Driving Back to Amelia Earhart

By John Graham

Just 23 miles of freeway lie between my home and the past – the Forney transportation museum just north of Denver.

Those 23 miles of the present-day motoring public and their motoring habits provided a graphic contrast to the past and yet, as I was later to see, confirmation of the overwhelming dedication to the car that we have made over the past hundred years.

The freeway was, as usual, full of trucks … ‘sports utility vehicles’ they are called although the only ‘sport’ is in going shopping. The larger the truck the faster it is driven and the driver is usually alone, thereby giving a lie to the idea that we are, in this country, short of gasoline.

Another dominant group on the highway, especially as it was school lunchtime, was the group of teenage drivers and young adult ‘wannabees’ in small Japanese cars with wings on the trunk lid. They are the punk-hair drivers of today.

Not that yesterday was that much better … in the fifties cars grew enormous vertical wings, which didn’t do much for performance either, and the teenagers drove by turning a knob on the steering wheel until that was banned.

The Forney museum grew from the purchase and restoration of one car … a Kissel. The museum obtained four of these magnificent cars before branching out into other makes.

One bright-yellow 1923 Kissel is memorable . ‘Goldbug’ belonged to Amelia Earhart, the flier, and she drove it in one of her New York ticker tape parades. As you can guess, she drove it fast, not to get anywhere, but simply for the exhilaration the speed gave on land as well as in the air.

Earhart’s Kissel had two small foldout seats that emerged from the body of the car just in front of the rear wheels. They were for children. Now, with her love of speed and the lack of any sort of seat belts, I wonder how many children she lost.

As you wander through the cars of the twenties, thirties and forties, names arise that are unknown today: enthusiast makers long since gone bankrupt or long since absorbed into other makers’ shops. Read them: Franklin, Whiton, Reo, Essex, Hupmobile, Graham, Cord, and Searchmont. The cars, carefully maintained, represent the enthusiasm of individual entrepreneurs of a growing technology. Megaliths like Ford and General Motors have long since absorbed those entrepreneurs and more but they too, as I write, are fighting bankruptcies in their turn.

Amelia Earhart isn’t the only notable name represented in the museum. Prince Aly Khan of Nepal owned a magnificent 1927 Rolls Royce with gold plated hood and wheel covers. Unfortunately, the plating has been replaced by paint but the history of how this car came from Katmandu to Denver must be a fascinating tale.

A six-wheeled yellow Hispano-Suiza made in 1923 must also have a memorable history. Stretch limousines are nothing new it seems. Three rows of yellow leather covered seating are almost as long as the bonnet and the headlamps are enclosed in assemblies more than a yard in length. I wonder if Generalissimo Francisco Franco ever owned such a magnificent vehicle.

Sears … an American institution … also manufactured cars and naturally sold them in their catalogue . They were in direct competition with Ford but he had the advantage of mass and rapid production so Sears didn’t last in the business long.

Ford’s cars were fairly elemental and painted black because that color paint dried fastest in his production line. Below you see what it was like to control and speed around in a model-T Ford. Instruments and controls were minimal.

At one time Henry Ford produced more cars than would fit on the mileage of American paved roads. In the present day, we are threatened by not having enough space to park all our cars in cities and parking space at malls exceeds the shopping area.

The museum goes on and on. There are sixty more car than I have mentioned that hold the imagination as one wanders through time: from 1890 through the twenties, the thirties, and all of a sudden … Whoa! … that car looks familiar. It’s a 1957 Citroën. It’s a car that would never stop when I was a student hitch-hiking in France. It’s not even an antique and doesn’t deserve to be in a museum. I’ve caught up with my youth … these cars now don’t look so old.

You can spend hours in this museum because it is a transportation museum and deals with real trucks, bikes, carts, trains, fire engines, a boat, and even one plane, as well as cars. The exhibits are well explained and, where appropriate, mannequins display the clothes of the day. The lady next to her 1927 Rolls is particularly fetching.

On the return journey, I reflected that the drivers of the twenties and thirties were real enthusiasts. Cars were, on average, less used as transportation than as status symbols. Until Sears and Henry Ford came along few could afford them. Now, cars are within reach of everyone (albeit mostly through debt) even those stupid 16-year-olds with punk car styling.

Forney Museum