Yes, it was a real race! 1908 New York to Paris. Made into a FUNNY movie by Blake Edwards in 1965. The race was won by the Thomas Motorcar Company with one of their Flyer autos.
The real car was returned to New York by ship and left outside for years, at some point being sent to a junkyard. Fortunately, it was acquired by the Southampton Auto Museum on Long Island New York.
Later still the car was bought by Bill Harrah and taken to Reno Nevada and restored to the exact condition it was in when arriving in Paris.
It is modeled as it appeared in the New York Junkyard in an amazing diorama.
#modelcar #plasticmodelkit #modelcarvideos
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Perfect timing to another good end to my evening. I turn off all the gadgets off at 8 PM and wind down. Good night
Cool.
The history of the Flyer car as you tell it, sounds like the story of the fictional race car in the classis film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang before inventor Caratacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke's character) rebuilt it. I saw the Great Race movie, it's definitely one of my favorite films. The Flyer model in your video is beautiful! I wish I had a real one!
Wow, I never saw that movie, I guess I'll have to find it. I wonder, could this movie be the basis for the cartoon show called "Wacky Racers"?
In that show Jack Lemon's character is called "Dishonest John" and Peter Falk's character is Muttly, proudly displayed on the left of my comment. Muttly had a whizzing snickering laugh, every time Dishonest John had his evil plan go wrong. 😉
Thank you guys so much for your fun history of "The Great Race " I've actually never sat down and watched the entire movie but I will now 😊😊❤
10-10-2023, 7:35AM, PST
The Thomas flyer looks like (at first glance) the car the Clampett's from The Beverly Hillbillies drove to Beverly Hills on the tv show. LOL.
Loving it. 🐢 😀 🐢 👍 🐢 🤣
Excellent!!!!!
Great video .I watched the great race at least 500 times or so it never gets old . Have a good week
I liked that movie The Great Race. To hear the history behind it was great fun. That diarama was very well done. Will have to find that movie and watch it again. Thanks for sharing.
GOD BLESS 🚂💖🚂💖🚂💖🚂💖
Interesting video. Great movie. I just thought that was a made up story because it would difficult to do that now. So it had to be nearly impossible then.
I have to watch the great race now 😉
One of the great performances from Jack Lemon. He absolutely steals the entire film.
https://youtu.be/9biklE2wA6M?si=LRAKuPmixr_agSCf
Still to this day I have never found the “join” button
What a great story! Thank you for the pictures and the story of what really happened. "The Great Race" is the first movie I remember seeing. It was playing at a drive-in nearby and we loaded up the car and went and watched "The Great Race." But, how did Harrah find the trophy?
It's funny that the first thing that came to my mind was the car from the Beverly Hillbillies. I don't know if that is the actual car or not.
It does look great in Reno nv
Thanks 😊
I've loved The Great Race since I was a kid. I never knew that there was a real race until I was visiting the museum in Reno with my son and we saw the car. At first we thought it was the car from the movie, as the Peterson museum had the Hannibal 8 for quite some time.
I love the movie and too watched it 50 plus times. I had no idea it was based on a true story. Now I must dig out the DVD make popcorn and watch again..
Three of the cars still exist, the Flyer, the German entry is in a German museum and the Italian entry is restored and in a museum in western Canada. If you'd like to know what the real race was like find the George Schuster book (the Flyers driver). There are also several other books on the race. It was a challenging race.