One of the most expensive failures in the history of the United States were a group of franchises started by Joseph Kennedy in the 1950''s called the "Ted Kennedy Driving School."
Each franchise offered an intensive five week course in defensive driving with a complimentary coed included.
(Small Businesses That Didn't Quite Cut It by Doris Kearns Goodwin)
7 comments:
It also sank Teddy.
Lucky us.
Amphicars appear for sale regularly on an auto auction site I visit. As boats they make fine cars, and vice versa. Neither fish nor foul, but fail they did.
I remember some magazine, probably Mad Magazine, doing an ad showing a VW bug which float. The caption was: "If Ted Kennedy drove a VW he would be President today."
That was National Lampoon, back when they made fun of even democrats.
Amphicar sounds like a bad translation of Schwimmwagen. I think the Gerries were first on this but correct me if I'm wrong.
I recently learned the modern Greek word αυτοκίνητο which I think is a translation of our word "automobile." The Greeks haven't invented anything for centuries -- let alone something mechanical. Note the replacement of "mobile" with κίνητο (pronounced "kineto"). Fans of kinetic sculpture and especially mobiles will appreciate the equivalence.
I am familiar with the Schwimmwagen. My brother used to drive a VW Thing which was sort of a Kübelwagen, sort of. We used to build models of WWII vehicles - I seem to remember an Airfix David Schwimmwagen but I think that belonged to my oldest brother.
Now pardon me, I am going to jump into my AutoCalder and motor over to the store and break the social distancing diktats.
Lots of moving parts in a modern autoCalder.
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