Archive
Transportation
AROUND THE WORLD BY KART! (May, 1962)

AROUND THE WORLD BY KART!

“They said we were crazy to try — but we’ve already traveled 10,000 miles!”

By William Glen Davis

DRIVE a kart around the world?

Man, you’re nuts! You’ll never make it!”

This was the almost universal reaction that greeted my announced intention to circle the globe on a four-wheeled beetle smaller than many a baby carriage. Now, 10,000 miles later, I like to think the scoffers have been silenced.

My plan was first to drive from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back in order to test the feasibility of a ’round-the-world trip by kart. Then I would head for New York and from there take a boat to Europe. Once in Europe I would work out the details of my itinerary.

.
Jet-Age Custom Car (Sep, 1954)

What this really reminds me of is the car from The Ambiguously Gay Duo

Jet-Age Custom Car
No flames spout from the tail pipes of a custom-built three-wheeled car, but that is about the only difference between it and a space ship! The engine is a 60-horsepower V8 mounted in the rear. A single front wheel is suspended on a motorcycle fork. The sheet-metal body is welded to the frame. Air scoops on each side of the body ventilate the engine. The 10 tail pipes permit the hot air from the engine to escape. The unusual car was built by Stanley M. Eakin of Grove City, Ohio. It took six years of his spare time. Top speed is about 90 miles per hour.

.
Early Porsche (Sep, 1953)

Looks like it would be a lot of fun to try getting into that.

New German Sports Car Called 125-Mile-an-Hour Speedster
A recent entry in the sports-car field is this Porsche racer from Germany—a more powerful and faster machine than the model previously offered by the same maker. Power has been boosted from 70 to 80 horsepower and maximum speed, it is reported, from about 110 to 125 miles an hour. Body design has been revamped, too, with the result that the new model has a body a few inches lower than its predecessor.

.
Lucky Kid’s Midget Tractor (Sep, 1949)

Lucky kid, I want a tractor too!

Our next award goes to a proud wife and mother, Mrs. S. C. Manila, of Boyceville. Wisconsin. Her letter reads, “I cannot help but forward the enclosed, snapshot of a tractor my husband made for our youngsters. It really has created envy in everyone who sees it. It stops traffic and all children just must touch it and ride in it. I am sure your readers will be interested. It is powered with a 2/3-hp. engine and will pull four coaster wagons carrying 12 children. Our boy in the snapshot is just four years old.”

.
SECRET WEAPONS (Apr, 1944)

This article is supposedly about German secret weapons, but really is a propaganda piece expounding on the superiority of American arms and engineering. My favorite quote is: “So far the Germans haven’t come through with anything approaching the new British-American jet-driven plane, which is already in production.”

As far as I know the Germans already had Me-262‘s in the field at this point. The the only American jet to be deployed in the war was the P-80 and by the end of hostilities in Europe, a grand total of 4 had made it to Europe.

SECRET WEAPONS

by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

“Our new weapons,” says Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, “can be and are kept secret, except that the enemy receives hill knowledge of their effects.” Here, in a sober analysis. Mi’s military analyst debunks the Herrenvolk’s “secret weapon” scare.

OUT of the rumor factories of Stockholm, Bern, and Berlin come periodic threats of miracle-working Nazi “secret weapons” that will blast the Allies sky high and clinch the war overnight. Are they sheer bluff?

As this is being written, a hullabaloo is still raging in the press over the much-touted German “rocket bomb.” Dr. Goebbels himself, fanning the propaganda flames, has claimed that a whole British convoy was wiped out in the English Channel in a matter of minutes by murderous long-range rocket shells. He would have us believe that the entire North French coast is a solid mass of rocket batteries capable of lobbing 12-ton bombs over London, each one powerful enough to devastate 20 square miles.

.
Home Made Streamliner (Sep, 1949)

This is a really cool looking car.

Home Made Streamliner
HERE’S a little workbench project you can try out some evening. But remember, the job (pictured above) took mechanical engineer Norman E. Timbs 2-1/2 years of sparetime work and cost him around $10,000.

The chassis is of tubular construction and the car itself is 17-1/2 feet long with a 117-inch wheelbase. It weighs 2300 pounds. The hydraulically raised rear deck (1) covers a Buick engine (just behind the driver’s seat), gas tank (between the wheels) and a spare tire and wheel. And the front hood (2) covers a luggage compartment.

Some pedestrians think the auto looks like a whale; others think it resembles a turtle. But, whale or turtle, all agree they’d like to own the “critter” themselves.

.
Giant Cleaner Sucks Out Bus (Sep, 1953)

I wish I could clean my house this way…

Giant Cleaner Sucks Out Bus
A Chicago company cleans out 110 buses every 24 hours with a king-size vacuum cleaner that attaches to the front door’ and inhales all the debris in each vehicle. Two 28-inch vacuum fans “create air pressure behind a huge bellows that does the job. A man helps remove stubborn particles with an air hose.

.
Japanese Drive Dummy Tanks (Sep, 1953)

Japanese Drive Dummy Tanks
Fledgling tank drivers in Japan’s security police force learn the ropes in the weird contraption above. Instruments, brake levers and periscope are copies of those in a U. S. Army M-24 tank.

.
Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices (May, 1955)

Given all the stories I’ve been reading at the Consumerist, it wouldn’t surprise me if the airlines still used these things.

Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices

American Airlines has turned to an electronic machine to provide fast, accurate flight information to all its offices in the New York area. The machine, the Magne-tronic Reservisor, is already in use, handling reservations automatically. In its new utilization, information on all flights, incoming and outgoing, is fed into the whirling drum that is the machine’s “memory,”
and is then available at any airline office in the area. To obtain the information, an agent has only to push a simple combination of buttons on the branch-office keyboard. The answer is returned in flashing lights. Immediately available flight information allows the agent to answer queries at once instead of checking bulletin-board postings.

.
Aerocoupe Speeds 75 M.P.H. (Mar, 1937)

I’m not quite sure how adding an unneccessary tail to a car makes it highly streamlined, but I do like his driving goggles.

Aerocoupe Speeds 75 M.P.H.
HIGHLY streamlined and following accepted aeronautical design in construction, a novel aerocoupe developed by Richard Crossley, of East Haven, Conn., has a top speed of 75 m.p.h. The cabin resembles an airplane fuselage, featuring longerons, braces, etc. For traction, the vehicle is equipped with three airplane-type wheels.

.