.....;Posted on 02/11/2014 6:10:08 PM PST by virgil283
"Ten years ago, I received a letter from a man named Bob Shotwell who lived in a small town in Minnesota. He knew that I liked old cars from watching me on television. And he wanted to give me one.
He recalled that he asked his father for a car as he was about to graduate from high school in the early 1930s. But his dad replied that if he wanted a car, he should build one. So, 17-year-old Bob scrounged parts and made his own car. It was a little three-wheeled coupe powered by a 77.2-cu.-in. four-cylinder 1931 Indian motorcycle engine...."
.....;
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Bob Shotwell went on to a career as a pilot for Northwest Airlines, retiring in 1975. He married and raised two children--and his little coupe was always an important part of the family's life.
But at age 82, he was afraid that the car would end up being torn apart by motorcycle guys for its precious Indian engine. He didn't want that to happen. So, he said he'd give me Philbert as long as I promised that I wouldn't break it up.
Once, a 17-year-old could build a three-wheeled car and drive it around the country.
.......Read more: Jay Remembers the Three-Wheeled Car - Popular Mechanics
Elio Motors and the Three Wheeled Car - A Moonshot Project ($6800, 84 mpg)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3119736/posts
Reminds me of “The World’s Fastest Indian”. I saw it on TV and had no idea what it was about until I saw it.
Fairly entertaining movie tho don’t know how accurate it was.
once, government would actually allow a citizen to build and drive a car they made.
Jay also has a very rare Chrysler Turbine. They only made something like 55 of them and they destroyed most of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2A5ijU3Ivs
Even the factories were more outgoing and willing to experiment before government regulations came into play.
Jay talks about the Chrysler turbine being one of those experiments that was actually pretty successful but Chrysler knew it would never be viable with the emissions controls that they saw coming.
The best was when he needed to ask people to help push him out of the elevator, because the car had no “Reverse” gear!
When I was a kid, our pastor was retired as president of a Baptist Seminary. Dr. Lett had a PHD from Yale. Pretty impressive for a little country church.
Dr. Lett’s Son Phillip who also had a PHD was head of the engineering team at Chrysler who developed the M1 Abrams tank. Of course it used the turbine engine.
It was a Peel P50 and there's your episode!
Kewel
Clarkson talks about how exciting it would be to set fire to Piers Morgan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onjPdHUa13w
I believe there were kit airplanes as well. when i was a kid, I wanted to build my own airplane with a lawnmower engine. then i went to try to build my own liquid fueled rocket. i could design it but as kid had no money to build one and even though i knew i could get little oxygen canisters, i wasn’t sure i could get liquid hydrogen.
M4l
Bump for later in-depth perusal.
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