Hit the California Jackpot!

You know what I’ve always wondered? Why we don’t see more contest cars. That is, cars won by entering some kind of contest back in the day. Flipping through old magazines, it seemed there was at least one car you could win in every issue, so if those contests were on the up and up, there’d be plenty of cars won in such a manner showing up at car shows and in car magazines.

Such as the 1951 Crosley Super Sports above, the October Crosley of the Month on the Crosley Automobile Club’s website. Owner Steve Gillie of Springboro, Ohio, didn’t win the car in a contest, but the Stewart family of Hamilton, Ohio, did, after entering a jingle contest sponsored by Mission Orange, a soft drink maker.

How Mission Orange chose a Crosley Super Sports as a prize, I dunno. Whether the Stewart family took possession of their five-acre California orange grove, I dunno (though it’d certainly be worth way more than the Crosley nowadays).

Know of any other contest-prize cars still out there?

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Six Degrees of Automotive Separation – Jaguar and Honda

For those of you following the Hemmings Six Degrees of Separation Challenge closely, you may have realized that lately, I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall, seeing if it’ll stick. You dear readers have been so stellar at finding both the direct and the obscure connections between any two auto companies I posit, I almost don’t need to work it out myself beforehand.

So this time, I’m not. As of this writing, I haven’t really investigated whether there is a connection in six degrees or less between Jaguar and Honda (minus any possible connections in Formula 1/Indycar racing). But I have faith that you can find such a connection.

The rules, as always, are simple: A connection consists of one company owning another, merging with another or sharing another’s parts. Explain your connections, and keep in mind that the point isn’t necessarily to do it in the least number of connections, but to do it with style and with obscure connections. If you need examples, check out our previous Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenges.

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Transitier: the Crosley-powered forklift

Forklift? Forklift. I had never found any reason to get the least bit excited about a forklift, at least not until I ran across Barry Seel’s photos of his Transitier on the Crosley Gang mailing list recently (right around the same time I spotted the Gasporter photos we ran yesterday – I’m just making this a Crosley-powered week). We already know that Crosley’s OHC four-cylinder engines started out as generator engines and eventually found their way into boats as well as at least one airplane, and thanks to Barry, we can add forklifts to that list. In Barry’s words:

There was a company in Portland Oregon, called Transitier, who built a 3 wheeled forklift truck powered by an air cooled 4 cylinder Wisconsin engine. The wisconsin was almost impossible to work on being so wide.  Sometime in early 1945 Transitier contacted  Crosley to supply engines for the forklift. The best I was able to find out that in July 1945 there were 125 Transitier Crosley powered forklifts purchased by the US Military. Mine is the only known to exisist out of that order. Later Pettibone bought Transitier and continued to make that style forklift with the Crosley engine up until 1968. I do not know where I found it, but I saved a copy, I found a notation where Pettibone purchased Transitier from Powel Crosley.

(Crosley Auto Club President) Dave Anspach found mine buried halfway up in the woods north of Reading, Pa. while deer hunting. It belonged to a mushroom farmer who purchased it in 1955  at an Army Surplus Sale at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. He used it to load pallets of mushroom into trucks up until 1972 and then drove it between some trees in the woods, and left it sit. The original tin block engine was laying inside one of the buildings. He replaced the tin block a couple of years after he bought the forklift, when it thew a rod thru the side of the crankcase.

It took a backhoe, and a very strong  winch on my trailer to get it out of its grave.  When I got it home I thought it was so bad, I might as well just scrap it. When I took the engine covers off all I saw was mud. I pressure washed the the engine compartment to see if there was anything in there. I could not believe it after sitting all those years in a damp woods, halfway buried the the engine was loose. Two hours later I actually fired it up. The engine had a broken piston, thats probably why the guy stopped using it. The clutch was completly rusted away, as it sits directly on the top of the trans exposed. It took a 20 ton porta-power to get the main mast unstuck. 6 weeks later I sand blasted it. It had at leat 10 coats of brush painted enamel paint on it, and when I got down to the last coat I found OD green paint, and alot of military markings. One I could still read, Gavabutu Ordianance Depot. I had thrown together a Crosley engine with all used parts, dismantled the trans, and hydraulic pump, and replaced the seals in them. I put it all back together and repainted it OD Green. I use it on my farm all the time.

The engine, by the way, powers the forklift via a screwy vertical clutch and transmission arrangement, then to the front wheels.

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2 years after- Old Navy truck issues still hitting our inbox.

One of the trucks is now on display in the showroom of Classic Parts in Kansas City.

All of the trucks were prepared for the Old Navy stores by the Alan Brasington Network in New York and stripped of engines and transmissions. Most still have differentials, however, any body work done to prepare these trucks for delivery was purely cosmetic with bondo and tin replacing cab corners and rusted wheel wells. Many lack interior details as well, no floorboards, no pedals, etc.  and the bed floors and floor boards were often just a piece of plywood. Still, every once in a while some of the better shells that weren’t too gutted come up for sale, many through dealers who bought a pile of them or as a single unit through online auctions.

At least twice a month since Dan’s posting, we receive an inquiry from buyers looking for titles or door jam plates with correct VINs and other documentation necessary to put these trucks back on the road.  We also have heard many horror stories involving motor vehicle departments and state inspection stations after new buyers have installed drivetrains and made the truck roadworthy but cannot register these trucks in their respective states because of the paperwork issues. Here are a few quick things you should be aware of when purchasing one of these trucks.

A. None of them come with titles. Old Navy has none or won’t release them because of corporate accounting regulations or some other crappy excuse and neither does Brasington have any paperwork for any of these trucks.  This means you have to go through one of the title companies, pay a hefty fee and wait for acceptable paperwork to come in the mail.

B. Most have had the VIN removed from the driver’s door jam making it even more difficult to put one of the trucks back on the road.  Any vehicle without a VIN cannot be registered and in states that do issue replacement VINs roadworthy vehicles have to pass a state safety inspection before a new non-original VIN can be issued. Many states also have “you only get one shot” rules involving this inspection process as well. Maryland, for example, has the right to confiscate the truck should it not pass the safety inspection.

Laws vary by state, but it is a very good idea to check what your regulations are before considering purchasing one of these trucks. If you are looking for a parts truck to repair an Advanced Design pickup you already own, it is great that there are actually vehicles out there you can get parts from, but you should investigate thoroughly before purchasing one of these trucks with the notion of re-streeting it. The idea of being able to buy a 55-year-old truck for a few thousand dollars may be tempting, but you could be setting yourself up for a at least twice that in restoration work, re-title, inspection and registration fees. Buyer beware.

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SIA Flashback – New Life for Old Fords and Suddenly, It’s 1958

These two stories from SIA #48, December 1978, would obviously not fly in today’s political climate. A bunch of 1958 Chevrolets still serving as rental car duty at a nearly forgotten airport? Crush them all, and give the fleet sales to a needy automaker. Rebody a Model A chassis and spare it from the junkyard? Crush it, and open up a line of credit to buy a new car. It’s amazing the editors of SIA even took the time to write about, much less appreciate, these old clunkers.

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