to the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in England.  It was up on auction in NYC in 1999 at $1.1M but failed to sell (gee, if I'd only known, I could have picked it up for pocket change!).

There is a great deal more information about (and more pictures of) these cars (real and fictional - the cars, NOT the info., hopefully!) at Mark Berry's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang page.  The "official" Brooklands Chitty/Zborowski story (well worth reading) has it that the last, streamlined car, Babs, was the "Higham Special", not a Chitty.

Stuart Gough has excellent coverage of Babs and Pendine on his site.

There were books and a children's record, many, many toys, and games, dolls, and other Chitty paraphenalia.  I still have a pair of Husky Models 3" (76mm) long Chittys, still with their wings but now bereft of their removable (and eminently loseable) nose and tail planes; I dug one of them out, dusted it off, and here she is, serpent horn and all, with wings stowed and deployed (the bright golden-spoked wheels have lost their sheen):

(09 Jul 01 photos by and © 2001 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Mark shows this to be the Husky Extra #1406 (with gold spoke wheels) made from 1967 to 1970 by Corgi Toys [replaced by Corgi Junior #1006 - a renamed version of the Husky model, from 1970 on, and then a later Corgi Junior, which replaced the original wheels with flat "whizwheels" {sacrilege!}].

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has turned up again (Spring 2005) as a supposedly-smash-hit Broadway musical (based on the movie).

This photo of Chitty II at the Waldorf Astoria turned up on a NY auction site from 1999, when it was put up for $1.1 million by the Crawford Museum (formerly Thompson Products Museum) of Cleveland but did not sell; to my total amazement, I found a picture I had taken at the Thompson Products Museum years before (and forgotten) showing the other side, also with the hood open (I will digitize it and add it here shortly):

* - Well, it seems that Babs was repaired; she is the star of a film about racing, Overland, and there is more information about her, Parry Thomas, and the film here, with lots of pictures.

Speaking of automotive toys bearing the Husky trademark, whether made by Corgi or no, here's another of the same size/series, slighly oversize for HO, the MONKEEMOBILE!  No model number appears on the underside, although the Monkees's guitar trademark does (I am truly insane or fanatic or both - I set up the camera again just for the second two pictures).  It appears, from the grille, to be a Pontiac, and there the foursome are, hidden under the roof:

(19 Aug 01 photos by and © 2001 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

"Hey, hey, with the Monkees,
people say we monkey around;
but we're too busy singing - ", etc.

(photos from D. A. David and unnamed Websites)

Here's a tattered jacket from Peter Helck's "The Checkered Flag", featuring (surprise!) Old 16, herself:

(reassembled from images on Adamstown Antique Gallery Website)

An unprovenanced photo of the engine for Old 16 at the factory (labelled as showing the "original make and break" ignition:

I found that photo I took of the field repair of the blown combustion chamber gasket (but see below^@) on Old 16 at the nostalgia running of antique cars at the Vanderbilt Cup race at Roosevelt Raceway on 19 Jun 1960:   (26 Dec 08)

(19 Jun 60 photo by and © 1960/2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnailed image - click on the picture for an even larger image.]

@ - Well, now; none other than Jerry Helck, himself, corrected me on several points on 09 Dec 2008; among many others which will be added shortly, the man in the white shirt (who might be cleaning up around an exhaust valve cover (where Jerry may have just replaced a gasket - but definitely NOT a combustion chamber gasket) is NOT Austi Clark, but another good friend of Jerry's, Dr. Bob Banks, who logged many pleasant hours assisting him maintaining and prepping the car for various outings, and accompanied Jerry and his father, Peter, on the 1957 Glidden and some of the LIOCC meets.   (26 Dec 08)

NOMENCLATURE - automotive terms (moved to continuation page 2 on 25 Jan 03)

Also anent autos and Long Island, Smithtown resident Arthur R. Pardington, an early auto enthusiast who helped create the 1908 Long Island Motor Parkway, also helped create the Lincoln Highway (today's Route 30), the first coast-to-coast through route.  This is noted in a sidebar in NEWSDAY L.I. History - Pioneers in Motion (thanks to LIMP aficionado John Herling for this tip).  However, the main focus of that page is on Francis Maurice Richard, a Frenchman who invented the two-cycle engine and built a huge one-lunger auto in Port Jefferson in 1909 called the ONLY!  It was not a great success and was succeeded by his METROPOLE, not much more successful, and, when the firm folded, the plant was bought by Finley Robertson Porter who used it to build his F.R.P., which was so expensive that virtually no one bought it!  So much for Port Jeff's auto pioneering!

Speaking of A. R. Pardington, see the Long Island Motor Vehicle Co. on the Long island History continuation page 3.

Another Long Island vehicle manufacturer (or body builder), of which I was blissfully unaware, turned up in the Smithsonian Institution's "Research Reports" No. 101, for Summer 2000; it is a 1915 Gypsy Van "house-car", built in Huntington by the "bus factory" of Roland and Mary Conklin and is shown in the summer of 1915, when they set out to see America:

(photo from Smithsonian Inst., courtesy of Huntington Historical Society - all rights reserved)
This looks to me for all the world like a stock Type B Fifth Avenue bus gone berserk -
more like an "apartment-house-car" - whadda monster!

I'm not much on post -WWII Caddys (pre-finned, finned, or post-finned) but THIS (Cadillac Ranch), in Amarillo, Texas, is sacrilege beyond even what I can handle; it smacks of the desecration perpetrated by another "artist" with a giant steam locomotive behind the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin!

Gigantic rail cars for carrying enormous loads like nuclear reactor vessels and transformers (800 tons worth!) are covered on my Schnabel page, et seq.; roadable versions of these monsters now have their own Road Loads page, et seq.