Question of the Day - 08 April 2021

The T-bird is a reproduction of the unlikely “crash wagon” that George and Peg Crockett used when they owned then-Alamo Airport. The Crocketts were bought out of the airfield by Clark County in 1947, which renamed it after Patrick McCarran. The Crocketts continued to operate their Alamo Airways until it was purchased by Howard Hughes in 1968.

Alamo Airport had a fire truck to keep its 33 daily flights safe. “But the airport still needed all the same basic services that larger airports need, including a crash tender,” writes Daniel Strohl, a classic-car journalist. The Crocketts “used a traditional fire truck, but decided to supplement it with something a little faster and flashier.”

That “something” was one of 15,000 Thunderbirds manufactured in 1956, Fiesta Red in color, powered by a V-8 engine. The Crocketts customized it with “windshield-mounted spotlights, an emergency radio, and pressure tanks for fire retardant mounted just behind the seat.” Much speedier than the fire truck, the T-bird was repurposed as a first-response vehicle.

George Crockett himself demonstrated this when he zipped to the site of a TWA mishap, after a charter flight crashed a mile out into the desert, and hosed down the airplane. "If the T-Bird hadn’t taken us to the scene, there might possibly have been 44 charred bodies," Alamo Assistant Manager Darrell Bradford told an aviation magazine. "All in all, the T-Bird more than paid for itself on that one occasion.” 

"People thought it was a toy or a publicity thing," Peg Crockett said in 1997. "But it was practical because it was so fast and maneuverable.” Added daughter Caty, "Dad took off in the Thunderbird and was usually the first one at the scene."

The car could also be adapted to refuel small planes on the run, as happened in 1958 when the Hacienda Hotel sponsored a Cessna 172 (also on display at McCarran) in a 65-day promotional endurance flight, the longest such feat in history. Crockett drove alongside and passed fuel cans up to the light plane as it flew low above a dry Primm, Nevada, lake bed. 

A line was lowered from the plane and Crockett tied five-gallon demijohns of fuel to it. “Fuel was spilling all over the car, but it worked," recalled Mrs. Crockett. By the same method, pilots Robert Timm and John Cook offloaded their human waste. (Crockett must have been thrilled.) The Hacienda’s Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas flights would be quite a bargain today: $27.50 for transportation, a comped room night, a bottle of champagne, and $5 in freeplay.

When Hughes bought Alamo Airways (a Hughes Tool Co. tag is still affixed to the firewall), the T-bird came with it, then went into the hands of John Seymore, Hughes’ pilot. The car passed to a boat dealer in 1981, who — incredibly — used it as trade-in on a new car at Vegas’ Sunland Motors two years later. It was auctioned off in Scottsdale for a cool $86,400 in 2006. (The McCarran replica was fashioned in 1997.) Sotheby’s later re-sold it, albeit for only $52,000.

It’s a snazzy car and added a bit of panache to the Alamo corporate image. (For dedicated gear heads, the vital statistics are as follows: 225 bhp, 292 cu. in. OHV V-8 engine with a four-barrel carburetor, two-speed Ford-O-Matic automatic transmission, independent coil-spring front suspension, live rear axle with semi-elliptical rear springs, and power-assisted hydraulic four-wheel drum brakes. Wheelbase: 102 in.) The restoration is the work of John and Marian Vetterli, who owned the crash wagon from 1983 to 2005.

As for the replica, there's some disagreement over who did the restoration handiwork. Richie Clyne, who leased the space for an auto showroom that used to be the Imperial Palace Antique and Classic Auto Collection from IP owner Ralph Englestad, claimed he did it; of the seven-month refurbishment, Clyne said, "It's 100 percent authentic. We even specially manufactured the spotlights to original.”

However, we heard from a dissenter, who worked for Ralph Engelstad for nearly two decades, and writes, "This car was built on Ralph Engelstad's dime and the work was done by his restoration shop crew that did the cars for his Auto Collection."

We don't know who's correct, but the dissenter also says, "A lot of projects that Richie Clyne has claimed to have done were at Ralph's request and on his dime." 

Sports cars as crash wagons are a notion that seems incredibly fanciful and romantic today, but it must have been quite an adventure when it was done by the Crocketts, swashbuckling aviation pioneers who helped make Las Vegas what it is today.