SIA Flashback – Call Me A Cab!

Even though Checker hasn’t built a taxi in nearly 30 years, people still associate the brand with taxis, and vice versa. Which is why I’m glad that Ray Scroggins, in his article for SIA #54, December 1979, discussed not just Checker taxis, but also Rambler, Studebaker, De Soto, Ford, Plymouth and Chevrolet taxis, while at the same time providing parallel discussions on the English line of taxis. (BTW, check out the interesting note on NYC laws requiring a divider in the trunk – to prevent carrying around dead bodies!?!)

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Hemmings Find of the Day: the truck from TV’s “The Highwayman”

After creating the first Knight Rider TV series, Glen Larson took the same formula and substituted a futuristic semi truck for a Pontiac Firebird. The result? A pilot movie and nine episodes of a TV show called “The Highwayman,” broadcast on NBC in late 1987 and early 1988. Sam Jones (Flash Gordon!) appeared as the title character, and the pilot even starred G. Gordon Liddy, Jimmy Smits and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Though it looks like a Luigi Colani creation, the truck actually started out as a 1980 Kenworth cab-over with an 8V92T diesel before it was converted, at a cost of $287,000, into the “futuristic” (the series was set in 1992) truck used in the series. Jon Ward Motor Sports of Alpine, Texas, which claims to have built the truck for the series, apparently held on to the truck after the series ended and kept the futuristic look, but began to convert it into a motor home, complete with stacked washer and dryer, on-demand hot water and room for a fireplace. Apparently, he felt there would be no relaunch of the TV series.

The Highwayman truck, as it appeared during the television series.

Partway through the motorhome conversion, Jon Ward is selling the Highwayman truck through Hemmings.com for $125,000, though on his website, Jon Ward said he’ll finish it for you for another $50,000. Which, really, isn’t that much if you’re in the market for a big RV.

Oh, and yes, the cab looks like a helicopter cockpit for a reason:

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It’s okay to drool: 1953 Maserati A6C54

We really should do a Hemmings Find of the Day feature here on the blog. There’s so many wicked awesome vehicles for sale in the Hemmings online classifieds, such as this 1953 Maserati A6C54, currently being offered by Fantasy Junction in Emeryville, California, for $1.95 million.

One of 52 such cars built, this one was sold new in the United States, is believed to have been raced by Fangio (then again, Fangio is believed to have raced every red mid-century Italian car…), and at one point in the late 1950s had a Chevrolet engine – presumably a small-block – under the hood as it raced in New Jersey. It was then used as a street car in the late 1960s, restored in 1989 and spent some time in Japan in the 1990s before coming back to the United States for a second restoration.

It’s a good thing I didn’t write the classified for this car. I would have left it at, “This car is pure sex.”

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Six Degrees of Automotive Separation – Nissan and Chrysler

Okay, last week’s Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenge kinda fell flat on its face. Maybe too open-ended? And in reviewing past challenges, we quickly realized that we haven’t yet made a Japanese car manufacturer one of the endpoints of a challenge.

So to make up for last week, a typical challenge. And to make up for the last five months, a challenge involving a Japanese company. Let’s pick Nissan. And let’s also pick its third-place counterpart in the U.S., Chrysler. I know you can connect these two in six degrees or less. But how obscure can you make the connections?

The rules, as always, are simple: A connection consists of one company owning another, merging with another or sharing another’s parts. Explain your connections, and if you need examples, check out our previous Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenges.

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SIA Flashback – Tanks for the Memory

The most essential vehicle of the early 20th century (and today) had to have been the tanker truck. After all, without the tanker truck, how would we get the gas to drive the less-necessary cars that we still enjoy? So it’s odd that they’re rarely celebrated as Donald Wood did for SIA #51, June 1979.

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Four-Links – Kripple Kart, McQueen on bikes, GAZ truck racing, this week in junkyards

* What would you do if you suddenly found yourself disabled? Not a pleasant thought, to be sure, but something to think about. Especially after reading Kripfink’s experiences with that same situation. Ultimately, though, he didn’t let his paralysis keep him from enjoying hot rods and building one of his own, the 1954 Ford panel delivery that he christened the Kripple Kart.

* O’Clair pointed me to this post on Knucklebuster that reprints an article from the November 1966 issue of Popular Science in which Steve McQueen reviewed a handful of contemporary motorcycles.

* Europeans will race anything. Thanks to our friends at BigLorryBlog, we now know that in Latvia and Estonia (Elbonia?), they race GAZ 51, 52 and 53 trucks around dirt/forest courses. Awesome.

* A couple friends of Hemmings recently blogged about their junkyard trips. First, the longrooffan headed out to find a circuit board for his BMW E30 and ran across a few finds (as well as a few clunkers, complete with glassed-out engines). Next, CarDomain’s Jen Dunnaway visited what seems to be the world’s most sensible junkyard, All American Classics in Vancouver, Washington.

* Them boys over at x planes keep finding photos that include cars in with their aircraft. One of the latest shows this Doman LZ-5 lifting a VW Beetle convertible to display its lifting capacity. Wonder why they didn’t try the Chevy in the background?

* And finally, another incident of unexpected racing in Europe. This time, it’s a bomb/lowrider/kustom drifting around the Tykkimaki Circuit in Kouvola, Finland. If all the participants drove lowriders, I might start to care about drifting.

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SIA Flashback – Hillbilly Genius: The Great “Boss Ket”

Most men are content doing one thing and doing it well. Charles Kettering, however, did many things well and almost singlehandedly steered the American auto industry toward modernity: He refined the coil ignition system, he developed the electric self-starter, he pioneered fast-drying lacquer paint. Yet all his inventions and advancements came from the one thing he was content to do very well: research. Maurice Hendry told Boss Ket’s tale in SIA #51, June 1979.

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