The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 152 - The Car Known as "The Dale"

Episode Date: February 11, 2016

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine "The Dale."  SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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listening to the dollop. This is a bi-weekly, semi-weekly, twice a thing. American History podcast. Terrible. Each week, a couple times, I read a story to a friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. It doesn't. It's a mystery. It's yeah it is a mystery. I don't know what it's about to be. It's a mystery. Yep. Do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Stay okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come the tickling podcast. You are Queen Fakie of Hathoptown. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to

Mingle and do what? Pray. Hi, Gary. No. I see it done, my friend. No. October 6, 1973. Ooh, all right. Disco Bee Gees. Love it. A coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. Oh boy. The fighting mostly took place in the Sinai and Golan Heights, territories that have been occupied by Israel since the Six Day War in 1967. Just like God said. Exactly. Six days into the fighting, the US began to airlift weapons to Israel. That did not sit well with the Arab OPEC countries. Why? OPEC had been created in 1960 to resist pressure from Western oil companies to reduce prices. Sorry. One more

time. Say that again. OPEC had been created in 1960 to resist pressure from Western oil companies to reduce prices. Okay, got you. And one of those big things was, of course, the Texas Railroad Commission. Okay. And by 1970, OPEC started using their power in politics. They raised the price of oil based on what? Us giving weapons to Israel. 70%. Well, if you're us, come on. Nixon gave Israel 2.2 billion in emergency aid. OPEC was infuriated. All the Arab oil producing countries announced they would embargo oil shipments to the US as well as Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK. Prices of oil went from $3 a

barrel to $12 a barrel. They said they would cut oil production 5% each month until their economic and political objectives were met. Shit was on. Jose is looking at the window meowing. US gas prices went from 38 cents in May, 1973 to 55 cents in June, 1974. Can you fucking believe that? How did they live? Now, to be fair, it obviously 55 cents doesn't sound like a lot. It's nothing. But it was an increase of 387% from the previous year. Well, my little brain can handle that fact. Now I see the plight. States asked people not to put up Christmas lights. You know, that's where that's the origins of the war on

Christmas. This is the war on Christmas. This is what this whole one is about, the war on Christmas. Fucking. Oregon banned Christmas lights. Strong. Yeah, seriously strong. Nixon asked gas stations not to sell gas on Saturday nights and all day Sunday. Many gas stations only sold to regular customers. What? Why? There's no gas. But the Saturday-Sunday thing, what is that? I don't know. Okay, because that doesn't seem to really do anything. Huge gas lines became the norm. People waited for an hour or more in gas lines that could be miles long. In New Jersey, lines were four miles long. Fucking Jersey. You got to burn a lot of gas waiting in that

fucking line, too, right? That's what I always thought about. You can't wait until you're in the orange part. Right. And go get gas. Like half a tank, you're like, well, we better fucking be safe. You get gas and then you go to the back of the line to get more gas. Yeah. People got into fistfights in the lines. That's cool. Now see that I like. That I like. Fred Norris owned a gas station in Vermont. He said, quote, it was a mess. I had people threatening to whoop me. How can I not put that in? Yeah. I'm gonna warp him. Gas started to run out. By December 1973, signs of no gas started appearing in front of gas stations. The

American Automobile, which just makes them stations. Right. Then they're just a place to give peanuts. Yeah. Not as sufficient. The American Automobile Association recorded that up to 20% of the country's gas stations had no fuel one week during the crisis. People could only buy gas on alternative days, depending upon whether the license plate ended with an odd or even number. What? Yeah. And you could only pump about three to five dollars worth of gas. What if you had a vanity plate? That's a good question. I wonder if they had them back then. They had to. If not, if not, let's do a dollop on when the vanity plate started at

some point. Who's the psycho who was like, you know, just because you can personalize it a little bit. Be cool. Uh, the federal dentist one. Oh, God, dentist one. The federal government even printed gas rationing coupons, but they were never actually used. Congress issued a 55 mile per hour speed limit on highways. Okay. It's the beginning of that. That's when that started. Yeah. Before then, no speed limit. I don't know what, but just best judgment. Best judgment, baby. He's eating your backpack. Yep. Daylight savings time was issued a year round to reduce the use of electricity. That's gonna sound good. Did you want to

rub that just across the table? Say that again. Sorry. Daylight savings time was now year round. What? Daylight savings time. So every day you had to say your clock back an hour. No, that gets old. I'm going to move on. Nixon formed the energy department and it developed a national energy policy. So Americans had to change the way they lived and that meant smaller cars. In 1973, Japan was producing small cars that were vastly superior to the small American car makers were making. The Japanese had already been prepared for the gas shortage and the American car companies were not. So pretty much overnight

America stopped looking to buy Detroit's specialty, the gas guzzler, and shifted to small gas saving foreign cars. Okay, right. The American companies tried to crank out cars like the Chevy Vegas, Chevy Vegas, AMC Gremlin and Ford Pentos. I was gonna say, I thought the Pinto was a reaction. Yeah, but they sucked and some of them exploded on contact. The Chevy Vegas? Yeah, what about the AMC Gremlin? How do you just let that, like that's a crazy name for a car. I've heard of the Gremlin. I've heard of the Gremlin. I mean, you look, you know the deal with the Gremlin. You can't get it washed after midnight. You can't

feed it gas. It's not Vegas. The fucking, that's word. Oh, word. Great. It's, what was it, Chevy? Cutlass. Yep, let's go with that. Great. So the Gremlin is a crazy name. Yeah. That meant, because this is before Gremlins. The actual Gremlins? I don't think we have, oh, the movie Gremlins. Yeah. Man, if there were actual Gremlins, don't even. You know, you could never put water on that car, right? That's what I'm saying. You can put water on that car and you can't feed it gas after midnight. Yeah. And there's one other rule. Yeah. Can't. Don't look it in the eyes. That's it. Don't make a sequel. That's what it was. So people stopped

buying American cars, but they still wanted American cars. They still wanted, they wanted America to create a fucking car. Right. Right. Then one woman came forth who said she had the answer to America's car problem. It was a revolutionary three-wheeled automobile. Oh, God. Called the Dale. Mrs. G. Elizabeth Carmichael was living in California. She was a mother of five and she was going to change the automobile industry with the Dale. It was made out of what seemed like fiberglass, but Carmichael called it reared in metal. And the fiberglass being called metal. Well, no, it's not. It's a different, it looked like fiberglass,

but it's different kind of, it's a material. All right. And the windows were made of rigid decks. Sure. Which had 70 times the impact resistance of safety glass. Okay. It had one wheel in the back and two in the front and can reach speeds up to 85 miles per hour. I mean, just the description. It sounds beautiful. Yeah. And thankfully reared in metal could sustain an impact against a brick wall at 50 miles an hour. Okay. Reared in metal was no joke. According to Carmichael, reared in metal was quote ounce for ounce, the strongest material known. Sledgehammer force won't dent or shatter the body. You better not be leading me on a path where

I'm going to want one of these cars. We'll see. Okay. But you know, it's good that most cars should be sledgehammer resistant. Yeah, for sure. The front bumper. Gallagher proof. The front bumpers were made of high density urethane foam. The car could also go 70 miles on just one gallon of gas. The price under $2,000. What? Yeah. What? The 20th century Motors Corporation was the company building the car. Okay. Now, if you haven't heard of 20th century Motors Corporation. Well, soon I haven't because you don't read and Rand. Oh, God. Well, that's a fair assumption in Atlas shrugged, which is a libertarian jerk off fiction work. John

Galt works for the auto manufacturer in Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin. The owner dies and leaves his company to his children and his daughter commences all the employees into voting to collectivize the company. Quote, the plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need. Naturally, because this is a libertarian tale, the company quickly goes bankrupt. Right. So why not name your car company after that? Perfect. Yeah. Quite an homage. Yep. The car was also tattered as having no wires. No. Forgive me. You go and go. The wires seem to be, they seem to have had a

positive effect on the automobile. Well, yeah, maybe better without wires. That's not a good point back. That's a good selling point. If someone's like, we finally have what you've wanted all along a car without wire wireless, a wireless car. We are having wireless cars now, but it has a different meaning. But you need wires because of many things. Do you need wires? I'm gonna go ahead and say you do need wires. Nope. It had a printed circuit dashboard instead. I didn't know that. You don't need it if you have a printed circuit dashboard. The material, the framework of the car was made from claim to be, okay. So they

basically described the the Dale's indestructible, right? Okay. Liz also said it was scratch proof, burglar proof, and bullet proof. I mean, lead with bullet proof, obviously. Right. Yeah. That's the first one. Burglar proof? Liz said she had personally driven into a brick wall at 30 miles per hour, per hour and walked away unscathed. Well, you want someone who's willing to just do testing like that at the helm. And hit the wall. Yeah. Hit hard. Yeah. Let's see what the reared metal can do. Listen, that's faith in your product. You know I'm talking about. Now you run at 30 miles an hour into a burglar with a gun and you

walk away. Hello. I'm buying. The Dale. Thank you. No, I'm talking about. Yeah. But Elizabeth Carmichael herself was a mystery. She seemed to have just come from out of nowhere. She said she was the daughter of a farmer and she had grown up tinkering with tractors and farm trucks from the day she could hold a wrench. So that's about age two, I guess. Liz, she said that if a farmer didn't have a boy, they would turn their girl into a boy. You know what I'm saying? Don't don't don't don't wait. Liz then went on to get a degree in mechanical engineering at Ohio State University and then a masters in business administration for

the University of Miami in Florida. Okay. She'd like to be called Liz. Cool. Liz was a widow with five kids. Her husband, Jim Carmichael, had been a structural engineer for NASA working on the space shuttle program. He had come up with a car design before he died and then incorporated the company and then she incorporated the company in Nevada and was now opening other offices in Dallas and near Los Angeles. Okay. A full-scale model was on display in Encino, California in the office there. Okay. Encino. Yeah, what? Liz offered security and stock options to investors but the California Securities Commission put the

kibosh on selling stock. It turns out the company did not have a license to sell stock in the state. Okay. So that doesn't problem. It just doesn't sound like it's on the up and up. What are you talking about? It doesn't sound like it's on the up and up. You can hit it in brick wall going 30. Right still. There's some. It's bulletproof. Right. And three wheels. 70 miles on a tank. I'm starting to worry about this automobile. It didn't stop Liz. She kept pushing the car on the media and taking orders for the car from interested customers. This is exactly what America was looking for. With each orders, customer had to put down a

deposit. This is such a scam. What? She's just the fucking scammer. The car would be delivered in the fall of 1975 and Liz could sell. She was rather charismatic and very large. She said six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. Alrighty. Well, I would be like, sure. Yes. It's a big lady. Yes. Liz was a good speaker and knew how to persuade people into giving. She built a few prototypes. One of them was capable of driving and another non-functioning one was brought to the 1975 Los Angeles auto show. Well, it shouldn't be at an auto show because it's just the shell. Yeah, but this is what this sometimes they do that. They go,

this is what the car of the future is going to look like and then they put that up there. Okay. Liz also sold dealerships on the car all without a manufacturer's license. So wait, this is not going in the right order. It's all fine. No. You have one functioning car and now you have dealerships? Oh, she's setting them up. Yeah. A little premature, right? No, everything's getting ready. A little premature. Everything's getting ready for the big... It's like franchising a restaurant before you've cooked a burger. You don't want to launch. You want a big launch. I agreed, but... Launch it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, but you need a rocket.

Oh, I mean... To launch. That's you. That's not somatics. This is real. In 1974 in Texas, Dale had the first prototype built. It was taken out for a test drive. Then they took it apart to look for any problems. Engineer John McGuinness worked on the Dale and said it was the real deal. He had also... The real Dale. He'd also come from NASA. Okay. Like your husband. Yeah. He returned some of the salary when finance became a problem and 20th car company needed some cash. He just wanted to keep the Dale alive as a possibility. Okay. So that's, you know, the people believe in it. The people working on it believe in this car. Why can't you? Okay.

I'm suspicious. And the media did jump on the story of the amazing car. People magazine wrote an article on Liz and what she thought would happen with her car of the future. Trade magazines all over the world wrote up articles about the amazing new car and other cars the 20th century motor car company was planning. Like the Vanagon. The Vanagon? A three-wheeled van. The Vanagon. The Vanagon. Sounds like a curse. It's a three-wheeled van. A three-wheeled van? A van, again. Just when you thought like a three-wheeled car couldn't sound any dumber, you made it a van. Fits it. A three-wheeled... And it's two wheels up front

and one in the back. It's eight people comfortably. What the fuck? Just... I just... I see this. Who doesn't want a three-wheeled van? I think people who... It's the future. I see tipping. I see a lot of tipping. Car needs less wheels. I don't know. I'm starting to worry about the wheel factor now. Come on. It's like you've never driven a three-wheeled car. I've never driven a three-wheeled car. The only time I've done that is when I've had a flat. In January 1975 one of the company salesman William D. Miller was found murdered in the Encino office. He had been shot four times in the head. Could have been an accident. Yep. Police

quickly zeroed in on a suspect who happened to be a fellow employee named Jack Oliver. Okay. It was then discovered Oliver and Miller knew each other from their time together in San Quentin Prison. This is not good. What do you mean? The facts are starting to leak out a little bit now. So these two ex-convicts... Right. I want to buy their car. Now the local LA media was on the trail. They started looking into Liz, the car company, and the car itself. They all realized something was amiss. Really, David? Fraud investigators started looking into whether or not the Dale was actually being planned for production.

Television reporters were doing stories and newspapers began printing articles about whether or not the Dale was a viable car. Okay. This caused all the investors and customers who had put down deposits to become a bit worried. Why? They barraged the company with phone calls and then the phones were disconnected. That's how you deal with it. Hey, we're getting a lot of calls. Go ahead and shut up. Getting a lot of complaints. Go ahead and shut down. Cut the cord. Let's make the building wireless too. Let's go ahead and wrap this up. Yeah, we're good. Well, then they closed the Encino office. Yeah, okay. I'm shocked

that this turns. Liz took off for Texas and there she set up the company again, renaming the Dale the Revet. She's like the monorail salesman from the Simpsons. She's off to Shelbyville. Even though the car looked exactly the same and even with the law investigating, she just pushed full bore ahead. Good. What was the new one called? The Irvet? The Rivet. Rivet? Revet. Sure. Revet. She promoted the Revet the same as she did the Dale. In spring 1975, she got it on the Price is Right in a showcase showdown. Oh my God. What? How the fuck does that even happen? How? What? I don't know. What a man to hear like Rod Roddy be like,

add a weird car. But the contestant couldn't guess the car's price. Why? I don't know. She was like, it looks like it fell from space. Yeah, what the fuck is that? A dollar. No way to million. But the end was near. An engineer who worked on the Vanagon, the three-wheeled station wagon or Vanamine, became a whistleblower and testified that the company could not actually produce a car and the California Superior Court ordered an injunction. So no more selling of anything. The San Gabriel Union described Liz as a six foot tall tough talking widow who had never disclosed her maiden name. Hmm. At this point, the California

Corporation Commission didn't know how many people had invested, but one investigator said, I'm afraid a lot of people are going to lose a hell of a lot of money. It's amazing to have a pyramid scheme and a pyramid car. Turns out the amount of money she had hauled in was $30 million. Oh, sweet bastard. She's great. Bill Hall, an investigator for the California Department of Motor Vehicles went poking around looking at the warehouses where Liz said the cars were being built. Yeah, they're right behind these doors, boys. Just go ahead and go on in there. Wall to wall, three-wheeled beauties. Quote, I went

to this airport. Upon entering, I discovered the hangars were absolutely empty. No tools, no machinery, nothing but a little dirt on the floor. That's because they're invisible right now. Right now they're in their cloaked. I've got them in their cloaks. They had rented this for only one month and now the rent had expired. So they actually did not have a factory that they were representing that they had. So they're fake factory shutdown? Yeah, they're not real factory. The pretend factory. Yeah, so they bought a place to say they had a factory. They couldn't even keep their imaginary factory open.

No, the fake factory closed. Right. At that point, LA County DA had enough evidence to make an arrest on grand theft charges. Grand theft sort of auto. For all the money they were taking from people. Okay, right. The company record showed a lot of cash transactions, but Liz could smell it and she bolted from her home with dinner on the table and left, quote, a device used by female impersonators to disguise their sex. She left a dick on the dinner table. That's what I thought when I read that. Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, a fucking minute. Wait, how weird is this about to get? I don't know. Weird. Is it

about to get real weird? Yeah. Are we about to find out that this linebacker lady is her dead fucking husband? Bill Hall then went to the Dale research and development lab. It looks like they were eating dick for dinner. There's a dick on the table. Quote on inspection of this vehicle. It was not a viable vehicle at all. It had no engine. Two by fours were holding up the rear wheel. The accelerator was just sitting on the floor. It wasn't even attached. The windows were not safety glass. They would just bend back and forth. The doors were put on by regular door hinges like one might find on a house door. Door hinges on a

house door. It's just not what you need. The vehicle just absolutely did not exist. Liz wasn't on the lam long. In April of 1935, Elizabeth Carmichael was taken into custody. The case dragged on for a couple years. While it was moving through the courts, it was revealed Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael was an alias. Liz was born as Jerry Dean Michael. Get the fuck out. Which is a guy's name. Yeah. Liz was a man but began dressing as a woman after becoming a fugitive when federal authorities came after him on counterfeiting charges in 1961. So did you just counterfeit your genitals? That's the next move. That's the thing. Yeah, fake

genitals. Wow. And it turned out he enjoyed being a woman and now he was a she. Oh my god. What is I mean if you like if you gave money to this car company you're like I'm not telling anyone. And in the trial was also revealed the car was not as described. The bumpers were made of black vinyl covered pieces of wood. The frame was just square tubing. The body was fiberglass. The body of the only running model was chipped and scratched. Inside was a two cylinder motor which turned out to be taken from a BMW motorcycle. That's gonna make Costco through the day. But somehow there were a bunch of engineers

like John McGinnis who believed in the car so much they gave up part of their salaries to continue working on it. It's like Scientology of cars. So fucked up. That guy couldn't have been real. So real quick just to go back the apparatus was just like underwears that would just like sleeve the cock or something. I don't know. Why just leave it on the table. It's such a great move. I mean when you find those you're like what the fuck is going on here. Cars aren't cars. Women are men. We got a bigger problem in the car gentlemen. We have a dick on the table. We got a dick out of here. Eventually the case went to trial

and Liz was found guilty or whatever. Liz was found guilty on 29 counts of grand theft. Three counts of corporate security fraud and one kind of conspiracy. She was given two consecutive sentences of 10 years in a $30,000 fine. She filed an appeal and then jumped bail. Oh wow. And was gone. Well what? In 1989. Oh snap David. 14 years later the NBC show Unsolved Mysteries ran a story about the Dale and Elizabeth Carmichael. God to see that reenactment. Oh fuck. That show led to tips from all over the country which led to authorities finding her location. She was selling flowers on the side of

the road in Texas. Oh my god. Actually she wasn't selling them. She would buy them wholesale and then she had her five kids out in the road selling them. Smart. Out source. Her five kids it was learned. She had had when she was married to Vivian Barrett. She didn't have them because she was a man. Because it hurts to push a baby out of your penis. Vivian had the babies. Right. And then while Vivian worked with Liz at 20th car company, Liz would always introduce Vivian as her secretary. Vivian then died just before all the legal trouble started with the 20th car company. From what? Although Vivian was

actually named in the criminal indictments. I couldn't figure out what she died of. Poison. So Liz was found living just outside of Austin, Texas because of this unsolved mysteries. Right. She was using the name Catherine Elizabeth Brown and the town she was living in was named Dale. Oh god. So she took the name of the car from the town and she changed her last name from Michael to Carmichael. She literally just added car. And then... I'm gonna make a car. I'm Carmichael. Just car fraud all over this. Fucking amazing. She told People Magazine that she had had a sex change. Liz was extradited to Los Angeles

and served 10 years in prison. How is she still serving 10 years after all this to like 10 years? We finally caught up with you. It's just in 1989 the Dale prototype was bought by Gordon Chamberlain of Glendale, California. The Dale was just made up of parts of other cars. There was parts of BMWs, Chevrolets, AMC's, Ford's. They were all in there. And the Dale can now be seen at the Peterson Automobile Museum in Los Angeles. I saw it and I didn't know what it was at the time. I think that's how everyone felt. I was like, just look at this fucking thing. It's ridiculous. Today, Liz is out of prison and is running a successful roadside flower

selling business in Austin, Texas. What? So we could just go buy flowers from... Yeah. A herm. Because it's fucking bad shit crazy. But is... so she is... so the disguise of being a woman eventually became her preferential gender. Yes. So... And now she has had a sex change. Well, it sounds like, okay, so she... he was charged with counterfeiting and then decided to change his identity probably already with yearnings to be a woman. Right. So just switched and then was a woman. But his wife stayed with him. Right. And so then they were together as a secretary boss. Female tandem. Yeah. Yeah. And then she came up with all this shit about this

car, which was never gonna... I always... scans like this. I'm always like, it's not gonna go on very long. Like you're... it's so... What's your end game? It was so public. You're Enron. There is no end game. Yeah. You're just... you're going to be fucked at the end of it. Like there's no way... Well, because you're not putting any work into it. No. The whole thing is a scam. You can't even keep your fake factory doors open for a little while. I mean, the fact that they had hinges from actual doors that you find in your house. It's like the Danish girl with a fiberglass car. Tell you what though, I'd sign that fucking car. We're signing cars.