The Zippo Manufacturing Co. built the Zippo car in 1947 by adapting a Chrysler Saratoga. However, the weight of the lighters kept causing the tires to blow out. So in 1952 the car was sent to a Pittsburgh garage for repairs and re-adaptation. It was never seen again. To this day, no one knows what happened to the Zippo car.
It reminds me of the tale of
the lost Star Wars Celica GT.
In 1998, a replica Zippo car was built — fitted with modern tires that could handle the weight.
More info:
post-gazette.com,
NY Daily News,
Zippo.
Thanks to hotsauce269 for the photo!
I don't get it. Is "nimble as an ox" good or bad, the before or after status of fueling up with their gas?
Original ad here.
It's a combo seat-buckle alarm stopper and bottler opener. So that you can crack open a cold one when you get in the car, and then drive seat-belt free. You can find tons of them for sale on eBay,
where they go for as little as 74 cents each.
They should give these away as a freebie when you buy a cellphone to make it a trifecta of unsafe driving.
A device for simulating driving, and measuring the skill of drivers, which was developed at Iowa State's Driving Research Laboratory in the 1930s.
A description of what it felt like to operate the thing. It sounds like it would have made a good arcade game. From
The Dalles Chronicle - Aug 21, 1936:
Dr. Alvan R. Lauer of Iowa State college sent here today a shiny red instrument of torture, designed apparently to give the ordinary, garden-variety motorist the everlasting willies. This device, which Dr. Lauer invented and christened the drivometer, insidiously reverses the usual laws of nature and turns them wrong side forward. The drivometer consists essentially of an automobile which doesn’t move, and a landscape which does, at 50 miles an hour. Imagine that, if you can! We couldn’t either, until the American Automobile association persuaded us to sit behind the wheel. The road twisted like a hula dancer – and we were supposed to steer down it, paying close attention to stop lights, warning signals, WPA men working, and hot dog stands. Never before have we had such a ride. We knocked a truck off the road. We ran down a farmer’s daughter and we wrecked his house. We whanged into a freight train, jumped across a mountain range, drove through a lake and smashed an ice cream shoppe into tutti-frutti. We tried to stop the thing, but everything we pressed made it go faster. We shifted into reverse and raced to the rear, bumping barns, beats and bicycles. Sadly shaking his head, Earl Allgaier, the AAA safety expert, turned off the current. He said we didn’t seem to be very well coordinated, somehow, but that he’d test us on his other machinery. This, together with the drivometer, will be taken on a nationwide tour beginning next week to prove to the average motorist that he’s got a lot to learn.
Update: I think the top picture shows the 2nd version of the Driveometer, developed in the 1950s. The original version, from the 1930s, is below.
Wausau Daily Herald - Oct 26, 1937
So maybe you don't want to turn your Beetle into a lawnmower...
Original ad here.
Article here.
At the start of the Automotive Age, merely driving from, say, Detroit to Kansas City was a challenge and endurance test. Thus the AAA-sponsored
Glidden Tours.
Here is a good write-up of the 1909 one.
Back in 1977, as a stunt to help promote the opening of Star Wars, Toyota created a custom Star Wars Celica GT. Then they raffled off the car. Somebody won it, but nobody knows who. The fate of this car has become something of an obsession among fans of the movie. Was it destroyed? Is it still sitting in a garage somewhere? The mystery endures...
More info:
SpeedHero,
jalopnik
Santa Ana Register - Oct 8, 1977
Yes, I want my product associated with the destruction of property and possible loss of life. That's a glamorous ambiance!
Original ad here.