These look an aweful lot like the new Tweels introduced by Michelin last year. Although I doubt the Tweels are made of wood…

Rubber Spokes Give Bounce to Airless Safety Tires

Hard wood, embedded in rubber, forms the rim of a new safety tire invented by J. V. Martin of Garden City, N. Y. Said to be more resilient and lighter than pneumatic types, the safety tire has hoops of hickory incased in rubber and fitted with crisscross spokes of ribbed rubber. Punctureproof and blowout-proof, the airless tires absorbed practically all vertical movement when a springless test car drove over four-inch blocks strung along a concrete road in a recent trial, it is claimed.

Baby Fire Truck might be just the thing for baby fires. It is powered by a small gasoline engine and is equipped with a siren that can wail almost as loudly as its big brothers. Truck’s sides are ladders,. Driver is Milton Bunker of Escabana, Mich.

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MM’S SHOWROOM OF 1936 AUTOMOBILES

Epitomizing the pinnacle of motoring luxury, the 1936 Packard sedan (above) will add new laurels to Packard craftsmanship. It features independent front wheel suspension, automatic chassis lubrication, and cool mixture carburetion.

Here is a cut-away photo of the Packard carburetion system. Raw gasoline cannot flood the motor as it drops into the vaporizing chamber where hot manifold converts it into gas.

Upholding Buick’s reputation for dependability and exceptional performance will be this sleek sport coupe (above) of Buick Series 40. It is powered by a 93-horsepower straight eight engine of valve-in-head design. One of its features is the new light-pressure clutch, shown at left. To provide additional smoothness when the clutch takes hold, individual cushioning springs are inserted between the fabric facing and metal base.

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They Travel To Keep Motorists Posted

LIVING like gypsies in their own trucks, signpost crews of the Automobile Club of Southern California have erected 500,000 signs of 125 types in their area. They cover 200,000 miles a year, posting 50,000 signs annually to keep abreast of changing road conditions. Often the crews are gone from headquarters ten days at a time, sleeping in beds which swing down from the roofs of their trucks and cooking on gas stoves which slide out onto the back platform.

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HITCH YOUR WAGON TO A CAR

By H. W. MAGEE

PART I

THE canvas-topped prairie schooner, the original home on wheels, crawled across a continent and transformed it into a nation. This slow, clumsy conveyance carried the pioneers and their meager belongings across the plains and pushed our frontiers westward to the Pacific.

Today America is returning to the covered-wagon era, and the modern covered wagon again is extending our individual boundaries by releasing us from permanent abodes and providing a mode of travel so comfortable and inexpensive that we are likely some day to become a nation of nomads.

Today’s prairie schooner is a streamlined, luxury-crammed “cottage” on rubber-tired wheels. It is hitched to a 100-horsepower car instead of to a team of oxen. Thousands of families are towing these rolling homes behind their cars today, living in them as they travel. They stop where fancy dictates, and wherever they stop, home is waiting just behind the rear bumper. When they tire of sitting still, they move—and take their home along.

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I have no idea if this worked, or if it was even real, but it sure does look cool. Recently Boston Dynamics has made a robot pack-mule that is somewhat similar.

Here is a later article in Mechanix Illustrated with little tanks that look somewhat similar.

HORSE OF STEEL RUNS ACROSS FIELDS

A MECHANICAL horse that trots and gallops on steel-pipe legs, under the impulse of a gasoline engine, is the recent product of an Italian inventor. With this horse, he declares, children may be trained to ride. The iron Dobbin is said to canter along a road or across a rough field with equal ease. Its design recalls the attempts of inventors, before the days of the automobile, to imitate nature and produce a mechanical steed capable of drawing a wagon.

Motor Cycle Equipped for Jungle Trip

PLANNING a motor-cycle trip from London, England, to Capetown, South Africa, an English rider outfitted his machine with the odd framework of pipes shown at the left. The pipes hold extra gasoline for long desert and jungle stretches where filling stations are few and far between. A canvas sheet thrown over the pipes and hanging to the ground will form an improvised garage to protect the motor cycle at night.

Tots protected by plastic cocoon

For $19.95 you now can buy an item called a Tot-Guard to protect your moppets from injury in case your car has a collision. Developed by Ford Motor, it consists of a hollow-molded shield and three-inch-high cushion of polyethylene. A removable foam pad fits inside the shield to take impacts. Engineers have crash-tested it for safety.

Parlor Is Garage for this unique cycle-drive car made by an ingenious Englishman for taking his wife out into the country. Yes, they keep it in the drawing room! It fools the police, for they think it’s an auto and ask to see the license.

Make Trailer From Defunct Auto

OLD automobile bodies that have been consigned to the junkyard can still do a lot of good in the world, for they can be pressed into service as very substantial trailers.

The chief operation you will have to perform on the auto is the cutting ofF of the front at about the point of the dashboard. This disposes of the motor and its weight. You can easily contrive your own coupling. In the photo above the side members of the chassis are bent in, to form a V, at the point of which is attached the coupler.

Of course, weight should be reduced to a minimum. Strip the machine down to its essentials, and you’ll have accommodations for extra passengers and luggage when you go camping.

Bulletproof Body Turns Any Auto into an Armored Car

Every automobile in the United States is potentially an armored car, under a plan recently proposed to aid the national defense program. The scheme would provide tanklike bodies of half-inch steel which could be speedily mounted on the chassis of standard cars. Swarms of these “minute man tanks,” the proponents claim, would prove an invaluable aid in combating invaders and parachute troops.