Showing posts with label concept. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concept. Show all posts

Saturday, July 16, 2011

the Pullman Railplane of 1933, self propelled, designed by Stout (of the Stout Scarab)

Feeling the effects of the Depression and declining business, America's railroads (in the 1930s) were looking for ways to reinvigorate passenger travel. As Ralph Budd, president of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy, later explained, railroads had to continue running trains on short routes to handle mail and baggage "whether or not anyone rides the trains." After seeing GM's powerful diesel engines, Budd concluded that what the railroads needed was a new kind of train that was fast, convenient, ultramodern and luxurious enough to fire the public imagination. The Union Pacific Railroad also saw the two exhibits and came to similar conclusions. A race was on to see which of the two railroads would be the first to develop an ultramodern railcar
 1934 Century of Progress Fair in Chicago The Union Pacific selected the University of Michigan to find the best aerodynamic shape while CB&Q turned to M.I.T.. The new designs looked like nothing else that had ridden the rails. They looked more like Buck Rogers's space ship than a train. People were tired of living in the Depression and they were ready for a change. 
 the Pullman-Standard wondertrain powered by 600 HP Winton petrol engine
 Union Pacific М-10000 City of Salina weighed 20 per cent as much as a conventional railroad car, but using only two minuscule (by railroad standards) 320-hp six-cylinder truck engines, was able to hit 100 miles per hour, while delivering 5 miles per gallon. By comparison to conventional railcars, the ride was superb, engine noise and fumes were all but eliminated and the seating arrangement - using aircraft-type seats as fitted to the Scarab automobile - made the Railplane quite luxurious


It is Pullman-Standard Railplane

In 1933, the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company constructed the Railplane to Stout's design (some improvements were later patented by the company, see the positives below). This was merely Stout's familiar triangulated space-frame aircraft fuselage, this time adapted to railroad use. Here too, he was able to preserve his all-time important triumvirate: simplicity, practicality and comfort. The self-propelled car had an aluminum body, 60' in length. It was exhibited at the Chicago World's fair 1934 and then leased to the Gulf, Mobile & Northern in 1935 for service between Tylertown and Jackson, Mississippi. From the railroad point of view, all running gear could be easily serviced from outside, tracks and roadbed lasted longer and operating costs were significantly less. Despite proven advantages, there were no buyers. Union Pacific ordered a three-car version (future City of Salina) , but that's as far as it went.

from http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/sunday-streamline-12-pullman  and  http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/flying-americans

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The variety in the few AMX3 concept cars made, 10 total I've read, but interestingly not alike in tail lights, and rear deck




Above image 2007 Meadow Brook Concours

Above images 2008 Goodwood Festival of Speed by Ilya Holt and from 2007 Meadow Brook Concours




Above 4 images were taken in 2004, at the Bizzarini Expo in Brussels by Dirk de Jager and all the above photos are from http://www.supercars.net/cars/2982.html




Notice the above museum car has a side marker light behind the rear wheel that only one of of the following do.

Lower door racing stripe and AMX 3 callout looks really good, and the rear deck styled partition with air foil over the tailights




Really don't like the above rims.




images from my many posts on the AMX 3... I hope you take a moment to see the differences in these different models, the bottom one having the coolest looking wheels, but I bet it's a mock up with no real car parts, and it looks like the model is in the design studio for a photo op.

Notice it doesn't have a gas cap like the yellow model directly above it, and the rocker panel is black with the AMX 3 call out looking really nice. Different tailights too.

From the Supercars website story on the AMX3:
Giotto Bizzarrini, of ex-Ferrari fame, was specifically responsible for making a production worthy AMX/3 out of the show queen AMX/2. What would have been a challenging build for AMC, was easily handled by Bizzarrini who was very familiar with race car design
and construction, particularly on a tight budget.

Bizzarrini's final AMX/3 featured the hallmark of sports engineering, a mid-mounted engine and rear transaxle. The Italian firm Melara developed the new gearbox while BMW completed final testing on the roadworthy AMX/3. It seemed AMC was serious about production. From a design standpoint, the AMC/3 was remarkably similar to Ford's DeTomaso Pantera which debuted just one day after the AMX/3. Such timely releases made it unclear exactly who copied who, but in any case, the casual observer can easily mistake the AMX/3 with a Pantera.

Due to the successful launch, and low price of the Pantera, AMC scrapped the AMX/3 project. Bizzarrini was ordered to destroy all six cars, which he, of course, did not.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Larry Shinoda designed vehicles

With Gurney Westlake 520hp V8 engine, it was capable of 150mph. The original design for this was done on the napkins at a hamburger restaurant.

Econoline ‘Kilimanjaro’ safari van, 1969 show car. Front wheel drive


1969 Ford Mach II design

1969 car show Torino Super Cobra front and back

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Emile Claveau, a designer of innovative cars..

this is the 1932


this is the 1956.

For a short bio, and full story: http://www.tbauto.org/claveau/ from the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum in Pinellas Park, Florida website.

For a online gallery of the vehicles at the Tampa Bay Auto Museum: http://flickr.com/photos/forwardlookguy/sets/72157601481866394/

I stumbled across this from http://www.kitfoster.com/archive/2007_04_01_archive.html

Alain Cerf is a man with a mission. Designer of packaging equipment made by his company Polypack, Inc., in Pinellas Park, Florida, he is understandably interested in innovative machinery. As a collector of automobiles he favors those with distinctive engineering: front-wheel drive, rear engines, unusual engines and suspensions. A native of France, he has a particular fascination with his countryman Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.
Alain has ensconced his collection of cars at his Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, an eclectic assembly of engineering masterpieces. Not surprisingly, many of them are French, including the groundbreaking Citroën 2CV, a Peugeot Darl'Mat, Voisin C7, Amilcar Compound and the last car of Emile Claveau.

Thursday, December 7, 2006

I like prototypes... hell, I just dig cars

1961 Mako Shark most of these pics are from a russian site http://autowp.ru/
1962 XP 755 Mako Shark

1962 XP 755 Mako Shark 1965 Mako Shark
1969 Manta Ray

1973 Astrovette 1956 SR-2 Corvette
http://www.tamsoldracecarsite.net is a great site and was my source for this SR-2, the precursor to the SS Corvette