LOST&FOUND
BY DANIEL STROHL
Sir Vival Shuffles
WHILE THE TALE OF SIR VIVAL DOESN’T EXACTLY FIT INTO THE
Lost & Found narrative — we’ve known where the oneoff safety vehicle has resided for decades — it’s worth mentioning here and now because it will be far more recognizable once new owner Jeff Lane, of the Lane Motor Museum, restores it. Walter C. Jerome’s disappointment at the lack of safety features in new cars of the Fifties—more precisely, at Detroit’s insistence that “safety doesn’t sell”—led him to purchase a step-down Hudson Hornet in 1958 from Bellingham Auto Sales in Bellingham, Massachusetts. He then began the process of transforming it into Sir Vival, an articulated safety car with center, turret-style steering, rollers, seat belts, perimeter bumpers, parallelogram doors, and a slew of other safety features. Jerome toured the car for years, including at the 19641965 New York World’s Fair, before he dismantled it and stored it in a warehouse, from which Ed Moore of Bellingham acquired it years later. Moore kept the car on semi-public display until this summer, when he agreed to sell it to Lane. Lane said he’d like to at least get Sir Vival running for the first time since the World’s Fair, and possibly restore it entirely once he gives it a full evaluation.
RE: Delivers Dust Now A DOZEN YEARS AGO, WE FEATURED IN THIS SPACE A PHOTO FROM
Charlie Harris of a curious Marmon-Herrington Delivr-All van. At the time, just six were known to exist, including the one that Harris came across in a junkyard in Mora, Idaho. After re-examining that topic in the context of its front-wheel-drive drivetrain for Hemmings Daily, it appears another has been found in the years since. According to Marmon-Herrington literature, the Delivr-All was the result of years of research into how route drivers (and the mechanics who kept the vans running) went about their business. Arthur W. Herrington determined that a more economical and space-maximizing van could be built with the entire drivetrain packaged in a removable unit up front. To do so, he mounted the Willys 134-cu.in. fourcylinder transversely in between the front wheels and used a sort of transfer case and short driveshaft to send power to a custom-built front axle. Production lasted from 1945 through 1952, though Herrington in later patents noted that the transverse layout caused cooling issues. Marmon-Herrington expert Don Chew seemed to be the unofficial registrar for Delivr-Alls, so his recent death (and sale of the Delivr-All vans and parts in his collection) makes it difficult to determine how many more have come to light since 2010. One spotted in a 2013 YouTube video, converted into a popcorn machine and located in a junkyard in Wisconsin, appears to bring the total count up to seven.
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HEMMINGS CLASSIC CAR SEPTEMBER 2022 I Hemmings.com
Recently discovered a unique or noteworthy classic car? Let us know. Photographs, commentary, questions, and answers should be submitted to Lost & Found, c/o Hemmings Classic Car, P.O. Box 196, Bennington, Vermont 05201, or emailed to dstrohl@hemmings.com. For more Lost & Found, visit blog.hemmings.com/index.php/category/ lost-and-found.
