48 people died in this car (sort of)

[gregleck]

I've heard of "death cars" before, such as the one (or two - one of them must be fake) that Bonnie and Clyde were riding in when they were shot to death.  But back in 1938, Ben Preston built a car made of car parts salvaged from fatal automobile accidents.  Each part had to come from a car which had at least three, preferably more, deaths connected to it.

 

Preston himself was almost killed in the car, along with a hitchiker who was thrown from the vehicle.  Both lived.

 

Oddly enough, there is a Ben Preston who writes for The Drive, but despite being a prolific writer of articles, he was not easy to track down an email address for.

 

The article likely appeared in a number of newspapers.  This one is from the December 4, 1938 Issue of the Shanghai (China) Times.

 

What became of the car?  And did Ben survive the car?

 

 

 

 

[Trulyvintage]

You have to be twisted to

do something like that.

 

Jim

[wayne sheldon]

While I sometimes do have a bizarre sense of humor? That is a bit too ghoulish for my tastes.

In this hobby, one often runs into automobiles with serious accidents as part of their history. One may sometimes wonder whether deaths may have occurred with some cars. 

I will admit that one of the antique automobiles I restored years ago was one such car. I did wonder whether anyone had died in that car or not. It was a 1921 model T Ford chassis with an original era after-market boat-tail roadster body on it. Real original era model T boat-tail roadsters are highly desirable in the model T world, but this one when I got it was about as bad as they came. When I first saw it in a private collection that was selling off some project cars, I thought fully a quarter of the body was missing, and not worthwhile restoring. However, I thought about it a bit, and decided that I might be able to make the missing section. I went back to look more closely and discovered that what I thought was missing was actually smashed inside the other side of the body!

The price was right, so I bought it. Several model T friends came by the house and with only one exception, they all said "Yeah it is a real original boat-tail roadster, but that -- cannot be restored!"

In addition to one rear quarter being smashed and shoved entirely into the other side, the rest of the body was twisted, crooked with one side nearly six inches behind the other side, cowl laid partially over, and the remaining part of the windshield frame had clearly been driven into the ground with considerable force. The damage done would have required a relatively high speed collision, the car being flipped around and striking several objects. After which, someone stripped the car of anything of value

But I did restore it. I wish I still had it. I sold it when we bought our first house.

I did often wonder if anybody was killed in that wreck?

But I really liked the car.

[Rod P]

Yep, that is truly bizarre.

 

Maybe he originally had plans for some kind of road safety awareness display?

 

And then...

 

Wonder if Stephen King had read this article long ago?🤔

[28 Chrysler]

Side show attraction?

[John Kelso]

I never understood why anyone would fear a death car, my father often invited his customers to dinner but none ever showed up.

He was a mortician.

 

 

[gregleck]

18 minutes ago, John Kelso said:

I never understood why anyone would fear a death car, my father often invited his customers to dinner but none ever showed up.

He was a mortician.

 

 

Years ago I went out on a house call.  The proprietor was a mortician.  When I presented the bill, he asked if I would rather trade services.

 

I politely declined.

 

[Eldovert]

Years ago my friends dad had a rusty early fifties Jag fixed head coupe..he decided that he was going to look for a more solid body and ended up finding one in Portland,Oregon. When he went down to have a look at it you could see a bow in the top of the windshield area on the passenger side (he knew it had been in a accident) ..when he asked the vendor about it he said that he was driving the car fast one night and lost control...his girlfriend was with him and hit the top of the windshield killing her. My friends dad bought the body and it hung in the rafters of his garage for years.

That was the first thing I would look at every time I entered the garage.

[gregleck]

34 minutes ago, Eldovert said:

.his girlfriend was with him and hit the top of the windshield killing her. My friends dad bought the body and it hung in the rafters of his garage for years.

 

I presume you meant he bought the body of the car...

[60FlatTop]

"So this slick city reporter, still wet behind the ears, came into town looking for a big news story. Well, I took him over to my place a gave him a good one. He wrote down everything and took pictures. Them young kids today will believe anything. Not a lick of sense in the whole generation." I know the story.

 

We used to have an Arby's in town where we held cruise nights for years. We are 20 miles outside of the city. The city newspaper sent a reporter out to do a story on the cruise nights. One of our guys was a deputy sheriff. We called him Deputy Dawg. He drove a white Chevy coupe because white was the cheapest color at the time. He told the reporter that he saved a lot of money building his car by saving parts left a accident scenes. That full page article hung by the front door for over a decade, all the quotes still in tact for us to chuckle at on each visit.

 

Somewhere there is a story about a Chicago news reporter who quoted a nearby farmer as saying "The corn crop didn't meet our expectations this year but we really didn't think it was going to."

 

"So you're a reporter, eh?"

[Eldovert]

On 8/19/2024 at 10:20 AM, gregleck said:

I presume you meant he bought the body of the car...

Plot twist !