The Star Wars franchise or cinematic universe or mythos whatever you want to call it is full of all manner of fictional animals and beasts and creatures, and they all have names, because if they didn’t, it’d be harder to sell action figures of them. I believe there is precisely one – albeit imperfect – crossover between Star Wars universe beasts and automobiles, and that crossover is between that smelly native of the ice planet of Hoth with the satisfyingly warm innards, the tauntaun, and the Taunton Automobile Company.
Sure, the spelling is a little different, but I’ll take what I can get in an instance like this. We have two Tauntauns/Tauntons! Who am I to nitpick over some letters!
The Taunton Automobile Company was active between 1901 to 1904 and are interesting in that they built both steam and gasoline cars, which is, surprisingly, exceedingly rare in the motor industry. You would think some number of the biggest and oldest carmakers would have had a history in steam vehicles, but that’s not the case. So a company that moved from one to another is kind of unusual.
Here’s the steam car, from around 1902:
It used a three-cylinder engine and a boiler of the water tube type with a superheating coil, words that I suspect will make the most sense only to our long-dead readers. The gasoline version from 1904 seems to have essentially the same bodywork:
Note the extra seat up front with the flip-down footrest, supported by those twin chains. These used a water-cooled single-cylinder engine making all of seven horsepower. Taunton didn’t last very long, part of that huge boom of automotive startups around the turn of the last century.
Now, the other Tauntauns, the fictional animals, are native to the ice planet of Hoth and are reptomammals which seem to be some sort of reptile/mammal hybrid. They seem very mammalian, giving birth to live young and having fur, a helpful adaptation to the cold environment of Hoth.
They also had four nostrils that helped to pre-heat the air they breathed, and, from what I can tell from this footage of an impromptu autopsy, an abdomen full of cylindrical lipidous bodies that function much like blubber in some Earth mammals:
Fascinating!
Here’s the other natural habitat of the Tauntaun: a Kenner box. They couldn’t have thrown in one action figure? No Han? Cheapskates.
Ahh see here’s where you’re wrong:
The Taunton Automobile Company, was based in Taunton Massachusetts, so pronounced Taw’in, one and one half syllables. The Star Wars creature is tawn-tawn, two syllables.
Not the same word at all.
Taunton had a strong leadership in steam cars and were well on their way to great success when, alas, they were sidelined and eventually bankrupted by boilergate. They attempted to pivot to gasoline engines, but by then they were so far behind the competition. The whole scandal ultimately destroyed the steam car industry. It was a pretty explosive episode.
More a Mercedes thing perhaps:
https://www.facebook.com/TauntonT5/
I know that some Cold Starts are a stretch, but I had a feeling about this one. A Google search lead to Taunton Automotive Company of Taunton MA. A town I am familiar with.
I see what you did there.
A water tube boiler is one in which the heat source surrounds the tubes filled with water rather than a fire tube boiler in which the much larger quantity of water surrounds tubes filled with er, fire. The latter are the sort of thing you see on steam railway locomotives and traction engines while the former are the sort of thing that you might find heating your shower. The coil supercharger is a coiled tube full of steam that is subject to intense heat causing the fine water droplets to vaporise. The resultant superheated steam is invisible to the human eye and really really hot. This is the stuff that power stations make turbines go round with to make electricity as water droplets and turbine blades are not compatible.
As far as I know I am still alive.
Good information!
“As far as I know I am still alive.” Maybe ask Haley Joel Osment?
This one’s a bit of a technicality, but somehow, I think you’ll allow it: Pao | StarWars.com
That’s a deep cut compared to a tauntaun. Well played.
Here’s hoping Ford makes an F-150 Rancor some day.
Kia Porg?
Dodge Dewback?
Hyundai Bantha?
VW Womp Rat?
Chevy El Kaminoan
Krayt dragon – Drako Dragon (There are other Star Wars creatures with the appelation of “dragon” but I kept with the most famous. The Drako Dragon’s 2022 debut is suspiciously close to the first time we saw a krayt on-screen in the flesh, rather than in video games or as a line of bones, in season 2 of The Mandalorian.)
Felucian ground beetle – Volkswagen Beetle
Howler (sometimes referred to as “howler monkey”) – Chrysler Howler (concept)
As an aside, the Wikipedia list of creatures in Star Wars has some interesting ideas about the split between sapient and nonsapient nonhumans.
Did they sell Tauntons with a driver? I think not. So why expect Kenner to sell Tauntauns with riders?
What, no mention of the bit on the Big Bang Theory where Mark Hamill is relentlessly quizzed about why there are no wheeled vehicles in Star Wars?
Is it a trick question in the bit? Because: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/HAVw_A6_Juggernaut
Yeah, but does it smell worse on the inside?
THANK YOU. Was hoping to see this joke.
The Tauntaun action figure should have had an evisceration feature. Open the belly, remove the guts. Sort of a “Visible Man/Woman” anatomy toy, only for Star Wars.
You could buy, much later on, a Tauntaun sleeping bag that featured a lining printed with, yep, intestines.
The zipper pull was a little lightsaber, so that you got the experience of slicing it open every time you unzipped it.
At first glance I thought they actually went there, but it was only the saddle.
Boom.
http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=39665
Good. I’m glad you found it. I was having a Mandela effect moment there.
Me too. I wasn’t gonna rest until that was resolved.
I find that idea to be… Luke warm.
Good with words that one is.
Could we have a COTD star over here please?