April 10, 2014 • 38 mins
Ever heard of the Muntz Jet? How about the Powell Sport Wagon? History is chock-full of strange and interesting cars that, for one reason or another, are nearly forgotten in the present day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff Works dot com. Hi, everybody,
welcome to car Stuff. I'm Scott Benjamin and Don ben Bolland,
and we've got a topic today that is kind of
one of those that we follow along with an article
that online so our listeners can can I don't know,
I get a good grasp of what we're talking about
(00:23):
you by following along if they want to. And it's
going to be an article from Gelotnik and uh Gelotnick
wrote about and this is a while ago. It's a
it's an older article from two thousand ten, but it
caught your eye this week and you you suggested that
we do, right, Yeah, because this article is about some
Gelopnick readers who submitted their favorite obscure cars. And you
(00:46):
and I are both um constantly fascinated by strange one
offs or concept cars or even cars that for some
reason are really well known in the US of the
world bit large. Yeah, we love those. We love the
story of like the what what was the Hinz vehicle?
What was that one? I can oh? The Coursair, the Coursair,
(01:07):
that's right, the Phantom Coursair and vehicles like that. We
love things like that, the scare of vehicles, and you know,
just so many different unusual vehicles. And we've got another
group of ten here that were, as you mentioned, suggested
by readers of Gelopnic. And the way they did it
was kind of cool. It was like a It all
started with like a question, you know, it's a question
of the day type thing, like what's the most obscure car?
And then they kind of listed one of the writer,
(01:29):
Matt heart Agree listed his favorite obscure car. It was
called a I think it was called a Deutsche Bonet
or something like that, right, Deutsche, I think I'm pronouncing
that correctly. But it's a French car. It's a racing car.
And he gave a little bit of a history and
what made it really interesting and unique and strange and
in all these different ways. And he said, now that's mine,
what's yours? And he set out this this kind of
(01:50):
an all call for everybody to write and say what
your favorite is. And then they called together everything and
they decided that, you know, these were the winners and
the winners, these top ten. I gotta say it's a
solid list because you know, initially we look through and
there's not a whole lot of information and a lot
of background information about the vehicles. I know that there's
a good photo of each one, and there's a title
(02:11):
on each one that says what makes it awesome and
what makes it obscure on each one, and that's about it, Yeah,
in a small paragraph, and it's you know, some interesting
little tidbits. But then we went a little bit deeper
and found quite a bit more information about each one
of these. So we're going to add a lot to
this article if if you're following along, Yeah, and Scott,
let me just say that when whenever you and I
do an article thing or we take a look at
(02:33):
a list um first, it can be dangerous if we
just make our own lists, because we will go on.
We have our views and I I enjoy doing those
episodes a lot. Um. I also enjoy working with another
article that is solid because sometimes and listeners, some of
you have written in and told us that you you
enjoy it when one of us has a beef for
(02:55):
a bone to pick with um with a list. But
sometimes man, I just can't get on board with a
couple of things. And like we were doing car trends, uh,
they were you know, we have our own issues with
some of that, but this list here is pretty is
pretty solid, and I I Am not ashamed to say
(03:15):
that I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know
just by digging deeper into some of these models. So definitely, yeah,
I mean there's something for everybody to learn, really, I mean,
and there was more to it than what we're gonna
even share today. So if you want, you know, dig
in deeper to these things, even, you know, just do
a keyword search and then just go from there, because
basically that's all we did. And then we found out
some of the more interesting stuff that wasn't in the
(03:35):
article that we're gonna share with you. And then again,
like every one of you know, our podcasts that we do,
there's there's, you know, a couple of hours that we
could talk about each one of these Probably we're not
going to do that, but each one of these ten vehicles,
they all have their own story, they all have their
own history, they all have their own angle. I guess
you know where they fit in history. Oh and uh,
(03:57):
let's just get right into it. No, Scott, you and I,
you know, we like cars and we like innovation. Pretty
open minded, and uh, I'm sure that you're you're the
type of dude, you're a forward thinking guy. I'm sure
that you're the type of guy who's started to get
into a car. You open the car door and you think,
a man, why do I need four of these? You know?
(04:18):
Why do you need four doors? Why do you need
two doors? Yeah? Like two doors? But I see what
you're going? Where you going with this one? Because this
car has an unusual entry system? Right, yes, sir, I'm
gonna butcher this name the nineteen sixty seven mos Austin
Tatien Right close close, I think what do you have for?
(04:38):
I think you're right. I'm just gonna call it the
Opera sid and we'll call it the Opera Sedan. Uh
so nineteen sixties seven for uh a little over nineteen
point five thousand dollars in sixty seven, uh, moula, you
could have, um, you could have this vehicle that honestly
(04:59):
looks completely different from everything. The folks who made this
they had this idea that you should just have access
to this sedan via one long door in the back,
so like a hatchback that is a door and goes
the length of the car. This is such a strange
looking hatch. I guess that opens up with these giant
(05:20):
struts on either side, and I guess you would you
would make your way from the back of the vehicle
up a small staircase, carpeted staircase, carpeted staircase all the
way to the front of the vehicle. Now you said,
you said nineteen thousand dollars in what your ninety seven
will price adjusted, that's about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So you get an idea that this is a high
(05:40):
end vehicle, right, Yeah. And I gotta say, man, I
love that you do the inflation calculator because it's it's
such a it's such a strange thing to realize how
the value of money has changed. I can't take credit
for this one. Then it was right in the article.
But but I normally do that. And you know, I'm
promised I'll bring that back later on if we if
we can think about it as we go along here,
(06:01):
because some of these cars have Atlantish prices. Um. But
but I was mentioning that, you know, this is a
very luxurious vehicle, you know, along lines of like a
Rolls Royce or Batley something like that. Right. Well, some
of these, uh, some of these options that you could
get in this vehicle, we're just absolutely ridiculous. I mean
they had gold inlaid panels and refrigerators origonal rugs was
(06:22):
another one. I think, Um, you could get it. Um
what was the other thing? There's some other really Um yeah,
you it had let's we said, the refrigerator. I'm thinking
of another vehicle that's coming up. Um. But I want
to mention that it was also a most vehicle, So
we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But um, I'll tell you about some other unusual things. Oh,
it could be customized heavily, oh, very heavily customer. This
(06:44):
is one of those things that almost like a bespoke
vehicle where you could you could custom order something and
MOS would create it for you. And you think, okay.
MOS may have been a manufacturer that you know, was
around for a short time, and they were around from
they're around from nineteen sixty seven until nineteen seventeen line,
so it's a significant run for them. I guess that's
a good twelve years. Um. But they only made two
(07:05):
models of vehicles and the reported production was supposed to
be only about three to four cars per year. However,
of this vehicle that we're talking about, this Oppora Sitana,
only one car was ever built a yes, and that
car died and returned. Uh see, Okay, before we go
(07:25):
inding for that, just have to say the this vehicle
had a truck engine too, had an International harvester engine,
which people are going to it'll come in later when
you when you wonder about this. But so the Oppor Sitan,
the one existing vehicle um was in just piss poor
condition for a long time. It was not maintained. It
(07:48):
wasn't safe in a museum or anything. Until after almost
twenty years of sitting in storage, some high schoolers of
all people saved this. Are yeah, this is really weird.
But in two thousand nine, two Wisconsin high school groups
gather to get you know, group together. So from two
different high schools. I guess it was like the auto shop.
(08:09):
Guys got together, you know, guys and girls got together
and restore this. It was a project, a class project really,
and their job was to restore uh this, this mose
oppercedent back to original condition. And that's exactly what they did.
I mean, incredible they did a great job with it.
I mean it's really really gaudy the way it looks,
but it's exactly the way that it came from the
Mose factory in nine seven, right. Because this one Oppor
(08:32):
Sedan was Bruce Mo's personal car and uh one of his.
The only reason the kids got to restore it was
because one of his friends, a guy named Fred Buyer
b y e er uh got to got the schools
together and coordinated this to get it fixed up in
time for the two thousand nine Iola Car Show in Iola, Wisconsin.
(08:54):
What a weird looking car. I mean, no door, that
one giant hatch. You gotta go up a staircase. It's
carpetti of course, with the oriental rugs inside and the refrigerator. Um.
But there's another vehicle that we mentioned just briefly. This
is the one that I was just hinting at with
with more features that I wanted to mention at the time,
the opposite and it's called the Safari Car. And the
Safari Car this isn't number nine or anything. This is
(09:15):
also another most vehicle that I stumbled across. And Safari
Car was was um introduced in nineteen seventy two, so
just after you know, the company started production maybe three
or four years later, and it had an unusual door
system as well. Um and that you would open this
one giant door on the side of the vehicle. You
would grab the hatch I guess or not hash maybe
(09:36):
the giant side door and pull it out towards you
and then lower it down into the left or right
or which exactly, yeah, and then you would climb in
through this giant door opening on the side of the vehicle.
So they had a thing for unusual doors on these cars, right,
I mean, these giant, weird doors on this So that
was kind of their thing. But that's not the strangest
part of this whole thing. Then what's the strangest part
(09:58):
make me angry? Exterior panels. The exterior panels were upholstered
in Nauga hyde, which is a type of vinyl. It
was stretched over film phone padding. So this is a
a vehicle that has you know, I guess what you
normally use on the inside of the vehicle, you know,
the nauga hide over foam on the outside of the vehicle.
(10:19):
It's a padded vehicle. The whole thing. I just feel
that that is wildly impractical. But maybe I'm not the
target audience, so I have to make a correction to
what that. Um. I think the way we were speaking
about the operas today and may have sounded like it
was the only single one ever made, it's the only
one around now because they had a couple of other models. Okay,
(10:42):
I didn't know that. I thought I thought only one
was that was ever built. But I guess the only
want to exists, got okay understood, so Um. The last
couple of things about this, uh, the Safari car that
I want to mention is that it had a retractable
hardtop design, which is unusual. I mean to begin with.
Um also had an aluminum body, which again usual, but
it had that Nauga hide covering, so that made it
(11:04):
I'm sure that made it really really stiff and able
to withstand any kind of in Yeah, of course, yeah right,
that's why people were and the options now, the options
get this beIN. I was I was kind of hinting
at this with the opera car, Um, you could get
a television, which was really unusual that. I mean, imagine
how big this is back when they were building televisions
in wooden cases. Remember that right, because the tubes, the
(11:26):
cathode ray tubes were so big. Exactly. Yeah, there were
giant pieces of furniture that you'd have in your house.
I mean, just go to your grandma's house and take
a look around. That's what That's what Chi's look at, right. Uh.
Four wheel drive, of course, you get four wheel driving
this thing, two way radios, which were pretty unusual at
the time, and a beautane furnace you could get inside
the vehicle. Now that seems to me like a bad idea,
(11:47):
but you could have a bututane furnace inside your Safari car.
Well that's why all the exterior fabric is not on
the interior. A strange, strange bit of history that most
vehicles I I you know, I gotta say though, of
the features I really enjoy, and some of those features
are way ahead of their time. And if you're doing
a search, it's m O H S mode and look
(12:07):
up mos Opera City and you'll see exactly what we're
talking about. And then Safari car is not far behind,
and that's Safari car with a k um Okay, So
number nine we get to uh something that we get
to a character who's pretty familiar to us so over
here on this show, and that's Earl the Madman Months,
the uh key player in the Months Car Company, and
(12:31):
that brings us to number nine, the nineteen fifty one
through ninety four Months Jet. Yeah, that's right, and there's
a you know, just to self promote here, I guess
we have a how stuff works article on this exact vehicle,
the four Months Jet, and you can look that up there.
And there's a lot of good background information on this
one as well. Um. But this is I mean, this
really comes down to kind of the wacky salesman character,
(12:53):
the businessman, the engineer. He was an engineer, ben Um.
He actually was a pioneer in automotive electronics and radio specifically.
I think he was the one who developed, Um I
think I read this somewhere the four track cassette system,
which was the predecessor to the eight track So am
I saying that right before trait? Yeah? Yeah, proceeded the
(13:13):
eight track, that's correct, And UM, I think he was
working heavily in that as well. So um, this uh,
this Madman Months character, I mean I think he died
in which would have put him in about age seventy
three when he died, but he wanted to build a
sports car with what he said, we're jetlike um contours
to it, so it had that like a futuristic look
(13:35):
to it, I guess. But he wanted a giant V
eight in it, so he ended up putting a I
think it was a Lincoln V eight that he ended
up with in this thing. Um, it was a I guess. Yeah,
he went through a couple though. You could say it
was America's first high performance personal luxury car. But you know,
the one who likes to use that personal luxury car term,
wasn't that forward with the Thunderbird. Yeah, I believe it
(13:55):
was just predated the thing exactly. I'm so glad you
said that a full seven years um. And interestingly enough
for people who are long time listeners, you guys may
have remembered some of our earlier stuff on Frank Curtis
and Curtis Craft Uh Madman Months and Curtis and Frank
Curtis UH have a long business relationship. And the Month's
(14:19):
jet actually comes from a lot of its DNA is
from the Curtis craft Sport. Yeah, and you know what,
this car was fast? This was for it to day.
It was fast, and I'll tell you how fast it
competed with the Jaguar x K one twenty, which which
I mean a stellar sports car at the time. I
meant at the time that was a quick car. That
(14:39):
was a an agile car. Now I think they said that,
you know, it was about even when they took off. Eventually,
the Month's Jet took it, you know, as far as
the top speed went. But I do believe I think
the Jaguar out handled the Months because it was a
bigger vehicle. When you see a photo of the Month's Jet,
you'll understand exactly what you're talking about. UM. Very limited
production run, I mean, and actually there are no product
(15:00):
records that remained from those vehicles, so they don't know
how many were actually built. But they went to the
source himself. They went to you know, the Madman Months
and asked him how many he built, and he said
it was around three hundred and ninety four. That's a
pretty specific number. And he also said that they lost
about a thousand dollars. The cars were manufactured at a loss,
(15:20):
So he built three and he lost a thousand dollars
on each one of those cars that he built, is
what he thinks, so it wasn't. It wasn't a winning
effort on his part. But they say that, you know
this guy man isn't this isn't just the one that
said that he had he had like raised and then
lost several fortunes over his life. I mean it was
time and time again he would become a millionaire and
then he'd lose it all. And they'd become a millionaire
(15:40):
and loses all. And I think it happened often to him.
Um he was just one of those guys that was
had his hands and everything. It was pretty interesting. So
um that one, you know, aside from looking up the
vehicle itself and just seeing some photos, take a look
into um Earl Madman months and just see what he's
all about. Because interesting character. And I think I gotta
tell you that the car itself seems fantastic, and it's
(16:05):
just a shame that they were aluminum body, fiberglass top.
That big V eight, I mean the Lincoln V eight
three cubic inch, right, yeah, it's a it was a
oh no, no, no, I'm wrong. That was the Cadillac
engine they had in there before, but then they substituted.
They put in a Lincoln went with a bigger, bigger
V eight from the Lincoln got it all right? Yeah,
(16:26):
it's a it's an impressive car all around, I think.
All right, so let's move on to number eight on
our list. How about that? Yes, sir, Number eight's a
little more recent. Yeah, i'd say, um, not not completely recent,
but it's something that I would be willing to bet
that not many people have seen one of these ever.
It is the nineteen to nineteen ninety Owasso Pulse. Yes,
(16:47):
and if you say, oh, yeah, the Owasso Pulse, then
give yourself a pat on the back, guys and gals,
because you are one of the few people who really
knows about this vehicle. Um, if you have not seen it,
save yourself some time. That's O W O S S
O and check it out immediately. Um. You know what
those scott I think a lot more people have seen
(17:10):
this than they realize and they just didn't know the
name of it. Yeah, maybe you're watching the Corps commercial
ways back. Oh yeah, maybe it has been featured in
a Corps Corps commercial beer commercial. Um went, what I mean,
do you know roughly when that was in the ninety nineties.
I would guess when this happened. Uh yeah, I think
I think it's late eighties, late eighties when it was
actually in production, probably trying to start something up, trying
(17:32):
to get it going. But the history on this one,
this is built by a guy, a prototype was built
by I think his name is um Jim Bead and
the prototype is built in something like eight and it
was called the Bad two hundreds. Like an enclosed motorcycle
that has the side skirts, you know, the um outriggers stability. Yeah, outriggers,
(17:52):
I call them out riggers, but they're but they're permanently
in place. It almost looks like tiny wings. Yeah, yeah,
it looks like tiny wings and uh out rigged. Of
course we say that just to show that they give
balance to the vehicle and stability that would not ordinarily have.
Basically looks like there's a jet that is on the ground,
(18:12):
a tiny jet think of think of like the jetsins
or something, and it has just a couple of wheels
that might as well be landing gear. Yes, stubby stubby
jet with with no big wings and it's missing its tail.
But you're in the canopy. The whole canopy thing is there,
and that's really cool looking the one that's in the
photo here is painted like a bumblebee, which is kind
of funny. But I've seen other ones that have different
(18:34):
paint jobs. They look pretty neat. Really, They're kind of
a cool vehicle. I just I've never seen one of
these in person there and you know and anywhere. UM,
but it's got kind of an unusual story, not not
crazy unusual, but but just unusual that you know. It
started in about UM I think the molds were created
to build something that he called the Jim called the
(18:56):
light Star, which was built in Scranton, Iowa initially, and
then production moved to Owasso, Michigan, UM, which they called
the Pulse Vehicle. So that's when um, the Owasso name
comes in. It's from Owasso, Michigan. And then later the
light Star and the Pulse vehicles are really similar, they're
not exactly the same. So if you see one of
the early light Star vehicles from the from the Iowa production,
(19:18):
they're gonna be a little different in you know, the
engine that they have, the headlights, um, you know, some
of the winglets. I think the design is a little
bit different than the winglets, and some of the venting
I think is a little bit different. But other than that,
you're gonna look at the vehicle either way, whether it's
a light star or a Pulse and say, yeah, that's
an OWOSSO Pulse probably if you know by that name.
Um strange, I mean, it's a road going jet really,
(19:40):
but it's also kind of like this motorcycle type vehicle. Um,
it's just it's a really unusual thing. And the guy
has aviation history obviously. Um. I think his other you know,
business dealings are all in airplanes that you know. When
I looked up his information online, his biography information and stuff, Yeah,
a lot of stuff. Yeah. He builds his own planes
out of his garage or wherever you know, and then
eventually moves them to production, you know, because he builds
(20:03):
the prototypes and then he sells the idea. And um,
that's the way that works. I'm sure there's a lot
more complexity to it than that. But Jim Bead is
definitely an aviation I guess pioneer really that's probably what
you've best know him for. But this was his his
one shot at building a car, and and the vehicle
that he chose to build looks like a plane, which
says a lot about him. I have a question though, so, um,
(20:28):
I can't remember the year of that Cores Beer advertisement again,
and I'll get it out to you guys. Um when
when I hunted down. Uh, but I would really have
liked to see this car in a movie. As a
matter of fact, I've been watching more and more movies now. Yeah,
and uh, I am kind of in a weird embarrassment
(20:52):
of riches because you know, I subscribe to Netflix instant
so I've got so many things to watch, you know me,
man Um, if I'm watching something like that, I would
like some amazing cars to be involved, or at least
some vehicles. Uh so what do you got for me?
You got any recommendations? Well, I don't have anything with
the car this week, Ben, but I got something with
the vehicle that I think a lot of our listeners
(21:13):
will be pretty intrigued by. And I don't think I'm
giving anything away here. When I say that this one
has someone happy ending to it, I guess think maybe
put it that way. All right, All right? This is uh,
this is called the Search for Kennedy's PT one O
nine and it's pretty old. It's about two thousand two,
so you know, it's it's getting up. It's about twelve
years old at this point. So I'm not giving like
I said, I'm not giving anything away and saying we
(21:35):
know what happened with this story, and I won't say
any more than that. But UM again released in two
thousand two. It's just a sixty minute piece, but it's
it's about the the guy Dr Robert Ballard, who was
the guy that is famous for discovering the you know,
the water it remains of the Titanic. UM. So you
know that this guy is a you know, a great
underwater UM expedition leader searcher, you know. UM, he was
(21:58):
looking for the wreck of John Kennedy's legendary World War
Two patrol torpedo boat UM in this intriguing documentary, So
you know patrol torpedo boat that's the PT one or
nine part UM. The documentary includes some compelling wartime footage
and I witness accounts of Kennedy's heroism aboard the ill
fated ship that was cut in half by a Japanese
destroyer in the murky waters off the Solomon Islands. So UM,
(22:23):
you know it was a tough one to find, but UM,
I guess, well, if you read about this, you'll find
out exactly what happened. But it's an interesting documentary to watch.
I've seen part of it already, haven't seen the whole thing,
but um, I'm kind of interested in watching the wrap
up of it. I love this kind of hunting, this
sort of real life Indiana Jones explorer, deep sea diving,
(22:44):
treasure expedition stuff. So I am in, my friend and
you can be into. But wait, Scott and Ben, you
might be saying, I can't be in. I don't have Netflix.
What am I daddy Warbucks from Annie? I don't know
if you are not, but I do know that just
them knowing Scott and I. You can check out Netflix
for thirty days for what was a ten dollar Scott, No, hucks,
(23:08):
No it do and go lower you get more dollar
ninety nine. I think it's free free. Yeah, let me
check my notes, check your notes. It is free a
thirty day free trial membership, which is that's remarkable, Ben,
I thought it was like a hundred box, but it's
free thirty a free trial membership. I have to do
is go to Netflix dot com, slash car stuff, download
(23:30):
as many of these as you want. You know it
doesn't have to be the Search for Kennedy's PT. One
oh nine, but that's a cool documentary to watch. We
recommend so many differently, have a huge list, gigantic lists.
In fact, it's it's getting difficult to find new movies
that we haven't recommended that have cars in them. But
the Netflix offerings keep growing and there are um yeah,
(23:50):
we do recommend some stuff with trains or was Zeppelin's before,
But believe us, guys, this stuff is worth your time
and they're adding new titles every day. Titles are subject
to availability, but Scott, we check these out before we
go on air with them. That one right there. All
you have to do is push the play button. And
we had somebody actually on our Facebook recently who wrote
(24:12):
in to ask for a list of some of this stuff.
So if you're listening, I'm gonna I'm gonna touch base
with you and send that to you personally. And we
can't read the list on air. It's too long. It
is a significant list to read. There's no way we
could do that. It would take an entire episode. They
would take an entire episode. Even if we were as
fast as number seven on our list, number seven, which
(24:34):
is a quick one. This was the nineteen seventy Mercury
Cyclones spoiler to long Nose, And that is a long,
long title for a vehicle. But what it is, Ben,
this is a This is a NASCAR prototype vehicle. And
that's why I'm so obscure because there's very very few
of these. And and there's an interesting story that goes
along with this one. I dug pretty deep into this one.
(24:55):
I'll tell you all about it. But there's a photo
on the Jewlopnic article of this vehicle and you'll see
exactly what I'm talking about here. When or what they're
talking about, I guess when they say that it was
it was um. The The original intent of this vehicle
was to compete with the Plymouth Superbird of the day,
because the Superbird was just blowing it away on the
(25:15):
NASCAR track in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies,
and uh and Ford was thinking, when we got to
do something to compete with this, and Mercury was actually
the division that they wanted to do this with. And
the Cyclone, this Mercury Cyclone vehicle that they came up with,
which is a specific cyclone. This again the spoiler too
long nose edition. This one is is what they came
(25:36):
up with to compete with those superbirds. Yeah, it's got
a four D and twenty nine cubic inch V eight Uh.
And it's it's a mean like a vehicle, it's a
it's also what what's it called when they have to
build just enough product production? Uh? Yeah, com alligation special,
(25:56):
I guess is what we can call it. Right. But
but the problem with that, ben in this is where
the history comes in. Now, the original rules, if you
remember this, right, was was the initial I guess, the
initial rules from NASCAR. Right around that time, they had
just changed the malligation rules from five dred vehicles up
to three thousand vehicles. So Mercury was in a position
where they would have had to build at least three
(26:17):
thousand of these. Now, I guess, I don't know. You
can't really call it good news because you know, the
bad news is that Ford pulled out of racing in
the early nineteen seventies, and you know, this is all
amid the fuel crisis that was happy and so Mercury
never got a got a chance to produce these vehicles.
I mean, so the prototypes are really all that exists. Now.
(26:38):
They built two of these cyclones spoiler two vehicles. They
built two of them. Only one of them survives and
that's the one that's in this photograph here. Um there's
kind of an interesting story around that one too, Ben,
because um that one, I guess was somehow it somehow
ended up in the hands of Larry Shnuda, And Larry
Shnuda was the guy from General Motors that's famous for
designing the corvette. Know what Larry was doing at the time,
(27:01):
I don't know if he had moved it, you know,
to another to Ford Mercury, whatever is going on. I'm
going to have to dig into Larry Shnuda again to
remember what he was doing. But it was given to him,
and then later I guess he had given that to
somebody else as a gift. He had gifted the car
to somebody. And when they found this vehicle, it was
in a it was in a I guess a muddy
chicken coop somewhere in Indiana, just kind of just kind
(27:23):
of rotting away or it was, um, I guess, sinking
into the mud. You know. It was just a disaster
vehicle and they found it. But someone recognized what it
was rescued it, you know, scooped it up and said,
you know, let's let's restore this thing back to where
it should be because it's it's one of a kind.
This is the only one out there and it's got
a history. I mean, it was given. It was gifted
by Larry Shnuda to to whoever this was. Um. They
(27:45):
also had another vehicle that's that kind of goes along
with this one. UM and I didn't mean to, you know,
stop you if you've had more about the siler. But
there's another vehicle if you want to look into, a
separate vehicle that's right around the same time. That was
another rum prototype vehicle for NASCAR. There's something called the
nineteen seventy four Torino King Cobra, and I guess four
(28:06):
of those were built and only three are known to
exist today. So the the nineteen seventy four Torino King
Cobra is another one to look up and you won't
be upset by what you find because it's a it's
a really cool looking car as well. So these these
NASCAR prototype one off type vehicles that were built by
the factory are pretty unusual and and definitely worth your
time to look up. Yes, and now we get to
(28:28):
what I think will probably be our last car for
part one, when I think, because it looks like we're
at about a half an hour ban and we've talked
about this already, so let's let's split up into two.
How about that? That sounds fantastic because I, you know,
I hate when we have to rush through the really
cool stuff, which usually happens at the end. So a
cliffhanger for the top five. Really, yeah, cliffhanger for the
(28:50):
top five. But we've we've talked about so far in
just a few brief minutes. We've talked about some really
weird cars, some really amazing cars, the uh, the highs
and the weirds. Uh. Now, let's talk about one of
the lows. Yeah, this is one that was a little
bit upsetting to uh well to the company itself. Right, Yeah, okay,
(29:11):
so all right, so, um, without telling you in the
name of the car yet, let's see, listeners, if you
can just guess, uh, we'll phrase as a trivia question. Uh,
which car was so bad that when the head of
the car company drove it for the first time, he
(29:34):
was scared for his life. He thought it was gonna
fall apart when he took it out for a weekend drive. Okay,
if you guess the nineteen fifties six Volvo P one
nine hundred, then you are correct. You have also called
the Volvo sport. Um. I think it's the P I
think most people to say P nineteen hundred, I think
(29:55):
when but it is an obscure carbon. I mean it
is one that you find very many others, um, very
few of these things that were actually built. One of
my friends, when I was researching this, by the way,
called it that. Uh. He said, oh, you mean the
Volvo POS nine messing up the name. Uh huh. This
is a fiberglass bodied roadster. That that came about when
(30:17):
I guess the head of Volvo had been had made
a trip to the United States, and the founder of
Volvo actually not just ahead of all, but but the
founder of Volvo because we're going back to the early
nineteen fifties here. Um, he had been on a trip
to the United States and he spotted a brand new
Corvette because corvettes were new at the time since what
nineteen and he decided, Hey, you know what, I've got
(30:38):
a car company. Let's build something like that. Because people
are going crazy over the new corvette over there in
the States. Let's do something like that over here in
Sweden and uh and make a fortune on this thing.
And so that's what he went about doing. However, he
didn't quite have the formula right because you know, he's
got this fiberglass by Roster and you know, Volvo is
mainly known for safety, I think at this point, um,
maybe not so back then. I think that they were
(31:00):
a solid car. I mean, they always built a high
quality vehicle right in the very beginning, and this, unfortunately
was just not one of those cases. And they did,
you know, stop it before it really happened. But um,
this thing had a one point four leader four cylinder
seventy horse power engines, so right away you know that
this thing is a bit underpowered if he's going for
(31:21):
the corvette market, I guess right. Um, three speed manual transmission,
which isn't all that unusual for the time. But it
also borrowed a lot of parts from something that they
called the Volvo PV four forty four, which was a
solid car that was a decent car, small car. But um,
I actually liked the PV four forty four. And there's
another one I think it was called the what is it,
(31:43):
the p V five forty four and uh, and then
there's eight hundred, that's right, and that was a more
successful vehicle. Really. The eight hundred UM was actually well,
I said, it is already success vehicle, successful vehicle, but
then complete failure in a lot of ways because they
designed this two door, four passenger kind of a fastback
(32:04):
design um of Volvo's first unibody car, which was I
guess significant in some way really, but there was very
low demand for this thing, and the problem was the
build quality just wasn't there. For whatever reason, they just
couldn't get the design right on this whole thing. Um,
and it was just not up to Volvo standards. They
realized that, you know, early on, this thing isn't gonna
(32:24):
cut it. We're not gonna be able to produce this
and keep our company name on it, and uh and
still keep our heads up high, right, And this shows
us I think there's a moral here, a bit of
a cautionary tail. Uh. Not all cars are obscure because
they were crazily high priced in ahead of their time. Um.
This car has been described in various test drives in
(32:44):
some very colorful ways. Um. I think in the Gelopanic article,
we have one reviewer say it's like driving four or
forty four that someone beat with a stick. Yeah, you know,
excuse me, a horrible stick. Horrible stick. Yeah, someone beat
that thing with another least so so okay. That The
idea though, is that you know that this uh you know,
the head of the company takes it on like a
(33:06):
fishing weekend or something up into the woods and car
the car is already in production, Ben, They're already building
this car, and he takes it on this trip and
he decides like, I was so scared that I pulled
over to the side of the road. I thought it
was gonna fall apart on me. And that is, you know,
so loose, and it just didn't feel right. It wasn't
a typical Volvo production vehicle. And he said, you know,
I thought it was gonna fall apart, but it's already
(33:27):
in production. He immediately stopped production. And there were only
something like sixty eight cars that were ever produced on
this whole thing. So they had the whole thing set
up to produce. They built sixty eight vehicles and that's it.
Most of those vehicles that were produced are long lull
and yeah, yeah, not many of them exist still today.
So if you see one, if you find one, you know,
in a in an auto graveyard somewhere, you know, scoop
(33:48):
it up because it's a rare piece of history. But
more than likely you're gonna find him in museums and
just uh, you know, where they're safe, where they're parked.
I guess, I don't know. That's the only way to
put it, really, I mean, according to this, I mean,
I know that for a while the thought was make
things really loose. So you go over um, you know,
like some of the early sports cars in America, like
(34:08):
even corvettes and things like that, they were pretty loose,
you feel you feel a lot of this give a
lot of motion. Yeah, give, I guess it was. And
if it was given the design of the vehicle intentionally,
So you go over a train track and you think
that the thing was gonna, you know, fall apart. Maybe
that's what he was feeling when he when when they
put this thing together, they designed it with more give
than he was used to. Yeah, that was gonna be
my question for you, because it's something that I couldn't
(34:30):
quite figure out, especially given the modern understanding of Volvo,
the reputation that they've earned, They've built it for safety.
It it seems um, it seems extraordinary to talk about
Volvo and say low quality builds, you know, in the
same sentence like that, I'm glad that they nipped this
one in the button. They got it early on, so
(34:51):
they're only sixty eight cars produced and they said, you know,
that's it. We can't have you can't have our company
name on this. And that shows that shows some integrity. Yeah,
total league. I mean I think so too. I think
it was a stand up move on his part, and
for this, I think this is going to be the
almost end of our list. We are in a bit
of a cliffhanger and we'll come back in our next episode.
(35:14):
I promise you. We've got five really great ones coming
up in the episode. We kind of saved the best ones.
But before we go, Scott, what do you think about
some listener mail? Let's do it? Okay, alright, okay? Uh.
Graham B from Vancouver b C. Writes to us to say, hey, guys,
(35:36):
I read an article a couple of months ago that
relates to your latest podcast. This was just after car trends.
I think, Graham said the article sites of study, saying
that car colors followed the general economy and blander colors
like grays or whites or more popular during downtimes in
the economy, and brighter, more saturated colors are more popular
(35:57):
during recovery years and high points in the economy. Interesting,
And I think I responded to this one didn't. Yeah,
I think I wrote back something like I'd read a
lot of studies that kind of matched this and that,
you know, but most of them have to do with fashion.
A lot of them don't really focus on auto trends
when they think when you think about the economy, I mean,
sure people hold onto cars longer, and you think about
(36:18):
you know, people where the average age of a vehicle
on the road is something like ten years at this point,
which is that's pretty old for vehicles, especially when you
see how many new cars being built every year, how
many you're on new car lots where all these old
used cars that that they claim are out there, because
I mean the average age is ten years. Mean, can
you imagine how many used cars are out there? They're
ten years old. We have a lot of cars. But
(36:41):
but I think that the fashion thing that we that
I replied with, was you know you often see it
like the hem of women's skirts or lipstick colors, things
like that. Yeah, the hymns of women's skirts tend to go.
Is it up with the economy? I think it is. Yeah.
There there's some really cool things that we'd like to
recommend as well. Um. The guys over freaking Comics have
some really interesting insights to this, Um Graham. I thought
(37:04):
that was a fascinating thing to say. Gram goes on
to say, in regards to transmissions, getting more gears, I
test her Porsche came in S with the seven seed
seven speed p DK for morning last September. Even the
seven speed makes for a very smooth ride compared to
a six speed, although being Porsche, they probably could have
had a two speed. That would have been impressed. I
(37:26):
love the Cayman S and I think I even replied
that as well, because is just such a cool looking car. Yeah,
that's that. That would be a fun one to test,
bread and I don't think it'll be an obscure one either.
Plenty of those produced. All right, so we are going
to go ahead and uh mosey on out of here.
Stay tuned for our next episode. In the meantime, tell
(37:49):
us about your favorite obscure cars. You can tell us
on Facebook, you can tell us on Twitter. We have
a website, car Stuff Show dot com. Please do check
it out and go ahead and send us an email
if you're if you're feeling up to it, our addresses
our stuff and Discovery dot com. For more on this
(38:10):
and thousands of other topics, this is how stuff works
dot com. Let us go what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff Works dot com. Hi, everybody,
welcome to car Stuff. I'm Scott Benjamin and Don ben Bolland,
and we've got a topic today that is kind of
one of those that we follow along with an article
that online so our listeners can can I don't know,
I get a good grasp of what we're talking about
(00:23):
you by following along if they want to. And it's
going to be an article from Gelotnik and uh Gelotnick
wrote about and this is a while ago. It's a
it's an older article from two thousand ten, but it
caught your eye this week and you you suggested that
we do, right, Yeah, because this article is about some
Gelopnick readers who submitted their favorite obscure cars. And you
(00:46):
and I are both um constantly fascinated by strange one
offs or concept cars or even cars that for some
reason are really well known in the US of the
world bit large. Yeah, we love those. We love the
story of like the what what was the Hinz vehicle?
What was that one? I can oh? The Coursair, the Coursair,
(01:07):
that's right, the Phantom Coursair and vehicles like that. We
love things like that, the scare of vehicles, and you know,
just so many different unusual vehicles. And we've got another
group of ten here that were, as you mentioned, suggested
by readers of Gelopnic. And the way they did it
was kind of cool. It was like a It all
started with like a question, you know, it's a question
of the day type thing, like what's the most obscure car?
And then they kind of listed one of the writer,
(01:29):
Matt heart Agree listed his favorite obscure car. It was
called a I think it was called a Deutsche Bonet
or something like that, right, Deutsche, I think I'm pronouncing
that correctly. But it's a French car. It's a racing car.
And he gave a little bit of a history and
what made it really interesting and unique and strange and
in all these different ways. And he said, now that's mine,
what's yours? And he set out this this kind of
(01:50):
an all call for everybody to write and say what
your favorite is. And then they called together everything and
they decided that, you know, these were the winners and
the winners, these top ten. I gotta say it's a
solid list because you know, initially we look through and
there's not a whole lot of information and a lot
of background information about the vehicles. I know that there's
a good photo of each one, and there's a title
(02:11):
on each one that says what makes it awesome and
what makes it obscure on each one, and that's about it, Yeah,
in a small paragraph, and it's you know, some interesting
little tidbits. But then we went a little bit deeper
and found quite a bit more information about each one
of these. So we're going to add a lot to
this article if if you're following along, Yeah, and Scott,
let me just say that when whenever you and I
do an article thing or we take a look at
(02:33):
a list um first, it can be dangerous if we
just make our own lists, because we will go on.
We have our views and I I enjoy doing those
episodes a lot. Um. I also enjoy working with another
article that is solid because sometimes and listeners, some of
you have written in and told us that you you
enjoy it when one of us has a beef for
(02:55):
a bone to pick with um with a list. But
sometimes man, I just can't get on board with a
couple of things. And like we were doing car trends, uh,
they were you know, we have our own issues with
some of that, but this list here is pretty is
pretty solid, and I I Am not ashamed to say
(03:15):
that I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know
just by digging deeper into some of these models. So definitely, yeah,
I mean there's something for everybody to learn, really, I mean,
and there was more to it than what we're gonna
even share today. So if you want, you know, dig
in deeper to these things, even, you know, just do
a keyword search and then just go from there, because
basically that's all we did. And then we found out
some of the more interesting stuff that wasn't in the
(03:35):
article that we're gonna share with you. And then again,
like every one of you know, our podcasts that we do,
there's there's, you know, a couple of hours that we
could talk about each one of these Probably we're not
going to do that, but each one of these ten vehicles,
they all have their own story, they all have their
own history, they all have their own angle. I guess
you know where they fit in history. Oh and uh,
(03:57):
let's just get right into it. No, Scott, you and I,
you know, we like cars and we like innovation. Pretty
open minded, and uh, I'm sure that you're you're the
type of dude, you're a forward thinking guy. I'm sure
that you're the type of guy who's started to get
into a car. You open the car door and you think,
a man, why do I need four of these? You know?
(04:18):
Why do you need four doors? Why do you need
two doors? Yeah? Like two doors? But I see what
you're going? Where you going with this one? Because this
car has an unusual entry system? Right, yes, sir, I'm
gonna butcher this name the nineteen sixty seven mos Austin
Tatien Right close close, I think what do you have for?
(04:38):
I think you're right. I'm just gonna call it the
Opera sid and we'll call it the Opera Sedan. Uh
so nineteen sixties seven for uh a little over nineteen
point five thousand dollars in sixty seven, uh, moula, you
could have, um, you could have this vehicle that honestly
(04:59):
looks completely different from everything. The folks who made this
they had this idea that you should just have access
to this sedan via one long door in the back,
so like a hatchback that is a door and goes
the length of the car. This is such a strange
looking hatch. I guess that opens up with these giant
(05:20):
struts on either side, and I guess you would you
would make your way from the back of the vehicle
up a small staircase, carpeted staircase, carpeted staircase all the
way to the front of the vehicle. Now you said,
you said nineteen thousand dollars in what your ninety seven
will price adjusted, that's about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So you get an idea that this is a high
(05:40):
end vehicle, right, Yeah. And I gotta say, man, I
love that you do the inflation calculator because it's it's
such a it's such a strange thing to realize how
the value of money has changed. I can't take credit
for this one. Then it was right in the article.
But but I normally do that. And you know, I'm
promised I'll bring that back later on if we if
we can think about it as we go along here,
(06:01):
because some of these cars have Atlantish prices. Um. But
but I was mentioning that, you know, this is a
very luxurious vehicle, you know, along lines of like a
Rolls Royce or Batley something like that. Right. Well, some
of these, uh, some of these options that you could
get in this vehicle, we're just absolutely ridiculous. I mean
they had gold inlaid panels and refrigerators origonal rugs was
(06:22):
another one. I think, Um, you could get it. Um
what was the other thing? There's some other really Um yeah,
you it had let's we said, the refrigerator. I'm thinking
of another vehicle that's coming up. Um. But I want
to mention that it was also a most vehicle, So
we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But um, I'll tell you about some other unusual things. Oh,
it could be customized heavily, oh, very heavily customer. This
(06:44):
is one of those things that almost like a bespoke
vehicle where you could you could custom order something and
MOS would create it for you. And you think, okay.
MOS may have been a manufacturer that you know, was
around for a short time, and they were around from
they're around from nineteen sixty seven until nineteen seventeen line,
so it's a significant run for them. I guess that's
a good twelve years. Um. But they only made two
(07:05):
models of vehicles and the reported production was supposed to
be only about three to four cars per year. However,
of this vehicle that we're talking about, this Oppora Sitana,
only one car was ever built a yes, and that
car died and returned. Uh see, Okay, before we go
(07:25):
inding for that, just have to say the this vehicle
had a truck engine too, had an International harvester engine,
which people are going to it'll come in later when
you when you wonder about this. But so the Oppor Sitan,
the one existing vehicle um was in just piss poor
condition for a long time. It was not maintained. It
(07:48):
wasn't safe in a museum or anything. Until after almost
twenty years of sitting in storage, some high schoolers of
all people saved this. Are yeah, this is really weird.
But in two thousand nine, two Wisconsin high school groups
gather to get you know, group together. So from two
different high schools. I guess it was like the auto shop.
(08:09):
Guys got together, you know, guys and girls got together
and restore this. It was a project, a class project really,
and their job was to restore uh this, this mose
oppercedent back to original condition. And that's exactly what they did.
I mean, incredible they did a great job with it.
I mean it's really really gaudy the way it looks,
but it's exactly the way that it came from the
Mose factory in nine seven, right. Because this one Oppor
(08:32):
Sedan was Bruce Mo's personal car and uh one of his.
The only reason the kids got to restore it was
because one of his friends, a guy named Fred Buyer
b y e er uh got to got the schools
together and coordinated this to get it fixed up in
time for the two thousand nine Iola Car Show in Iola, Wisconsin.
(08:54):
What a weird looking car. I mean, no door, that
one giant hatch. You gotta go up a staircase. It's
carpetti of course, with the oriental rugs inside and the refrigerator. Um.
But there's another vehicle that we mentioned just briefly. This
is the one that I was just hinting at with
with more features that I wanted to mention at the time,
the opposite and it's called the Safari Car. And the
Safari Car this isn't number nine or anything. This is
(09:15):
also another most vehicle that I stumbled across. And Safari
Car was was um introduced in nineteen seventy two, so
just after you know, the company started production maybe three
or four years later, and it had an unusual door
system as well. Um and that you would open this
one giant door on the side of the vehicle. You
would grab the hatch I guess or not hash maybe
(09:36):
the giant side door and pull it out towards you
and then lower it down into the left or right
or which exactly, yeah, and then you would climb in
through this giant door opening on the side of the vehicle.
So they had a thing for unusual doors on these cars, right,
I mean, these giant, weird doors on this So that
was kind of their thing. But that's not the strangest
part of this whole thing. Then what's the strangest part
(09:58):
make me angry? Exterior panels. The exterior panels were upholstered
in Nauga hyde, which is a type of vinyl. It
was stretched over film phone padding. So this is a
a vehicle that has you know, I guess what you
normally use on the inside of the vehicle, you know,
the nauga hide over foam on the outside of the vehicle.
(10:19):
It's a padded vehicle. The whole thing. I just feel
that that is wildly impractical. But maybe I'm not the
target audience, so I have to make a correction to
what that. Um. I think the way we were speaking
about the operas today and may have sounded like it
was the only single one ever made, it's the only
one around now because they had a couple of other models. Okay,
(10:42):
I didn't know that. I thought I thought only one
was that was ever built. But I guess the only
want to exists, got okay understood, so Um. The last
couple of things about this, uh, the Safari car that
I want to mention is that it had a retractable
hardtop design, which is unusual. I mean to begin with.
Um also had an aluminum body, which again usual, but
it had that Nauga hide covering, so that made it
(11:04):
I'm sure that made it really really stiff and able
to withstand any kind of in Yeah, of course, yeah right,
that's why people were and the options now, the options
get this beIN. I was I was kind of hinting
at this with the opera car, Um, you could get
a television, which was really unusual that. I mean, imagine
how big this is back when they were building televisions
in wooden cases. Remember that right, because the tubes, the
(11:26):
cathode ray tubes were so big. Exactly. Yeah, there were
giant pieces of furniture that you'd have in your house.
I mean, just go to your grandma's house and take
a look around. That's what That's what Chi's look at, right. Uh.
Four wheel drive, of course, you get four wheel driving
this thing, two way radios, which were pretty unusual at
the time, and a beautane furnace you could get inside
the vehicle. Now that seems to me like a bad idea,
(11:47):
but you could have a bututane furnace inside your Safari car.
Well that's why all the exterior fabric is not on
the interior. A strange, strange bit of history that most
vehicles I I you know, I gotta say though, of
the features I really enjoy, and some of those features
are way ahead of their time. And if you're doing
a search, it's m O H S mode and look
(12:07):
up mos Opera City and you'll see exactly what we're
talking about. And then Safari car is not far behind,
and that's Safari car with a k um Okay, So
number nine we get to uh something that we get
to a character who's pretty familiar to us so over
here on this show, and that's Earl the Madman Months,
the uh key player in the Months Car Company, and
(12:31):
that brings us to number nine, the nineteen fifty one
through ninety four Months Jet. Yeah, that's right, and there's
a you know, just to self promote here, I guess
we have a how stuff works article on this exact vehicle,
the four Months Jet, and you can look that up there.
And there's a lot of good background information on this
one as well. Um. But this is I mean, this
really comes down to kind of the wacky salesman character,
(12:53):
the businessman, the engineer. He was an engineer, ben Um.
He actually was a pioneer in automotive electronics and radio specifically.
I think he was the one who developed, Um I
think I read this somewhere the four track cassette system,
which was the predecessor to the eight track So am
I saying that right before trait? Yeah? Yeah, proceeded the
(13:13):
eight track, that's correct, And UM, I think he was
working heavily in that as well. So um, this uh,
this Madman Months character, I mean I think he died
in which would have put him in about age seventy
three when he died, but he wanted to build a
sports car with what he said, we're jetlike um contours
to it, so it had that like a futuristic look
(13:35):
to it, I guess. But he wanted a giant V
eight in it, so he ended up putting a I
think it was a Lincoln V eight that he ended
up with in this thing. Um, it was a I guess. Yeah,
he went through a couple though. You could say it
was America's first high performance personal luxury car. But you know,
the one who likes to use that personal luxury car term,
wasn't that forward with the Thunderbird. Yeah, I believe it
(13:55):
was just predated the thing exactly. I'm so glad you
said that a full seven years um. And interestingly enough
for people who are long time listeners, you guys may
have remembered some of our earlier stuff on Frank Curtis
and Curtis Craft Uh Madman Months and Curtis and Frank
Curtis UH have a long business relationship. And the Month's
(14:19):
jet actually comes from a lot of its DNA is
from the Curtis craft Sport. Yeah, and you know what,
this car was fast? This was for it to day.
It was fast, and I'll tell you how fast it
competed with the Jaguar x K one twenty, which which
I mean a stellar sports car at the time. I
meant at the time that was a quick car. That
(14:39):
was a an agile car. Now I think they said that,
you know, it was about even when they took off. Eventually,
the Month's Jet took it, you know, as far as
the top speed went. But I do believe I think
the Jaguar out handled the Months because it was a
bigger vehicle. When you see a photo of the Month's Jet,
you'll understand exactly what you're talking about. UM. Very limited
production run, I mean, and actually there are no product
(15:00):
records that remained from those vehicles, so they don't know
how many were actually built. But they went to the
source himself. They went to you know, the Madman Months
and asked him how many he built, and he said
it was around three hundred and ninety four. That's a
pretty specific number. And he also said that they lost
about a thousand dollars. The cars were manufactured at a loss,
(15:20):
So he built three and he lost a thousand dollars
on each one of those cars that he built, is
what he thinks, so it wasn't. It wasn't a winning
effort on his part. But they say that, you know
this guy man isn't this isn't just the one that
said that he had he had like raised and then
lost several fortunes over his life. I mean it was
time and time again he would become a millionaire and
then he'd lose it all. And they'd become a millionaire
(15:40):
and loses all. And I think it happened often to him.
Um he was just one of those guys that was
had his hands and everything. It was pretty interesting. So
um that one, you know, aside from looking up the
vehicle itself and just seeing some photos, take a look
into um Earl Madman months and just see what he's
all about. Because interesting character. And I think I gotta
tell you that the car itself seems fantastic, and it's
(16:05):
just a shame that they were aluminum body, fiberglass top.
That big V eight, I mean the Lincoln V eight
three cubic inch, right, yeah, it's a it was a
oh no, no, no, I'm wrong. That was the Cadillac
engine they had in there before, but then they substituted.
They put in a Lincoln went with a bigger, bigger
V eight from the Lincoln got it all right? Yeah,
(16:26):
it's a it's an impressive car all around, I think.
All right, so let's move on to number eight on
our list. How about that? Yes, sir, Number eight's a
little more recent. Yeah, i'd say, um, not not completely recent,
but it's something that I would be willing to bet
that not many people have seen one of these ever.
It is the nineteen to nineteen ninety Owasso Pulse. Yes,
(16:47):
and if you say, oh, yeah, the Owasso Pulse, then
give yourself a pat on the back, guys and gals,
because you are one of the few people who really
knows about this vehicle. Um, if you have not seen it,
save yourself some time. That's O W O S S
O and check it out immediately. Um. You know what
those scott I think a lot more people have seen
(17:10):
this than they realize and they just didn't know the
name of it. Yeah, maybe you're watching the Corps commercial
ways back. Oh yeah, maybe it has been featured in
a Corps Corps commercial beer commercial. Um went, what I mean,
do you know roughly when that was in the ninety nineties.
I would guess when this happened. Uh yeah, I think
I think it's late eighties, late eighties when it was
actually in production, probably trying to start something up, trying
(17:32):
to get it going. But the history on this one,
this is built by a guy, a prototype was built
by I think his name is um Jim Bead and
the prototype is built in something like eight and it
was called the Bad two hundreds. Like an enclosed motorcycle
that has the side skirts, you know, the um outriggers stability. Yeah, outriggers,
(17:52):
I call them out riggers, but they're but they're permanently
in place. It almost looks like tiny wings. Yeah, yeah,
it looks like tiny wings and uh out rigged. Of
course we say that just to show that they give
balance to the vehicle and stability that would not ordinarily have.
Basically looks like there's a jet that is on the ground,
(18:12):
a tiny jet think of think of like the jetsins
or something, and it has just a couple of wheels
that might as well be landing gear. Yes, stubby stubby
jet with with no big wings and it's missing its tail.
But you're in the canopy. The whole canopy thing is there,
and that's really cool looking the one that's in the
photo here is painted like a bumblebee, which is kind
of funny. But I've seen other ones that have different
(18:34):
paint jobs. They look pretty neat. Really, They're kind of
a cool vehicle. I just I've never seen one of
these in person there and you know and anywhere. UM,
but it's got kind of an unusual story, not not
crazy unusual, but but just unusual that you know. It
started in about UM I think the molds were created
to build something that he called the Jim called the
(18:56):
light Star, which was built in Scranton, Iowa initially, and
then production moved to Owasso, Michigan, UM, which they called
the Pulse Vehicle. So that's when um, the Owasso name
comes in. It's from Owasso, Michigan. And then later the
light Star and the Pulse vehicles are really similar, they're
not exactly the same. So if you see one of
the early light Star vehicles from the from the Iowa production,
(19:18):
they're gonna be a little different in you know, the
engine that they have, the headlights, um, you know, some
of the winglets. I think the design is a little
bit different than the winglets, and some of the venting
I think is a little bit different. But other than that,
you're gonna look at the vehicle either way, whether it's
a light star or a Pulse and say, yeah, that's
an OWOSSO Pulse probably if you know by that name.
Um strange, I mean, it's a road going jet really,
(19:40):
but it's also kind of like this motorcycle type vehicle. Um,
it's just it's a really unusual thing. And the guy
has aviation history obviously. Um. I think his other you know,
business dealings are all in airplanes that you know. When
I looked up his information online, his biography information and stuff, Yeah,
a lot of stuff. Yeah. He builds his own planes
out of his garage or wherever you know, and then
eventually moves them to production, you know, because he builds
(20:03):
the prototypes and then he sells the idea. And um,
that's the way that works. I'm sure there's a lot
more complexity to it than that. But Jim Bead is
definitely an aviation I guess pioneer really that's probably what
you've best know him for. But this was his his
one shot at building a car, and and the vehicle
that he chose to build looks like a plane, which
says a lot about him. I have a question though, so, um,
(20:28):
I can't remember the year of that Cores Beer advertisement again,
and I'll get it out to you guys. Um when
when I hunted down. Uh, but I would really have
liked to see this car in a movie. As a
matter of fact, I've been watching more and more movies now. Yeah,
and uh, I am kind of in a weird embarrassment
(20:52):
of riches because you know, I subscribe to Netflix instant
so I've got so many things to watch, you know me,
man Um, if I'm watching something like that, I would
like some amazing cars to be involved, or at least
some vehicles. Uh so what do you got for me?
You got any recommendations? Well, I don't have anything with
the car this week, Ben, but I got something with
the vehicle that I think a lot of our listeners
(21:13):
will be pretty intrigued by. And I don't think I'm
giving anything away here. When I say that this one
has someone happy ending to it, I guess think maybe
put it that way. All right, All right? This is uh,
this is called the Search for Kennedy's PT one O
nine and it's pretty old. It's about two thousand two,
so you know, it's it's getting up. It's about twelve
years old at this point. So I'm not giving like
I said, I'm not giving anything away and saying we
(21:35):
know what happened with this story, and I won't say
any more than that. But UM again released in two
thousand two. It's just a sixty minute piece, but it's
it's about the the guy Dr Robert Ballard, who was
the guy that is famous for discovering the you know,
the water it remains of the Titanic. UM. So you
know that this guy is a you know, a great
underwater UM expedition leader searcher, you know. UM, he was
(21:58):
looking for the wreck of John Kennedy's legendary World War
Two patrol torpedo boat UM in this intriguing documentary, So
you know patrol torpedo boat that's the PT one or
nine part UM. The documentary includes some compelling wartime footage
and I witness accounts of Kennedy's heroism aboard the ill
fated ship that was cut in half by a Japanese
destroyer in the murky waters off the Solomon Islands. So UM,
(22:23):
you know it was a tough one to find, but UM,
I guess, well, if you read about this, you'll find
out exactly what happened. But it's an interesting documentary to watch.
I've seen part of it already, haven't seen the whole thing,
but um, I'm kind of interested in watching the wrap
up of it. I love this kind of hunting, this
sort of real life Indiana Jones explorer, deep sea diving,
(22:44):
treasure expedition stuff. So I am in, my friend and
you can be into. But wait, Scott and Ben, you
might be saying, I can't be in. I don't have Netflix.
What am I daddy Warbucks from Annie? I don't know
if you are not, but I do know that just
them knowing Scott and I. You can check out Netflix
for thirty days for what was a ten dollar Scott, No, hucks,
(23:08):
No it do and go lower you get more dollar
ninety nine. I think it's free free. Yeah, let me
check my notes, check your notes. It is free a
thirty day free trial membership, which is that's remarkable, Ben,
I thought it was like a hundred box, but it's
free thirty a free trial membership. I have to do
is go to Netflix dot com, slash car stuff, download
(23:30):
as many of these as you want. You know it
doesn't have to be the Search for Kennedy's PT. One
oh nine, but that's a cool documentary to watch. We
recommend so many differently, have a huge list, gigantic lists.
In fact, it's it's getting difficult to find new movies
that we haven't recommended that have cars in them. But
the Netflix offerings keep growing and there are um yeah,
(23:50):
we do recommend some stuff with trains or was Zeppelin's before,
But believe us, guys, this stuff is worth your time
and they're adding new titles every day. Titles are subject
to availability, but Scott, we check these out before we
go on air with them. That one right there. All
you have to do is push the play button. And
we had somebody actually on our Facebook recently who wrote
(24:12):
in to ask for a list of some of this stuff.
So if you're listening, I'm gonna I'm gonna touch base
with you and send that to you personally. And we
can't read the list on air. It's too long. It
is a significant list to read. There's no way we
could do that. It would take an entire episode. They
would take an entire episode. Even if we were as
fast as number seven on our list, number seven, which
(24:34):
is a quick one. This was the nineteen seventy Mercury
Cyclones spoiler to long Nose, And that is a long,
long title for a vehicle. But what it is, Ben,
this is a This is a NASCAR prototype vehicle. And
that's why I'm so obscure because there's very very few
of these. And and there's an interesting story that goes
along with this one. I dug pretty deep into this one.
(24:55):
I'll tell you all about it. But there's a photo
on the Jewlopnic article of this vehicle and you'll see
exactly what I'm talking about here. When or what they're
talking about, I guess when they say that it was
it was um. The The original intent of this vehicle
was to compete with the Plymouth Superbird of the day,
because the Superbird was just blowing it away on the
(25:15):
NASCAR track in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies,
and uh and Ford was thinking, when we got to
do something to compete with this, and Mercury was actually
the division that they wanted to do this with. And
the Cyclone, this Mercury Cyclone vehicle that they came up with,
which is a specific cyclone. This again the spoiler too
long nose edition. This one is is what they came
(25:36):
up with to compete with those superbirds. Yeah, it's got
a four D and twenty nine cubic inch V eight Uh.
And it's it's a mean like a vehicle, it's a
it's also what what's it called when they have to
build just enough product production? Uh? Yeah, com alligation special,
(25:56):
I guess is what we can call it. Right. But
but the problem with that, ben in this is where
the history comes in. Now, the original rules, if you
remember this, right, was was the initial I guess, the
initial rules from NASCAR. Right around that time, they had
just changed the malligation rules from five dred vehicles up
to three thousand vehicles. So Mercury was in a position
where they would have had to build at least three
(26:17):
thousand of these. Now, I guess, I don't know. You
can't really call it good news because you know, the
bad news is that Ford pulled out of racing in
the early nineteen seventies, and you know, this is all
amid the fuel crisis that was happy and so Mercury
never got a got a chance to produce these vehicles.
I mean, so the prototypes are really all that exists. Now.
(26:38):
They built two of these cyclones spoiler two vehicles. They
built two of them. Only one of them survives and
that's the one that's in this photograph here. Um there's
kind of an interesting story around that one too, Ben,
because um that one, I guess was somehow it somehow
ended up in the hands of Larry Shnuda, And Larry
Shnuda was the guy from General Motors that's famous for
designing the corvette. Know what Larry was doing at the time,
(27:01):
I don't know if he had moved it, you know,
to another to Ford Mercury, whatever is going on. I'm
going to have to dig into Larry Shnuda again to
remember what he was doing. But it was given to him,
and then later I guess he had given that to
somebody else as a gift. He had gifted the car
to somebody. And when they found this vehicle, it was
in a it was in a I guess a muddy
chicken coop somewhere in Indiana, just kind of just kind
(27:23):
of rotting away or it was, um, I guess, sinking
into the mud. You know. It was just a disaster
vehicle and they found it. But someone recognized what it
was rescued it, you know, scooped it up and said,
you know, let's let's restore this thing back to where
it should be because it's it's one of a kind.
This is the only one out there and it's got
a history. I mean, it was given. It was gifted
by Larry Shnuda to to whoever this was. Um. They
(27:45):
also had another vehicle that's that kind of goes along
with this one. UM and I didn't mean to, you know,
stop you if you've had more about the siler. But
there's another vehicle if you want to look into, a
separate vehicle that's right around the same time. That was
another rum prototype vehicle for NASCAR. There's something called the
nineteen seventy four Torino King Cobra, and I guess four
(28:06):
of those were built and only three are known to
exist today. So the the nineteen seventy four Torino King
Cobra is another one to look up and you won't
be upset by what you find because it's a it's
a really cool looking car as well. So these these
NASCAR prototype one off type vehicles that were built by
the factory are pretty unusual and and definitely worth your
time to look up. Yes, and now we get to
(28:28):
what I think will probably be our last car for
part one, when I think, because it looks like we're
at about a half an hour ban and we've talked
about this already, so let's let's split up into two.
How about that? That sounds fantastic because I, you know,
I hate when we have to rush through the really
cool stuff, which usually happens at the end. So a
cliffhanger for the top five. Really, yeah, cliffhanger for the
(28:50):
top five. But we've we've talked about so far in
just a few brief minutes. We've talked about some really
weird cars, some really amazing cars, the uh, the highs
and the weirds. Uh. Now, let's talk about one of
the lows. Yeah, this is one that was a little
bit upsetting to uh well to the company itself. Right, Yeah, okay,
(29:11):
so all right, so, um, without telling you in the
name of the car yet, let's see, listeners, if you
can just guess, uh, we'll phrase as a trivia question. Uh,
which car was so bad that when the head of
the car company drove it for the first time, he
(29:34):
was scared for his life. He thought it was gonna
fall apart when he took it out for a weekend drive. Okay,
if you guess the nineteen fifties six Volvo P one
nine hundred, then you are correct. You have also called
the Volvo sport. Um. I think it's the P I
think most people to say P nineteen hundred, I think
(29:55):
when but it is an obscure carbon. I mean it
is one that you find very many others, um, very
few of these things that were actually built. One of
my friends, when I was researching this, by the way,
called it that. Uh. He said, oh, you mean the
Volvo POS nine messing up the name. Uh huh. This
is a fiberglass bodied roadster. That that came about when
(30:17):
I guess the head of Volvo had been had made
a trip to the United States, and the founder of
Volvo actually not just ahead of all, but but the
founder of Volvo because we're going back to the early
nineteen fifties here. Um, he had been on a trip
to the United States and he spotted a brand new
Corvette because corvettes were new at the time since what
nineteen and he decided, Hey, you know what, I've got
(30:38):
a car company. Let's build something like that. Because people
are going crazy over the new corvette over there in
the States. Let's do something like that over here in
Sweden and uh and make a fortune on this thing.
And so that's what he went about doing. However, he
didn't quite have the formula right because you know, he's
got this fiberglass by Roster and you know, Volvo is
mainly known for safety, I think at this point, um,
maybe not so back then. I think that they were
(31:00):
a solid car. I mean, they always built a high
quality vehicle right in the very beginning, and this, unfortunately
was just not one of those cases. And they did,
you know, stop it before it really happened. But um,
this thing had a one point four leader four cylinder
seventy horse power engines, so right away you know that
this thing is a bit underpowered if he's going for
(31:21):
the corvette market, I guess right. Um, three speed manual transmission,
which isn't all that unusual for the time. But it
also borrowed a lot of parts from something that they
called the Volvo PV four forty four, which was a
solid car that was a decent car, small car. But um,
I actually liked the PV four forty four. And there's
another one I think it was called the what is it,
(31:43):
the p V five forty four and uh, and then
there's eight hundred, that's right, and that was a more
successful vehicle. Really. The eight hundred UM was actually well,
I said, it is already success vehicle, successful vehicle, but
then complete failure in a lot of ways because they
designed this two door, four passenger kind of a fastback
(32:04):
design um of Volvo's first unibody car, which was I
guess significant in some way really, but there was very
low demand for this thing, and the problem was the
build quality just wasn't there. For whatever reason, they just
couldn't get the design right on this whole thing. Um,
and it was just not up to Volvo standards. They
realized that, you know, early on, this thing isn't gonna
(32:24):
cut it. We're not gonna be able to produce this
and keep our company name on it, and uh and
still keep our heads up high, right, And this shows
us I think there's a moral here, a bit of
a cautionary tail. Uh. Not all cars are obscure because
they were crazily high priced in ahead of their time. Um.
This car has been described in various test drives in
(32:44):
some very colorful ways. Um. I think in the Gelopanic article,
we have one reviewer say it's like driving four or
forty four that someone beat with a stick. Yeah, you know,
excuse me, a horrible stick. Horrible stick. Yeah, someone beat
that thing with another least so so okay. That The
idea though, is that you know that this uh you know,
the head of the company takes it on like a
(33:06):
fishing weekend or something up into the woods and car
the car is already in production, Ben, They're already building
this car, and he takes it on this trip and
he decides like, I was so scared that I pulled
over to the side of the road. I thought it
was gonna fall apart on me. And that is, you know,
so loose, and it just didn't feel right. It wasn't
a typical Volvo production vehicle. And he said, you know,
I thought it was gonna fall apart, but it's already
(33:27):
in production. He immediately stopped production. And there were only
something like sixty eight cars that were ever produced on
this whole thing. So they had the whole thing set
up to produce. They built sixty eight vehicles and that's it.
Most of those vehicles that were produced are long lull
and yeah, yeah, not many of them exist still today.
So if you see one, if you find one, you know,
in a in an auto graveyard somewhere, you know, scoop
(33:48):
it up because it's a rare piece of history. But
more than likely you're gonna find him in museums and
just uh, you know, where they're safe, where they're parked.
I guess, I don't know. That's the only way to
put it, really, I mean, according to this, I mean,
I know that for a while the thought was make
things really loose. So you go over um, you know,
like some of the early sports cars in America, like
(34:08):
even corvettes and things like that, they were pretty loose,
you feel you feel a lot of this give a
lot of motion. Yeah, give, I guess it was. And
if it was given the design of the vehicle intentionally,
So you go over a train track and you think
that the thing was gonna, you know, fall apart. Maybe
that's what he was feeling when he when when they
put this thing together, they designed it with more give
than he was used to. Yeah, that was gonna be
my question for you, because it's something that I couldn't
(34:30):
quite figure out, especially given the modern understanding of Volvo,
the reputation that they've earned, They've built it for safety.
It it seems um, it seems extraordinary to talk about
Volvo and say low quality builds, you know, in the
same sentence like that, I'm glad that they nipped this
one in the button. They got it early on, so
(34:51):
they're only sixty eight cars produced and they said, you know,
that's it. We can't have you can't have our company
name on this. And that shows that shows some integrity. Yeah,
total league. I mean I think so too. I think
it was a stand up move on his part, and
for this, I think this is going to be the
almost end of our list. We are in a bit
of a cliffhanger and we'll come back in our next episode.
(35:14):
I promise you. We've got five really great ones coming
up in the episode. We kind of saved the best ones.
But before we go, Scott, what do you think about
some listener mail? Let's do it? Okay, alright, okay? Uh.
Graham B from Vancouver b C. Writes to us to say, hey, guys,
(35:36):
I read an article a couple of months ago that
relates to your latest podcast. This was just after car trends.
I think, Graham said the article sites of study, saying
that car colors followed the general economy and blander colors
like grays or whites or more popular during downtimes in
the economy, and brighter, more saturated colors are more popular
(35:57):
during recovery years and high points in the economy. Interesting,
And I think I responded to this one didn't. Yeah,
I think I wrote back something like I'd read a
lot of studies that kind of matched this and that,
you know, but most of them have to do with fashion.
A lot of them don't really focus on auto trends
when they think when you think about the economy, I mean,
sure people hold onto cars longer, and you think about
(36:18):
you know, people where the average age of a vehicle
on the road is something like ten years at this point,
which is that's pretty old for vehicles, especially when you
see how many new cars being built every year, how
many you're on new car lots where all these old
used cars that that they claim are out there, because
I mean the average age is ten years. Mean, can
you imagine how many used cars are out there? They're
ten years old. We have a lot of cars. But
(36:41):
but I think that the fashion thing that we that
I replied with, was you know you often see it
like the hem of women's skirts or lipstick colors, things
like that. Yeah, the hymns of women's skirts tend to go.
Is it up with the economy? I think it is. Yeah.
There there's some really cool things that we'd like to
recommend as well. Um. The guys over freaking Comics have
some really interesting insights to this, Um Graham. I thought
(37:04):
that was a fascinating thing to say. Gram goes on
to say, in regards to transmissions, getting more gears, I
test her Porsche came in S with the seven seed
seven speed p DK for morning last September. Even the
seven speed makes for a very smooth ride compared to
a six speed, although being Porsche, they probably could have
had a two speed. That would have been impressed. I
(37:26):
love the Cayman S and I think I even replied
that as well, because is just such a cool looking car. Yeah,
that's that. That would be a fun one to test,
bread and I don't think it'll be an obscure one either.
Plenty of those produced. All right, so we are going
to go ahead and uh mosey on out of here.
Stay tuned for our next episode. In the meantime, tell
(37:49):
us about your favorite obscure cars. You can tell us
on Facebook, you can tell us on Twitter. We have
a website, car Stuff Show dot com. Please do check
it out and go ahead and send us an email
if you're if you're feeling up to it, our addresses
our stuff and Discovery dot com. For more on this
(38:10):
and thousands of other topics, this is how stuff works
dot com. Let us go what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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