Vintage Camper Showcase #20

"It's a boat, no a plane, no, it's a, a Spartan camper?"

"Yes. Virginia, the Spartan Manufacturing Company briefly considered using their fancy travel trailers in a different mode altogether in 1954, as a houseboat!

If you can find one of these rarities, you've just paid for your kids' college, and maybe a few nights at the Hilton, to boot! The unusual house boat was only in production for about an hour or two before they realized how 'out of their element' they were. No word on how many were made, or if they were even sold to the general public. But this fancy example did indeed float, as this RV/MH Museum lost photo proves. I can't imagine not having a diving board, though.

At least you don't have to worry about leveling the rig!"

"Captain Nemo, your camper is ready, sir!"

Vintage Trailer Showcase #16

"That's no ordinary camper, it's a Clipper!"
Fresh from the backlots of southern California, where they wee once as common as former Liz Taylor spouses, this vintage 1936 Clipper is undergoing a restoration and complete tear down. Known for their "scary" snouts and windswept style, they were also famous for being the weirdest thing you'll see in your rear view mirror.
I don't have much info on this, except that it came from a camper forum several years ago, with no more accompanying info.
Sadly, I have very few Clipper photos, but will include what I have in a collection.
Enjoy!

Genuine Imitation: Order a brand-new, custom-made 007 classic re-creation thingy...Or "I'm ordering a Batboat!"

A company called "Fiber Classic" started taking orders for a brand-new, re-created, classic 007 Bond boat, from "Live and Let Die." If they're building James Bond re-makes, why not an even cooler Glastron: The Batboat?!

Check out the video for a bit of a background, and weigh-in if you think it may be the best "Bond" song ever, as well. Short of the theme, of course. (Don't want any 007 fans to shoot me with a fake pen at a convention anytime.) 

The soundtrack morphs into the re-make by Guns and Roses, and then shows how to get a "New" old boat:

Yes, you can now get a fresh off the shelf, brand-new, fake, recreated-from-scratch version of one of the coolest boats ever made: The Glastron GT-150. This is one of the first "muscle boats" for everyman. It was affordable, solid, fun and most importantly, light. With a 50-horse on the tail, it could pull two skiers and get on plane in ten seconds. With an 85-horse, it could beat almost anything on the lake and pull a (dropped-ski) bare-footer. With a 115-horse? It ruled the lake. There are plenty of stories of folks who bought a GT-150, and then went to another dealer and ordered a big ass Mercury 150-horse "tallboy" and "re-stickered" it to look like a 115, for insurance purposes. A few dealers had an extra 115-hp sitting around, and probably made out pretty well. The boats would do over 65-mph with the right prop, trim and lightened up. Tweaked and "greased" - a way of waxing the hull - it pushed 70-mph and beyond. That's cooking on the water!



Why a Glastron for James Bond? It sure helped that Glastron previously got the call for one of the most visible boats in all of media: The famous "Batboat."
The Batboat is seen here undergoing initial break-out runs, with creator and chief engineer Mel Whitley at the helm. It is a fascinating story behind the machine(s) and their fate is chronicled very closely at the site. Unfortunately, one of the true original Batboats was turned into a, gasp, CAR! (No, I don't get it either.)






While the other original apparently got lost along the way, and was believed to have ended up in South America.




I can see it now: Kathleen Turner, (now ACTUALLY a horse-voiced, semi-retired, former vixen wannabe romance novelist) who while on "holiday," gets tangled up with a Drug Cartel kingpin. (I hate when that happens on vacation! ) Her old friend Michael Douglas happens to be in nearby Columbia, (undergoing hyper-baric chamber treatments to prolong his life, and allow him to keep up with wife Catherine Zeta-Jones) when he gets the call from Turner. (Squeeze your throat with a belt while mumbling) "Michael, dahling, I'm in it up to my ahm-pits with a silly older fella. Please assist." Then they meet the Drug Lord (portrayed by, hmm, someone lost to time, maybe a slurry-speeched Dick Clark?) Who later tries to outrun "The Federales," and takes them on an exotic river run in the original Batboat, which he hides in a camo shed along the banks. He bought the rare classic with crack money at an auction in Bogotta. As he launches the classic into the Amazon, the bat-theme plays and Turner and Douglas must be stuffed into "lil buddy" Robin's chair. It's an uncomfortable and highly-sexually charged moment for our stars. Then the drug lord proclaims "Say hello to my yill bat-friend!"

No quote yet on my Batboat, I'm guessing twenty large, plus licensing fees. (Of course, I could find a tattered Glastron V-174 on e-Bay in Missouri for $400, drive a 12-mpg pickup down for a delivery, and get into all kinds of adventures along the way...)

Follow up on Bond boat

I've been getting some flak on the James Bond post, about the famous boat jump. Here's the background and the coolest piece of rock in any film, just as a bonus.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the boat jump was helped and made possible through a group of Tulane Univ engineering students, and reportedly, a little jet fuel - it depends who you believe.
"Oh, James..."

As I hinted in the previous post, there's a clue to finding some of the other "Missing" Bond Boats: If you look close, you'll see that the seat is in the MIDDLE, and not on the right side. That was true with ALL of the LALD (Live and Let Die) boats. By placing the chairs in the middle, the driver's weight was located on a central plane, reducing the "roll." The chairs also all had "slides," to move back and forth, adjusting the weight of the driver, to control "yaw." Click on the left photo for more useless Bond info.

James Bond's world record boat jump and chase

Originally, the boat went about 15 feet. So the movie guys enlisted Tulane Univ students to help. They designed a better ramp, and the one-take jump scene over the bayou, filmed with assistance of that specially-constructed ramp, unintentionally set a Guinness World Record at the time with 110 feet cleared. Unfortunately, the waves created by the impact caused the following boat to flip over. The Bond boat, a Glastron-Carlson CVX, was made to look like it had a stock Evinrude 115-hp OUTBOARD motor. It was not. The V-6 was reportedly tweaked to produce quite a bit more horsepower, and the boat transom was strengthened and all of them were lightened. Glastron Boats (of Minnesota!) made 26 special boats for the film, and 17 were destroyed. Some of the remaining boats are out there, somewhere. At least two are in Europe - one at a James Bond museum. And yes, there are several ways to know if they were one of the rare 007 boats. And no I'm not telling. Did the USA boats survive the hurricanes?
For more Bond classic fun, I suggest going to the Boat Chase part 2, where another boat - a big block jet -joins the chase and Bond suddenly is driving a Glastron with an INBOARD MOTOR as he slides the boat across a lawn - where a wedding is occurring! BTW - I used to work for a guy who was IN THAT WEDDING scene. It was his Tulane Univ frat and sister sorority doing much of the staging. He said it took hours and hours. Dozens of takes, and the boat rarely made it all the way into the water. It was hot, sticky and nowhere near as cool as it turned out.