1939 Super Sonic

we have been joined by Earl Rubinstein Earl is a curator here at the Museum what to do there Lou thank you for joining us Earl I am standing next to something I've never seen before I've never heard of I have no idea what this is well this is a supersonic it's a one-of it really wasn't designed as a car it was a race car designed by Joel Thornton in Burbank California in 1938 and he wanted to race on the Bonneville Salt Flats against Mercedes Auto Union dkw and it really had two Miller engines and I'm a specialized chassis with a single bubble top for the driver to sit in the center when the war broke out he decided to abandon the project and was sold to Luther a jewel of the twin Coach bus company out of Kent Ohio Lou fragile decided to make an arrangement with the Hudson motor car company and do a futuristic design in the car so what they did is they mounted it on the Hudson chassis with the Hudson straight-8 they widened the body from a point here in at the same point on the other side provided a full top to flow into the back of the car and then after they put all that together they drove it at the 1948 Indy 500 as a futuristic car then the car sort of disappeared for a while and nobody's seen it was found in 1980 82 by Rob DeMars up in San Francisco and they had a Ford v8 in it bucket seats tilt steering wheel and he didn't know what it was and he started to gut the car and then always I said well there's something unusual about the car it's all aluminum and everything else about it and he did the research and found out this history that I'm telling you now one of the side stories to the whole thing is a gentleman here in Southern California who restores radio Steve Engel came in one day and recalled meeting in the Hudson digest an article by one of the engineers discussing this car so he called him up and got more information on it and then took pictures of a sent it to the engineer who was now about 90 some odd years old and he said yes this is the car that he worked on at the Hudson studios in about 1952 due to the fact that it had a fire under the dashboard and he had a rewire n't that the design studio is up Michigan with the Hudson Motor Car Company so those are some of the little tidbits that we found out about this particular car it's a very neat little car you're going to restore this is the plan well Bob DeMars is looking for a partner with a half a million dollars to come along and be his partner and do the restoration if he can find the partner design I mean the viewers out there with an extra half million dollars they'll be able to contact you and correct we'll put them in with Bob and then they can reach them on the counter I'd I'd help out but I'm just a little short on that you don't have your lunch money behind night night quite a lot

Channel: VV Productions

Views: 202,908

Keywords: Lance, Lambert, Vintage, Vehicle, Automobile, Driving, Museum, El, Segundo, Super, Sonic, Earl, Rubenstein, futuristic, rare, car, auto

Id: tlyaRNNSHDE

Length: 2min 44sec (164 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 20 2008