Hundreds of thousands of spectators along the 2013 Great Race route from St. Paul, Minnesota, to the Gulf of Mexico saw the Leslie Special Tony Curtis car from the 1965 movie The Great Race. But missing was the companion car from the movie Jack Lemmons Hannibal 8.
Well, after a visit to Ted Stahls wonderful museum in Chesterfield, Michigan, I can assure everyone that the Hannibal 8 is alive and well. In fact, as you can see from the photos, the hydraulics and working well and took me up about 15 feet. You can see Ted in the background working the switch. Professor Fate would have been proud.
Ted became hooked on the Great Race so much that he bought one of the three pairs of movie cars which had been in Europe for many years. After getting them home and finding out they needed a little more work than expected, he bought a second set from Great Racer Rodney Rucker (the two cars that traveled with us on the 2004 race from Jacksonville to Monterey).
Teds museum is fantastic and a must-see if you are in the Detroit area. There are some of the most iconic cars in the world in his museum, including a Duesenberg and a Tucker. But with the Leslie Special and the Hannibal 8 in the house, the Great Race will be well represented.
Wow
…great memories of Hannibal 8 from Rodney Rucker’s ownership era. That car did laps at Daytona on July 5, 2003 where we celebrated the completion of Livonia to Daytona!
I am so happy that Ted & Mary Stahl are part of the Great Race family. In addition to having a wonderful collection of cars they are great people! We enjoyed the opportunity to share the fun of the Great Race with them.
The engines of the Hannibal 8 have no driveline to the wheels when it is elevated. There appears to be a box on the lower frame that I assume to be an electric motor. Is that the case?
Fate accomplished this remarkable piece of physics-defying engineering by plundering the world’s stocks of high-grade Handwavium.
It’s a Chevrolet Turbo-Air aluminum flat six out of a Corvair.