When gas prices exploded in the early seventies, a person named Liz Carmichael presented a small 70-mile-per-gallon car that the press fawned over and people rushed to put down deposits on. The only problem? The car didn’t really exist.
I feel sorry for those who lost hard-earned cash on a product, but my deepest sympathy goes to the person whose idea was used as part of this scheme. The car in question that this inventor was working on had the potential to be the Real Deal, and his concept and good name got unfairly maligned. What if he got a do-over to bring this much-wanted product to life?
Unknowingly Headed For A Clifft
Dale Clifft probably never thought that his life would take the turn that it did; he’s one of many people of integrity in this world who deserved far more than they got.
In his garage, Dale had built a three-wheeled “motorcycle car” with a stretched-fabric body; Clifft was a motorcyclist who wanted to create something with the economy of a bike but some real weather protection.
The car was lightweight enough that Dale could lift the thing rather easily himself, even clad in a slick seventies’ polyester leisure suit as seen below:
Whether he knew it or not, this product had the makings of the right thing and the right time; that’s certainly what caught the attention of an ex-con who saw dollar signs in his creation.
How Liz Carmicheal became aware of Dale’s creation is unclear, but she offered Clifft $1000 and “royalties” for “the design” (whatever that encompassed) as well as a role of consultant in turning the cycle-car into something more of, well, a car.
Carmichael started what she called Twentieth Century Motors to develop the little car that she named the Dale after her sort-of business partner. Glossy brochures were made up to promote the Dale, with illustrations since there was no physical car yet to photograph.
The brochure contained plenty of information that stretched the truth beyond even what PT Barnum would have done. Inside were specifications of the car which, at the time of printing, were not even close to being finalized.
How much of a role Dale had in the development of the non-motorbike-based “real” yellow car that actually wasn’t “real” at all yet is unknown, but it was apparently the outlandish claims that Liz was making about this car in the press and in the documentation that he took issue with. Zoom in on the brochure pages and get ready to spit out whatever beverage is currently sitting in your mouth.
Yeah, those are some interesting claims there, woof. Despite what Carmichael said, Clifft knew the windows were not made of “space age Rigidex” that was “indestructible.” He understood Liz had not driven one into a wall at 30MPH with no damage as she claimed, since there was no running prototype car that could even drive at 30MPH in the first place. Stating impossibly that the air conditioner in the Dale would have “no moving parts” and “no wires” must have truly irked the man whose name was on the car.
When Clifft finally confronted Carmichael about these and many more flat-out lies, he was shown the door, and the promised $3 million in royalties he was supposed to receive became a $2000 check. Which bounced. In a way, Dale’s lack of connection with the firm that was going to make “his car” was a good thing since he didn’t get embroiled in the mess that ensued when Liz was arrested and convicted of numerous counts stemming from her taking of anywhere from $6 to $30 million in deposits for nonexistent products and the company (which it turns out was a cash business and in many ways wasn’t even a company) collapsed.
Nothing substantive existed from the venture, other than a few prototypes that were built, only one of which supposedly ran (by “ran” I mean it could sort of move under its own power but forget 70 MPG and 85 MPH). The one you see here is one of the non-functional ones in the collection of the Petersen Museum today.
A full HBO documentary exists on the story, and there are those today who appear to have some sympathy towards Liz Carmichael’s situation. Maybe she wasn’t given enough time to get the product off the ground and got railroaded by the Big Three? Was she the victim of discrimination as the transgender woman she was? Anything is possible, but the bigger issue for me is that what appeared to be a rather reasonable idea from a creative guy didn’t get a chance to really see the light of day.  I’d like to imagine a fictional timeline where it could have, but my alternate reality involves another controversial figure.
Yugo Find Another Partner
It’s obvious from examination of the few Dale prototypes that exist that a lot of work still needed to be done to make it into a functioning vehicle. Clifft had not partnered with a person who had the slightest idea of how to produce a car. However, I can think of someone who knew exactly how to spin a compelling yarn and make a car from semi-scratch and had learned what not to do from the esteemed University of Hard Knocks.
Like Liz Carmichael, Malcom Bricklin has been accused by some of being more of a showman (to be charitable) than a businessman, but regardless of any claims about his business dealings, there is a big difference between Bricklin and Carmichael: Malcolm actually produced and imported not-fake cars, most notably the 1974 “safety” sports car that bore Bricklin’s name. About 3000 were produced over two years before production and labor issues brought this venture down, and Malcolm readily admits today that he had no idea what he was getting into.
Despite fizzling out with this debacle, Malcolm returned. In the sixties, before making his own car, Bricklin had imported the first Subarus (the tiny 360 coupe), so when the Bricklin “safety car” venture died he went back to bringing in things like Fiat sports cars (after the manufacturer stopped bringing them into American).
Say what you will about Malcolm, but if anyone could bring this funny yellow car to life, it would be him. I promise you, Clifft would have wanted revenge and, if nothing else, vindication of his small-car idea. And Bricklin needed a new job. Could these two have made Dale’s car a reality?
Still A Banana, But A Cooler Banana
Besides the prototype at the Petersen Museum and the only running (sort of) one in a private collection, there’s also one in the very interesting collection of the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Staff member Jason Lubken stated to me over the phone that it is absolutely just a styling buck without any kind of interior, but you can see some refinement from what I am assuming are earlier versions of the Dale.
Still, there’s work I’d want to do to make it more real-world; a LOT of work.
As shown, to make the front match the styling mockup would require a urethane bumper cover; I think a startup like Dale might have a hard time bringing that to reality. Taking a cue from the Bricklin, the front bumper would be telescopic to comfortably manage the 5 MPH impact regulations of the time; it also has the benefit of visually breaking up the front a bit. I’d also try to take out at least a little bit of the length of the nose to reduce a bit of the banana appearance. I’d cut out some of that low-hanging belly pan beneath the car and make what remains black to hide it. The “B” pillar would get black paint or vinyl on the upper-level models to make the side windows look larger.
I know that the designers were keeping the top of the wheel arch squared off to match the character line on the side of the car but that makes it appear quite heavy, so I’ve cut in a round opening. Here’s a very rough animation to make it a little easier to see:
Those ill-fitting sunken sealed beams on the front of all the Dale prototypes and renderings always made these things look kit-car unfinished and, more importantly, would be death for aerodynamics in a car attempting to get 50MPG-plus on the highway; they’re practically air brakes. Yes, my revised design has flip-up lights but I’d eschew motors for pulling a lever in the cabin like on a Saab Sonett or an Opel GT (actually, the Opel flip-around lights might be a good choice to provide a relatively slick shape even with the lights exposed).
The black insert at the back of the styling buck would benefit us in that we could blend in a rubber 5MPH bumper in rather easily. My assumption was the whole back of the Dale was supposed to lift up (for reasons we’ll explore later) but I changed that to a simple hatchback to access the cargo area.
I also like that the design allows for a void that could accommodate virtually any taillight obtainable and still look relatively integrated. The above image uses 1972 Firebird lights as on one of the actual Dale prototypes. Again, a rough animation to show the changes:
The image below I’ve put Fiat 850 Spyder lights (also used on a Detomaso Mangusta!) into the void with a separate back up light below.
Amber signals would make Jason Torchinsky happy, right? Oh, and of course the AMC side markers I put on it as well.
It’s Just Plastic, People
Naturally, we know that the “space-age structural resin” claimed by Carmicheal of the Dale was space-age bullshit; it was just fiberglass. However, the statement in the brochure about “minor scratches won’t show”? Bricklin had an answer for that, which he’d used on his ill-fated self-named sports car.
I’ve set this video to start where Malcolm talks about not painting cars (if you choose to watch the whole interview, I can assure you it isn’t a waste of time, since this 80-year-old guy has the energy of a thirty-year-old and he has stories).
Bottom line: the $300 million or so investment in paint facilities was not something Bricklin wanted to do; note that years later his nemesis John DeLorean also chose to make a non-painted car. After visiting plastic maker Rohm and Haas, Bricklin found an acrylic sheet material that could have been vacuum-formed to shape and then stuck onto an unpainted fiberglass “underbody”. Colored all the way through, the material was designed for bathroom walls in lieu of tile, hence the insanely disco-era colors.
Malcolm was stuck with the “bathroom” colors that they had, which he then named “Safety Green”, “Safety Red”, and so on (the one Malcolm called “vomit” was named “Safety Suntan”).
Now, bonding the acrylic to the fiberglass underbody proved to be problematic, with something like a sixty percent failure rate. Early cars driven in the desert and put into an air-conditioned garage would shed their acrylic panels; body panels were tested by hitting them with a hammer at the factory to see if the panels stayed on. A lot of learning took place, to say the least.
I wonder if there would be a way to eliminate the fiberglass bonding to a body underneath (and save that weight). You can solvent bond mounting points onto acrylic, and maybe there’s a Fiero-like structure underneath to attach semi-stressed panels? I’m not sure, but it would have been great to apply some of the learnings from the Bricklin to the Dale, nearly a decade before Pontiac’s sports car came to life.
As promised by Malcolm, fifty years later you can pretty much buff a scratched and dead-looking finish back to near-new 1974 eye-searing perfection. Jeez, those colors..
Would A Hamster In A Wheel Work?
Despite the details in the promotional literature, there were no finalized production specifications for the Dale. In fact, Jason Torchinsky has pointed out that even technical drawings of Dale in the brochure showed absurd details like the flat twin BMW motor being mounted vertically behind the seats. Maybe there’s like an interesting oil pan setup or something?
To make a Real Dale, a powerplant and drivetrain are the first things we’d want to source. Interestingly, after the Bricklin car project collapsed in 1975, Malcolm apparently still had stock in Subaru (they had bought him out when they decided to import cars themselves to the US). Subaru’s water-cooled EA-63 1200cc flat four pumping through a front-wheel drivetrain seems like it might have been an idea for the Dale; even with the low hood line the spare tire likely could have found a home on top of the motor.
The gas tank might fit under the center console as on the Pontiac Fiero, which not only is good space utilization but a very safe place for the tank in a collision (as opposed to where the rear bumper bolts could pierce it like on a certain Ford subcompact). The single rear wheel and drum brake would sit on a swing arm held up by a quarter-elliptic leaf spring (or torsion bar) to save space.
With 58 horsepower on tap in a car as small as the Dale, performance likely would have been reasonable for the time; in fact, the Dale might have been sold as a sports coupe. Don’t laugh; the Pontiac Fiero started life as a “commuter” car. The Polaris Slingshot is a three-wheeled contraption that claims to be a recreational vehicle; at least the Dale would have offered a real cabin and more-useable-in-snow front wheel drive. Actually, I’m reminded of the very rare three-wheeled 1982-85 Trihawk car from the early eighties, with a complete flat motor drivetrain from a Citroen GSA mounted up front and driving the steering wheels. Only 100 or so were built before the venture ended, but testers of the day claimed that it was such a blast that it might be banned in some states.
Despite the skinny tires, contemporary tests were able to get figures near 1.00G on the skidpad, beating the concurrent Corvette and exotica like a Lamborghini Countach at the time. Another fun fact: based on the site threewheeler.com, the Citroen drivetrain was used only because the makers of the Trihawk had wanted to buy Subaru motors but “they weren’t taken seriously” and refused.
Wait, wasn’t the Subaru motor for the US at the time a larger 1600cc unit? Yes, it was; imagine adding a two-barrel option with 78 horsepower to this little car and getting a better power-to-weight distribution than many sports cars of the day. That would have been a blast for poor malaise-era enthusiasts.
Still, what if buyers really wanted economy over all else? Well, Subaru still made two-cylinder engines like the one in the little 360 that Malcolm once sold here, yet by the late seventies it was water-cooled. With only 36 horsepower on tap, putting this 600cc motor under the hood of the Dale would not have exactly resulted in an Exocet missile for the road, but there’s not much to power around.
So, I’m seeing three different Dales on offer. The Dale Light (delight, get it?) would have been the base two-cylinder car with minimal equipment for pure economy. The one below has optional chrome trim rings added to the Subaru-stamped steel wheels.
The run-of-the-mill model might have been the 1200cc four-cylinder Dale Licious with a bit more features. This model adds twin sport side mirrors and upgraded spoker wheels from a Soobie.
Top of the line for sports car enthusiasts would be the Dale Lirium with the big 1.6 four and alloy wheels, plus extra features like the blacked-out pillar trim and driving lights. Something for everyone here.
Could Carmichael’s claims of 70 miles per gallon have been possible? Probably not but look at some of the other cars of the era: this much larger gas-powered Datsun B210 was rated for 50MPG highway by the EPA.
You would think that a four-cylinder Dale with a fifth gear could have easily exceeded that, and a two-pot Dale might have approached or even gone beyond 60MPG, at least in the EPA tests that we are well aware were a bit suspect for real-world figures. So Liz’s claims of 70MPG might have been far-fetched, but not that far from reality with this fully developed Dale.
Malcolm Couldn’t Put Gullwings On The Yugo Either
Sadly, cost constraints would have negated scissor or gullwing doors, unquestionably disappointing Bricklin. Open one of the doors (with AMC door handles, naturally) and you’d see a rather basic but functional cabin that could be easily upgraded even at a dealer level. Lower-level models would lack equipment that the higher tiers would get, but it isn’t like you couldn’t go back and add more as your budget allowed.
Case in point: things like extra gauges might be installed later, as well as armrests on the doors and between the seats. To keep things inexpensive, the center console would also house the basic gauges (speed, fuel) and warning lights in the center of the dash on the Light model. That might be a plastic plug in the cigarette lighter socket to save fifty cents:
There are storage bins all over the place but no glove box; you could still get soft storage bags that were fitted to sit in the dash-top recesses with handles so that you could carry them with you.
Take a step up the ladder and we would add a bolt-on gauge cluster in front of the driver for additional gauges like a tach, temperature, and oil pressure (the gas gauge might be relocated to free up space for a clock in the center stack). Unlike the headlight opening lever on the Opel GT which was located over by the handbrake, the slider bar for raising the headlights on the Dale is located near the light switch; my thought was that you couldn’t lower the lights without switching them off so that you won’t forget and run down the battery.
A front-wheel drivetrain would free up the whole cabin space to allow for cargo behind the two Subaru front seats, and possibly even two tiny fold-down seating spaces flanking the central rear wheel suitable for children. Remember, it’s the late seventies so we could get away with that; even if the cargo area is left seat-free you simply know that as kids you’d ride around in there like you did rolling around in the back of your uncle’s RX-7, right? Naturally, I’d make the seats unavailable on the Light model to keep weight down, not to mention that the base motor likely couldn’t handle even the extra weight of two kids.
With water cooling, we’d have a real heater which, at least to me, would be a reason alone to choose the Dale over a VW Bug (sorry Jason, I’ve spent northern winters with your beloved air-cooled Volkswagens growing up and never will again).
Remember That We Still Had The Pinto
Naturally, there are plenty of far-fetched elements in this what-if Dale scenario. Any project with as much stank on it as the Dale would have been extremely hard to reheat and pitch. At the same time, what banks would loan Malcolm Bricklin money after his own car venture went bust?
I get all of this, but there’s one thing you can’t forget: the public clamor to get what they want. During a time when VW Beetles and Ford Pintos were your choices for cheap cars, the economy was tanked and gas prices were steep (if you could find it) you can best believe that an inexpensive, economical car would sell like hotcakes. Besides, the Dale would have offered a fun look and driving pleasure that something like a wretched Chevette Scooter or Pinto Pony never could. With all of the controversy about the Dale, few people ever said that the idea of the car was a bad. Poorly executed? Absolutely, but a potentially popular product? There’s a reason that Liz Carmichael raised millions of dollars.
What about Malcolm Bricklin? Remember, in the real timeline he actually did come back to the car business. After importing those Fiat sports cars in the early eighties, he did his own “Dale” project: he found the least expensive but viable car in the world, modified it, and brought it to the US. Initially, the Yugo was a smash success on the market, regardless of the fact that some put it on the World’s Worst Cars (don’t let Yugo owner and fan Jason Torchinsky hear you say that or he’ll ask you to step outside, unless you’re really big and physically fit in which case he might just give you A Look).
Had this alternate Bricklin Dale reality taken place, I’ll virtually guarantee that a moldering Dale Licious would be in Jason Torchinsky’s driveway instead of the Bricklin-imported Yugo that’s there now; I bet it would be yellow, too.
A Daydreaming Designer Imagines An AMC Sports Car Based On The Look Of The Pacer – The Autopian
What It Might Look Like If Tesla ‘Gremlinized’ The Model 3 To Make A Tesla Model 2 – The Autopian
Also worth mentioning, Carmichael named the business after one of the companies in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (the even more fictional 20th Century Motor Car Corp was bankrupted by the socialist heirs of its founder, who turned it into a nonprofit cooperative governed by a workers’ council. The company was depicted as having developed a perpetual motion machine in the form of an electric motor that ran on static electricity pulled from the air). Wasn’t the only shady vaporware/scam/semi-scam startup to take inspiration from that source, but might have been the first
I came here to ask when the “Dale”irious model is coming out?
Ha ha
Would this imaginary Dale evolve into an Aptera?
Having read Car and Driver about the Dale back in the day I immediately linked Aptera with Dale conceptually although as far as I know Aptera’s vaporware mobiles have not resulted in criminal prosecutions.
Just add cocaine and drive home in your very own Dale Orean!
And then there’s the cargo version, the Dale Ivery!
The car was lightweight enough that Dale could lift the thing rather easily himself, even clad in a slick seventies’ polyester leisure suit as seen below:
I have a better caption:
In the Seventies the cars serviced YOU!
I’m Chiquita banana and I’ve come to say
Bananas have to ripen in a certain way
When they are fleck’d with brown and have a golden hue
Bananas taste the best and are best for you
You can put them in a salad
You can put them in a pie-aye
Any way you want to eat them
It’s impossible to beat them
But, bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator
So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator
OK, the preceding message has nothing to do with the Dale, but the banana references in the post brought this jingle to mind and now I can’t not hear it, so I’m subjecting you all to this torture.
(Not that I expect many, if any, Autopians to remember it or its jaunty little tune.)
My next-door neighbor owned an orange Bricklin SV-1. As I recall, he also owned a bridge in Brooklyn and oceanfront property in Arizona.
Finally, you could add a street racer model to the Dale line up. Call it the Dale Linquent.
Much fun as always, TB (The Bishop). C-Saurus, signing off.
Dammit, where were you on Saturday when I was trying to think up more “Dale” names?
Ironically the “Safety Suntan” color that Bricklin described as “vomit” is all the rage again. Or at least it’s here again. And some people rage about it.
Oh the days when a second side mirror was an opulent expression of extravagance.
General 3-wheeler question for anyone who might know…
How is a 3-wheeled car versus 4-wheeled car officially defined by the NTHSA/SAE/whoeverdefinesthesethings?
For example, can a 3-wheeled vehicle use a dually setup for the rear? Or do two tires=two wheels? Is it by wheel hub?
It varies by state whether a trike is considered a motorcycle or an autocycle (newer category). Not sure how it works with the feds, but I think they just have to adhere to motorcycle specs. All I remember when I looked into this about 20 years ago, was that the state RMV was the final arbiter (or state police inspector in the case of MA). Two wheels in the back I think would be considered an automobile as the definition seems to universally consider the number of tires contacting the ground, which is why the Pulse motorcycle tilted toward the outside of turns—only one of the pair of outrigger stabilizer wheels could touch the road at a time so as to not be considered a 4 wheeled vehicle and, therefore, a
witch!car. Also, the BMW Isetta has two wheels close set in the rear and is considered a car, though they’re not as close as a dually set up, so that’s only slight support to the argument. There was also the Dodge Tomahawk “motorcycle”, which was not street legal. I don’t know the reason for that, but it did have 4 tires in contact with the ground in a front and rear dually setup and that might have precluded it legally being a motorcycle and unable to pass standards for passenger cars.A like for the tucked in reference. A møøse once bit my sister
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/acrylic-10_20.jpg
But that bathroom!!! :”)
federally, a 3-wheeler is a motorcycle and just has to meet the same safety and emissions standards as any 2-wheeled motorcycle, at the state level, most states have an “autocycle” or “cyclecar” category for 3-wheelers with car-style controls, which exempts them from helmet mandates and allows them to be driven without a motorcycle endorsement (its Elio’s only real contribution to anything, they lobbied state by state to get that enacted over a period of several years), a handful of states do still treat them as motorcycles for licensing though. I believe 1 hub with two tires would probably be treated as 1 wheel, but it would likely have to be run by NHTSA for a ruling before going to market. The Dodge Tomahawk, for instance, was classified as a 2 wheel motorcycle, despite having 4 tires (but DaimlerChrysler ultimately decided against a production run after doing some of the preliminary work for it, so only about a dozen or so were made and they were all preproduction prototypes without valid VINs for road use).
I wonder what it would be like in terms of noise and vibration, riding in the rear with the wheel in the middle? Did anyone sell a four passenger three wheeler?
Morgan. Can’t think of anyone else offhand.
I’m not sure if the 3 seat Morgans had rear seats? The Morgan 4/4 4-wheeler had tiny rear seats.
The Morgan F4 was a 3-wheeler with 4 seats. That’s the trike with the water cooled Ford engine that most people forgot about. AFAIK that’s the only one, but I would love to know of more just out of curiosity.
The Davis Divan was advertised as having “‘4-people-wide’ divan seating” but opinions vary concerning its practicality:
https://live.staticflickr.com/4004/4338862468_3b19dc61a9_c.jpg
That Davis Divan looks divine for dem dames.
Allegedly the largest 3-wheeler ever built. As the company was failing, they tried to develop a stripped down Jeep-style version to sell to the military as an economical transport for domestic bases, and also reached out to Reliant in the UK with some vague partnership proposal. One Divan was shipped to Tamworth for technical evaluation, but Davis collapsed and liquidated before it could be returned, and I don’t believe anyone knows what happened to it after that. Reliant concluded it was far too large and inefficient to market in Britain and contained no special engineering that would be of interest to them
A 3-wheeler hits more bumps than a two-wheeler or a 4-wheeler, since it covers three “lines” in the lane, instead of two or one.
The Dale would have been terrific, if only to provide variety on the roadway and inspire future automotive designs. They would have probably been less than terrific in a collision with a Cadillac (or a Volkswagen).
Road quality under three tracks is always the thing that limits my interest in three wheel designs after driving an old-school Harley/VW trike and recently trying a Can-Am Spyder. Roads are often atrocious, and trying to dodge potholes with three wheels is exponentially more difficult than two or four.
It seems the only ways to succeed on three wheels are to have a super-soft or super-high tech suspension. Soft makes it no fun, and high-tech makes it expensive.
I could imagine lusting after a three wheeler with Cadillac-style Magneride suspension on the front wheels, and maybe even Bose Active suspension for the solo wheel in the back. But without that kind of sorcery, I can’t imagine it being much fun.
Love the mockups as always. The black underbody with the Bricklin nose actually kinda makes the design work, at least as much as it can. Question: why do the photos under the ‘Still A Banana, But A Cooler Banana’ header look like CGI? I assume the lighting but it looks 100% fake.Even if the Dale was real to its as-advertised specs, I still wonder how much the name would hinder it, but I don’t understand the culture of the 70s.
It is real! Jason from the museum assured me that it’s sitting right there. His photography does indeed make it look rather otherworldly.
Often his prose will do the same thing.
I thought it was a render too, but their other exhibit photos have a similar hyper-realistic look. Composite lighting photography maybe?
Also, it is a yellow car that looks like a bloated banana so it’s never going to look entirely “real”
Love The Bishop’s exploration on design What If?’s, like this one.
Satisfying read about a considered design evolution, including schematic drawings, thoughtful construction and execution theory.
Well done! Always ready for the next tale of What could have been…
Thank you!
Waiting for Toecutter to weigh in on the red car Clifft built
He’ll also tell us exactly what size electric motor and battery could be installed to get 200 miles range
Assuming the car Clift built had the CdA of a VW kit car such as a Bradley GT, you’d need a 60 kWh battery pack get that range at 70 mph.
The referenced HBO documentary “The Lady and the Dale” was a very interesting watch.
Edit: I’ll also add that I came away from watching it thinking Liz was actually trying to build that car and not just run a con. Her history, of course, would say otherwise.
I was really looking forward to that documentary, and came away very disappointed at the slant it took. She was a con artist. Nothing more, nothing less, and never had any intention in the world of starting and running a legitimate manufacturer. All felt pretty similar to Netflix’ decision to cast the group who committed the largest bioterror attack in US history in order to influence an election as just a bunch of misunderstood, well meaning post-hippies and concluded with the mastermind of the whole thing happily dancing during the credits. I figure sometimes they have to guarantee depicting some people in a positive light just as a condition of access to key interview subjects and materials, but, at a certain point, if you can’t do it right, you just shouldn’t do it
The only thing missing is a convertible! You already used Light, so… maybe Sunny Dale?
The Dale Capitate.
That got a real chuckle out of me. This being the 1970s and everyone is so terrified of new convertibles…
Maybe not, apparently it’s an entrance to Hell, and there’s a bunch of vampires and teenagers that get up to questionable extracurricular activities.
“ The gas tank might fit under the center console as on the Pontiac Fiero, which not only is good space utilization but a very safe place for the tank in a collision (as opposed to where the rear bumper bolts could pierce it like on a certain Ford subcompact).”
I picked up a date once in my mk2 MR2 and she asked what the huge wall between the seats was. She was not happy to be sitting right next to the fuel tank, despite it being even more protected from crash damage than we were.
I told her pretty much every other car puts the gallons of explody fuel under the back seat your kids sit on. She wasn’t happy about that either.
My first date small-talk sucks.
I used to like picking up people in the Beetle and knocking on the fuel tank just in front of our knees. “Don’t worry, there’s a spare tire to cushion any impact.”
Are we sure he’s lifting the car in that photo?