Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Leeedy On 2014/5/16 23:01:46

RE: the so-called "Willow Run Expressway"... Yesssss, I know alllll about the WIllow Run Expressway.... and I believe the Davison Expressway in Highland Park predated it. Anyway, my grandmother owned much of the land around Belleville, Michigan. I very, very, very well remember driving out there back in those days. If you know where that is, I assure you it was a half-day trip out there from Detroit in the early 1950s. Whatever freeway, people may be imagining today was a short strip of double roads that bent and went for only a while and then hit traffic lights. Anyone thinking it was "a snap" to go from downtown Detroit to Ypsi... wow. I have no idea what roads they were using... but it was nothing like I-94 is today!

RE: Free Press articles about Frost & French... I didn't need to read the Free Press about goings on at Frost & French since I knew most of everyone there and I was a customer too (still have F&F license plate frames)! I was certainly living in Los Angeles at that time and I was a founding member of PACs Earle C. Anthony Region, so anything unusual happening at Frost & French would have been easily known. As far as a man wearing a chauffeur's uniform driving the Caribbean... strange story... unless it happened to be Jamie Kay who was Peter's nephew...he was the one who got the car out of the garage. And yes, I knew who shot the car for Motor Trend and I have original photo proofs and posters made up by Petersen Publishing personnel who gave them to me back then. Yesss, still have them. Yess, know all about the restrospect MT article. Still have that too. By the way, whoever wrote that article claimed the car had "air bags" for suspension...so don't be to bowled over by stuff that was published about it back then-most of it written by people who knew nothing about the real details of the car. And the car wash in question was the Sunset Car Wash...located on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood...a few blocks away from Petersen's headquarters in those days. I did freelance and contract work there (at Petersen).

RE: The Studebaker archivist response... Of course he would say "who?"... you should have asked any SoCal PAC member and you could have had an immediate and accurate response! As I said earlier, a friend of mine bought the car from Hughes' people in Hollywood and he has had the car ever since. I wrote the history of this car and it was published in the PAC The Packard Cormorant magazine back in the 1970s. Believe you can still buy that back issue of the magazine by going to PAC's web site and requesting one Or look on the back inside cover of TPC and there is a listing of available back issues and how and where to order them. You can also find old issues on eBay.

RE: Whereabouts of the Hughes/Peters Caribbean today... It is alive and very well in a glass enclosure at the Automotive Driving Museum in El Segundo, CA. Curator there is Earl Rubenstein.