I think everyone here knows how much I love a good automotive mystery. Knowing things is wonderful, but the strange, hungry quality of not knowing something and desperately wanting to is, in some perverse ways, even better. And I think I have a good automotive mystery for everyone today. This one comes once again from my pal Emily and her recent obsession with vintage photographs of Los Angeles, as we already saw in today’s Cold Start. This time I have no idea what the story is behind this photo, despite the strange, seemingly blatant obviousness of the whole thing. If X marks the spot, what spot is it marking?
This image was posted on a Skyscraper Page forum back in 2015, almost a decade ago, and I do not think the mystery has been solved yet. It’s a busy Los Angeles street, and I think the picture was taken in the very early 1950s – likely before 1954. The street itself isn’t mentioned, but I have a suspicion this may be by the intersection of La Brea and Clinton Street.
The mystery part of the picture has to do with the 1947 to 1949 Studebaker Champion in the lower right of the image. You can see the one I’m talking about because it has a huge, white X painted on its roof:
Identifying the car as a Studebaker Champion was relatively easy: that very distinctive wraparound rear window could hardly be anything else:
In 1950, the taillights flipped to be vertical, so it’s no newer than a ’49. The car diagonally up and to the left of the X car is a 1950 Ford, so this is at least from 1950.
Anyway, let’s just get to the big question: why does this Studebaker have a huge X painted on the roof? I don’t think this was a factory option from Studebaker, I doubt there was much demand for roof Xs in the late ’40s, especially with memories of the war so fresh.
It has to be for some sort of aerial spotting, right? But what, and why? And look at the vantage point of the photograph:
It’s above the road, and I don’t think there’s a bridge or overpass there. So maybe this picture was taken from some manner of aircraft, and that car was used to help the aircraft follow or track, for some reason?
But what and why? Is there something done with aircraft in cities that would require a car to visually track like this? Ballooning? Do hot air balloons have support cars like this? Can they even track a car? It’s probably not a balloon.
So, I’m hoping the Autopian Brain Trust can help with this, because it’s kind of driving me nuts. One of you out there must have just that right mix of aviation and automotive and civil engineering knowledge. Or several of you, working together and combining forces like some kind of anime robots forming one colossal robot, in space.
Can we solve the mystery of the X-Car? Man, I hope so.
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Most likely this vehicle was used to provide ground truth while doing aerial mapping campaigns. Aerial mapping is done using specialized large-format cameras mounted in the bellies of airplanes that are flown at moderate altitudes. By using a continuous sequence of overlapping images, accurate details and even elevations can be determined. However, errors do creep in and accrue. You therefore need to have periodic ground truth where exactly known locations can be identified in the photos and used to adjust out the errors. This method is still used today to do large area and municipal mapping. If you’ve ever seen large colored X’s on manhole covers, this is an area that is being aerially mapped.
It’s to help Speed Racer spot his long, lost brother.
That’s Uncle Jesse’s original General Lee.
It’s Malcolm X’s Xmobile. Such amazing gadgets.
That’s the car from the Scottish version of the Dukes of Hazzard, the “The Earls of Inverary”.
Waldo? Is that you?
My guess is that the photo was taken for inclusion in a driver’s ed handbook, film strip, or something similar. Probably in a chapter on merging.
You’ve located the inspiration for Racer X’s helmet.
0% chance that was taken with an aircraft; the perspective means it would have been about even with all the power lines. I’d say bridge, or a truck with a bucket/firetruck ladder or something.
The whole X on the car makes me think of the scene in Black Hawk Down where the informant is driving around with a black cross on the roof of his car which is being tracked by a helicopter far away and he stops at different stops to indicate stuff.
It’s so that the two guys loading a grand piano into someone’s high rise apartment can easily place when and where to drop it for maximum comedic effect
I’m just chuffed to see a mention of SkyscraperPage on here. As an LA history geek, I’ve been following a forum thread on that site called “Noir-ish L.A.” since 2009. It is now over 3000 pages, and over time it has organically became one of the best online collections of Los Angeles historical photos anywhere. A few real-life historians and authors have participated in it, as well as plenty of interested amateurs like me.
It’s Friday. I have no brain power left.
Maybe it was a modern day treasure map?
Okay, so now I am invested, I guess. The street is “Figueroa near Sunset.” A picture from a similar time and vantage point is here at the LA Public Library:
https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/88285
The caption is “View of Figueroa Street in 1950, looking north toward Sunset Boulevard, showing a reverse traffic lane used to help accommodate the heavy automobile traffic.”
So if the X-car picture is from before 1950, it could somehow be involved in traffic planning, with the X making the car visible and easy to track through traffic. I also note that there are new lines that have been painted next to old ones in the X-car picture, which implies that they were changing lane markings
wow that pic perfectly lines up. on the right, the circle sign on the street post with a cross, and the pepsi-cola sign further back. on the road on the left, the ‘PED’ text is visible for the ‘PED X-ING’
There seems to be / have been bridges there that a photographer could have stood on. It’s hard to tell, but the whole area depicted in this photo seems to have been “urban renewed” into the intersection between 101 and 110, which makes me think even more that this X-car is about traffic planning and /or aerial photography. The current site of this photo seems to be at coordinates 34.061008044132905, -118.2473237848747
Great comments and I have nothing to add except that measuring lat/long to 15 decimals of precision gets you to something like a millionth of an inch.
That will be useful to avoid future transporter accidents until Heisenberg compensators are perfected.
This. I have to tell younger engineers at work to just round coordinates off at like 6 digits ALL THE TIME. Just because you can get that many decimals doesn’t mean they convey useful information!
The Hollywood Freeway was completed from downtown to a preexisting section at Cahuenga Pass in 1954, and the map location you linked to shows where it goes over Figueroa Street. The angled lane marking looks like it denotes an entrance ramp for Figueroa, probably the one from Temple Street where it crosses over the Figueroa underpass, The architecture of the Temple St overpass and ramp look like they were in place before the early ’50s, and the street sign for the street going to the right of Figueroa could read “Boston St” as easily as “Clinton St”. I don’t know when the freeway overpass went in, but this may have been part of a study to determine where the freeway could cross and how that would affect the ramp from Temple to northbound Figueroa.
This part of town was cleared and redeveloped as slum clearance in the ’50s and ’60s, obliterating almost everything that existed there
Maybe it is to guide the movement of the Pantry restaurant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Pantry_Cafe
It moved from that location to its new location in 1950 with customers carrying their meals.
Best diner ever, miss it.
Your comment made me look up the changes in that area since this picture was taken. I grabbed an aerial from 1941 from the USCB Library’s “FrameFinder” app for aerial photography of that area and matched it to a current map.
I made three maps that show 1941 (Map1), 1941 with an overlay of the current highway interchange (Map2), and the current area (Map3). I put a red X about where I think the X-car was located (in the bottom right of each photo). Frankly, I am amazed at the almost total change this area has seen. Almost nothing in this area from 1941 (which in fairness was 103 years ago) exists today.
Be careful of cars with X’s painted on their roofs. They are harbingers of destruction.
And from its angle it’s easy to assume that the photo was taken from the Temple St overpass over N Figueroa St, which was already in place in 1941 according to the aerial you provided. The resolution’s not quite high enough to confirm that there’s a gas station at what presumably is Boston St (which still exists as the motor entrance to a recent apartment complex), but everything else points to that as the location. Good work!
My guess would be a traffic study, too.
I think you’ll this was one of a set and there were 25 other Studebakers out there.
A real gambler would take that alpha bet.
Aerial photo calibration?
Traffic study?
Scottish nationalism?
An interesting theory: “Looks like a mark for aerial photography- mapping, but very strange to put it on something movable- perhaps the car belongs to the survey outfit, and the mark is on top to prevent someone else from parking over the mark if it was on the pavements. Such temporary marks would have been carefully located by ground survey and thus would allow precise adjustment of the photomosaicss to convert to topo maps”
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170279&page=1327
It would help if someone could identify the exact location to see if the picture was taken from a bridge or other high vantage point, rather than from an airplane
Given the elevation and angle, it may have been taken from the Temple St or Hollywood Freeway overpass over Figueroa St, as mentioned above.
I asked Copilot:
CopilotUsing
the web
Sent by Copilot:
In post-World War II Los Angeles, painting an “X” on top of a car was a practice used during civil defense drills and air raid precautions. The “X” marked vehicles that had been inspected and cleared by civil defense personnel. This was part of broader efforts to prepare for potential air raids or other emergencies, ensuring that all vehicles were accounted for and not hiding any hazards or unauthorized items.
This practice was part of the larger civil defense measures taken during that era, reflecting the heightened awareness and preparedness for potential threats in the post-war period. If you have any more questions about historical practices or anything else, feel free to ask!
That doesn’t make any sense. If the X is a permanent mark then “unauthorized items” could be added at any time after the X had been applied.
Please provide actual sources, not AI gibberish.
Hey, it was worth a try. Note that it was used for drills among unsuspecting citizens.
It’s never ever worth a try.
But it’s a car, not a drill.
AI is my favorite way to get a wrong answer quickly.
It’s the X-car for the X-men.
The owner named their car “Spot”.
That, Sir, is a Bear Target.
Because, as you all know, a Bear’s natural habitat is a Studebaker.
(Wokka-Wokka!)
Ever notice that when a bear gets into a car it always seems to be a Subaru?
My theory is that, Studebakers being thin on the ground, bears went to the next name on an alphabetical list of marques. Subarus are the Cavendish banana of bear habitat.
Source: Wokka-pedia
It’s part of a team of supercars with special abilities.
Early target car for the first prototype of the Jewish Space Laser.
Obviously.
Jason would already know this answer and not be allowed to talk about it.
I hope they were tailing some other car and the white X was so that aerial surveillance could keep track of them
You see, the car used to be called Twitter…..
Came here to say this. You beat me to it.
Look at that X car go!
S-nailed it.
I’d trade places with that car.