Honestly, This Seems More Fun Than The Club: Cold Start

I’m a bit surprised I’ve never heard of Bosco’s Collapsable Rubber Driver before, because it seems to show up a decent number of times on the internet, and it’s always the same ad you see above there. I actually saw it in a 1978 copy of The Vintage-Auto Almanac I picked up at a used book store, but even way back then the content and context of the ad is the exact same, and it boils down to “look at this crazy shit.” I’m not sure I’ll be adding all that much to the discourse, because all I really want to say is “look at this crazy shit.” because, re: this crazy shit, look at it!

The ad is for a product named Bosco’s Collapsable Rubber Driver, and that product is pretty much exactly what it says: it’s a collapsable rubber driver. Well, “driver” is pretty generous, as it is not capable of doing any actual driving, it’s just going to sit in the car’s seat, where its only job is to dissuade car thieves. Probably just relatively stupid car thieves, or ones with extremely poor vision or a very rudimentary idea of what actual human bodies look like.

It’s basically a blow-up sex doll, but instead of sex, it’s automotive security. Though I’m sure if your intent was sexual, you could have figured out something.

Let’s look at this ad one more time:

The Bosco ad starts by denigrating the use of locks, which can be “picked or jimmied,” and notes that people tend not to steal cars with a man at the wheel. I guess this was in the days before carjacking?

The ad states the rubber man is “lifelike and terrifying,” which makes me wonder what sort of terrifying men Mr.Bosco was used to spending time with. The rubber man was $15 back in 1910, which would make it close to $500 today, hell of a lot of money for an inflatable, terrifying man.

The December 1985 issue of Popular Science  has an article called “Accessories a Century of Progress” that starts like this:

“Lemuel Bosco of Akron, Ohio, spent $5 for an antitheft device that was supposed to lock the Splitdorf ignition switch of his car, but it didn’t stop a thief. He broke it off and took Bosco’s Mercer for a joyride. The cops found the car undamaged, but Bosco was mad and vowed it wouldn’t happen again. Thus was born the Bosco Collapsible Driver. When inflated and propped behind a steering wheel, it looked like Charlie Chaplin, right down to moustache and derby. When the mannequin wasn’t needed, it was deflated and stored under the seat. Standing a foot away from a car, no theif could tell that the rubber dummy wasn’t a real man — or so ads in auto accessory manuals of 1910 would have you believe.

The Bosco Collapsible Driver Co. collapsed in two years, because it didn’t take even the dumbest thief long to realize that the guy who was sitting behind the wheel never even twitched, which meant he was either dead, in a coma or not for real.”

I think this description is based on the same ad illustration as we see here, which really isn’t much to go on. I’ve not been able to find any photographs of the rubber man anywhere, but I suspect a 1910-era rubber person likely isn’t all that convincing even from “a foot away.” I also wonder how it may have been strapped or secured in, to keep from blowing away in a potential open Model T.

The Bosco company didn’t last long, and it’s not clear just how many rubber drivers were sold; any amount sold is astounding, though.

Also, it’s almost impossible to see this ad and not think of this:

Man, I’d love to see one of the Bosco Rubber Men. I bet they’re pretty huggable, if nothing else.