Designer Times
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Designer Times is a continuing column by legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr on his experiences in the early days of Disneyland to benefit the Ryman-Carroll Foundation. If you missed any previous columns, click here for the list.
10. Main Street Vehicles - Antique Cars - Omnibus - Fire Engine.
While I was designing the body for the first Disneyland Autopia Car in the fall of 1954, Walt said he wanted an antique car for Main Street, along with maybe some other vehicles. He showed me a Fairbanks Morse railroad inspection car that he had bought brand new for use on the Disneyland Railroad.
This thing was brand new all right, but it sure was a design right out of history. It had a funny looking motor, four wheels and a wooden frame with long handles ( so you could pick the thing up and lever it on and off the tracks). The motor was sort of a single cylinder affair cooled with a big cast iron tub of water, and had a big fancy flywheel. Just the thing for a “new” old car. I made a big side view drawing of a 1902 period car using this engine underneath the seat. But when I ran the engine one day, it was rough and made quite a bit of smoke.....maybe my design was not a good idea.
Roger Broggie, my boss, had a Studio friend that Walt trusted regarding old cars.......Ben Sharpsteen. Roger and I went up to see Ben and some of his car parts collection in nearby La Crescenta for reference in developing an authentic looking Main Street Antique Car. About this time a Horseless Carriage Club “character” was trying to get Walt to buy part of his old car collection for use on Main Street. Walt sent Roger and I out to San Bernardino to look at his collection.
What a collection!.....and what a character! I think his name was Doc Lorenz. Big old ruffled guy in a dusty old black suit. He took Roger and I on an all day tour of dusty old barns and chicken coops filled to the rafters with hundreds of unrestored old cars and motorcycles. Car nuts dream of finding one good car in a barn.....but here were hundreds.....many offered for sale to the new future Disneyland.
Back at the Studio, Roger and I began to have second thoughts about a Main Street antique car using the Fairbanks Morse engine, or the practicality of using an authentic early automobile as a Disneyland ride. So Roger told me to engineer something practical. We didn’t start work until early 1956. I had a book, Floyd Clymer’s Treasury of Early Automobiles for reference, and Ben offered his help with authenticity. And the Studio Machine Shop has some copies of Automotive Industries Specification Books which listed current automotive products.
Thus started the engineering of Disneyland’s Main Street Vehicles.....all new, but looking old......what I later called “authentic bastards”. Ben suggested a design similar to the 1902 French Renault using a rear entrance tonneau body style. I selected a group of new drive train components, all of which would bolt right together into a new steel tube ladder style frame. We would build it in the Studio Machine Shop.
Starting with a Hercules NXB 2-cylinder engine bolted to an SAE No. 4 flywheel and housing, a Warner T9 3-speed transmission, Spicer U-joints, and ending with a Spicer 44-2 rear axle.....We now had a new stock power train. Years later some folks from Hercules got a kick out of riding up Main Street in our car with their engine.....which was intended only as a farm water pump motor! I thought the 2-cylinder “smooth roughness” was just right.
We used Model T Ford 30 inch clincher rim wheels, and a 1938 Plymouth front axle beam chopped to fit a sprint race car, using Model A Ford front hubs with the brakes removed. We later had many tire failures, so I made some cast aluminum spoke wheels patterned from the Model T wheels so we could use 4.75 x 19 inch conventional tires on bolt on rims.
The body was simply some sheet metal panels attached to the steel tube frame, onto which were bolted the seats and fringe top. Maurice Schwartz of the famous custom classic body shop in Pasadena, Bohman & Schwartz, built the front seat. Maurice built custom bodies in the 1930’s for Packards and Duesenbergs. So our first Main Street Vehicle did have a bit of real authenticity after all!
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Posted: 3/21/10