(first posted 11/4/2016) Sherman, set the way-back machine to 1974—to the wonderful days of seat belt-ignition interlocks, presidential resignations, 55 mph speed limits, and soaring fuel prices.
The OPEC oil embargo in 1973 had a long-term impact on the everyday lives of everyday Americans in a way few other events have. With the specter of gasoline selling for–God forbid–$1.00 per gallon, Americans’ interest in small, economical cars surged, and many Honda and Toyota dealers displayed their characteristic altruism by dressing up new Civics, Coronas and Starlets in $1,000 mud flaps and $2,500 pinstripes in response.
The time was ripe for a new means of personal transport that was cheap to buy, cheap to drive, and cheap to maintain. This is the story of a vehicle that was none of these things, because it existed only in the mind of its creator.
Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael was 37 years old in 1974. A self-described “Indiana farm girl with five children and widow of a NASA engineer”, she formed the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation that year, in Encino, CA, and publicly announced its first product, the Dale.
A three-wheeled, resin-bodied car designed to achieve some 70 mpg, the Dale’s genesis began with a truly talented engineer named Dale Leon Clifft. Working in his garage, Clifft had concocted a three-wheeled vehicle with an engine and assorted parts from various motorcycles. How he met Carmichael is unclear, but when she expressed interest in producing his creation, Clifft agreed to sell her the design. Reportedly he was promised $3 million for it, but at the time of his death, in 1981, Clifft had received only $1,000 from Carmichael.
A brochure issued by Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation (herewith TCMCC) claimed that the Dale’s three-wheel configuration made it impossible to roll over, and thus safer than a four-wheeler; that any mechanical part on the car could be replaced in less than 30 minutes; and that this technological marvel would retail for less than $2,000.
Wild claims, you say? Actually, they seem carved in stone next to some of the others made by TCMCC, among them that the Dale would have no wiring whatsoever, thanks to its printed circuit instrument panel; and that the resin used to build the Dale (Rigidex, in company-speak) was, per ounce, the strongest material in the world and able to withstand virtually any impact short of a bullet.
Under its nearly indestructible hood, claimed the company, would be a vertically-mounted (?) 850cc, 40 hp BMW motorcycle engine capable of propelling the little beast up to 85 mph.
Armed with said brochure and phony press releases describing TCMCC as already having an up-and-running factory in Burbank, CA that employed over 100 workers, Carmichael now set about raising money from potential investors. At six feet and 200-plus pounds, Ms. Carmichael cut an imposing if not intimidating figure, and eventually persuaded investors to pony up a stunning amount of money; various sources report the figure between $6,000,000 and $30,000,000, but the actual total remains unknown.
Toward the end of 1974, Car and Driver magazine dispatched photographer Mike Salisbury to the West Coast to meet Ms. Carmichael and inspect the factory. In their book, History’s Greatest Automotive Mysteries, authors Matt Stone and Preston Lerner wrote of Salisbury’s experience at TCMMC’s Encino office:
“A yellow, egg-like car – the Dale – was parked in a corner. There was no gas pedal or steering wheel. Ringed around the car, a couple of guys wearing Clark Kent glasses were scribbling on clipboards. Salisbury was convinced they were performing a pantomime for his benefit. As soon as they left, he opened the engine compartment and found it occupied by a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower motor. ‘It didn’t take much to realize that the whole thing was a scam,’ he says. But the best was yet to come.”
The observant visitor might also have noticed that the roped-off prototype was surrounded by an unusually large amount of space, undoubtedly by design. After all, how better to conceal front wheels that were nailed to a 4×4 wood post in place of a front axle, an “energy-absorbing, high-density urethane” front bumper that was merely plywood covered in black vinyl, and a “space-age resin” framework that was no more than welded 1/2″ metal tubing.
In early January 1975, a non-running prototype was on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show, where TCMCC declared that the Dale would be EPA-certified, crash tested, and in mass production within the next six months; it is not known whether the company planned to use pixie dust or magic wands to meet those goals.
At this point, it is necessary to mention Preston Tucker, and the movie The Producers. Carmichael must have been a fan of both, because at a time when her company should have been developing, refining and testing the Dale—to say nothing of actually ramping up its production facilities— it instead focused its efforts on issuing and selling shares of stock without SEC sanction, and selling non-existent cars to dealerships without a manufacturer’s license or franchise permits. It wasn’t long before the California Securities Commission demanded that TCMCC cease stock sales in that state (an order Carmichael simply ignored); however, the event that triggered serious investigation of the company was yet to come.
Toward the end of January 1975, TCMCC executive William D. Miller was found shot to death in the company’s Encino office. The motive was (and remains) unknown, but the chief suspect was fellow employee Jack Oliver, who had once served with Miller in prison. (If nothing else, you’ve got to give Carmichael props for giving people second chances.) Now every employee at the company was under investigation—as was the Dale itself.
Not surprisingly, the Miller/TCMCC investigation was big news, and as disgruntled investors began telling their stories to television and print reporters, TCMCC shut off their phones, locked up the office, and fled town just as the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office issued an arrest warrant for Carmichael, who had bolted off to a Dallas suburb, where she had reestablished operations—this time hawking another new-as-tomorrow three-wheeler , the Revelle, as well as a station wagon variant, the Vanagen.
In an extraordinary display of chutzpah, Liz actually managed to get the Revelle (presumably a non-running prototype) showcased as the grand prize on The Price Is Right. No contestant won it, which was just as well, but someone winning it would have created a very awkward and very entertaining scenario.
It turned out that Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael had formerly been Jerry Dean Michael, a man who happened to be an alleged counterfeiter who’d been running from Federal authorities since 1961.
In April 1975, Carmichael was traced to a Dallas suburb where she’d been living with one of five children she had fathered by his ex-wife Vivian Barrett. In addition to promoting the Revelle, Carmichael had pressed her five children into selling flowers on street corners in an effort to generate income. When police raided her home, she wasn’t there; however, the officers found a trove of padded bras, wigs, hair removers and other items often used by female impersonators or transgender women.
In an interview for People magazine, Barrett claimed, “We love her just as much as we loved him. The children call her Mother Liz and me just plain Mother,” and said that her former husband considers herself a woman despite not yet having completed the full course of sex-change surgeries.
Carmichael was tracked down to a rented house in Miami and arrested just as she was attempting to climb out a window. A Texas court tried and convicted Carmichael of counterfeiting and bail-jumping, both crimes committed when he presented as a man. The sentence of 10-20 years imprisonment and a $30,000 fine proved purely academic since Carmichael skipped town once again, this time jumping a $50,000 bail.
Carmichael lived, quite successfully, under the radar until 1989, when the television program Unsolved Mysteries featured her story. Almost immediately leads started coming in, several of which involved an Austin, Texas-area flower-selling operation manned by five siblings. Authorities apprehended Liz Carmichael—now living as Katherine Elizabeth Brown—in the town of Dale, Texas (!) and returned her to Los Angeles to face trial on the original fraud charges (incredibly, California had no law against bail jumping then, thus no such charges could be filed). The court sentenced Carmichael to 32 months behind bars.
After serving just over two years in prison, Carmichael was released on probation. She returned to Austin and her career as a flower seller, and died, of cancer, in 2004.
And what became of the two Dale mock-ups and one prototype that were built? One was acquired, in 1994, by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles; it is seldom displayed. The other two are in the hands of private collectors. And so ends the story of the person who supposedly set out to shake up the automotive industry, but in reality only shook down some gullible investors.
I heard about this on Mysteries at the Museum
Dear God. You couldn’t make it up.
Sounds and looks far more like the Davis Divan than the Tucker. Even the promotional blurbs seem to be copied from Davis!
Tucker was a much larger and more serious effort, which probably could have become a real automaker.
Bizarre….There are many stories like this around the world….
How can it be SO easy to separate people from their money? Can’t understand how anyone would invest in such an outlandish scheme without first making, at least, rudimentary investigations.
Anyone care to invest in a 100mpg carburetor?
K.Johnston: Ever watch American Greed ? I am amazed at the number of people willing to dump their life savings into the pie in the sky promises of some flim-flam man [or woman].
Some of the returns claimed would be a red flag, even if we were at historically normal interest rates.
There’s a reason “greed” is one of the Seven Deadlies.
About 7-8 years ago, a man “masquerading” as a preacher got a couple dozen people to “give” him several thousand dollars as part of a ….scheme (?) to get cars for his flock. There were NEVER any cars, but 20-30 people, or more, thought they were going to get new Cadillacs and Lincolns for pennies.
How, you ask? KNOW YOUR VICTIM. Certain ethnic groups are enamoured of gold and that makes it easier to foist off some phony gold scheme to the gullible ones smong them. “Carmichael” knew what (s)he was selling and had a good idea of the profile of those (s) was selling to. All that, a sense of timing a good helping of chutzpah and a convincing, persuasive manner, and you have a success. For a while, anyway.
“How, you ask? KNOW YOUR VICTIM.”
This crap is still going on, except the payouts have gotten enormously larger.
Certain political groups are enamored of non-viable technology, and that makes it easier to foist off multiple phony energy/environmental schemes to the gullible/greedy ones among them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra
Don’t get me started on wind turbines, Diesel emissions, CAFE, autonomous vehicles, battery-electric cars, mandatory Ethanol in gasoline, etc.
Excellent stuff.
So weird, so far-fetched.
This is inspiring me to look into another oddity I remember that also turned out to be a hoax. I might do a little writing this week-end…
Cough Cough Elio. Cough Cough.
Spot on.
Well, at least they have real cars journalists have actually driven. Here’s some excerpts from Elio’s SEC filing:
“We have no revenues, are currently in debt, and expect significant increases in costs and expenses to forestall revenues for the foreseeable future. Even if we are able to successfully develop the Elio, there can be no assurance that we will be commercially successful. If we are to ever achieve profitability, we must have a successful commercial introduction and acceptance of the Elio, which may not occur.”
That’s pretty straightforward, I would say. It’s a high risk and almost certainly bad investment, but that doesn’t automatically make it a scam like the Dale.
Reminds me of Carbon Motors
http://carbonmotors.com/
Not a scam (I think) but an attempt at building the ultimate law enforcement vehicle. Unfortunately, the funding never materialized and the company folded.
The one prototype was sold at auction:
http://www.indystar.com/story/money/2014/01/23/former-carbon-motors-e7-supercar-sells-quietly-for-74000/4805317/
Just reading this in October 2018.
I looked up Elio Motors and are still in ‘business’ but still not sold any cars to customers.
https://support.eliomotors.com/hc/en-us
“When can I get an Elio/when will production begin?
We are targeting 2019 to begin production and we are taking reservations on our website. We plan on filling all reservations in our first year of production.”
From their SEC filing that would equal roughly 65,000 cars.
https://ir.eliomotors.com/all-sec-filings/content/0001140361-18-027806/0001140361-18-027806.pdf
I am not optimistic they will manage this.
Hence, no doubt, the old expression “a change is as good as arrest”. I hope no Morgan/Reliant/Bond patents were infringed in the making of this production.
I saw an automobile commercial for a 3 wheeled car, the other day on a major National network.
The Elio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0rA4oMjYtg
http://eliogenuine.eliomotors.com/
I recall when the Dale appeared and how Motor Trend jumped all over it. As the feature lays out, Car and Driver was substantially more skeptical. Road & Track wasn’t quite as dubious as C&D, but not as enthusiastic as MT, either.
The 1973 Oil Embargo and subsequent dearth of gas was quite a shock to the psyche of Americans who, up to that point, had been used to an unlimited supply of extremely cheap gas since the time the Model T made automobiles affordable to a large part of the population. They reacted, almost in a panic, to anything that promised fantastic fuel mileage, making for easy targets of swindlers.
Even then, it wasn’t until the relatively recent run-up in fuel prices due to Hurricane Katrina that the long-term emphasis on fuel economy took hold. Today, there is plentiful fuel at low cost (adjusted for inflation), yet fuel economy remains a major selling point for many, and there are still occasional, even frequent, reminders of the volatility of the price of oil. Hell, just within the last week, there was a rupture of some major fuel line that instantly increased the price of gas on the order of something like 15% in parts of the country.
“Um, you are doing it wrong!”
A version of this engine powered a car before: ’59 to ’65 BMW 700. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_700). It also morphed into “he little engine that powered the Citroen 2CV and even the Citroen VISA. But I have never before seen a vertical orientation applied to this engine. Apparently, there was no need for a transmission either.
The BMW 700 twin is not related to the Citroen twin, if that’s what you are claiming.
A fascinating story about a (kind of) car. This stuff was going on when I was reading all I could read about the auto industry, but if I ever read about this car (or this swindle) back in the 70s, I had forgotten all about it.
“Dollar for Dollar, the best car ever built” – this part might actually be true. 🙂
Cars, ladies and gentlemen, cars. Whether Carmichael felt he or she was a Panda Bear or a Duck is merely a side issue to the story. “AND PERHAPS BEST DISCUSSED IN SOME OTHER BLOG”, Lokki hinted. The most interesting thing here is how well she sold the sizzle when there was no steak. The technology was just beyond the borders of the existent technology of the time, and in fact we are now seeing legitimate proposals for a very similar design…. the Elio…some 40 years later.
http://blog.caranddriver.com/elio-motors-the-single-doored-84-mpg-three-wheeler-that-could/
Given that, I wonder if there was ever any intent to actually build the cars. Maybe, originally? Preston Tucker actually produced some 50 running vehicles – the question was whether he could mass produce them. We have seen the Tesla – which I certainly thought was pie-in-the-sky technology – succeed springing up from company that built a rich kid’s toy – a sports car powered by a zillion cellphone batteries wired together. So the plausibility of the Dale actually being produced may not have been as easy to judge at the time as it seems in hindsight.
In any case, an interesting story…
I have read the concerns raised, but have to ask just how a story like this should be covered? We have a person who began a life of crime as a man and finished it identifying (we are told) as a woman. It has to be explained at least a little to keep the story straight.
I really enjoyed reading this fascinating story….I had never heard it before. I was amazed to read that the car actually made it on The Price is Right!
The immediate post embargo ’70’s were a field day for folks inventing wacky stuff. It was really entertaining part of the early malaise era. Ya had to be there!
I can recall reading about this thing way back when it was announced but never heard anymore about it, having read this I now see why it was little more than vapourwear and mostly an investor scam,
This is the car that made me read “Atlas Shrugged”. Twentieth Century motors was the name of the company where John Galt worked when he decided to turn off the world. A tidbit gleaned in the course of following the decline phase of this story.
I stumbled on the idea on the radio recently that we are credulous beings by nature, so any one of us can be duped under the perfect circumstances. Apparently, it was in our best interest to believe the nutty guy who said, “There’s a lion in the grass over there”. If there wasn’t, little was lost. The one who didn’t believe did not live to pass on his/her DNA. So we all have credulity in our DNA. It helps us socially but can lead us down the garden path.
I have one of the brochures tucked away.
I’ve always considered the story of the Dale to be fascinating, particularly the way that some in the automotive press and investors were duped by the classic große lüg (big lie): Tell a lie that is so colossal, that no one ever would believe that anyone could have the impudence to distort the truth to such an extent.
Nowadays, I’d tend to believe that such a scam would be caught very quickly, given the prevalence of smartphone cameras and social media. But then again, there’s a part of me that wonders if Liz Carmichael actually had a sincere belief that this was a viable venture. Sadly, we’ll never know for sure…
Not sure if a similar scam would be caught more quickly today or the opposite. It’s so easy to create a very convincing-looking website, do a couple videos that seem to show an operational concept car, and you’re off. Plus, people are even more primed to invest in online startups and Kickstarter ventures and other sketchy wing-and-a-prayer ventures.
Good points, Mad Hungarian.
I was looking at it from the fact that people of today are more likely to call bulls#it through social media, but you make a compelling case for the fact that video and photo editing is easier today.
This infamous promo supports MadHungarian’s case:
youtube.com/watch?v=mz5kY3RsmKo
I always thought that if someone had won a Dale on “The Price is Right,” they could have just given the winner an AMC Gremlin and called it even.
That’s a gripping tale, that has everything a Hollywood movie script-writer couldn’t invent.
Thanks for this post.
For a revolution in efficiency, the prototype looks like it has really terrible space utilization. Like the AMC Pacer – big front compartment, not much else – but worse since the central rear wheel would split the available trunk space.
“Revelle” is a truly strange name choice for a plastic bodied small car given that the association with Revell model kits would if anything been stronger in 1975 than it is now.
As to changed attitudes towards transgenderism, a few days ago I listened to Weird Al’s version of “One Week” (the Jerry Springer song) and …just…wow.
Did one of her children grow up to found Theranos?
Cracking story.
More here…http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/automobiles/excerpt-historys-greatest-automotive-mysteries-myths-and-rumors-revealed.html?_r=0
The grey lady herself published the following in 2012…
“I was 15 when the Dale came out, and I saw it at the L.A. Auto Show,” recalls Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum, which owns a mock-up of the car. “I remember thinking, Man, that is something! I also remember seeing a picture of Liz and thinking, Holy moly, that is not a woman!’ It was the perfect scam for L.A. First, you had someone bilking people out of money. And that somebody was doing it with an imaginary car And that someone was a transsexual. It was a movie of the week waiting to happen.”
Speedyk: I’ve always thought the same way. This has MOVIE written all over. Something the whole family could enjoy.
Theranos: I see what you did there.
I have this brochure from the LA Auto Show of that year and actually saw the “car”. My first big auto event in LA.
This story has always fascinated me, from the first stories, through “Unsolved Mysteries” to the end. It has everything: murder, financial crime, false identities, a colorful and charismatic character at the center of it. At the very least, a book chronicling the story should have been written about it.
One of the rags did a two part story on it, after it had all blown up, I think Motor Trend.
I think it was in 1976 or 1977 when Motor Trend did those stories. I’d saved them from my childhood, but I think they were lost in the great storage unit flood. It was strange to read about that whole situation: transgenderism, a vaporware car and money swindling. Very exotic to my 13 year old eyes.
One can cast aspersions at Paul Elio, but I think he’s actually going to sell these things. Maybe not like he thinks, but the guy is not a huckster, either. He has auto business experience and has been fairly open about his process to interested journalists.
Ronnie Schrieber over at TTAC has been issuing a bunch of posts chronicling the Elio’s progress; if Mr. Elio was doing anything super shady, I don’t believe he’d be so open to having folks in on his progress. I happen to think that the Elio concept is a good idea, while not everyone would want this as a primary car, it would be a good secondary car.
When the Elio project started, a gasoline powered car was (and still is) a good idea. However, with the recent improvements in electric cars, I wonder if Elio has one on the drawing board somewhere.
Thanks for that, Geozinger.
Malcolm Bricklin is another slightly tarnished auto “mogul”. The book “Yugo: The Rise and Fall Of The Worst Car In History” details a lot of his wing and a prayer financial dealings. Subaru 360, Bricklin, Yugo.
The Ed Wood of the automotive industry.
I’ve made that comparison before myself, but I think to be an Ed Wood you need to be spectularly unaware of your own incompetence, whereas Bricklin may have had some sense of malfeasance each time someone turned his hard-made earnings over to buy one of his cars which arguably makes Bricklin less of and Ed Wood and more of a PT Barnum
Perhaps we can settle it by calling Bricklin more of an Ed Wood with a little bit of Ed Meese thrown in. Bricklin wasn’t evil enough to qualify for a PT Barnum status – How is anyone who bought a Yugo a sucker? He got a GREAT deal!…
The mug shot reminded me of this one:
At least the Delorean was a real production car and we didn’t have to see John D in drag. They would have been smarter to put that body on a VW pan and extol the aerodynamic benefits and the very efficient air-cooled two cylinder motor (kit planes use a cut down version of the venerable VW’s engine by cutting off two of the cylinders). THEN they would have gotten 70mpg!
Is that an AMC flush door handle on the prototype?
Yes, and if I had a rear view you could see tail lights cribbed from a Pontiac Firebird.
I remember seeing a report on TV and as soon as “Carmichael” said her first word, my mother and I looked at each other and said, “They can’t tell that’s a guy?”. I actually argued with a guy at work that insisted someone he knew “knew her”, and that “she” was a “woman”. It seemed to be a scam early on. I was kind of shocked it took as long as it did to figure that out for some people.
I remember reading all about the Dale when it came out. It was very disappointing to me that it turned out to be such a scam.
Another lunatic with no grip on reality.
The car was fake, a lie he told the world.
His gender was fake, a lie he told himself.
I have letters from and to people from dale who would but those look me up Facebook jacko brooks
Utterly fascinating and well-told. I had to check the original run-date to make sure this wasn’t from 4/01. This was better than a lot of fiction.
“Excuse me attendant”, the yellow “Dale” please.
I wonder why she wasn’t prosecuted for fraud. Even if she gave all the duped investors their money back (which never happens) the act of what she initially did was criminal. I’ll have to do some digging later tonight. How anyone could get past that hideous front clip from hell is beyond me. Three wheeled vehicles must be the hardest to style due to their fundamental geometry. To my eyes the Aptura has the best three wheel design to date. The Messerschmitt KR200 wins for cutest though.
This post which is the funniest that I read on CC, should have been called “(Not) Built On Bullshit.”
Mucho scandalo! As one Cuban lady told me years ago,
What a story. Film material at its best.
“With the specter of gasoline selling for–God forbid–$1.00 per gallon”
Hey, Americans had reason to panic over $1 gas in 1973, that translates to $6.88 in 2022 dollars…