davintosh

I’m not quite sure whether to poke fun at this idea or applaud it for being a great idea. In 1956, Mechanics Illustrated published plans to build a car from mostly plywood, oak, and mahogany strips, using a motorcycle engine for power. On the one hand, I love the concept; light weight, readily available parts, build it in your garage…

But on the other hand, this thing — as designed and described in the article — has some serious issues. A frame made from oak and plywood? Can you say “severe body flex?” And the brakes… The motorcycle rear hub mounted inboard with a welded shaft going to the left rear wheel? The whole frame & drivetrain seems pretty lacking to me.

I guess the appeal for me is just that it conforms to some of the basic ideas that I’ve had for a project of this kind that I’d like to put into flesh someday; using off-the-shelf or salvage yard components to build a zippy little two-seater like the Locost or Stalker V6. But using laid up cedar for the body panels… That just may have some possibilities! But I’d definitely forego the wood frame. Definitely.

One of the neatest features on the Speedball is headlights that lay back for aerodynamics, but snap to attention when you pull a lever. And that’s not all; when in the upright position, the right headlight pivots in concert with the front wheels to throw light in the direction you’re turning. Not sure how steady the light would be on this buggy, but it might be an interesting feature to commandeer. Then again, would it really be worth the amount of work it’d require? Maybe not.

The Modern Mechanix Blog has high-res scans of the pages, along with an OCR’d version of the text. Here also is a pdf of it.

The boys & I went to the AutoMania car show downtown last night, and while there were lots of impressive machines there, one rig that was a real standout was this 1954 Ford Delivery Wagon pulling a camper. But not just any camper; it had a boat for a roof!

Gary and Joyce Bortscheller of Elk Point are the owners of this rig. Gary runs a body shop in South Sioux City, NE; he must’ve spent a goodly amount of time on the Ford and the trailer. The finish was gorgeous. It didn’t appear that the boat had spent much time in the water. There wasn’t much room inside the camper; the whole thing stood only five feet or so tall, so with the boat on top there was less than 4 feet of headroom. Definitely made only for sleeping inside. The back has a small fridge and storage cubbies, along with a fold-down working surface.

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I was just listening to Laura Ingraham’s radio show, and she was in the middle of interviewing Clint Wilder, co-author of The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity. They were discussing ways that we can be better stewards of what we have, and take better care of the earth. While I was listening, they took a call from a guy with a great question; he said if his 1994 Honda Civic can get 45mpg, why hasn’t 13 years of automotive technological development improved gas mileage any more than it has?

I think that’s an excellent question. Emily drives a 1995 Civic with 120,000 miles on it, and I have personally seen it get 50mpg on the road. Heck, I once owned a 1981 Mazda GLC Sport, and that thing would get close to 50mpg on the highway. So why are the EPA mileage estimates on the most fuel efficient car in America — the Toyota Prius — only 60/51mpg? (and the dirty little secret is that in real-world driving, the Prius is hard pressed to pull that off.) The next best is the Honda Civic Hybrid, which is rated at 49/51mpg.

That’s pretty pathetic when the top fuel mileage ratings for new cars is nearly matched by real-world mileage on decade-old machines. Too bad I don’t still have that GLC; it’d be interesting to see if that’d still be capable of making 50mpg. The new cars get better mileage only by using hybrid gas/electric motors. The standard Civic has an EPA rating of 30/40mpg; it’d be interesting to see how that compares to the EPA rating for the 1995 model year, but can’t find that on the durned intarwebs tonight.

So what I’d like to know is why in the same amount of time, advances in technology have taken us from Apple computers like the 9500 that run at 132MHz and cost $5,000, to the mighty Mac Pro, which runs two dual-core Intel processors at 2.66GHz, and costs half what the 9500 did. If the same progress had been made on the automotive front, I’d be driving a new Honda Civic that could go across the state of South Dakota on a gallon of gas, and would’ve cost me about $5,000. Or better yet, I’d be driving a Chevy Suburban that moves & handles like a Corvette, costs $10,000 and gets over 100mpg. That’s the future I’ve been waiting for.

Now this is weird. Really weird. Straight from weirdtruck.com!

Remember the Push-Me-Pull-You (or is it Pushmi-Pullyu?) from Dr. Doolittle?

Not even sure what to say about this… thing.

I had seen it once before last summer behind the Gas Stop on North Cliff. It had/has a Wisconsin license plate on it, so at that time I thought I’d never see it again. I think this was the thing that made me decide to get a second digital camera so that I could grab a photo of weird stuff like this when the opportunity presented itself. Today, I had the camera, and now I have the photos .

It looks like an old civil defense siren strapped to the top of it. Not sure if there is a purpose for it or if it’s just there for shock value. I do know I’d hate to be in front of it when he cranks it up.

Wonder what kind of gas mileage it gets; that horn can’t help that old Dodge’s aerodynamics a bit.

Edit: Turns out there is a name for it; a Bluesmobile! Apparently there are folks around that feel the need to emulate the cars driven by Jake & Elwood. Go figure. No explanation about the speaker on top though. EDIT: Of course the speaker on top is emulating the speaker used in the movie by Jake & Elwood to get the word out about their concert. Had to watch the movie again to figure that out.

I don’t know that the car I saw in Sioux Falls last week was the same one pictured at the link; the horn is different, the pallet/speaker mount is much different, the markings on the doors are different, the nerf bars are different, and most notably, there are no ropes! So, I guess this could be considered a knockoff of a knockoff!

Thanks to rojisan for the tip!

I was looking for some info on another old Pontiac machine & bumped into this one; the 1964 Pontiac Banshee.

At first blush, it looks like a Corvette, but the Corvette didn’t sport the styling cues developed in the Banshee until 1968.

More photos after the jump.
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Baldwin-Motion builds some awesome ’69 Camaro knockoffs. Well, not exactly knockoffs.

They look like ’69 Camaro’s and actually use the coachwork from real ’69 Camaros, but the resemblance ends at the shell. The guts are all new, and all business; 2″ x 3″ tubular steel backbone/spine chassis running through the console and welded to the body, fully independent custom-fab rear suspension, 600-HP 540-CID Big-Block V-8 (or a 450-HP 427-CID in the convertible), and optional stuff to make 1,000 HP, Tremec TKO 600 5-speed transmission, etc…

The body is original, each limited edition machine is built from a donor car, so that each can be registered and insured anywhere. The premiums for that insurance are probably way out there, but if you can afford the car, you’d better be prepared for the insurance too.

Base price for all this beauty is $189,000 (or $169,000 for the SS-427 convertible.) If only I had disposable income like that… What trouble I could get into!

Serious Wheels is the place to go for high-resolution pics of most any car you can think of. Everything from this spiffy AC Cobra to this Aston Martin Zagato (not that I’m all enthralled with the Zagato, but how many other cars start with the letter Z?

Paul Dana crashed big time on Sunday. Not quite 31 years old.

From the video it looks like he lived his motto.