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Louie Mattar's Fabulous Car! (Heidi Lewis) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
Welcome to Automotive History Live, where the stories drive us.
0:05
From the grand lawns of Concours to the icons that shape the road
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ahead, we celebrate the machines, the makers, and the moments
0:14
that define automotive history.
0:19
As the nation gears up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Route 66, we're
0:24
spotlighting one of the most astonishing, least believed, and absolutely true
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feats in American automotive history.
0:31
In 1952, San Diego inventor Louis Mattar and two friends drove a fully customized
0:37
1947 Cadillac nonstop, and yes, literally without stopping the wheels, from
0:44
San Diego to New York City and back.
0:48
Six days, coast to coast, continuous motion, a rolling workshop, kitchen,
0:53
bathroom, refueling system, and engineering marvel, all built by one
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man with a limitless imagination.
1:01
Today, that legendary machine still runs and lives proudly at the San
1:05
Diego Automotive Museum, where its story continues to inspire engineers,
1:09
dreamers, and road trip romantics.
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That's right, and joining me tonight is returning co-host Lauren Goodman,
1:16
associate curator of exhibitions at the Revs Institute, and one
1:20
of the many personalities here on the Motoring Podcast Network.
1:23
Lauren, welcome back to the studio.
1:25
Hello.
1:25
Good to be back.
1:26
And with us, we're thrilled to have Heidi Lewis, the author of a new
1:30
picture book titled Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car, and we'll dive into the
1:34
wild ingenuity behind the build, the nonstop cross-country quest, and why
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this story matters now more than ever.
1:42
So welcome to the show, Heidi.
1:43
Hi.
1:44
Thank you.
1:44
So let's begin at the beginning.
1:46
Let's talk about Louis' origin story.
1:49
You know, where did he come from?
1:50
Where did he get the idea?
1:51
What first drew Louis Mattar to the idea of building a car
1:55
that could operate nonstop?
1:57
I think that's the question of the hour, the why.
2:00
I have asked a lot of people, and the answer really is because
2:06
he thought he could do it.
2:08
I think that he was just a man that loved to tinker.
2:13
He loved to dream.
2:15
Even from just a young child, he was an immigrant from Lebanon, and his family,
2:22
it sounds like they didn't have a lot of money when he was growing up, and they
2:27
kind of bumped around and he ended up in Detroit, and he was able to work on cars.
2:33
I mean, there's so many fun stories about him working on cars when he
2:36
was younger, and I think that he just decided that he wanted to do it.
2:41
He had a dream.
2:42
Did he just not like stopping for gas and rest or anything?
2:47
There was a story earlier than this nonstop drive that I think kinda set
2:52
the idea in motion, where an uncle or a relative that needed to hitch a ride from
2:59
the east to the west, and he said, "Yes, I will take you, but I'm not gonna stop."
3:05
And this relative said, "Well, yeah, but at least we're gonna have to stop to go
3:09
to the bathroom or whatever." He said, "No, I think we're just gonna do it."
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And so that was kind of the first time.
3:14
I think he did end up st- I think the, his relative said, "Hey, you, you know, you
3:18
gotta stop." But he just wanted to push the limits and see how far he could go.
3:21
Man, I know I was bad, especially in the old days with the Volkswagen diesels.
3:25
I used to tell people, "We're not stopping till the car runs out of
3:28
fuel," which was usually 700-plus miles.
3:31
It's a lot, right?
3:31
It's a lot of pressure on, on a lot of things and people
3:35
in the car and otherwise.
3:35
Yes.
3:36
But I hadn't heard of this story before we, I got ready for this interview.
3:40
So I'm curious, how did you learn about this story?
3:42
Well, I was on vacation in San Diego.
3:46
We went to Balboa Park, where the San Diego Automotive Museum is.
3:52
And I am a journalist, a writer.
3:54
My husband was really interested in the car from Bullitt, you know, Steve
3:58
McQueen, and all of these things.
4:00
And then I see the fabulous car, and it was like, "Oh, what is this?
4:05
What is this thing?" And I looked inside.
4:08
I think one of the things that was so fascinating to me, besides the shower, and
4:13
there was a drinking fountain hidden in the back fender on the outside, was that
4:16
it has a bar- Inside this car, and my dad, in the '70s, sold car bars door to door.
4:26
My dad was German.
4:27
He installed this car bar.
4:30
I, I don't know, I was young, and he always said, "This is our black
4:33
market Mercedes." I don't know why it was a black market Mercedes.
4:36
It was an old Mercedes that he had taken, he'd gotten somehow into the
4:40
United States, not by means that I, you know, I don't know how he got it there.
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But we had this Mercedes, and he installed the car bar in it so he could
4:48
demonstrate, "Oh, this is wonderful."
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And as kids, we could pour ourselves a ginger ale.
4:52
We could get ourselves a soda.
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We just loved this car bar.
4:57
And then, unfortunately, it completely destroyed the motor of the car, and
5:02
I guess it did that with other cars, and so the car bar didn't last.
5:06
But for me, that was really interesting because I thought we were the only
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ones, you know, and I would tell people about this ridiculous thing from my
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childhood, and nobody believed it.
5:16
But this was the fabulous car.
5:18
And so then I asked if, you know, there's gotta be a picture book
5:22
about this, and there wasn't.
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And I thought, well, then I'm gonna be the one who has to write this.
5:26
And so I was able to find Louis Mattar's sons.
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One of his sons, Joe, had passed away, but Lee and Paul were still alive.
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And I called Paul first, and he said, "Oh, no, Lee owns the title to the car.
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You need to call him." And so I called Lee, and he said, "Sure,
5:44
come on over to my garage." He was running a garage in, uh, San Diego.
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And so I went over there, and he just took down j- just boxes of
5:53
primary documents, which is, you know, heaven for any researcher.
5:57
And he said, "Knock yourself out." And so I just went through for hours
6:02
and hours and hours and read all about the trip and took pictures.
6:07
And then he said, "Well, what do you want?" And he gave me a lot of the primary
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documents 'cause he had duplicates of them because his dad had made multiple copies.
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And so I was able to take some of those primary documents, and then I, I just
6:20
decided to write it into a picture book.
6:22
And I thought, yes, kids need to know about this story because it
6:25
is too, and p- and anyone, any car enthusiast, because it's wild.
6:29
But to go cross country nonstop, and we're gonna dive into
6:32
that, is absolutely incredible.
6:33
But as I dug into this story a little bit more and the information
6:37
that's out there and the research that we did, I came to find out that
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Louis wasn't a trained engineer.
6:41
Like you said, he was an immigrant.
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It really is, it sounds like to me, a really Southern California
6:46
story, and I, I wanna tell you why.
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Because it sounds like Louis was really a self-taught guy Who is
6:51
really brilliant with being able to fix things and make them run.
6:56
And the Southern California car culture and hot-rodding, it's not just about the
7:00
road trip, it's about young guys coming back from the war and figuring out how
7:04
to soup things up because they got a taste for going really fast in planes.
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And these are the people who built the cars that won Le Mans for America.
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These were not necessarily professionally trained people or college educated
7:18
people, but really, really smart people who knew how to work with their hands.
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It kinda sounds like Louis fits right into that, uh, that mold.
7:25
Yeah, definitely.
7:27
He was a person who was a problem solver, and I think that back then you
7:32
could have, and I hope we can still have this, but you could have people that
7:36
could say, "Here's this thing that I wanna figure out. Let me just see how
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I can do it." And then the next thing you know they are, you know, winning a
7:45
race somewhere or doing some big thing.
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And it definitely, it is a uniquely San Diego story.
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Yet he built systems into this Cadillac that he drove cross country that really
7:56
rivaled some professional engineering and some professional prototypes of the day.
8:00
Can you tell us more about all this DIY that he did back in the 1950s?
8:05
Yeah, he did have some trade school training, and he actually invented
8:10
a demagnetizer for the Navy where I think that it was able to demagnetize
8:17
mines so that they would be able to go through mines in the water.
8:22
He did invent that.
8:23
He had a couple of other little projects that he worked on.
8:26
But as far as the car was concerned, like, there's a story about him when he
8:31
was maybe a teen- 18, 19 years old, and he was hired by a guy to put in false
8:39
bottoms or, you know, different kinds of things for cars to run alcohol across the
8:44
border from Canada into the United States.
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And so I think that helped him to kind of see what was possible to
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ma- Because you- the Fabulous Car, what's really interesting about the
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Fabulous Car is that from the outside it looks like your stock Cadillac.
8:58
It's just that everything was going on, and he did put things toward
9:02
the end, like antennas and things like that, but for the most part, it
9:05
just looked like a regular Cadillac.
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And so then he was doing all these things on the inside.
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So he must have made some good money with the bootlegging projects,
9:13
with the Navy projects, et cetera, because 1947 Cadillac, it would have
9:16
been only about three years old.
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That's a pretty expensive car for somebody to be able to afford.
9:22
Obviously, he was able to get all that together, but then there's
9:24
all the things that went into it.
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So, like you said, when you look at it from the outside, and you can't judge a
9:29
book by its cover, when you really analyze this car in person, what stands out as,
9:35
like, the biggest change he made or the most radical thing that he added to that
9:39
Cadillac compared to, like, a stock one?
9:41
So many things.
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That would be really hard to choose.
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I, I think one thing that stands out is that he was able to create
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a system to change the tires and the brake pads on the go.
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You know, this is 1952 when they did the first non-stop drive, and
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tires were not like our tires today.
10:01
They were not going to go across country.
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He had to change those tires and those brake pads.
10:06
Even though he did go non-stop, he, he obviously had to apply
10:10
the brakes once in a while.
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And so he had these kind of running boards on the outside, and then he was
10:16
able to put this little platform that he could put, you know, around the tire that
10:21
needed to be changed, lie down on his back, raise the car on a hydraulic lift,
10:28
and put down a little caster wheel so that the car could keep rolling, and then
10:32
change the tire while they were moving.
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So it was really ingenious what he did.
10:38
There's so many engineering tests to make something like that happen
10:42
today that I don't think we'd be able to make something like that happen.
10:46
I mean, I've seen the videos on Instagram of the guys with the, uh, what are they?
10:49
The Toyota Hiluxes.
10:50
They'll pop them up on two wheels, and somebody will climb out the side
10:53
and try to change the tire while the guy's on two wheel- I mean,
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it's all acrobatics at that point.
10:57
But I don't wanna call it insane.
10:59
It's ingenious, but it's also sort of scary at the same time that he was able
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to come up with all these apparatuses.
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Like you're talking about lifting the car at speed to change the wheel.
11:09
That's crazy, right?
11:10
Well, it's great because it really demonstrates this out of
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the box thinking that he had.
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It's like, "Here's a problem. We need to solve this problem. How are
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we going to solve this problem?" And I do think that someone, you know,
11:23
automotive engineer today could do an entire thesis, maybe, uh, maybe their
11:28
doctoral thesis on Louis Mattar and how he was able to solve those problems.
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It wasn't just the car itself.
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Behind you there's a model of the car.
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He had a trailer with a bunch of stuff- Yeah … that followed
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him along this journey, right?
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By the way, my husband made that model for me from scratch.
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It's pretty cool.
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We've kind of all gotten into the Fabulous car.
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And so, yes, he had to bring a trailer.
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He had to carry enough fuel.
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I mean, they refueled on the go.
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There wasn't enough, but he wanted to make that fuel last as long as possible,
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and so he carried fuel in there.
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He carried oil in there.
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He carried water in there.
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And so they were able to make only three refueling stops for that
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entire, you know, cross-country run, you know, back and forth.
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So basically he had pumps, let's say, on the trailer, and he would just put it in
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the tank like you would do at any other service station at that point, right?
12:20
Yeah.
12:20
So what they would do is they'd go to an airstrip or a racetrack,
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and they would go alongside, drive in tandem with a fuel tank.
12:31
Oh, wow.
12:31
They would walk onto the, you know, little platform, and they'd
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drive in tandem in a circle.
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It took them two hours, and they would go around in a circle and refuel as
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they were driving around in a circle.
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So how many more miles, how much more time did he end up adding to this trip
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with all these, I guess, extra things?
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I know they stopped in, uh, I think it was Omaha, and then they stopped
12:55
in New Jersey, and then on the way back they stopped one more time.
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So it was three stops.
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Not a physical stop 'cause the car was still in motion.
13:03
No, sorry, not stops.
13:04
Sorry.
13:04
Yeah.
13:04
No stops.
13:05
Okay.
13:05
Absolutely no stops.
13:07
So three places where they refueled.
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So three destinations.
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So did he have an extended fuel tank then, like on the trailer or something?
13:16
Because- Yes … let's just
13:17
Okay.
13:17
'Cause I was gonna say, 90- Yeah, and on the, and on the Fabulous car.
13:20
Okay.
13:20
So the Fabulous car had an extra fuel tank, and on the trailer.
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The trailer had fuel, 230, I think.
13:27
Gallons, right?
13:27
Gallons.
13:28
Wow.
13:28
Yes.
13:29
Uh-huh.
13:29
Yeah, 'cause I was gonna say at best a '47 Cadillac on the long highway journeys
13:33
maybe doing 14 miles to the gallon.
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That would be a really good guess.
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I mean, because you gotta remember, this is an eight-ton vehicle because of all
13:43
of the things that he's added to it.
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So you're gonna have a lot of… It's not g- you're not gonna get
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the best gas mileage with that.
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And they had, a- along the route, they had different, not stops, but b- you
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know, towns that they would go through, and they had, like the press was there.
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They would have people that would wanna take their picture.
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The roads were lined with people.
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They even had sometimes kind of a, a parade or caravan that
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followed them through the town.
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All of that slowed them down a little bit.
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What's incredible is you're talking about police escorts, and
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ambulances, and press, and people.
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This was a real fanfare.
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And it, he was very famous at the time.
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And like so many things that are lost to history, it just, it just didn't,
14:28
you know, it just didn't endure.
14:30
Yeah.
14:31
Did he figure out an average speed for the best efficiency
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and all that kind of stuff?
14:35
Do you have any idea of how, like how fast they were going?
14:37
You know, they were very careful with their speed.
14:40
On the open road it was no more than 55 miles an hour ever.
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Usually 45 was kind of his goal.
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Of course, they would slow, so never more than 55, and then they would slow it
14:52
down when they were going through a town.
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They had to call ahead.
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There might be stoplights or other things going on, so they had to call ahead.
14:59
They had a phone in the car.
15:00
They could radio.
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He sent telegrams to the stops ahead, or the towns ahead.
15:06
I keep saying stops.
15:07
No stops.
15:07
Zero stops.
15:09
And so they would have all of this set up ahead of time so that they would
15:12
have police escorts through these different towns so that they would
15:16
be able to legally run a red light.
15:18
Just a reminder to everybody, at this time, the US interstate
15:21
system did not exist yet.
15:22
Yes.
15:23
Yeah.
15:23
Exactly.
15:23
Yeah.
15:24
Not until 1955.
15:25
So we're talking small, small roads.
15:28
Yeah, you're talking- Yeah … Route 66, the Lincoln Highway- Yes … the
15:31
Jefferson Highway, and a couple other interconnected town-to-town type of
15:36
roads, but there was no Eisenhower interstate system at that point.
15:39
You're, very good point there, Lauren.
15:40
But- Yeah … did I hear her wrong?
15:42
Did Louis Mattar have the first car phone?
15:45
Is that what I understood?
15:46
I don't know if it was the first car phone, but they were able to call
15:49
ahead and, 'cause this is before, you know, seven-digit phone numbers.
15:53
So they had to switch.
15:54
They had to call ahead and have the switchboards plug
15:56
them into the different places.
15:58
Yeah.
15:58
But he had to do it over the air, so basically he had a wireless
16:01
telephone- Yes, yes … in the car.
16:03
Yeah.
16:04
That just blows my mind.
16:05
Mm-hmm.
16:06
Speaking of amenities, Lauren, we should probably investigate the other
16:09
inventions that were inside the car.
16:10
That's … I mean, I could nerd out on the technical stuff all day.
16:13
No, I love the technical stuff, but I'm thinking about the human experience
16:17
because a round nonstop trip coast to coast, how many days was that?
16:21
It was six days, and that is morning, noon, and night.
16:26
He had three drivers, and they h- took five-hour shifts.
16:30
And one person would be the driver, one would be the co-pilot, and that
16:34
was a very important role because they had to look at all of these
16:38
gauges and dials and everything to make sure that there wasn't something
16:41
that was overheating or something that was wrong going with the car.
16:46
And then in the backseat they made a little bed, and then the
16:50
other driver was supposed to be in the back and be sleeping.
16:54
And so because they were driving, you know, morning,
16:56
noon, and night for six days.
16:58
We're gonna get to the bathroom question soon.
17:01
Before that, my mind is like, okay, so he's modified, super modified
17:05
this Cadillac, has a custom trailer, is calling ahead, you know, sending
17:10
out telegrams, you know, having a refueling truck drive alongside.
17:14
How much would this have cost?
17:15
How did he pay for this?
17:17
Well, that is a really good question.
17:20
He had a very successful garage in San Diego.
17:24
I mean, he famously has said the car cost him $75,000 just to build the car.
17:30
And you've got to remember, that was starting in the '40s and
17:33
then the early '50s, so today that's almost a million dollars.
17:37
I was gonna say, yeah.
17:38
Yeah, yeah.
17:39
900- I think it's $900,000.
17:42
And as far as the drive itself, I don't have any accurate numbers.
17:47
But what's really interesting about that is he, he was very adamant
17:51
that he did not accept sponsorship.
17:53
You know, a lot of companies, Mobil Gas, you know, all of the different
17:56
companies wanted him to slap, you know, their logos on the fabulous car.
18:01
And he did a few things, like for the National Safety Council, those
18:06
kinds of things, but he didn't want to sell the car to a company.
18:10
He, he was kind of quirky that way.
18:12
And he was also quirky in that he famously carried around a shoebox full of cash.
18:18
So that's how he paid for things.
18:20
He would go around and he'd shill the money out of his shoebox.
18:23
As people drove up next to him and they handed it out the window- Yes.
18:27
… right?
18:27
It's like.
18:27
Yeah.
18:28
Yeah, yeah.
18:30
We'll get into the finer details of the interior stuff and to Lauren's
18:33
bathroom question, I suppose, but I have to ask, is this a Guinness
18:38
World Record, or was it at the time?
18:41
It is a world record.
18:43
I'm not sure that it was in Guinness.
18:46
I think there was an application process for that, and I don't know.
18:50
But he does, I believe, hold the nonstop driving record even today.
18:55
To this day, okay.
18:56
Yeah.
18:57
And which is, we haven't even talked about the second drive, which was eight days.
19:00
So th- you know, this was a six day, and then there was an eight-day
19:03
one later on Louis actually planned multiple other nonstop drives.
19:09
One of the most interesting to me was that he planned a drive from Paris to
19:15
Moscow, and he had it all mapped out.
19:18
He was making the calls and everything, but that would have required them to
19:22
go behind the Iron Curtain, and Russia said, "No. We're not gonna let you do
19:28
that." He also had the problem of going across the Atlantic without stopping
19:31
the car, so that would've been- Yes.
19:34
Well, there's an issue, too.
19:36
I mean, what's interesting on the second drive, it wasn't an and back.
19:39
It was just Anchorage to Mexico City.
19:43
So he drove all the way up to Anchorage to start that drive.
19:47
But on the way up, the Fabulous Car was getting pummeled by the
19:52
rocks and everything from that dirt road, the, the Alcan Highway.
19:56
And so in Anchorage, he was able to take a, a steel kind of plate and kind of
20:02
reinforce the bottom of the Fabulous Car so that they would be able to make that
20:07
trip without having, you know, a lot of the damage that was gonna be done.
20:11
So, uh, it was over 7,000 miles from Anchorage all the way to Mexico City.
20:18
Eight days, nonstop.
20:20
All right, Lauren, let's dig into this interior.
20:22
Yeah.
20:22
The setup there, okay, you've got somebody co-piloting, somebody
20:26
driving, somebody asleep.
20:28
Presumably there's a spot in the car where one can relieve oneself.
20:33
Yes.
20:34
There is a toilet and a washing machine.
20:37
Wait, wait, what?
20:38
Yes, a washing machine and toilet.
20:40
It's interesting.
20:42
Anybody who ever asked me the question, especially kids, because, you know,
20:45
I, I wrote a picture book about this, and kids always, the first question
20:48
is always, they had to stop for gas, you know, or they had to stop to eat,
20:52
and that's pretty easy to answer.
20:54
But then the second question always is, how did they go to the bathroom?
20:57
And they went to the bathroom in this toilet that was just
21:03
underneath one of the back seats.
21:05
And on the first drive, they didn't really think that one through, and
21:09
they only brought sandwiches, like, you know, sub deli sandwiches.
21:14
No fresh fruit, no vegetables, and they got really, really constipated.
21:19
And they were on day four and a half, and they all were pretty sick, and
21:25
they said, "We just can't keep going."
21:27
And so I think it was in Nebraska, I think somewhere outside of Omaha,
21:31
they called ahead and they were able to get a doctor to come and
21:36
bring them some, you know, laxative.
21:40
And they were able to take the medicine, and it worked a treat, and
21:45
they were able to continue their drive.
21:47
But you gotta stagger that.
21:48
I hope they didn't take the laxative all at once.
21:49
Do you know what I mean?
21:50
Well, yeah.
21:51
Yeah, exactly.
21:52
Exactly.
21:53
Yeah.
21:53
And they, uh, well, they made it.
21:55
They made it work.
21:56
I'm sorry.
21:56
I've been on a lot of road trips.
21:58
I don't think I like anybody in my life enough to do that on a road trip.
22:02
Do you know what I mean?
22:03
I know.
22:04
Yeah.
22:04
They were committed.
22:06
They were in it to win it.
22:07
Wow.
22:08
Wow.
22:10
I had heard that the toilet is the washing machine or vice versa.
22:15
Is that true or is there a second unit?
22:17
No, it's the same.
22:18
It's the same thing.
22:19
Okay.
22:19
S- so how does that work exactly?
22:21
Well, I mean, they didn't really… They, on the second drive they did
22:25
wash their clothes because they got really, really muddy because
22:29
they were on the Alcan Highway, and that's 1,000 miles of dirt road.
22:34
And it was raining.
22:35
There was at one point where the mud was clinging inside the wheel wells and they
22:40
had to get out of the car while the driver was driving and get on the platforms and
22:44
actually claw the mud out from under the wheels so that the car wouldn't stop.
22:48
And so they got really, really, really dirty, really muddy.
22:52
And so they stripped down to their coverall, you know, from their coveralls.
22:57
They washed them, and then they hung them out to dry above the fabulous car.
23:02
And then they had an ironing board and an iron, and so then he pressed them.
23:07
Oh, they showered also.
23:08
They had to go outside and shower 'cause there was a shower, so they
23:11
went and took turns showering.
23:12
And then they were all nice and fresh for their next PR visit in the next town up.
23:18
So I mean, he was, he was a meticulous guy.
23:20
He wanted to look nice for the cameras.
23:23
Fresh.
23:24
Yeah.
23:24
Fresh.
23:25
Fresh.
23:25
But I'm j- I'm assuming they didn't use the toilet at the time.
23:28
So they could dump it out.
23:29
So they would slow down, and they probably dumped it out on the road.
23:33
So that's interesting because I guess in my head I made the assumption that it was
23:37
more like an RV where if he was used to making false bottom vehicles that maybe
23:41
it evacuated somewhere underneath the car, and then they could dump it down the road
23:45
as they were going or something like that.
23:47
So that's, that's interesting.
23:48
Yeah.
23:49
If we go see The Fabulous Car today at the San Diego Auto Museum and we
23:54
look inside of it, what else would we find, something that isn't obviously
23:58
available on a stock Cadillac?
24:00
Oh, goodness.
24:01
Okay, you're gonna see a Turkish water pipe.
24:03
You're gonna see a bar where you can serve yourself a drink.
24:09
You're going to see a reel-to-reel cassette.
24:13
Interesting, too, they had a, a phone that you could pick up from the inside
24:18
of the car, and you could call back to the trailer, so you could talk from
24:22
the trailer to, you know, to the front.
24:24
They had a stove, like a barbecue stove, a fridge.
24:29
And all of this fit inside the Cadillac?
24:31
All of it was inside in front, in, either in the front panel or down
24:35
by their feet, or in the back, yes.
24:38
So there wasn't much in the way of leg room at that point.
24:41
Yeah.
24:41
In the back, it's a fairly large car, and so if you didn't have
24:46
all the stuff, you could fit six people in there very comfortably.
24:49
And so there, it's, it seems like it's fairly roomy.
24:53
So you mentioned the trailer a couple of times.
24:55
I wanna dig into that a little bit more, too.
24:57
So you have a model of it behind the model of the car that you have there.
25:01
Was that just tools and fluids and oil and all that kinda stuff, or
25:06
was that a sleeping compartment?
25:08
Like, how was the trailer designed?
25:10
It really was to carry all of the extra things that they needed, but on the very
25:15
back of the trailer, there's a dinette with a little table and two cute little
25:21
booth… You know, like, just like you might find in a cute diner somewhere.
25:24
You know, after the drives, famous people would ride around.
25:27
Most famously, there's a picture of Michael Jackson riding around in
25:30
The Fabulous Car in that dinette.
25:33
So he would take people on trips, and they'd go around and drive
25:36
around in a circle, and they'd just sit there in, in the dinette.
25:39
No reliability issues other than, "We gotta change some brake pads or
25:43
change some tires," or whatever it is?
25:46
Or did they have issues where, "We've just gotta let the car coast and change a
25:50
distributor cap," or something like that?
25:52
Oh, yes.
25:52
They had all kinds of issues.
25:54
In fact, the hood of the car has two little clear windows.
25:59
The hood can be up, and the driver can see and drive through those little
26:04
window panels, and so they would have to be working on things all the time.
26:09
Wow.
26:09
Yeah.
26:10
Wow.
26:10
I mean, try to think of something that he didn't think of.
26:13
I mean, it's really, really challenging.
26:16
One thing I do not think, and I have- I think I asked Lee this, I don't
26:20
think the car had air conditioning.
26:22
You've gotta remove something, right?
26:24
I, I'd have to check on that one.
26:25
I think I asked that question.
26:26
But I believe that they did not come stock with air conditioning in 1947.
26:32
They would've had vents.
26:33
They would've had- They had vents … vents they could open, let in fresh air.
26:35
Yeah.
26:35
But air con- No … that's, no, I don't think so.
26:37
So it was, it was hot.
26:39
The first drive was in September.
26:40
The second drive was in August because they wanted to start all the way
26:43
up in Anchorage, Alaska, but they drove all the way to Mexico City.
26:47
It was blazing hot in that second part of the drive.
26:51
No, you couldn't pay me to do that.
26:53
You couldn't pay me.
26:54
That's, that's incredible.
26:55
That's absolutely incredible.
26:57
Was Louis driving with the, with the same guys all the time?
26:59
No.
27:00
He switched it from the first drive to the second drive.
27:03
There were some different
27:04
And for the second drive, one of the guys, they say he developed a nervous condition.
27:10
I don't know exactly what happened, but he was absolutely
27:15
incapable of finishing the drive.
27:17
And so Louis thought that he was going to have to stop.
27:21
And so he called ahead and he said, "I need Lee." Lee was his
27:28
15-year-old son at the time.
27:30
And he said, "Can we get him ready to drive?" Well, he was 15.
27:34
He needed a driver's license.
27:36
He didn't have a driver's license.
27:37
And so they had to run to the city building, and this was early, early,
27:42
early in the morning, and go and get him a provisional license so
27:47
that he could join the second drive.
27:50
And this was on August 15th, which was Louis' birthday.
27:54
They met him in San Diego.
27:56
An ambulance comes, takes this driver out of the car.
28:00
They're driving in a circle.
28:01
They didn't stop.
28:01
And then Lee hops in the car.
28:03
They wheel out a big cake for Louis' birthday.
28:07
They sing him happy birthday.
28:08
The mayor gives him the key to the city.
28:10
All kinds of fun things happen as they're driving around in a circle.
28:13
And then Lee gets in the car and he finishes that drive with his
28:17
dad all the way to Mexico City.
28:19
Wow.
28:19
Yeah.
28:20
Pretty cool.
28:21
And what year was that second drive-in?
28:23
'Cause the first one you said was 1952.
28:25
'54. So '52 and '54.
28:28
And that's interesting because… And I'm not an electrical engineer.
28:31
I know a little bit about cars, I'll just say that.
28:35
Alternators didn't come into the equation until about 1960, and Chrysler
28:40
brought them to bear for the market.
28:42
So that meant the car was running a generator, which only made DC power, but
28:46
you talked about them running an iron and running, you know, these telephones and
28:50
the telegraph, things that were household items that you'd plug into the wall.
28:54
How is he making electricity?
28:56
He was a genius with electricity.
28:59
There were stories about him when he was younger where … There's one story
29:04
where it sounds like he was a bit of a character and kind of got into some
29:07
scruffs with people all the time.
29:10
And so one time there were these guys that were maybe bullying him or
29:14
something like that, and so he took a wire, thin wire, and he attached
29:18
to each of their car door handles.
29:21
And so then when they tried to get into their car, they were all to
29:25
this thing that would shock them.
29:26
Obviously, I'm not an electrical engineer either, but he would, he had a little
29:30
thing that would send them a little zap.
29:32
And they op- tried to open their car, and they got a shock.
29:35
And so he was always considered himself a mechanical genius,
29:40
and I really think he was.
29:41
And so he was able to adapt the car so that he could have enough
29:46
power to run these different things.
29:48
I don't know if you could run the electric razor and the iron at the same time.
29:55
My guess is no.
29:57
My guess is that he would have to do the kind of thing like they did in Apollo
30:01
13, where they're like, "We gotta get all of the power to this one place."
30:06
And I think that that's what he was doing.
30:07
He was always, you know, moving things around and, and making sure that he
30:11
had the power where he needed it.
30:13
It's pretty cool … I mean, there's layers and then there's this, right?
30:16
The more you keep telling, there's so many threads to pull, so many different
30:21
ways you can take this whole adventure.
30:23
And I think it's funny because this type of ingenuity, I mean, there's a lot of
30:28
very smart and talented engineers today, but this sort of out-of-box thinking
30:32
as you mentioned it, is really part of that post-war America period, right?
30:37
And at the same time, so you got all these people inventing all
30:39
sorts of things in the 1950s.
30:41
But you also have the rise of the road trip culture at the same time, right?
30:45
And so I wanna hone in on the importance of where Route 66 plays into this.
30:50
We mentioned it earlier.
30:52
As Lauren mentioned, the, the interstate highway system wasn't there.
30:55
We know that the first leg of the trip would've taken them San Diego to
30:58
Chicago, following Route 66 at the time.
31:01
From Chicago, where did they go from there?
31:03
Or did they make a left turn at Albuquerque?
31:06
They didn't go up to Chicago.
31:08
Oh, okay.
31:08
Yeah, they didn't go all the way up to Chicago.
31:10
Because he started in San Diego, I mean, I have… I made a little, like, a zine to
31:16
go with the book that has all the little specs and, and other things like that.
31:20
Okay, so they started out on US 80, 395.
31:25
You know, it's the El Cajon Pass, and then they go to Yuma.
31:28
And then they do 80 all the way to Gila Bend, and then Tucson.
31:32
So they're going down, you know, the south.
31:35
They go through Roswell.
31:36
They go through Amarillo, Texas, Oklahoma City, Joplin.
31:41
So that's Route 66, right?
31:43
So the, they get to Route 66 through Oklahoma City to Joplin is Route 66.
31:48
Then they're on this little 43 to Highway 57, 57 to 69, 69 to Kansas City.
31:56
They refueled at the Fairfax Airport.
31:59
That's where they refueled in Kansas City.
32:01
You know, that was the first refueling place.
32:04
Then they go 40.
32:05
They did 40 a lot.
32:07
So they go 40 through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cambridge.
32:11
Then there's 22 to Pittsburgh.
32:13
There's a turnpike.
32:14
They go to Harrisburg, and then the 22 to Newark, and they get a police
32:19
escort through the Holland Tunnel.
32:21
They go along the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge, and then that's
32:26
when they make the turn to go back west.
32:29
And so then they turn west on 46.
32:32
They go to Teterboro.
32:33
That's where they refuel.
32:35
They planned it to go through the Holland Tunnel very early, early,
32:39
early in the morning so they wouldn't have to deal with New York traffic.
32:42
Yeah.
32:42
So I was gonna ask, if you got stuck in New York City traffic
32:46
or a big city traffic, would that have counted as a stop?
32:49
Yes.
32:49
Yeah, the wheels stopped, it would be a stop.
32:51
The wheels were never not in motion for six days.
32:57
Phew.
32:57
So they never stopped moving once the entire time.
33:01
If you had told me that this was gonna be on an episode of Ripley's Believe It
33:06
or Not or something like that, I would've been like, "Yeah, this is so far-fetched."
33:10
But then to see some of the file footage that exists of the car in motion and
33:15
things like that, who was taking video of them while they were on this trip,
33:19
and where can we see more of that video?
33:21
Yes.
33:22
If you search on YouTube, you can find … One of the best ones
33:25
is what they did for the museum.
33:27
It's about a 25-minute long video that you can watch, and it has interviews with
33:32
the family members and with Louie himself.
33:34
He was on a lot of shows.
33:35
He was on a show called You Asked for It with Art Baker, I
33:41
think was the host, in the '50s.
33:43
If you watch episodes of this show, you can go down the rabbit hole.
33:45
It's a fun, it's a, you ask for it.
33:48
It's Y-O-U and then a hand pokes its finger through the O. And then the host
33:54
answers letters, like from people, "I've, I've heard about this crazy thing,"
33:57
or, "I've heard about this thing," and then they bring them on the show.
34:00
And so they actually brought Louie on the show to demonstrate
34:03
how to change a tire on the go.
34:06
And then he was on That's Incredible.
34:08
Remember that show, That's Incredible?
34:10
He was on that.
34:11
And so, and then there was news, but they didn't keep news footage really back
34:15
then, and so they don't have a lot of the news footage, but they were able to
34:19
have some of this, which is great for me.
34:21
In fact, the Smithsonian asked for the Fabulous Car, and Louie said,
34:27
"I do not want this car to leave San Diego." And before he passed
34:31
away he went to his son Lee and he said, "Here's the title to the car.
34:35
I don't want you to have this go to the Smithsonian or any other, any other
34:40
museum." And Lee unfortunately passed away just not too long ago, and now Danny
34:45
Mattar is the one who holds the title.
34:47
And he really shared with me that when they would have, you know, events or
34:52
places, put maybe in a parade or a car show or something like that, they would
34:56
call him up as a young boy and he would be charged with making the car shine.
35:02
And he just felt like that was such an important trust for him to be able
35:06
to take care of the Fabulous Car.
35:08
And I just love that it's so many generations now that feel
35:11
like this is their car, and I feel like it is San Diego's car.
35:15
So let's talk a little bit more about the book.
35:17
You put together a picture book.
35:18
It's geared towards kids.
35:20
Is there an adult version of the book coming along, like something with more of
35:24
the diaries, more of these first sources that you have, something more that, I
35:28
hate to say a tome versus a picture book, where we can dig deeper into the story?
35:32
I don't have anything planned for that.
35:35
There is a book that I used as a reference, and it was written,
35:39
I believe, in the '60s, and it was called Louie and His Fabulous
35:43
Car, and it was by George Barrack.
35:47
It's, was out of print, and I had to just wait until I could find.
35:52
I knew it existed, but it took me, I think, a year or two
35:56
to be able to find that book.
35:58
And I finally found it, and that's where I got some of the research.
36:00
Most of what I used were interviews with the primary sources and the
36:04
interviews with Lee for the picture book.
36:07
Having read that book, which would be very hard for any of our listeners
36:11
to get ahold of, what do you think was missing from the journey?
36:14
Are there stories that you found by talking to the family or looking
36:17
at those primary sources that weren't included in the book?
36:20
Or does that book need to be revisited and revised for 2026?
36:25
It definitely could be revisited.
36:26
It, it's a very conversational book.
36:28
It's just him talking with Louis, and it's kind of got this vibe of, like, wow,
36:34
you know, this guy's a real character and this is what he told me and this is…
36:37
You know, all of that kind of stuff.
36:38
So yeah, I think it definitely could be revisited.
36:41
It's a… Just so much of Louis' story is wondering what drove
36:48
him to do all of these things.
36:50
I mean, at one point he, he was working on the Fabulous Car, I think, 18 hours a day.
36:55
This was according to his son.
36:57
His wife, Rosie, said, "You're not here anyway.
37:00
You might as well just live at the garage." I mean, she was very
37:03
supportive throughout their, uh, you know, their relationship.
37:07
But I think she just kinda had it, and it seemed like for six months
37:09
he just sent checks home so that she could keep the family running, but
37:14
really, he was living at the garage.
37:16
Unlike a historical book, which would detail the account of the journey from
37:22
very beginning, like you said, his tinkering with the Cadillac all the
37:24
way through the completion of even the second adventure that they went on,
37:28
a children's book usually has a moral or a point or something you're trying
37:33
to convey as part of the message.
37:34
So as a picture book about a car, is there a takeaway here for a younger audience?
37:39
What are they supposed to learn from the book?
37:41
Well, that's a good question.
37:42
I, I mean, I like picture books that don't necessarily have any kind of moral per se.
37:47
Just it, it might be to inspire, entertain.
37:51
I think for me, I want mostly to foster curiosity in kids,
37:57
and it really does that.
37:59
I mean, I wrote this to be a good read-aloud, meaning that you can take this
38:04
book and read it to kids in schools, and I'll be doing school presentations, things
38:09
like that, libraries, car museums, and be able to have them understand what it
38:17
means to really go through the iterative process, to have trial and error, to fail
38:25
and start over, because definitely there w- there was failure involved in this,
38:30
and I think that that's really important.
38:32
So I guess, I guess that is kind of a message that, hey, dare to
38:36
dream and, and then just be curious.
38:38
And what I do with kids in, in a school program is to have them dream what, what
38:43
would they put in their fabulous car.
38:45
You know, what's the thing that you think would be indispensable?
38:49
I don't know, an ice cream machine.
38:51
Like a soft serve?
38:52
I would've put a soft serve in my fabulous car.
38:54
I think that would've been a really cool thing to do while you're driving nonstop.
38:58
But, you know, for kids to think that way and to … I mean, definitely
39:02
this is a STEM book, so it's a true story and it's a science story.
39:07
And a geography story, 'cause we're learning about the United States too.
39:11
I, I think my question for you, Heidi, is what does Louise Carr have to say
39:15
about the importance of Route 66 and road tripping for the American experience?
39:20
The national conversation has been on Route 66 because
39:24
it's the 100th anniversary.
39:26
I did not time this release.
39:30
The publisher had, uh, complete control of the release of the book, and it
39:34
just so happens that it's coming out on the 100th anniversary, which I think
39:38
is amazing because I think families are wanting to rediscover some of
39:46
the, the magic of the road trip that maybe they've forgotten about or…
39:51
I think that that's really been something that people have talked to me about
39:56
when I tell them about this book.
39:57
"Oh, I remember when my family took this trip, and we traveled all the
40:01
way from California to Georgia one summer." And they tell me all about
40:06
the things that they did on their trip.
40:09
And of course, they made stops along the way.
40:12
And so this one is just kind of a story about what's possible and what
40:17
you can see and the places that are maybe a little bit forgotten in our
40:23
country because we fly over them, and to see all of these little towns.
40:27
I don't have anything planned right now, but I would love to do a independent
40:31
book store road trip myself, where I go to all of the independent children's
40:37
book stores along the route and be able to visit with them and get those
40:41
kids excited about what it means to…
40:43
You know, about the fabulous car and then what it means to road trip.
40:46
All of that kind of fun stuff.
40:48
You know, and you bring up a really valid point, Heidi, because I think road
40:50
tripping hit a high probably in the '80s.
40:53
When you think about even the way they were glorified in movies like National
40:58
Lampoon's Vacation, where the family truckster to Wally World, right?
41:01
I mean, and they're iconic and things like that, but we just went on a
41:04
road trip ourselves to the Midwest.
41:06
We put 2,500 miles on the, you know, the family hauler going all
41:09
the way to Wisconsin and back from the DC area, and it was great.
41:11
I mean, I grew up in that time period when road tripping was still a thing.
41:15
Now it's like, "Oh, jump on a plane. Go here." And even
41:18
the romance of trains is gone.
41:19
Sometimes I fantasize about that.
41:21
Wouldn't it be cool to take a train from New York to Chicago
41:24
or to w- LA or wherever it is?
41:26
You know, that's a bygone era there.
41:28
But where I'm going with this is, if you could pick a car, any car, and
41:32
go on a road trip, do a one lap of America, what would you do it in?
41:37
Well, I mean, I would do it in the Fabulous car.
41:42
I would, I would love for someone to recreate that car, real-life
41:47
Fabulous car, and do that.
41:48
And I would, I'd probably find two very clo- like what Lauren was saying,
41:52
maybe some close friends that I'd feel comfortable doing the, the trip.
41:56
I think it would be really, really cool to do that.
41:59
If we're talking, like, you know, in the realm of what's possible, I
42:04
would say I, I think I would probably choose a nice comfy Cadillac.
42:09
Hey, hey, Cadillac, a nice Escalade or something like that, 'cause you
42:14
can have a, just bring all the books in the back and all of my stuff.
42:17
That would be awesome.
42:17
So you got room for the washer, the dryer, and the BJ, right?
42:21
Yes.
42:21
In the back of the Escalade.
42:22
Yes.
42:22
But that's okay.
42:23
Going in the direction of yet another Cadillac for a journey like this,
42:27
do you know on the off chance, is Cadillac planning to commemorate this
42:32
car along with Route 66 in any way?
42:35
Has the GM Heritage Center been involved in any way?
42:38
What is GM's feel about such an iconic car as this Cadillac?
42:43
You know, I mean, I've had a lot of people reach out to me.
42:47
I've reached out to Cadillac, and I haven't really gotten any kind
42:51
of response from Cadillac on this.
42:53
So I don't even know if they're aware of the book.
42:57
I was talking to a friend of mine who makes commercials for Cadillac,
43:00
and I was asking him about this.
43:02
So I'm like, "Hey, you know, I think this would be really great to connect
43:05
with Cadillac." And he said that Cadillac's vibe is really sort of
43:08
modern and not looking toward the past.
43:11
They're not as much.
43:13
And so maybe that's the reason why they're maybe not as
43:18
interested in the heritage story.
43:21
I was offered a booth at the Cadillac Fall Festival.
43:25
It's the Cadillac, you know, Enthusiast Club at the Gilmore
43:29
Museum in Hickory Corners.
43:31
And I am just beyond excited.
43:34
I've never been to Hickory Corners at that Gilmore campus, and I don't know if either
43:39
of you have been there, but I have heard that is just an amazing place to visit.
43:43
And so I'm really excited.
43:45
If anybody wants to come and get a signed copy of the Louis Mattar's Fabulous
43:49
Car book or meet me or talk more about The Fabulous Car, I will be there,
43:53
and I'm really excited about that.
43:55
And everybody should because, yes, the Gilmore, that's a beautiful complex,
43:59
different museums on the property.
44:01
Big shout-out to National Association of Automobile Museums.
44:04
Our next annual conference is gonna be there next year.
44:07
And I want to assure you, Heidi, that a modern car brand not taking the bait
44:14
and biting at a wonderful historical story says nothing about the story.
44:19
This is, I work in an independent car museum.
44:22
A lot of car brands really struggle to understand how to facilitate and
44:26
celebrate their heritage and pass it on and take it as something very special.
44:30
It's run by a lot of marketing people who don't really grasp or
44:34
even understand the importance.
44:35
So it doesn't say anything about how important this story is.
44:38
Like, I'm telling you, I work at a museum.
44:40
It is.
44:40
It's very important.
44:41
Everybody go buy the book.
44:43
Yeah, thanks.
44:43
I mean, we all have those cars that are the close-to-our-heart kind of cars.
44:48
I mean, my grandpa's second wife had this 1957 T-Bird, red
44:54
with a cream-colored hard top.
44:56
And I mean, I was seven or eight years old looking at that car thinking,
45:00
"Now that, that is a car. You know, that's a car." And- If someone
45:05
made something like that today, I'd probably buy it on the spot because
45:09
it's just, you know, it's nostalgic.
45:11
And I know you have to deal with all of the modern needs, but I, I,
45:15
I do think that there is something to celebrating car history and just
45:20
the amazing ingenuity of people that were developing these different,
45:24
you know, not, not just the fabulous car, but all of the different cars.
45:28
Yeah.
45:28
It's just, it, it's amazing to me.
45:30
It's why enthusiasts are such an important part of the car community, and doing
45:34
things like Cadillac Fall Festival.
45:36
Really, it's the enthusiasts who really keep the tradition and the
45:39
history and the heritage alive.
45:41
They're so important.
45:42
So important.
45:43
And I think that's a great segue there, Lauren.
45:47
As you guys were talking about this, I was thinking to myself,
45:49
any enthusiast in their right mind should have a copy of this.
45:53
Well, I can't find the original book like you were talking about, but your
45:55
book, Heidi, Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car.
45:58
You know, and Lauren said, "Go buy the book," but that poses the
46:01
question, where can we buy the book?
46:02
Do we call you?
46:04
Do we get it at the San Diego Museum?
46:05
Can I order it on Amazon?
46:07
How do we go about getting a copy of the book?
46:08
Anywhere books are sold in the entire world you can get
46:12
Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car.
46:14
I love buying at local independent bookstores.
46:17
I think that they're wonderful.
46:18
You can also get it on bookshop.org.
46:21
You can get it on Amazon, and it's, you know, it's available wherever.
46:25
And of course, car museums.
46:27
Really love that car museums have been reaching out, and I've been reaching out
46:30
to car museums, and it's been wonderful.
46:32
And I'm having … My official launch party is at the San Diego Auto Museum.
46:38
Yeah.
46:39
And the retail price on the book is gonna be?
46:41
$18.99. All right.
46:43
With that, Heidi, we've reached that part of the episode where I like to invite
46:46
our guests to share any shout-outs, thank yous, promotions, or anything
46:49
else we haven't covered thus far.
46:50
Okay, great.
46:51
Well, I would say I would wanna shout out to my fabulous
46:56
illustrator, Jordi Vila Delclòs.
46:59
He's an amazing illustrator from Barcelona, Spain, and just got
47:04
the technical aspects of the book just perfection in my mind.
47:08
The publisher, Creative Editions, did such a wonderful job with the art
47:13
direction and the making of the book.
47:16
The San Diego Automotive Museum, just such a great place.
47:20
Everybody should go there.
47:21
It's just such a wonderful museum, and they've been so wonderful to me.
47:25
The Mattar family, so helpful.
47:28
Lee Mattar, he was an amazing… He was so much like his dad.
47:33
He made this whole amusement park with actual roller coasters
47:36
and all kinds of things on…
47:38
They had this piece of property in the outskirts of, or the back hills of San
47:42
Diego, and he made this whole amusement park for his children and grandchildren.
47:47
It's crazy.
47:48
I mean, the ingenuity, the inventiveness of the Mattar family, it's just legendary.
47:54
And then, of course, my entire family has been involved.
47:57
My husband made this… It's just everything on this model is just,
48:01
like, we went and measured the Fabulous car, and he made it from
48:04
scratch, and it's, uh, it's great.
48:07
We're gonna post some of those, you know, the making of the
48:10
Fabulous car model online.
48:12
But, uh, yes.
48:13
And then, of course, thank you for having me talk about something that
48:17
I love so much, the Fabulous car.
48:19
Louis Mattar didn't just take a road trip, he redefined what a road trip
48:24
could be, and he proved that imagination can take you farther than any map.
48:29
His nonstop cross-country Cadillac remains one of the most audacious
48:33
engineering feats in American automotive history, and it's not just a legend.
48:37
It's real, it runs, and you can stand inches away from it.
48:41
If you want to experience this piece of rolling ingenuity for
48:44
yourself, Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car is on permanent display at
48:47
the San Diego Automotive Museum.
48:49
Visitors can explore the full suite of custom systems Louis built,
48:52
from the onboard shower to the kitchen, the communications gear,
48:56
hydraulic jacks, and the mid-wheel drive change and refueling setup.
49:01
It's one of those rare artifacts that feels even more unbelievable in person.
49:05
So the next time you're in San Diego, be sure to stop by Balboa Park.
49:08
Many fabulous museums there, and be sure to stop by the Automotive Museum to
49:13
check out Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car.
49:15
Don't forget to check out sdautomuseum.org for further details.
49:19
That's right, Lauren, and as we close out today's episode of Automotive History
49:22
Live, we wanna thank Heidi Lewis for bringing Louis' story to life, and for
49:26
sharing the spirit behind her new picture book, Louis Mattar's Fabulous Car.
49:31
And with the 100th anniversary of Route 66 sparking national conversation about
49:34
road trips again, there is no better time to revisit the stories that push the
49:39
boundaries of what a road trip could be.
49:42
So thanks for joining us, and until next time, keep your wheels turning
49:45
and your curiosity wide open.
49:55
This episode is made possible by the Studebaker National Museum,
50:00
the home of South Bend, Indiana's automotive and industrial heritage.
50:04
The museum preserves and interprets the legacy of Studebaker through
50:08
its world-class collection of vehicles, artifacts, and archival
50:12
materials, including several nationally designated treasures.
50:16
As a center for history, design, and innovation, the museum inspires
50:21
enthusiasts and the community alike through its exhibits, programming, and
50:26
commitment to safeguarding the stories that shaped American transportation.
50:30
To learn more or plan your visit, check out www.studebakermuseum.org.
50:39
This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
50:45
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
50:49
The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational
50:56
records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard as well as to broaden and
51:01
deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through
51:06
the modern age and into the future.
51:09
For more information about the SAH, visit www.autohistory.org.
51:21
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