King Midgets

let's continue our interview with car collector Barry Hilbert Barry we have made a giant I want to say leap actually a miniscule look I guess that from a giant 59 Continental to a little itty bitty King [ __ ] and before you answer any questions I think you and I fall into what a lot of the viewers fell into when I was growing up my dad and everybody's dad had a subscription to Popular Mechanics and every issue in the back there was an ad for a king [ __ ] and every boy wants and lots of girls I'm from about four years old on just dreamed about having one of these cars I just think they are so cool I was that way it was 1959 and I was going to high school in California Division II Air Force and he took those magazines and I sent for the catalog which showed this model but at my high school one of the kids had the earlier King [ __ ] and every day he would come out and have to lift the front end of the car up off the concrete stops put it back down and put out of the parking lot but it dollar a week allowance for cutting the lawn even at 680 dollars this wasn't going to happen it took 35 years if I were to do with them yeah you have two of them they are there they're so cute well what's the appeal here I know the answer this already but I want to get your you know you have a car that's totally for the most part impractical you don't want to be trying to go down the freeway on this car people ask me if I Drive down a freeway it's limited and everything it's probably a little bit dangerous because it's maybe it's just not seen you know knowing all these things I still want one no it's well it's got a cuteness about it it's timeless it looks like an old Jeep student looks like one of the jeeps ters from the early 50s the size I mean it's just unpretentious it doesn't put on any airs it just is hey look at me I'm in this little little car and it's so well made and I think that's what impresses me about it is how well-made it is the two men had a dream to build a little car in Athens Ohio and succeeded and people come up to me I can be my one-man car show and they come up and they want to know about it if I meet somebody that has even seen the ad I think that's amazing aha the history of King midgets I know they originally started out basically like looking like soapbox derby cars of motors at up the first one then they had a kind of a sporty model or whatever can you can you run us through the history well they started out they met after World War Two with a Civil Air Patrol meeting and they did say being these two guys yeah Dale Orkut and claw drying huh and they both built homemade airplanes and said why you know why can't you build a little commuter car that was built like a home-built airplane very light efficient simple so I said well that's a nice idea but how can you do it so they started out building a scooter that really looks pretty neat if you ever see a picture of a king of the scooter they kept pocketing the money then they came out with this one seater like you're talking about looks like a dirt track racer haha that was mostly a kit you had to build that yourself then came the first two-seater which was a little small earnest more rounded off smaller engine and this is the biggest car the final evolution the most complex thing they ever built still a 1 cylinder engine and this started being built in 57 and lasted till they went out of business in 69 which wasn't their fault a guy bought the company in 66 and it went into bankruptcy in three years this particular car has a 12 horsepower Kohler in it right right that was the biggest engine they ever put in them they started putting those engines in in 67 12 horsepower and then before that they used the Wisconsin nine horses on how fast will it go and what kind of transmission does it have they supposedly patented it's a two-speed centrifugal clutch system which surprisingly very simple that they came up with it in the catalog they said it would do 55 when I was younger and dumber I took one of them down in front of the Navy base held a gas pedal down and it got the 55 and I'm thinking this is a dumbest thing I have ever done if you've ever seen the cameras in the land speed record cars just before they flip over huh they're going like this that's a church that's what I was doing mm-hmm they're happiest around town at about 35 they hate they love to do what a big car hates to do stop and go short trips slow speeds my thought is that the ownership of one of these it's a short commuter you run to the grocery store and you run to the neighbor's house and it you just have fun in it yeah you know you're not going to pack up and make a 200-mile drive and although I'm sure there are people out there that do that but what what is the best use of this is this a smart car out of out of the 50s or wouldn't well exactly what you're saying what what would kill a big car this loves to do stop and go short runs one of the best ideas I heard is use it at the service airplanes at a small municipal airfield you can go out with a little trailer behind it go from plane to plane shut it off turn it on put around it nothing's going to bother it but there is a they showed a photo of the guy with his King midge at the earlier model in the early 50s this guy took one from Michigan to Mexico City and back over 11,000 foot high mountain range and 700 miles of desert didn't have a single breakdown it cost him $44 for gas Wow so people did some bizarre things with these way beyond what you'd imagine but they they were yeah they were they were ahead of the time the smart car the whole idea of simplicity maintain it yourself is wonderful what this car cost is what it costs for a diagnostic checkup today before you even find out you know what your car needs Barry let me drive this from where he lives to a little spot here yeah the first thing that impressed me was it was so roomy inside there was a lot of room in there it was actually comfortable and could have had my wife sitting alongside of me and we'd have been just fine it's just it felt like my you know is there something beyond here or was it all the way to the front because it looked like right about here is where the floor comes up with a fender where the rest of the fenders and right even with the fenders there is a partial shelf that goes all the way to the nose it's a little hard to get a pitching put side curtains coats and whatever you want down there and nobody will even know it's there a little bit of trunk area but it is anyone I've given a ride to in this just marvels how much room there is inside the other ones white looks really nice this looks really sporty and you say this is a stock color on this this was a stock color they decided initially to do one color that was white keep everything simple but in the 60s people wanted colors so they offered red yellow and blue and the story goes it because now they had a mixed of paint and put it in a spray gun and shoot your car that they would charge ten dollars extra for the trouble unlike Detroit which would offer you what about 50 colors it seems car career and a certain period of time all 50 callers at the same time on it on the car round this my wife loves the red I like the white one because the white one was one the one I saw in the ads in the magazines and you know the restoration on this I miss this looks like a show car this is absolutely beautiful well it's it's it's nicer than most of them look is a lot of them were used up and thrown away you find that they've been thrown out in the backyard somewhere some were just treated always as a toy and this one obviously was I got it from an elderly couple and they said it have been in heated storage ten years the only thing bad whether it was the inner tubes it rotted oh and it's got the original Goodyear tires the tops original the masonite dashboard I'm even though if you can buy masonite anymore it's just a nice original car with a one repaint on it what model year is this this one's a 67 67 and this is when the new owner started cranking these out instead of building them as they were getting orders and they were storing them all over Athens Ohio and they ran out of money and he just he did the exact opposite of what was working for over 25 years and but he was going to make a big success out of it well supposedly at one time it was the fifth biggest car company in the United States when all of independents were disappearing yeah Barry thank you very much for allowing us to take a look at your collection both large and small very large and very small I think and we have done over 400 episodes of the show and you have the most the biggest in the small collection we've seen most at each end yeah yeah so thanks a lot my pleasure and I appreciate any publicity the King [ __ ] can get that it never got when it was being built it's great to see ya and thank you very much for watching the show I'll let you in a little secret I'm working on a deal on owning a king [ __ ] so next time you see me ask me if I actually did the deal thanks a lot for watching and we will see you again next time until then bye bye

Channel: vintagevehicleshow

Views: 88,509

Rating: 4.9145298 out of 5

Keywords: Lance Lambert, Barry Hilbert, 1965, '65, 1967, '67, king midget, Popular, Mechanics, science, Athens, OH, Kohler, Wisconsin, scooter, bubble, mini, micro

Id: suv1Dyz4HWo

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2010