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* We wus robbed
Page 79
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Gasps of astonishment at CM's Fleet Management Conference last week confirmed that Ford's prototype turbine truck, Big Red, depicted there in a special film, is indeed Big and Red. It's 13ft high to the cab roof and with its two trailers coupled is getting on for 100ft long. And very red. You wouldn't think you could lose a thing like that; nor did Ford, but ...
One morning when turbine designer Ivan Swatman drove up to his office in Ford's Detroit complex he noticed that Big Red was missing from the parking spot where it had stood since the proving programme was completed. Casual concern became something much more alarming when he drew a complete blank with the engineering department, security guards, gatekeepers and all the more obviously possible sources of information.
Once the general alarm was raised you can picture the wires humming; I gather it was like something out of a Hollywood spy drama. But all without result. Big Red had vanished. Then one morning an engineer happened to ask Ivan for some advice about a modification—and" the designer immediately recognized the drawings as relating to Big Red. "Have you got it?" "Sure, we're running some changes on it for the road."
It turned out that a very senior executive had authorized the use of the turbine monster for some other job, and it had been innocently spirited away by a quite different section of the Ford organization. It is now a transporter with a single trailer and spends its life hauling a vast power boat around the States.
The remaining puzzle, to me, is how anyone ever moved that much Bigness and Redness without somebody recalling seeing it go.