Memphis Auto

From the same Yardley, Pennsylvania, based seller of the 1943 White from the other day comes this 1944 Ford M20. This one I had to look up in Crismon, where I see that the M20 was also designated the T26 and was based on the Ford T22 Armored Car. The difference between the two is that the T22 had a turret, while the M20/T26 had a Browning machine gun on a ring mount. From the seller’s description:

top speed 60 mph, restored & has field radio, complete, all it needs is gas to go to war

Crismon also wrote that the M20/T26 was powered by a 112hp Hercules JXD 320-cu.in. six-cylinder engine, though he pegged its top speed at just 55 MPH.

Source: Daniel Strohl

While the auctions in Scottsdale are usually the big winter news within the collector car hobby, the pre-spring events in Florida – in particular the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance – are one of the early signals that warmer weather is on the way over here on the East Coast.

Attending this year’s four-day event (scheduled to kick off on Thursday) is our very own Daniel Strohl, who is also planning to stop at the two auctions in town during the weekend.

Among RM Auctions‘ 114 lots that are scheduled to cross the block on Saturday is lot 182: a 1964 Shelby Cobra USRRC Roadster (CSX 2557) (see image above). Currently, the RM estimate is $1.5 – $1.9 million.

Nearby, Gooding & Company intends to hold their 72-lot auction on Friday, which will include a 1947 Mercury half-ton panel truck (lot 15) offered without reserve.

Both auction companies’ full catalogs can be found on their websites via the links above, or here and here, and look for Dan’s reports in the coming months within the pages of our Hemmings titles.

Source: Matt

From Eddie Stakes comes this ad for a 1968 AMC Javelin, “the first of the AMX cars.” So, if we read literally into this, is the AMC Javelin the tool of the hunter or the hunter itself? Will it eat up all the Mustangs, Cougars, Barracudas and Firebirds once it’s hunted them down, or is it just meant to spear them for the fur bikini chick? And it’s a little ironic, donchathink, that AMC had just chucked the Marlin a year before this ad came out.

Source: Daniel Strohl

While most of the rest of the Hemmings staff who took the latest Hemmings cruise to the Mexican Riviera spent a couple days prior to the cruise bopping around Los Angeles, taking in museums and seeing the sights, Heather and I stayed in Long Beach, visiting friends and enjoying the warm weather.

Which is not to say I didn’t do my best to grab some shots of the Long Beach automotive wildlife while we were there. A walk along the marina provided a bit of sightseeing, and from the conditions of some of the vehicles, it appears they belong to boat-dwellers at the marina. On the solid ground side of the parking lot, it appeared the city had already begun setting up for the Long Beach Grand Prix next month.

Then at the end of the walk, we got a clear view of the Queen Mary. We later got a chance to walk around the great ship, which was a great opportunity, but the condition of the ship – deteriorating and neglected – was downright awful. I just read the other day, though, that there’s currently an effort underway to upgrade the QM. Hopefully they do her right.

Source: Daniel Strohl

The writers for RM are usually great about filling us in on the details of the cars they auction off, but the story behind this 1948 Mercury ute is rather thin. Over on the RM Fort Lauderdale site we see that it’s from the John O’Quinn collection (and that it’s estimated to sell for $20,000 to $40,000), but we see little else. From the auction description:

A rare right-hand drive example, this Mercury features an older body-up restoration, a flathead Ford V8,a wooden bed and a box cover.

Based on the number plate, this is the same Mercury ute that I saw at the Leake/Kruse Tulsa auction in 2005. It sold there for $19,750, and I rated it in #3+ condition.

See more Mercury vehicles for sale on Hemmings.com.

Source: Daniel Strohl

Last year, when we went through the photos of the Virtual Motor City Project, we came across an interesting photo of an unidentified cab-over engine truck hauling bomber parts through downtown Detroit during World War II.

We were able to find out a little more about the truck through Crismon and through James Wagner’s “Ford Trucks Since 1905,” but we couldn’t get a clear answer as to who actually built the trucks. Crismon maintained Thorco (a brand of the Thornton Axle Company) built them, while Wagner posited that it was E&L Transport of Dearborn, Michigan.

What makes the trucks so compelling is that whoever built them used two Ford flathead V-8s, mounted side-by-side on a removable tray, complete with their cooling, electrical and exhaust systems. The trucks needed both engines to haul their accompanying 60-foot-long supertrailers, chock full of parts for the B-24 bomber.

Crismon does mention the possibility that E&L and the Gear Grinding Machine Company of Detroit (Grico) were also involved in the project. The former, established in the 1930s, specialized in hauling new Fords across the Midwest. According to coachbuilt.com, E&L “provide(d) haulaway at seven assembly plants, three rail ramps and one border transfer site in the states of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and New York.”

As it turns out, both Thorco and E&L were involved in the project. We contacted Tom Warren of Amarillo, Texas, who in 1988 took on the restoration of one of the only – if not the only – such trucks to still exist. Tom noted that Thorco did come up with the dual-motor design of the bomber haulers; he notes, however, that it was simply a matter of routing the power from the left engine to the rear axle and the right engine to the front axle, then ensuring that both engines received the same amount of vacuum and that their four-speed transmissions were shifted in synchronization. E&L then took on the construction of the trucks, with total production at less than 100.

Tom still has his dual-engined COE tractor, and said he knows where several of the accompanying trailers are. He said there are possibly one or two other tractors still around, but hasn’t confirmed their existence.

As far as Crismon’s mention of Grico, Wagner elaborated on that in his book. Both Grico and Merry-Neville Manufacturing Company of Birmingham, Michigan, would often convert Ford COEs to dual-engined configurations in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Grico, at least, used one engine in the stock location and a second mounted behind the cab. The above photo from Wagner, however, shows a dual-engined Ford COE from an unidentified third converter that placed both engines behind the cab, each engine apparently driving its own axle.

Source: Daniel Strohl

If there’s anything that Red Baron’s can auction off to redeem themselves of the Tornado, it’s this: Frank Stroback’s “roadable aircraft,” what the auction house is advertising as the world’s oldest original flying car.

Unlike the Tornado, this is the real deal. Frank Skroback, a resident of Syracuse, New York, first dreamed up his roadable aircraft in 1925 (though a patent that shares much with the flying car – 1,434,922 – was applied for as early as 1921), and built it in 1934 with six eight-foot-long wing segments attached to the linen-bodied, 21-foot-long tubular steel fuselage.

I’ve yet to come across any record that Skroback’s roadable aircraft actually flew, but I have seen several references that he did drive it around both Syracuse and along the highways of Maine. It ended up in the collection of Donald King, who founded Willowbrook Village Museum in Newfield, Maine, from where it was sold to Red Baron’s last November.

Red Baron’s auction is scheduled for March 13-14 in Atlanta.

Source: Daniel Strohl

It appears I was mistaken when I said last week that I’d plumbed the depths of military vehicles for sale on Hemmings.com. Jeremy, our in-house web dude, located a few others, starting with this 1943 White M3A1 halftrack, for sale out of Yardley, Pennsylvania. The seller writes:

restored, top speed 45 mph, new rubber track, repainted Jan 2008, all it needs is gas and you go to war.

So whom should the buyer go to war with?

Source: Daniel Strohl