April 29, 2014 • 31 mins
At first glance, it sounds too good to be true: a three-wheeled car with fantastic mileage, minimal wiring and almost unbelievable efficiency. So what happened to the miraculous promise of the Dale car, and why did its charismatic promoter compare herself to Preston Tucker?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with car
Stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, everybody, welcome
to car Stuff on Scott and I'm Ben Bullet and
we've got a strange Tale today. Yeah, a'sually weird, weird
piece of automotive history. We're even gonna need some strange
tale music in the beginning here, that's probably true. And
(00:25):
we're going to talk about a vehicle that is called
the Dale. Now, if you don't know about the Dale,
hang on because there's a big twist that's coming somewhere
near the middle of this story that you probably didn't expect.
Maybe maybe not. If you do about it, you know
what's coming. But either way, this is about an American
made car that that well, I guess you could say
as an American made the car that never really was. Um,
(00:47):
it's tale deception in more ways than one. Really, Yeah,
there's a lot of deception going on in this whole thing.
And again we already mentioned the twist that's coming up,
So um, there's a lot to this story and it's
it's just a fascinating bit of automotive history to make.
So cast your minds back to the glamorous wild world
(01:08):
of nineteen seventy four. Yeah, we go, we go way back.
That's almost almost forty years well that is forty years
ago at this point, right, So it's a long, long
time ago. And this is the formation of a company
called the twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation. And they had
one vehicle that they were promoting at the time, and
it was called the Dale. And this Dale vehicle was
(01:29):
a it was a revolutionary vehicle at the time, or
said to be a revolutionary vehicle at the time. You
got to remember the time frame for this whole thing. Now,
it was the the early nineteen seventies exactly right. The
fuel embargo was going on. Now, it promised a lot
of things, and there were there were a lot of
different um car designs that were coming out at this
time now, a lot of ideas for fuel efficiency, for
(01:53):
saving saving fuel. So there were bodies made of carbon
fiber even back then. There were bodies that were fitted
with wings, uh, some that floated on water. There were
three wheelers, there were six wheelers. They went back to
steam engines for a while. Jet turbines were were something
that they were kind of playing around with. You to
remember that we talked about um, the Ford vehicle that
was gonna go with nuclear power and UM, there was
at least one developer that decided that the three wheel
(02:16):
option was the way to go. Yes, that was a
gentleman named Dale Cliff. Dale Cliff, now this is the
guy that the Dale car is eventually named after. But
you know he has he plays a role in this,
but not as much of a role as he may think.
UM early on. We'll talk about him quite a bit here.
But he had this idea, he said, I wanted to
(02:36):
make this the three wheel vehicle. Um. Again, he's a
Southern California inventor and he's working for some three large
scale electronic military contract exactly. But he likes to also
kind of mess around with things in his in his
uh you know side times, I guess you know, his
time off, um, and he was kind of mechanically messing
around with a lot of different personal projects. I think
(02:58):
he built a bicycle motor and he built a device
that was designed to blow installation into an existing wall. UM.
He he also played around with motorcycle engines and things
like that, you know, the kind of mechanical things and
and UM, commuting vehicles. That was one of his ideas
was how to create a three wheel commuting vehicle that
was powered by a motorcycle engine. And he developed a
(03:21):
vehicle with um, well, he built this, you know, I
don't know if you want to say that he built
it with a friend maybe from the company that he's
working with. And I want to really give too much
away here at this point, but he built it in
his garage and in suburban Los Angeles, and it was
the three wheel design. It was, if I can just
describe it this way, it was this is the way
(03:42):
it was written in the place where we're getting this
this book, or that this information from the story from
familiar listening. Yeah, that's right. It's called the book is
called History's Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths and Rumors Revealed. And
we've used this several times in this podcast, uh to
glean some stories from uh some of the stranger uh
(04:03):
stranger parts of our past, I guess, in an automotive past. Yeah,
this is kind of like a collection of Ripley's believe
it or not, tails, specifically about cars. Yeah. It's like
think of like like a Snope story only expanded. You know,
there's a lot more information here. So we're gonna kind
of read through this, and there's there's parts of this
article that will read and uh and and one part
that I want to read here is about this vehicle. Now,
(04:24):
the vehicle itself, they say that the frame consisted of
half inch electrical conduit with the joints that were braised together.
So the mechanical components came from a motor from the
motorcycle world. The engine, for example, was a robust three
five cc twin from a Honda c B seventy seven
super Hawk. And while there were two front wheels, they
were suspended with motorcycle style forks. So the whole thing
(04:47):
was covered and the whole thing was covered with Nauga
hide in a metal flake maroon. Now Nauga hyde, you
know that's like plastic leather. Really that's fake leather. And
so that's the exterior this And we talked about that
that an obscure car that was covered with something like this,
but it had foam I think on the outside, similar
type cover. And that was the uh Safari car. That
(05:07):
was it, right, yeah, in our in our obscure car episode,
Yeah exactly. Now he he completes this three wheel prototype
vehicle which which they said. It actually looked pretty good
from the outside. Uh. He completed it in the nineteen
seventy three, so he's working on this early on. And um,
he used it to drive around town. He used to
get around town and this thing. He would go back
(05:28):
and forth to work. And you know, he had it
licensed for street you right, he had it registered as
a motorcycle. No, of course it wasn't perfect. It add
a lot of the disadvantages that you see in cottage industry,
garage built vehicles, so carbon monox i could leak into it. Um. Oh,
it was a two seater too, exactly. Yeah, that's pretty good.
So two seaters. So he would sometimes take a friend
(05:48):
with him to work or you know, just just to
run errands around town and people. It garnered a lot
of attention. In fact, it got attention of um local
press eventually. And I'll tell you about it in just
one second. But I also want to say that, you know,
along with you know, everything that was doing right, it
also had a lot of flaws. And some of these
flaws I guess and and this is a typical of somebody,
(06:08):
you know, something that someone would build in their garage,
right right, Like yeah, I mean, it would leak carbon
monoxide into the cockpit, which is a bad problem to have.
I'll tell you that if you're going a long trip,
um you know, the stopping power from the brakes was
really really negligible because tiny tires, cable driven brakes. You
can imagine what that was like. And and this might
surprise some people who I don't know if you're a
(06:30):
fan of Nauga Hide or something, but it turns out
that if this thing ever gotten a crash, Dale was screwed. Yeah,
if you're having a Nauga Hide car, I don't think
you're gonna want to hit too many other vehicles or
walls or anything like that or really anything. But again,
this is the kind of car that we have talked
about before, the kind of vehicle. Rather, it's a small,
light vehicle with a kind of short range, at least
(06:52):
of the way he was building it that is meant
for not highway drive, instimant for commuting inside the city.
And that's exactly what he was doing. When finally, you know,
some of the local press I guess kind of got
wind of what was going on and they saw him
around town and they said, hey, let's just make a
great story, Let's talk to him. So they actually interviewed him,
and they talked to him about, you know, what he
was doing, and and got a story and everything that
(07:12):
was all kind of interesting. But then that gets more
attention because more people see this, and through that attention
is where possibly this may be the turning point in
the story. This is the twist that I was going
to tell you about. But this is where a meeting
happened that I think was a set up right from
the very beginning, and a lot of people I think
I think looking back that this was a set up
as a planned meeting. But um, in nineteen seventy four,
(07:35):
while he was eating dinner in a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard,
he was approached by a stranger who told him who
knew that that that stranger said that I know somebody
who might be willing to put this three wheel vehicle
to have into production, right which at the time some
people are saying he called it the commuter cycle. Yeah,
so a lot of this story it's time to introduce
this other guy too. A lot of this story comes
(07:57):
from a close friend of Dale's, yeah, named Richard Smith.
And so Richard Smith wrote a book about this called
the Dale Automobile, an American dream, and a lot of
our accounts are coming via Smith. So Smith is one
of the people who believes that this quote unquote chance
meeting was planned from the beginning. Yeah, and there's a
(08:19):
there's a good reason for that later on, as we'll
find out. I mean, looking back, you know, they try
to piece this all together. Really, So who is this stranger. Well,
the stranger that that is supposedly able to put this
thing into production is a woman by the name of
Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael. Now I think her friends called her
Liz or Liz Carmichael, and then we'll just call her
Liz Carmichael. That her full name is Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael.
(08:42):
And the way she's described here in this article is
that she was a huge woman, um anywhere from six
ft tall and one d seventy five pounds to somewhere
around six two inches tall and two pounds, depending on
who who you talked to, right, And depending on who
you talked to again, she was either an Indiana farm
girl who worked on tractors, former stock car racer, UH
(09:06):
entrepreneur from the University of Miami, mechanical engineer from Ohio State,
the widow of a NASA structural engineer, or the owner
of a car mod company, former owner, uh customizer, patent holder,
she said, patents. There's there's this long list. She had
this self skinning foam apparently that you know, she was
(09:27):
a patent holder on and you know, again, what what
stands out? You've been about this right away? I mean,
this sounds like a charlatan, doesn't It sounds like somebody
who's just breathing into town. It's like one of you know,
the one of the people selling snake oil. Doesn't it well,
you know it does. I'm just gonna in the interest
of being fair, Scott, I'm playing Devil's advocate. I'll go
ahead and say that I guess it's possible for one
(09:49):
person to have done all these things. I guess so.
But my gosh, Ben, this is a this is quite
a resume, really, and I think of the life well
lived exactly now now she's saying, you know, Liz is saying,
I can I can get this current of production for
you and you know who. And she wasn't telling everybody
all those things all at once, saying she was telling
this two different people who asked her different times. So
she's living this life where she's telling multiple lives all
(10:12):
over the place for no way that can come back again.
Exactly right. But think about how what amazing news this
is for Dale Cliff because he if you are an inventor,
and I know we have some inventors who listened to
the show, Scott. So one thing that happens to a
lot of inventors is that you come up with an
astonishing revolutionary idea, but you have neither the capital nor
(10:37):
the know how needed to bring this thing to store shelves.
And at the same time, you want to protect your idea.
You want to you want to hold onto that, so
you know you're being cautious, but you also have to
be a bit adventurous and that you know, you have
to say, yeah, I've got to throw caution to the
win here with this one, because I believe this person
and what they say, and you can only go on
their credentials, you know what they tell you. I suppose
(10:58):
a lot more difficult at that time, probably to look
into someone's background than it was, you know, than it
is now. Right. So our girl Liz comes to Dale
and says, you know, want to put this brilliant design
into production, and I can give you what might be
three million dollars three million bucks. Now she's saying, you
know that your royalties for this whole thing would be
(11:21):
three million dollars if you if you give me this
design and let me run with it. And of course
he would remain you know, impartial control of the whole thing,
and you know, part of the company as well. However, um,
you know, she would be the controlling partner of this
whole thing. And of course she's gonna stand and make
a lot more money because she's gonna risk everything apparently,
right that's her, That's gonna be her role, right, Yeah,
So he's essentially being offered a deal to sell the
(11:45):
rights to the car exactly right now. And and you,
of course also the promise that your name will be
on the vehicle. It's gonna be called the Dale, that's
gonna be the name of the car. So that is
a tempting, tempting offer for any inventor, you know, to say, like, well,
of course you're gonna name the vehicle AFT for me? Cool?
Would that be, by the way, So let's fast forward
to August, all right, So August of nineteen seventy four,
and the company is finally formed. It's called the Liz
(12:07):
Carmichael sets this up. She calls it the twentieth Century
Motor Car Company, which uh, maybe a little bit familiar
to readers of um iron Rand, Right, yeah, right, from
iron Rand's famous novel Atlas Shrug. That's right, And it
was the title was just a little bit different. It was.
It was the twentieth Century Motor Company in the book.
Now if you again, this one is the twentieth Century
(12:30):
Motor Car Corporation, so very very similar. I could see
where a lot of people would be would be confused
with this. Now again, this is set up in August
of nineteen seventy four by Liz Carmichael, and it was
supposed to be the company that would carry the flagship
Dale vehicle. You know, this prototype three wheel two seater
sports car that was designed by Dale Cliff. You know,
it was supposed to be the greatest thing since Slice spread.
(12:52):
It was. It was a very futuristic vehicle. They had
everything laid out of. You know, how was gonna be powered,
what the shell was going to be made of, was
that the glass is gonna be made of exactly. Yeah.
It was supposed to be powered by an eight hundred
and fifty cc air cooled engine, and it claimed that
it would have us it would get seventy miles per gallon,
but we still go eighty five, still go eighty five
(13:13):
miles per hour. That's right. And so you know, with
this this great fuel economy, uh, the expected price for
this ben here we go two thousand dollars in nineteen
seventy four. That's U S dollars, two thousand dollars, which
you know, I guess when you're when you're looking at um,
you know, nineteen seventy four dollars and at the time,
you know, for what a car cost, and with the
fuel prices and all that, this was a very attractive package. Right,
(13:36):
do you have the numbers? I'm glad you have been,
because I do. I I've I've done my little you know,
inflation calculator thing that I like to do with these often,
and um, I've got something more of a question really
than anything. Now I did the calculation. Now, two thousand
dollars in nineteen seventy four is equal in two thousand,
fourteen to nine thousand, five four dollars and fifty eight cents,
(13:58):
so still a cheap. Yeah, it took new and under
ten thousand dollars to buy a brand new vehicle like that.
Where I mean this, this reminds me of the Elio
and something like that. I hate to say it, and
we went along with the story, but it does. Now
here's something I want to want to point out. I
went to a site called the cost of Living the
cost of living dot com, and I looked up what
(14:18):
the average price of the car was in nineteen seventy four,
and the average price in nineteen four with three thousand,
seven hundred and fifty dollars. So this vehicle is coming
in way under the average price, nearly half almost half,
almost half of it. But then I was thinking, okay,
that the equivalent today if if you just go by inflation.
So I did that number, the thirty seven fifty into
(14:40):
two thousand, fourteen dollars, and try to follow me here.
I did the equivalent, and the equivalent of seventeen thousand,
eight hundred and fifty eight dollars and sixty cents versus
under ten thousand. Yeah, yeah, for the for the modern
day price of the Dale exactly, that's right now. But
But my the point that I want to get at
with this is, now, if you just go a straight inflation, now,
(15:01):
the average cost of the car in ninety four was
thirty seven fifty If you take that number to today,
it's seventeen thousand, eight hundred and fifty eight. Do you remember,
just not long ago, when we talked about the average
price of a new car? Do you remember what that number?
One thirty one thousand two dollars. So what happened happened?
What happened that if we had just gone by, you know,
(15:23):
from straight inflation, it should be and if if this
were to play out equally, I guess seventeen thousand, eight
hundred fifty eight versus thirty one thousand, two hundred fifty two.
I think that, you know, it has to do with
a lot of the added federal safety regulation and the
I guess, the exotic materials that they build cars out of,
you know sometimes these days, and the rate of inflation
(15:45):
is not itself constant anyways, that just gives you a
little something to think about. And I thought it was
interesting along the way that you know, I guess, apples apples,
the price of a new sedan should be seventeen thousand
eight instead of thirty one two. Yeah, but if you
really want to see those numbers in a way that
or that rate of growth in a way that can
(16:06):
hit home for a lot of our listeners, especially some
of our younger listeners. Check the cost of college back in.
Oh my gosh, these these things that's that for inflation.
These will drive you insane if you go back and
you look at it, look at some of the numbers.
So if you want to go to the cost of
living dot com and you can find some information there,
and if you pair that up with an inflation calculator,
that's where you'll start to get mean, make yourself a
(16:27):
stiff drink, Honestly, if you drink before you read some
of this stuff. To do something, try to relax. But
here we are back in nineteen seventy four in August,
and Scott, this feels cinematic some of the stuff that's
going on with some big claims, right right, right, So, Uh,
Liz Carmichael immediately gets together a sales team. Uh. They
(16:49):
start producing vehicles in uh during avenue or excuse me,
on during avenue in Canoga Park. Uh. They've got an
office in Encino and cheap fame, as Lee says, Look,
we're all going to be fabulously wealthy or we'll go
to jail. Very prophetic, right, Yeah, as well find out
And I'm sure that you know where this is going now,
(17:11):
but there's still another twist. But before we go on, Scott,
I like to pause for a moment with that cliffhanger
prophetic statement. So we were we were talking here about
the Dale, right and uh, and we were just getting
into some of these big claims. I guess that that
Liz Carmichael was making about this vehicle, right, excellent mileage, yeah,
(17:32):
great performance, speed exactly. And she has a a six
page full color brochure printed up which showcases all of
the things that you know, the Dale is supposedly gonna do.
The seventy mile per gallon Dale dollar for dollar, the
best car ever built, YEP, the most exciting new car
the century, the first space age automobile designed, built like
it's ready to be driven to the movie, the most
(17:53):
exciting idea that ever happened to personal transportation. The eyes
of the world are on the amazing New Dale. It's
a masterpiece and automotive design and engineering a whole new
standard of performance, economy and safety available in no other
car in the world today. So these bold, bold statements,
you know, they come from this brochure. And these brochures,
by the way, you're still out there. You can you
(18:14):
can find one if you know a collector. I would
guess so difficult to find. But anyways, so they also
claimed the cars structure itself is everything but bulletproof. So
they said that the shell of the Dale was made
of a quote rocket structural resin whatever that means. Well,
(18:35):
that goes back to her. You know, she's the widow
of a NASA structural engineer. Oh that's right, I'm sure
it was her her former husband's secret invention. Uh. It
will absorb over four times the impact of a cadillact
without serious damage. Uh. And the windows were made of
something called rigid X Yeah, yeah, which is uh, I've
never heard of rigid X. But it's seventy times the
(18:58):
impact resistance of safety ASS so only the force of
a bullet bend could penetrate that, that's according to her.
And so additionally had a printed circuit dashboard. So I'm
laughing about this one. Yeah, okay, just walk me through
this and make sure you got this, okay, so um.
(19:19):
So it had a printed circuit dashboard with plug in accessories,
which is which is claimed to make it easier to operate,
easier to work on, you know, the things, things won't
go wrong. It's like a solid state thing, right. I mean,
it's like your radio, your heat or your A C
goes out, you can you can just pull it out,
pull it out, plug a new one in, right, or
(19:40):
repair it and then put it back in, which is
what Tesla is doing with batteries. Well. Yeah, but the
idea behind this was that the vehicle had no wires.
And there's a flaw in this idea because you know,
all the headlights, you know, any other any other accessory
beyond what's right in the dash can't be plugged into
a circuit board like that. It sounds like, at best,
there's a lead realistic definition. Did it have an electric starter,
(20:03):
because if it did, it has wires. I mean, there's
just no way unless the entire vehicle was a printed
circuit board, there's no way that it had. It was
a wireless vehicle. Maybe that maybe it had. The wires
were placed by rigidet and and then the Maybee bent
and then the the you know everything, I mean, it
claimed it I had to air conditioning and had you know,
a heater and everything, and had all the all the
features right, the engine that they claimed it had, and
(20:25):
the warranty is pretty interesting as well, because they claimed
it was powered by a forty horsepower eight and fifty
cc horizontally opposed twin engine from a BMW motorcycle. And
of course we mentioned the eighty five mile per hour
top speed already. But it came with, you know, quite
a decent warranty really for the time, fifteen months exactly,
(20:46):
and if you wanted to pay an additional one hundred
dollars ben of course, if you wanted to do to
up your game a little bit, you could for another
hundred bucks, you could double that warranty to thirty months
and thirty thousand miles just for a hundred bucks. Who
wouldn't do that, right, Only a only fool, that's right.
And they actually went so far as to u to
put a mock up on display at the twentieth Century
(21:07):
Office in in Sino I think it was in Sino, right,
And they put stanchons all around the vehicle so you
couldn't get really too close to it to take a
good close up look at the vehicle, right, And there's
there's a reason for that because it wasn't quite what
the production model was supposed to be. Well they didn't
say that right up front, though, They said, this is
a mock up. So this is you know, what the
(21:28):
car will be. Uh, this is representative the vehicle. Now.
One of the things that stood out to anybody who
looked at this vehicle, Ben, it featured front wheels nailed
to a four by four that served as the front axle. Yeah,
but that wasn't the only car display they had. They
also did have a prototype, Ben, Did you hear me,
(21:48):
I said, I said the wheels were nailed to a
four by four that was supposed to be the front
axle of their mock up vehicle. Yeah, but they said
mock up. Okay, alright, so a good point taken. Let's
move on the prototype like you want to, I I seemed,
I want to dwell on this just a little bit more.
But well, okay, how about this. What they ran that
prototype that you're talking about, They ran it and it
(22:10):
ran so poorly that they had to go back to
the original Dale Clift mock up you know, the one
that was covered in Nauga. Hyde his commuter, They showed
him a vehicle that wasn't even the Dale for the
promotional video of this thing, because they couldn't get the
Dale prototype to actually work all that. Well, it ran,
but it ran very very poorly. Yeah, so you know
(22:31):
that this is just another thing where you know, and
and in this promotional video or in this promotional material,
I guess they're claiming that they have thirty three million
dollars invested in this thing already. Does that sound like
a couple of vehicles that have thirty three million dollars
invested already in Not really, because that's a lot of money,
(22:52):
especially in that time, well in ntree million was a
lot of scratch. I mean now you can barely retire
on that. But you know, that's the way it was
back and I should have done the conversion for that.
Oh no, wait, we I don't know if I could
take it so anyway, So so all this is going on, right,
there's the mock up, there's the prototype, neither of which
really run. The mock up no way, the prototype runs roughly.
(23:12):
They went back to the Dale Cliff design for the
promotional video and then she claims that she has one
hundred employees working in a one hundred and fifty thousand
square foot facility in Burbank, Burbank, California. UM, and the
projections called for astronomical number of cars being built each year. Right,
eight thousand cars were supposed to be sold during the
(23:34):
first year of production, and then after that two hundred
and fifty thousand vehicles were supposed to be built. UM
for the second year at one hundred dealerships and two
hundred and ten distributors all over the country at least,
if not all over the world. I'm not sure if
it went worldwide or not. But but she's selling dealerships
and and she's also selling h distributorships to people ahead
(23:56):
of time, which I don't know. Other people have done that.
Preston Tucker did that, and Tucker has done that, and
that comes up later as we'll find out. But um,
she's selling a lot of stuff that you know is
right now as we call it vaporware. Yes, And let's
go ahead and add add something here, because there's a
little bit of trouble and paradise between Dale and Liz.
(24:20):
This is a there's a sidebar that comes from an
interview with the author Richard Smith mentioned earlier. So this
interview is courtesy of the folks at three wheelers dot com.
And they had they had a question here where they said,
did Dale have any concerns about some of the claims
how this vehicle would perform or be made? And Richard says, uh,
(24:44):
you know, I would talk to Dale about some of
the concerns he had with what Liz was telling him
and anyone who would listen. Dale at this time was
so supportive of the project it was difficult to approach
him with the reality that some of the claims for
the Dale might not stand. Dale finally put his foot
down when Liz claimed seventy miles to the Gallant. From
(25:05):
this time forward, with this claim and others, Dale began
to put two and two together. Ah so now he's
starting to starting to wise and up. But right first,
he's completely on board. And at this point in the story,
Ben at this point because now we'll find out that
you know later, there's a there's a little bit of
a riff between the two of them, but but right now,
(25:25):
at this point, he's still on board. Now you said that,
and and okay, you did mention the seventy seventy miles
per gallant thing. Okay, so maybe he's already having some doubts,
but he's still backing. He's still backing the company and
saying that, yeah, we're gonna go forward with this idea.
It's amazing to see a dream made reality, while the
problem was that they're starting to be investigated as well. Now, um,
(25:48):
there's a cease and desist order that's filed by the
California Corporation Commission, um, which I guess um was supposed
to prohibit the company from continuing to sell stock in
the corporation at that point. And this is in September
of nineteen seventy four, I believe, Oh can I do
the quote? Sure? This is from Liz Carmichael, who remained unrepentant.
(26:10):
I don't want to sound like an egomaniac, but I
am a genius. She told the Associated Press, I believe
a hundred percent that this car will revolutionize the industry,
all right, you know, and just after she made that statement. Okay,
so she's making this this bold statement, you know, after
the season desist order is being levied upon the twentieth
century century business. You know overall the Dale, you know,
(26:33):
falling under that umbrella. Um we find out that um, well,
carrent Driver sends out a reporter and this pretty much
uncovers this whole thing as a scam and can here
here's the way it goes down. And I want to
read this paragraph because this is pretty interesting. Now, this
is towards the end of I believe it's towards the
end of nineteen seventy four when this happens, or night
(26:54):
is a nineteen um maybe early nineteen seventy five. It
says Car and Driver spatch photographer Mike Salisbury to see
Carmichael at her plant in person. So he's headed out
to the plant to take a photograph and get the
story for Car and Driver magazine. Right, a yellow egg
like car which was the Dale, was parked in a
corner and so this is you know, the either the
(27:15):
mock up or the or the prototype. I'm not sure which.
It says. When when he went to the vehicle, there
was no gas, pedal or steering wheel in the vehicle,
So it sounds to me like it's maybe the mock up.
Um ringed around the car when he arrived were a
couple of guys wearing Clark Kent glasses and scribbling on
on clipboards. Salisbury was convinced that they were performing a
pantomime for his benefits. So this is a ruse right
(27:37):
at the right from the onset, you know, they've got
people that are supposedly, um, I don't know, Ben's scientists
that are doing, you know, making scientific evaluations of the vehicle,
and they're wearing glasses and lab coats, I'm sure, but
they're definitely intended to give uh this car and driver
report or the idea that you know, there are people
working in this car all the time and they're very important.
(27:58):
For the off chance he's a moral, very very stupid
what's the rest of this? As soon as as soon
as they walked away from the vehicle, you know, because
they had they were done with their clipboards. Apparently at
that point, as soon as they walked away, he opened
the engine compartment and found that there was a Briggs
and Stratton lawnmower engine inside. And it didn't take much
to realize that the whole thing was a scam. He said,
(28:18):
you know, but but the best was yet to come.
And I think if you're okay with it, Scott On
that note, let's pause this for part one of our
podcast on the Dale Car. I mean, as he says,
the best is yet to come, and can we break
it right here. I don't think listeners will get tired
of it. I hope not. No, I hope not, because
(28:39):
this is not even the this is not even the
crazy part. Now there's a there's a crazy twist coming,
I'll tell you that. Yeah, And just to give us
a taste of a little something different, I've got some
listener mail before we close out. Let's do it, okay,
Scott ben W writes to us from I'm gonna mispronounce
this some of the Washington. That's got to be close.
(29:03):
I don't know. It sounds like a drunk person trying
to say a sandwich. I'm probably saying it wrong, Ben,
but thanks for writing to us. He does say. It's
it's east the Seattle, So Ben W says, high, Scott
and Ben, thank you for me another Benjamin, you guys
do a great show. You've got me a lot more
interested in cars. Well, thanks man, very good. Uh. Ben
goes on to say, I'm just finishing up listening to
your latest show about putting one horsepower motors into cars
(29:26):
and thought you might enjoy this fun fact. The Seattle
Space Needles rotating ring operates on just a one point
five horsepower motor. That's incredible, which was an upgrade from
its original one point one horsepower motor. No kidding, yeah,
he said. Granted, it doesn't move the entire saucer section,
just the ring inside the restaurant. However, this ring and
(29:48):
the related equipment way around a hundred and twenty five tons.
But apparently it's so well balanced that only takes this
tiny motor to keep it moving. That's pretty that's a
amazing that it's such a small engine would be able
to operate something like that, right. Yeah, and this is
a reference in case nobody missed it. This is a
reference to our earlier episode where we talked about whether
(30:11):
you could have a one horse power car. It's really
really interesting. Now I'm gonna take a second look at
every rotating restaurants at the tops of buildings that I
see now, one in Atlanta. Yeah. I always assume that
those have just massive engines that are spinning those things,
or are a giant electric motors Really they're spinning them? Yeah,
I never really thought it would be a one horse
power motor. I don't that may be electric. I'm not sure.
(30:34):
I'm sure it's electric. I don't think they're going to
continually feed gasoline into that. Was it the sun dial
in Atlanta? Is that the name of it? Maybe it? Yeah?
Uh so maybe we should go investigate. We need badges
that say like car Stuff Official. Yeah you know that
that look like we're FBI or something. Well, Ben, thank
you for writing to us with that fascinating fact here. Ben.
(30:54):
You also included some space needle facts and uh small
opportunities to get more information. So I am going to
figure out what kind of engine is running there or
what kind of motor rather is running there in the
Western and we are going to head out. We hope
that you stay tuned. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
Uh and if you didn't, then continue on to episode two,
(31:16):
because it is gonna get weird. It's off, yeah all right.
In the meantime, check us out on Facebook and Twitter,
visit our website car Stuff Show dot com, and send
us an email with your own weird car stories or
just engine backs. Our addresses car stuff at Discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
(31:37):
is how stuff works dot com. Let us know what
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com.
Behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with car
Stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, everybody, welcome
to car Stuff on Scott and I'm Ben Bullet and
we've got a strange Tale today. Yeah, a'sually weird, weird
piece of automotive history. We're even gonna need some strange
tale music in the beginning here, that's probably true. And
(00:25):
we're going to talk about a vehicle that is called
the Dale. Now, if you don't know about the Dale,
hang on because there's a big twist that's coming somewhere
near the middle of this story that you probably didn't expect.
Maybe maybe not. If you do about it, you know
what's coming. But either way, this is about an American
made car that that well, I guess you could say
as an American made the car that never really was. Um,
(00:47):
it's tale deception in more ways than one. Really, Yeah,
there's a lot of deception going on in this whole thing.
And again we already mentioned the twist that's coming up,
So um, there's a lot to this story and it's
it's just a fascinating bit of automotive history to make.
So cast your minds back to the glamorous wild world
(01:08):
of nineteen seventy four. Yeah, we go, we go way back.
That's almost almost forty years well that is forty years
ago at this point, right, So it's a long, long
time ago. And this is the formation of a company
called the twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation. And they had
one vehicle that they were promoting at the time, and
it was called the Dale. And this Dale vehicle was
(01:29):
a it was a revolutionary vehicle at the time, or
said to be a revolutionary vehicle at the time. You
got to remember the time frame for this whole thing. Now,
it was the the early nineteen seventies exactly right. The
fuel embargo was going on. Now, it promised a lot
of things, and there were there were a lot of
different um car designs that were coming out at this
time now, a lot of ideas for fuel efficiency, for
(01:53):
saving saving fuel. So there were bodies made of carbon
fiber even back then. There were bodies that were fitted
with wings, uh, some that floated on water. There were
three wheelers, there were six wheelers. They went back to
steam engines for a while. Jet turbines were were something
that they were kind of playing around with. You to
remember that we talked about um, the Ford vehicle that
was gonna go with nuclear power and UM, there was
at least one developer that decided that the three wheel
(02:16):
option was the way to go. Yes, that was a
gentleman named Dale Cliff. Dale Cliff, now this is the
guy that the Dale car is eventually named after. But
you know he has he plays a role in this,
but not as much of a role as he may think.
UM early on. We'll talk about him quite a bit here.
But he had this idea, he said, I wanted to
(02:36):
make this the three wheel vehicle. Um. Again, he's a
Southern California inventor and he's working for some three large
scale electronic military contract exactly. But he likes to also
kind of mess around with things in his in his
uh you know side times, I guess you know, his
time off, um, and he was kind of mechanically messing
around with a lot of different personal projects. I think
(02:58):
he built a bicycle motor and he built a device
that was designed to blow installation into an existing wall. UM.
He he also played around with motorcycle engines and things
like that, you know, the kind of mechanical things and
and UM, commuting vehicles. That was one of his ideas
was how to create a three wheel commuting vehicle that
was powered by a motorcycle engine. And he developed a
(03:21):
vehicle with um, well, he built this, you know, I
don't know if you want to say that he built
it with a friend maybe from the company that he's
working with. And I want to really give too much
away here at this point, but he built it in
his garage and in suburban Los Angeles, and it was
the three wheel design. It was, if I can just
describe it this way, it was this is the way
(03:42):
it was written in the place where we're getting this
this book, or that this information from the story from
familiar listening. Yeah, that's right. It's called the book is
called History's Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths and Rumors Revealed. And
we've used this several times in this podcast, uh to
glean some stories from uh some of the stranger uh
(04:03):
stranger parts of our past, I guess, in an automotive past. Yeah,
this is kind of like a collection of Ripley's believe
it or not, tails, specifically about cars. Yeah. It's like
think of like like a Snope story only expanded. You know,
there's a lot more information here. So we're gonna kind
of read through this, and there's there's parts of this
article that will read and uh and and one part
that I want to read here is about this vehicle. Now,
(04:24):
the vehicle itself, they say that the frame consisted of
half inch electrical conduit with the joints that were braised together.
So the mechanical components came from a motor from the
motorcycle world. The engine, for example, was a robust three
five cc twin from a Honda c B seventy seven
super Hawk. And while there were two front wheels, they
were suspended with motorcycle style forks. So the whole thing
(04:47):
was covered and the whole thing was covered with Nauga
hide in a metal flake maroon. Now Nauga hyde, you
know that's like plastic leather. Really that's fake leather. And
so that's the exterior this And we talked about that
that an obscure car that was covered with something like this,
but it had foam I think on the outside, similar
type cover. And that was the uh Safari car. That
(05:07):
was it, right, yeah, in our in our obscure car episode,
Yeah exactly. Now he he completes this three wheel prototype
vehicle which which they said. It actually looked pretty good
from the outside. Uh. He completed it in the nineteen
seventy three, so he's working on this early on. And um,
he used it to drive around town. He used to
get around town and this thing. He would go back
(05:28):
and forth to work. And you know, he had it
licensed for street you right, he had it registered as
a motorcycle. No, of course it wasn't perfect. It add
a lot of the disadvantages that you see in cottage industry,
garage built vehicles, so carbon monox i could leak into it. Um. Oh,
it was a two seater too, exactly. Yeah, that's pretty good.
So two seaters. So he would sometimes take a friend
(05:48):
with him to work or you know, just just to
run errands around town and people. It garnered a lot
of attention. In fact, it got attention of um local
press eventually. And I'll tell you about it in just
one second. But I also want to say that, you know,
along with you know, everything that was doing right, it
also had a lot of flaws. And some of these
flaws I guess and and this is a typical of somebody,
(06:08):
you know, something that someone would build in their garage,
right right, Like yeah, I mean, it would leak carbon
monoxide into the cockpit, which is a bad problem to have.
I'll tell you that if you're going a long trip,
um you know, the stopping power from the brakes was
really really negligible because tiny tires, cable driven brakes. You
can imagine what that was like. And and this might
surprise some people who I don't know if you're a
(06:30):
fan of Nauga Hide or something, but it turns out
that if this thing ever gotten a crash, Dale was screwed. Yeah,
if you're having a Nauga Hide car, I don't think
you're gonna want to hit too many other vehicles or
walls or anything like that or really anything. But again,
this is the kind of car that we have talked
about before, the kind of vehicle. Rather, it's a small,
light vehicle with a kind of short range, at least
(06:52):
of the way he was building it that is meant
for not highway drive, instimant for commuting inside the city.
And that's exactly what he was doing. When finally, you know,
some of the local press I guess kind of got
wind of what was going on and they saw him
around town and they said, hey, let's just make a
great story, Let's talk to him. So they actually interviewed him,
and they talked to him about, you know, what he
was doing, and and got a story and everything that
(07:12):
was all kind of interesting. But then that gets more
attention because more people see this, and through that attention
is where possibly this may be the turning point in
the story. This is the twist that I was going
to tell you about. But this is where a meeting
happened that I think was a set up right from
the very beginning, and a lot of people I think
I think looking back that this was a set up
as a planned meeting. But um, in nineteen seventy four,
(07:35):
while he was eating dinner in a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard,
he was approached by a stranger who told him who
knew that that that stranger said that I know somebody
who might be willing to put this three wheel vehicle
to have into production, right which at the time some
people are saying he called it the commuter cycle. Yeah,
so a lot of this story it's time to introduce
this other guy too. A lot of this story comes
(07:57):
from a close friend of Dale's, yeah, named Richard Smith.
And so Richard Smith wrote a book about this called
the Dale Automobile, an American dream, and a lot of
our accounts are coming via Smith. So Smith is one
of the people who believes that this quote unquote chance
meeting was planned from the beginning. Yeah, and there's a
(08:19):
there's a good reason for that later on, as we'll
find out. I mean, looking back, you know, they try
to piece this all together. Really, So who is this stranger. Well,
the stranger that that is supposedly able to put this
thing into production is a woman by the name of
Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael. Now I think her friends called her
Liz or Liz Carmichael, and then we'll just call her
Liz Carmichael. That her full name is Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael.
(08:42):
And the way she's described here in this article is
that she was a huge woman, um anywhere from six
ft tall and one d seventy five pounds to somewhere
around six two inches tall and two pounds, depending on
who who you talked to, right, And depending on who
you talked to again, she was either an Indiana farm
girl who worked on tractors, former stock car racer, UH
(09:06):
entrepreneur from the University of Miami, mechanical engineer from Ohio State,
the widow of a NASA structural engineer, or the owner
of a car mod company, former owner, uh customizer, patent holder,
she said, patents. There's there's this long list. She had
this self skinning foam apparently that you know, she was
(09:27):
a patent holder on and you know, again, what what
stands out? You've been about this right away? I mean,
this sounds like a charlatan, doesn't It sounds like somebody
who's just breathing into town. It's like one of you know,
the one of the people selling snake oil. Doesn't it well,
you know it does. I'm just gonna in the interest
of being fair, Scott, I'm playing Devil's advocate. I'll go
ahead and say that I guess it's possible for one
(09:49):
person to have done all these things. I guess so.
But my gosh, Ben, this is a this is quite
a resume, really, and I think of the life well
lived exactly now now she's saying, you know, Liz is saying,
I can I can get this current of production for
you and you know who. And she wasn't telling everybody
all those things all at once, saying she was telling
this two different people who asked her different times. So
she's living this life where she's telling multiple lives all
(10:12):
over the place for no way that can come back again.
Exactly right. But think about how what amazing news this
is for Dale Cliff because he if you are an inventor,
and I know we have some inventors who listened to
the show, Scott. So one thing that happens to a
lot of inventors is that you come up with an
astonishing revolutionary idea, but you have neither the capital nor
(10:37):
the know how needed to bring this thing to store shelves.
And at the same time, you want to protect your idea.
You want to you want to hold onto that, so
you know you're being cautious, but you also have to
be a bit adventurous and that you know, you have
to say, yeah, I've got to throw caution to the
win here with this one, because I believe this person
and what they say, and you can only go on
their credentials, you know what they tell you. I suppose
(10:58):
a lot more difficult at that time, probably to look
into someone's background than it was, you know, than it
is now. Right. So our girl Liz comes to Dale
and says, you know, want to put this brilliant design
into production, and I can give you what might be
three million dollars three million bucks. Now she's saying, you
know that your royalties for this whole thing would be
(11:21):
three million dollars if you if you give me this
design and let me run with it. And of course
he would remain you know, impartial control of the whole thing,
and you know, part of the company as well. However, um,
you know, she would be the controlling partner of this
whole thing. And of course she's gonna stand and make
a lot more money because she's gonna risk everything apparently,
right that's her, That's gonna be her role, right, Yeah,
So he's essentially being offered a deal to sell the
(11:45):
rights to the car exactly right now. And and you,
of course also the promise that your name will be
on the vehicle. It's gonna be called the Dale, that's
gonna be the name of the car. So that is
a tempting, tempting offer for any inventor, you know, to say, like, well,
of course you're gonna name the vehicle AFT for me? Cool?
Would that be, by the way, So let's fast forward
to August, all right, So August of nineteen seventy four,
and the company is finally formed. It's called the Liz
(12:07):
Carmichael sets this up. She calls it the twentieth Century
Motor Car Company, which uh, maybe a little bit familiar
to readers of um iron Rand, Right, yeah, right, from
iron Rand's famous novel Atlas Shrug. That's right, And it
was the title was just a little bit different. It was.
It was the twentieth Century Motor Company in the book.
Now if you again, this one is the twentieth Century
(12:30):
Motor Car Corporation, so very very similar. I could see
where a lot of people would be would be confused
with this. Now again, this is set up in August
of nineteen seventy four by Liz Carmichael, and it was
supposed to be the company that would carry the flagship
Dale vehicle. You know, this prototype three wheel two seater
sports car that was designed by Dale Cliff. You know,
it was supposed to be the greatest thing since Slice spread.
(12:52):
It was. It was a very futuristic vehicle. They had
everything laid out of. You know, how was gonna be powered,
what the shell was going to be made of, was
that the glass is gonna be made of exactly. Yeah.
It was supposed to be powered by an eight hundred
and fifty cc air cooled engine, and it claimed that
it would have us it would get seventy miles per gallon,
but we still go eighty five, still go eighty five
(13:13):
miles per hour. That's right. And so you know, with
this this great fuel economy, uh, the expected price for
this ben here we go two thousand dollars in nineteen
seventy four. That's U S dollars, two thousand dollars, which
you know, I guess when you're when you're looking at um,
you know, nineteen seventy four dollars and at the time,
you know, for what a car cost, and with the
fuel prices and all that, this was a very attractive package. Right,
(13:36):
do you have the numbers? I'm glad you have been,
because I do. I I've I've done my little you know,
inflation calculator thing that I like to do with these often,
and um, I've got something more of a question really
than anything. Now I did the calculation. Now, two thousand
dollars in nineteen seventy four is equal in two thousand,
fourteen to nine thousand, five four dollars and fifty eight cents,
(13:58):
so still a cheap. Yeah, it took new and under
ten thousand dollars to buy a brand new vehicle like that.
Where I mean this, this reminds me of the Elio
and something like that. I hate to say it, and
we went along with the story, but it does. Now
here's something I want to want to point out. I
went to a site called the cost of Living the
cost of living dot com, and I looked up what
(14:18):
the average price of the car was in nineteen seventy four,
and the average price in nineteen four with three thousand,
seven hundred and fifty dollars. So this vehicle is coming
in way under the average price, nearly half almost half,
almost half of it. But then I was thinking, okay,
that the equivalent today if if you just go by inflation.
So I did that number, the thirty seven fifty into
(14:40):
two thousand, fourteen dollars, and try to follow me here.
I did the equivalent, and the equivalent of seventeen thousand,
eight hundred and fifty eight dollars and sixty cents versus
under ten thousand. Yeah, yeah, for the for the modern
day price of the Dale exactly, that's right now. But
But my the point that I want to get at
with this is, now, if you just go a straight inflation, now,
(15:01):
the average cost of the car in ninety four was
thirty seven fifty If you take that number to today,
it's seventeen thousand, eight hundred and fifty eight. Do you remember,
just not long ago, when we talked about the average
price of a new car? Do you remember what that number?
One thirty one thousand two dollars. So what happened happened?
What happened that if we had just gone by, you know,
(15:23):
from straight inflation, it should be and if if this
were to play out equally, I guess seventeen thousand, eight
hundred fifty eight versus thirty one thousand, two hundred fifty two.
I think that, you know, it has to do with
a lot of the added federal safety regulation and the
I guess, the exotic materials that they build cars out of,
you know sometimes these days, and the rate of inflation
(15:45):
is not itself constant anyways, that just gives you a
little something to think about. And I thought it was
interesting along the way that you know, I guess, apples apples,
the price of a new sedan should be seventeen thousand
eight instead of thirty one two. Yeah, but if you
really want to see those numbers in a way that
or that rate of growth in a way that can
(16:06):
hit home for a lot of our listeners, especially some
of our younger listeners. Check the cost of college back in.
Oh my gosh, these these things that's that for inflation.
These will drive you insane if you go back and
you look at it, look at some of the numbers.
So if you want to go to the cost of
living dot com and you can find some information there,
and if you pair that up with an inflation calculator,
that's where you'll start to get mean, make yourself a
(16:27):
stiff drink, Honestly, if you drink before you read some
of this stuff. To do something, try to relax. But
here we are back in nineteen seventy four in August,
and Scott, this feels cinematic some of the stuff that's
going on with some big claims, right right, right, So, Uh,
Liz Carmichael immediately gets together a sales team. Uh. They
(16:49):
start producing vehicles in uh during avenue or excuse me,
on during avenue in Canoga Park. Uh. They've got an
office in Encino and cheap fame, as Lee says, Look,
we're all going to be fabulously wealthy or we'll go
to jail. Very prophetic, right, Yeah, as well find out
And I'm sure that you know where this is going now,
(17:11):
but there's still another twist. But before we go on, Scott,
I like to pause for a moment with that cliffhanger
prophetic statement. So we were we were talking here about
the Dale, right and uh, and we were just getting
into some of these big claims. I guess that that
Liz Carmichael was making about this vehicle, right, excellent mileage, yeah,
(17:32):
great performance, speed exactly. And she has a a six
page full color brochure printed up which showcases all of
the things that you know, the Dale is supposedly gonna do.
The seventy mile per gallon Dale dollar for dollar, the
best car ever built, YEP, the most exciting new car
the century, the first space age automobile designed, built like
it's ready to be driven to the movie, the most
(17:53):
exciting idea that ever happened to personal transportation. The eyes
of the world are on the amazing New Dale. It's
a masterpiece and automotive design and engineering a whole new
standard of performance, economy and safety available in no other
car in the world today. So these bold, bold statements,
you know, they come from this brochure. And these brochures,
by the way, you're still out there. You can you
(18:14):
can find one if you know a collector. I would
guess so difficult to find. But anyways, so they also
claimed the cars structure itself is everything but bulletproof. So
they said that the shell of the Dale was made
of a quote rocket structural resin whatever that means. Well,
(18:35):
that goes back to her. You know, she's the widow
of a NASA structural engineer. Oh that's right, I'm sure
it was her her former husband's secret invention. Uh. It
will absorb over four times the impact of a cadillact
without serious damage. Uh. And the windows were made of
something called rigid X Yeah, yeah, which is uh, I've
never heard of rigid X. But it's seventy times the
(18:58):
impact resistance of safety ASS so only the force of
a bullet bend could penetrate that, that's according to her.
And so additionally had a printed circuit dashboard. So I'm
laughing about this one. Yeah, okay, just walk me through
this and make sure you got this, okay, so um.
(19:19):
So it had a printed circuit dashboard with plug in accessories,
which is which is claimed to make it easier to operate,
easier to work on, you know, the things, things won't
go wrong. It's like a solid state thing, right. I mean,
it's like your radio, your heat or your A C
goes out, you can you can just pull it out,
pull it out, plug a new one in, right, or
(19:40):
repair it and then put it back in, which is
what Tesla is doing with batteries. Well. Yeah, but the
idea behind this was that the vehicle had no wires.
And there's a flaw in this idea because you know,
all the headlights, you know, any other any other accessory
beyond what's right in the dash can't be plugged into
a circuit board like that. It sounds like, at best,
there's a lead realistic definition. Did it have an electric starter,
(20:03):
because if it did, it has wires. I mean, there's
just no way unless the entire vehicle was a printed
circuit board, there's no way that it had. It was
a wireless vehicle. Maybe that maybe it had. The wires
were placed by rigidet and and then the Maybee bent
and then the the you know everything, I mean, it
claimed it I had to air conditioning and had you know,
a heater and everything, and had all the all the
features right, the engine that they claimed it had, and
(20:25):
the warranty is pretty interesting as well, because they claimed
it was powered by a forty horsepower eight and fifty
cc horizontally opposed twin engine from a BMW motorcycle. And
of course we mentioned the eighty five mile per hour
top speed already. But it came with, you know, quite
a decent warranty really for the time, fifteen months exactly,
(20:46):
and if you wanted to pay an additional one hundred
dollars ben of course, if you wanted to do to
up your game a little bit, you could for another
hundred bucks, you could double that warranty to thirty months
and thirty thousand miles just for a hundred bucks. Who
wouldn't do that, right, Only a only fool, that's right.
And they actually went so far as to u to
put a mock up on display at the twentieth Century
(21:07):
Office in in Sino I think it was in Sino, right,
And they put stanchons all around the vehicle so you
couldn't get really too close to it to take a
good close up look at the vehicle, right, And there's
there's a reason for that because it wasn't quite what
the production model was supposed to be. Well they didn't
say that right up front, though, They said, this is
a mock up. So this is you know, what the
(21:28):
car will be. Uh, this is representative the vehicle. Now.
One of the things that stood out to anybody who
looked at this vehicle, Ben, it featured front wheels nailed
to a four by four that served as the front axle. Yeah,
but that wasn't the only car display they had. They
also did have a prototype, Ben, Did you hear me,
(21:48):
I said, I said the wheels were nailed to a
four by four that was supposed to be the front
axle of their mock up vehicle. Yeah, but they said
mock up. Okay, alright, so a good point taken. Let's
move on the prototype like you want to, I I seemed,
I want to dwell on this just a little bit more.
But well, okay, how about this. What they ran that
prototype that you're talking about, They ran it and it
(22:10):
ran so poorly that they had to go back to
the original Dale Clift mock up you know, the one
that was covered in Nauga. Hyde his commuter, They showed
him a vehicle that wasn't even the Dale for the
promotional video of this thing, because they couldn't get the
Dale prototype to actually work all that. Well, it ran,
but it ran very very poorly. Yeah, so you know
(22:31):
that this is just another thing where you know, and
and in this promotional video or in this promotional material,
I guess they're claiming that they have thirty three million
dollars invested in this thing already. Does that sound like
a couple of vehicles that have thirty three million dollars
invested already in Not really, because that's a lot of money,
(22:52):
especially in that time, well in ntree million was a
lot of scratch. I mean now you can barely retire
on that. But you know, that's the way it was
back and I should have done the conversion for that.
Oh no, wait, we I don't know if I could
take it so anyway, So so all this is going on, right,
there's the mock up, there's the prototype, neither of which
really run. The mock up no way, the prototype runs roughly.
(23:12):
They went back to the Dale Cliff design for the
promotional video and then she claims that she has one
hundred employees working in a one hundred and fifty thousand
square foot facility in Burbank, Burbank, California. UM, and the
projections called for astronomical number of cars being built each year. Right,
eight thousand cars were supposed to be sold during the
(23:34):
first year of production, and then after that two hundred
and fifty thousand vehicles were supposed to be built. UM
for the second year at one hundred dealerships and two
hundred and ten distributors all over the country at least,
if not all over the world. I'm not sure if
it went worldwide or not. But but she's selling dealerships
and and she's also selling h distributorships to people ahead
(23:56):
of time, which I don't know. Other people have done that.
Preston Tucker did that, and Tucker has done that, and
that comes up later as we'll find out. But um,
she's selling a lot of stuff that you know is
right now as we call it vaporware. Yes, And let's
go ahead and add add something here, because there's a
little bit of trouble and paradise between Dale and Liz.
(24:20):
This is a there's a sidebar that comes from an
interview with the author Richard Smith mentioned earlier. So this
interview is courtesy of the folks at three wheelers dot com.
And they had they had a question here where they said,
did Dale have any concerns about some of the claims
how this vehicle would perform or be made? And Richard says, uh,
(24:44):
you know, I would talk to Dale about some of
the concerns he had with what Liz was telling him
and anyone who would listen. Dale at this time was
so supportive of the project it was difficult to approach
him with the reality that some of the claims for
the Dale might not stand. Dale finally put his foot
down when Liz claimed seventy miles to the Gallant. From
(25:05):
this time forward, with this claim and others, Dale began
to put two and two together. Ah so now he's
starting to starting to wise and up. But right first,
he's completely on board. And at this point in the story,
Ben at this point because now we'll find out that
you know later, there's a there's a little bit of
a riff between the two of them, but but right now,
(25:25):
at this point, he's still on board. Now you said that,
and and okay, you did mention the seventy seventy miles
per gallant thing. Okay, so maybe he's already having some doubts,
but he's still backing. He's still backing the company and
saying that, yeah, we're gonna go forward with this idea.
It's amazing to see a dream made reality, while the
problem was that they're starting to be investigated as well. Now, um,
(25:48):
there's a cease and desist order that's filed by the
California Corporation Commission, um, which I guess um was supposed
to prohibit the company from continuing to sell stock in
the corporation at that point. And this is in September
of nineteen seventy four, I believe, Oh can I do
the quote? Sure? This is from Liz Carmichael, who remained unrepentant.
(26:10):
I don't want to sound like an egomaniac, but I
am a genius. She told the Associated Press, I believe
a hundred percent that this car will revolutionize the industry,
all right, you know, and just after she made that statement. Okay,
so she's making this this bold statement, you know, after
the season desist order is being levied upon the twentieth
century century business. You know overall the Dale, you know,
(26:33):
falling under that umbrella. Um we find out that um, well,
carrent Driver sends out a reporter and this pretty much
uncovers this whole thing as a scam and can here
here's the way it goes down. And I want to
read this paragraph because this is pretty interesting. Now, this
is towards the end of I believe it's towards the
end of nineteen seventy four when this happens, or night
(26:54):
is a nineteen um maybe early nineteen seventy five. It
says Car and Driver spatch photographer Mike Salisbury to see
Carmichael at her plant in person. So he's headed out
to the plant to take a photograph and get the
story for Car and Driver magazine. Right, a yellow egg
like car which was the Dale, was parked in a
corner and so this is you know, the either the
(27:15):
mock up or the or the prototype. I'm not sure which.
It says. When when he went to the vehicle, there
was no gas, pedal or steering wheel in the vehicle,
So it sounds to me like it's maybe the mock up.
Um ringed around the car when he arrived were a
couple of guys wearing Clark Kent glasses and scribbling on
on clipboards. Salisbury was convinced that they were performing a
pantomime for his benefits. So this is a ruse right
(27:37):
at the right from the onset, you know, they've got
people that are supposedly, um, I don't know, Ben's scientists
that are doing, you know, making scientific evaluations of the vehicle,
and they're wearing glasses and lab coats, I'm sure, but
they're definitely intended to give uh this car and driver
report or the idea that you know, there are people
working in this car all the time and they're very important.
(27:58):
For the off chance he's a moral, very very stupid
what's the rest of this? As soon as as soon
as they walked away from the vehicle, you know, because
they had they were done with their clipboards. Apparently at
that point, as soon as they walked away, he opened
the engine compartment and found that there was a Briggs
and Stratton lawnmower engine inside. And it didn't take much
to realize that the whole thing was a scam. He said,
(28:18):
you know, but but the best was yet to come.
And I think if you're okay with it, Scott On
that note, let's pause this for part one of our
podcast on the Dale Car. I mean, as he says,
the best is yet to come, and can we break
it right here. I don't think listeners will get tired
of it. I hope not. No, I hope not, because
(28:39):
this is not even the this is not even the
crazy part. Now there's a there's a crazy twist coming,
I'll tell you that. Yeah, And just to give us
a taste of a little something different, I've got some
listener mail before we close out. Let's do it, okay,
Scott ben W writes to us from I'm gonna mispronounce
this some of the Washington. That's got to be close.
(29:03):
I don't know. It sounds like a drunk person trying
to say a sandwich. I'm probably saying it wrong, Ben,
but thanks for writing to us. He does say. It's
it's east the Seattle, So Ben W says, high, Scott
and Ben, thank you for me another Benjamin, you guys
do a great show. You've got me a lot more
interested in cars. Well, thanks man, very good. Uh. Ben
goes on to say, I'm just finishing up listening to
your latest show about putting one horsepower motors into cars
(29:26):
and thought you might enjoy this fun fact. The Seattle
Space Needles rotating ring operates on just a one point
five horsepower motor. That's incredible, which was an upgrade from
its original one point one horsepower motor. No kidding, yeah,
he said. Granted, it doesn't move the entire saucer section,
just the ring inside the restaurant. However, this ring and
(29:48):
the related equipment way around a hundred and twenty five tons.
But apparently it's so well balanced that only takes this
tiny motor to keep it moving. That's pretty that's a
amazing that it's such a small engine would be able
to operate something like that, right. Yeah, and this is
a reference in case nobody missed it. This is a
reference to our earlier episode where we talked about whether
(30:11):
you could have a one horse power car. It's really
really interesting. Now I'm gonna take a second look at
every rotating restaurants at the tops of buildings that I
see now, one in Atlanta. Yeah. I always assume that
those have just massive engines that are spinning those things,
or are a giant electric motors Really they're spinning them? Yeah,
I never really thought it would be a one horse
power motor. I don't that may be electric. I'm not sure.
(30:34):
I'm sure it's electric. I don't think they're going to
continually feed gasoline into that. Was it the sun dial
in Atlanta? Is that the name of it? Maybe it? Yeah?
Uh so maybe we should go investigate. We need badges
that say like car Stuff Official. Yeah you know that
that look like we're FBI or something. Well, Ben, thank
you for writing to us with that fascinating fact here. Ben.
(30:54):
You also included some space needle facts and uh small
opportunities to get more information. So I am going to
figure out what kind of engine is running there or
what kind of motor rather is running there in the
Western and we are going to head out. We hope
that you stay tuned. We hope you enjoyed this episode.
Uh and if you didn't, then continue on to episode two,
(31:16):
because it is gonna get weird. It's off, yeah all right.
In the meantime, check us out on Facebook and Twitter,
visit our website car Stuff Show dot com, and send
us an email with your own weird car stories or
just engine backs. Our addresses car stuff at Discovery dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
(31:37):
is how stuff works dot com. Let us know what
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com.
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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