Cars That Make You Smile :-)

orracle posted this on a separate thread,
http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-hybrid-news/47527-oscar-smarter-than-smart.html

http://priuschat.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=9268&d=1211215460

My appology if I'm stealing your thunder orracle.

Info and comment on this all electric, two pax jewel at:

Five Thousand Euro Electric Car Catches VW's Attention : TreeHugger

 

Here's a unabashedly homely piece of 1950's urban nostalgia that I saw
today in Ballamer:

http://priuschat.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=9837&stc=1&d=1213324863

I saw it in the lot at the corner of Falls Rd. and Cold Spring Lane.
The lot is frequently used as a support area for film crews.

Although trucks like this were endemic in eastern US cities in the '40s and
'50s, they went largely unnoticed. They were out and about in the wee hours
of the morning making home deliveries, long gone when most folks left the
house for school or work.

I shared the front bedroom in a typical Ballamer row house with three
brothers. The clinking sound of the milkman putting quart bottles of milk in
the thinly insulated aluminum box on the porch signaled the true start of a
new day. Shortly thereafter an alarm clock sounded in the back bedroom.

Then the Old Man shuffled to the bathroom for a shower. And soon Mom
went down the stairs to the kitchen to start coffee and breakfast. It was still
safe to be wrapped in semi-conscious half-sleep. But once the Old Man
exited the bathroom, the official reveille sounded from the kitchen:

"Boys, boys, it's time to get up. Clean shirts are on the hall table. I'll be up
in 5 minutes, and your beds better be made up."

 

In the mid-70s, in Long Beach, CA, I owned an ex-bread truck, later owned
by a used book store in Santa Monica. It looked similar, except the front
windshield was way out over the front grill with glass all around. The truck
looked like a loaf of bread!


Helms Bakery truck

Anyway, the padded tractor seat stood on a
pedestal that could be tipped forward. The center horn? on the seat was
fairly large so you could grip it with your thighs. You were only just barely
sitting.

Driving was interesting; it had a floor mounted l-o-n-g throw 3-speed shift,
but only two pedals. Gas on the right of course. The other was combined
clutch and brake. Total throw as about 7 inches. The top 3 inches or so was
clutch, the rest brake. Made for some interesting driving in the hills around
Palos Verdes, Newport, and and La Jolla.

The engine was a great lump of a four-banger, don't know who made it. It
had a mechanical governor that topped out at a screaming 35 MPH, no
power anything, and a steering wheel that must have been 20-22 inches in
diameter. No Synchro -- chrunch, crash, GRIND. Whole lotta engine-gear noise,
understandable as the motor/trany was essentially in the pax compartment
covered only by a hinged flat aluminum cover. Vacuum powered windshield
wipers that enthusiastically thrashed about when stopped, but hardly moved
when underway. Thank God it didn't rain much in those parts. Tire pressure up
around 75-80 psi IIRC. Great huge, but marginally effective drum brakes all
around. At times it was actually necessary to stand on the brake pedal.
What a beast.

Oh, the bread truck also had an air whistle that ran off a diaphragm pump
connected to the pull lever over the driver's door. Toot! Toot!

That's as close as I can get to what the milk truck was probably like.

Who made the milk truck? DIVCO, Detroit Industrial Vehicle COmpany
-- that wasn't the only pix I took!

http://priuschat.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=9848&stc=1&d=1213382214