As the Owl Flies

I'm suspicious of any museum with "transportation" in its name. Usually, either the mission is too broad or8-2 the museum is so large that the exhibits boggle the mind. A nice compromise is the Owls Head Transportation Museum in the Maine village of the same name.

Although the museum concerns transportation on water, rail and even space, it's mostly about automobiles and airplanes, with a few bicycles and motorbikes (and a sleigh) thrown in for balance. A common curse of auto museums is the tendency to put too many cars in too little space. The larger exhibit area required for airplanes all but eliminates this problem.

The charm of Owls Head is its eclecticism. In addition to the obligatory Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow and Flying Lady-adorned Rolls-Royce, one finds a jaunty Léon Bollée tricar, massive Panhard touring car and rare Stevens-Duryea tourer, the latter once the property of artist Melbourne Brindle of Packard advertising renown. There's a nearly-complete collection of the works of James Scripps Booth, a Rocket cyclecar, Model C runabout and enigmatic Bi-Autogo. The designer of the Bi-Autogo, William B. Stout, is represented with his Stout Scarab, and there's the Eliot Cricket, an innovative automobile with aircraft-type controls. H.P Hood, the New England dairy, is present in the form of a Divco milk truck, and one can ask the man who owns one about his Rollson-bodied 1939 Packard. Next year will be the centenary of the Ford Model T, so Owls Head is preparing a T exhibit, including ane "ice T" for harvesting ice from Maine's many ponds.

You can't interpret manned flight in the United States without the Wright Brothers (theirs is a replica), but Owls Head is similarly diverse in its flight path. The magical Ornithopter is a mechanical bird, the Gazda Helicospeeder, an experimental craft from an Austrian-born inventor, and the Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" (shown here with Jill) an icon of early American aviation. Of local interest is the Milliken M-1, a home-built craft that crashed on its maiden flight.

Before leaving, visitors should visit the Engine Room, where exhibits range from a giant Corliss steam powerplant to a tiny Locomobile steam engine and include internal combustion engines of inline automotive, radial aircraft and Wankel configuration.

Located two miles south of Rockland, Maine, the Owls Head Transportation Museum is open 361 days a year. Allow most of a day for a leisurely visit - finish up with a walk to the picturesque Owls Head lighthouse on the rock-bound coast. Or come for one of the museum's many special events. You'll have a great time.

The Clipper Conundrum

In April 1941, Packard Motor Car Company introduced the new Clipper model. A single streamlined sedan on the wheelbase of the traditional One-Twenty, its four-month sales equaled those of the One Twenty, itself a successful foray into the medium-priced field introduced in 1935. The One-Twenty was so successful that a six-cylinder version became available in 1937. But while these "junior Packards" were keeping the company afloat in the Great Depression, there was no mistaking a Six or a One-Twenty for one of the "Senior Packards," like a Super Eight or a Twelve.

In 1942, "Clipperized" styling proliferated, including a new coupe model. After World War II, only Clipper models were built, the Senior cars having been dropped. (A persistent legend holds that their tooling was sold to Russia. If so, it wasn't used, because the ZIS, the USSR's Packard look-alike, shares no sheet metal with any Packard model.)

Packard introduced the new Twenty-Second Series "Pregnant Elephant" cars in 1948. There were three lines of cars, Eight, Super Eight and Custom Eight, but aside from different grilles and wheelbases, there was little to distinguish them, despite prices ranging from $2,275 to $4,175 (for standard wheelbase four-door sedans). They were competing with cars from Buick Super to Cadillac Fleetwood 75. Put another way, the Packard Custom Eight looked very much like the Eight but cost almost twice as much, whereas even the cheapest Cadillac, the Series 61, had character much different from a Buick. Alfred Sloan's "Car for every purse and purpose" was much more than a trite slogan.

With the Twenty-Fourth Series in 1951, the situation was the same, the $3,662 Patrician 400 being only subtly different from the 200 Business Coupe, which sold for $2,302. James Nance, the Hotpoint executive who became Packard's president in 1952, believed that Packard needed a "Buick." He re-introduced the Clipper name for the cheapest 1953 cars, then further differentiated the 1954 Clipper from the Patrician with its own tail treatment.

Nineteen fifty-five brought a new skin on the old body, V8 engines and "Torsion Level" self-adjusting suspension, though entry-level Clippers made do with a conventional coil-and-leaf spring setup. Clipper trim, particularly in the rear, was completely different from that of the Patrician. For '56, Nance went all the way, taking the Packard name off the Clipper entirely, and forcing dealers to sign new Clipper franchise agreements. An upscale Executive model on the Clipper's wheelbase was introduced in March, selling for $700 less than the Patrician. Whether the Nance dance could have helped Packard we'll never know. Time had run out, Nance was sacked and 1957 Packards became gussied-up Studebakers, all of which were Packard Clippers. By July 1958, they too were gone.

Travels with Arthur

Many of us talk about driving old cars, but few put significant mileage on them. The dean of old car motorists has to be British motoring historian and journalist Mike Worthington-Williams, who until last year drove his old car about 10,000 miles every year.

For Arthur, his 1927 Austin 20, it was a genteel retirement, for Arthur spent nearly a half century - and a million miles - in taxi service at Henley-on-Thames, England. In Mike's care from 1982 to 2006, he was a regular at British motoring events like Beaulieu Autojumble. The start of any journey includes checking the oil and filling up with petrol (that's 99 pence per litre, about $6.50 a gallon).

Packing is challenging, as Arthur's trunk is small. The route is scenic, including stretches of the New Forest, where we share the road with animals, and historic, as in Downton, once home to Downton Engineering, tuners of Minis. While at Beaulieu we refresh at The Musketeer, the best pub in Lymington, and spend our days looking for interesting car parts.

Our return journey takes us through Pennsylvania and over the Batheaston toll bridge, where the bridgetender cheerfully takes our toll. We are soon back in Wales, where signs are bilingual and the language is excessively consonant (actually, "w" is a vowel, so "Bwlch" is pronounced "Boolk.") As we enjoy our al fresco lunch, Arthur has a nap in the shade.

Driving an old car in modern traffic calls for healthy brakes, and reliable power. Arthur's sidevalve four is Model A-sized, and works and sounds like an A, too. At day's end we are home again. Arthur has completed 24 round trips to Beaulieu in as many years, and around 200,000 miles of around-Britain travel. That's what I call really driving an old car.

Which Way Does the Airflow?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the air flows differently than the eye expects. That was the premise of Chrysler Corporation's Airflow models, introduced for Chrysler and DeSoto in 1934. Scientifically designed to be slippery, and engineered with a truss bridge frame to be sturdy , they were technological marvels.

Unfortunately, they were sales flops, as the eye saw them as blunt instruments. DeSoto sales fell by nearly half compared to the attractive 1933 models. Chrysler did better, but only because they had retained a "conventional" line of six-cylinder cars, that outsold the Airflows two to one. DeSoto had to suffer Airflow alone. Product planners finally put a fine point on it in 1935, peaked grilles for both Chrysler and DeSoto, and there were DeSoto Airstreams as well as Chryslers.

Spares rode outside or in, depending on model, but only with Chrysler's touring trunk was there any useful luggage space. Engines sat right under the hood, requiring low-profile hoses, and access produced a huge yawn. Interiors were spacious and comfortable. Ingenious were the two-way vent wings that could be opened or lowered.

In 1936, Chrysler's Airflow and Airstream shared a grille theme, but DeSoto's Airstream took on a flair of its own while the Airflow retained its funky outlook. For 1937, DeSoto had only a conventional car, while Chrysler kept an abbreviated Airflow line that mimicked its other cars. And then the Airflow was gone. Chrysler had learned the hard way that change can be risky. But whereas the Airflow had been a sales disaster, Lincoln's technically-similar Zephyr had improved sales sixfold. One wonders why. Maybe that was the point.

The Size of Their Toys

That's what separates, we are told, the men from the boys. You've seen our exposés on Tonkas and Doepke toys, so it won't surprise you that when I learned the national meet of the Historic Construction Equipment Association was being held nearby wild tractors couldn't keep me away.

As you'd expect there were trucks and cranes, graders and road rollers. There were tractors of all descriptions: John Deere, Farmall, Ford and Oliver. There were funky machines like a Fordson with tracks and a limbo dozer. There were Caterpillars from Ten to Sixty and everything in between.

But most delightful were the action figures, doing what construction equipment is meant to do: grading, earth moving, bulldozing, alone or in teams. The power shovels were shoveling, loading trucks, even the Beverly Hillbillies came out to play. Star of the power shovels is the Northwest D80, a much more imposing sight than the modern loader. Of a different persuasion is the dragline shovel, good for digging in hard-to-reach places. There was even a gravel sifter in motion, sifting, screening and loading one of the many dump trucks.

The event was held at the Zagray Homestead Museum in Colchester, Connecticut. The late Zagray brothers were eccentric collectors with a fetish for Farmall F20s. They reportedly had more than forty of them in a forest of Farmalls.

Jill remarked that we hadn't seen many girls. It wasn't long before we learned why. The organizers had set up a play area for children. Boys, it seems, are content to look at other people's machinery, but where the kids dig dirt girls rule.