Just A Car Guy: 1/25/26

Saturday, January 31, 2026

I've seen a lot of Hollywood celebs run for pres, including WC Fields, but never until now seen the Marx brothers for Vice Pres

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/61/

Top 50 most memorable hot rods and street cars of all time that have made an appearance in a television series, or a memorable television episode. No. 41: Jack Benny’s 1923 The Good Maxwell Tourer

At the turn of the century, industrialist Ben Briscoe hired Jon Maxwell to build a new car.

Jon had worked with Ransom Olds on the famed “curved dash Oldsmobile,” the first car made on an assembly line. A 1910 auto history credited Maxwell with “the unit power plant, multiple-disc clutch, and thermo-syphon system of cooling with the radiator in front of the engine;”

The original 1904 Maxwell was popular, and Briscoe built numerous factories to make it before going on a buying spree which bankrupted the company. Walter Flanders bought the remains, swapped out the aging Maxwell cars for his own (renaming the Flanders to the Maxwell). After Flanders retired, Maxwell again started to fail, and Walter Chrysler stepped in with expert engineers to fix the car’s troubles and to create a car in his own name—the Chrysler. After 1925, the Maxwell was upgraded and sold as the “Chrysler Four” (the original 1924 Chrysler was a six) then upgraded again to be the “new” Plymouth.

In a skit, Rochester called Jack at 11:05 in the morning to tell him the Maxwell had been stolen. Jack asked when it happened, and Rochester said it was taken at 10:30 AM and he let the police know at 10:50 AM. When Jack then asked Rochester why it took so long for him to call the police, Rochester replied that he called them when he stopped laughing.

Because of Jack Benny and Harry Conn, not to mention Mel Blanc, many Americans know Maxwell—if they know it at all—solely as the dilapidated, obsolete, sad car of Jack Benny.