Showing posts with label REO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label REO. Show all posts
Sunday, April 05, 2026
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Monday, November 17, 2025
John William "Jack" Ryan, was Mattel VP and chief designer until 1977, created Barbie, had about a 1,000 patents, and drove a 1935 Reo fire engine around Bel Air!
He built a bizarre faux castle with drawbridge and moat in Bel Air, where he had a dozen college students trading room and board for estate grounds upkeep/party waiters, etc - and so he installed 144 telephones throughout The Castle and grounds.
The entire phone system was switched through a highly sophisticated communications system that he bought as surplus from a U.S. Navy destroyer and reengineered.
For a short while, he held 300 parties a year
He had a 18 car collection, and owned a vintage 1935 REO fire engine that he would load with party guests and drive around town, and to the Playboy Club where their respective social secretaries arranged a meet and greet, resulting in Hefner and Ryan teaming up for charity events around Hollywood/Beverly Hills/LA
Ryan went to Yale College, where he was active in the Pistol Club, and the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He served in the Pacific for a short time during World War II and in 1946 returned to Yale, where he was known as an “engineering genius.”
With a degree from Yale and having studied at Harvard, Jack worked for Raytheon during the early 50s / Cold War, helping to design the ground-to-air Hawk missile and the air-to-air Sparrow III missile, both of which were ordered by the Pentagon.
In 1955, Ryan joined Mattel, by getting a deal where he got 1.5% of the gross on all the toys he designed for them.
Even though he was never an employee of Mattel, he was their head of R&D. Not only did he do the mechanical design of the toys, he studied how children interacted with them. That’s because he was a real engineer, not just a tinkerer, and that means being systematic. He set up play areas with prototypes and had psychologists evaluate them. This became another reason for Mattel’s success.
Jack invented the Hot Wheels car suspension, the bearings, and the plastic wheels. Unlike Matchbox, Ryan put plastic wheels on the cars with a little give for traction and needle bearings for smooth motion
He also came out with the orange track system that let kids build raceways, and invented the battery-powered accelerator (the Supercharger) that would shove the cars along. Mattel sold six billion Hot Wheels cars in their first 50 years, from 1968 to 2018.
He devised a coffee cup that would keep beverages at a constant temperature (probably using a phase change of sodium acetate), and a camera that could develop its own film.
Ryan later engineered the voice mechanism for Chatty Cathy, the first mass-produced talking doll, revolutionizing interactive play for children. He invented the rocking horse with moving legs. He also helped create Hot Wheels, applying automotive and aerospace engineering to design miniature cars with unprecedented speed, style, and performance.
His ideas on blending technical precision with imaginative play were later preserved by Stanford University, where his "Design Philosophy" is archived.
Evidence of his "space-aged savvy" can be seen in the designs of many of the toys he created for the Mattel line. For instance, the V-RROOM! X-15 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/09/did-you-ever-hear-of-this-mattel-x-15.html which was named after the North American X-15 rocket-powered aircraft that were made for the USAF, the NASA, and the USN.
His name also appears on the patent documents of the V-RROOM! bicycles of the 1960s as well as the V-RROOM! toy engines that simulated real motorcycle engine sounds.
He married Zsa Zsa Gabor for a year, 75-76, but near the divorce, disassembled her Rolls-Royce in attempt to make her a custom limousine and, according to court records, refused to put it back together again.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/04/barbie-creator-jack-ryan-once-held-his-own-daughters-hostage/
https://www.facebook.com/DreamHouseJackRyan/posts/i-asked-chatgpt-for-help-what-do-you-think/1074045853936982/
https://www.facebook.com/DreamHouseJackRyan/posts/i-asked-chatgpt-for-help-what-do-you-think/1074045853936982/
Thursday, August 28, 2025
it's been 14 years since the last time I came across any photos of this '37 Reo Speed Tanker
The futuristic Australian body design was built by Martin and King Coachbuilders on top of a REO Speedwagon Model 2LM forward control bus chassis’ designed to improve fuel efficiency and was introduced by the Vacuum Oil Company in 1937, by an unknown Melbourne artist's concept art.
The capacity of the four internal tanks was 1075 Imperial gallons, and the tire size was 7.50 x 20. Enough of the trucks were built to be assigned to each of the seven Capitol Cities in Australia (probably for the units advertising value).
The discharge hoses were stored in the chrome tubes that started at the rear of the headlights and followed the catwalk on each side of the body.
The truck appeared at the Coronation International Motor Show. A
The truck appeared at the Coronation International Motor Show. A
piece in the May 25th, 1937 The Argus, of Melbourne, had the following sentence. “On the Reo stand is the most extraordinary vehicle in the show — a fully streamlined tanker which looks as if it is several years ahead of its time.”
Wednesday, May 03, 2023
REO Flying Clouds had very nicely engraved instrument panels
there are a couple of cars that had nicer engraved panels, but I've only found 2 or 3, they all were made between 1925 and 1930, the Cadillac, Hudson, Gardner, and Essex... see them at http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/label/instrument%20panel
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Saturday, June 05, 2021
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Friday, February 15, 2019
Thursday, January 03, 2019
the first fully functional miniature gas-powered car ever built? Well, hybrid actually, it was converted to run on compressed air for the Barnum and Bailey Circus! It was the 1906 REO "Baby". It cost $3,000 to make it.
a perfectly accurate ½-scale model of the REO Model A 5-passenger Light Touring Car introduced to the public at the New York auto show in 1906. The Baby REO, hand built in 1905, is powered by a structurally accurate but scaled-down, horizontally-opposed, two-cylinder engine making 2 horsepower (as compared to the full-size car’s 16 horsepower) mated to a planetary transmission, smaller, of course, but just like the big car’s unit. The brass details, chassis, radiator shell – everything is accurate and exactly to scale. If we do the math we find that the Baby’s footprint is ¼ of the full-size car and 1/8th its volume. The Baby REO cost $3,000 to build – just about twice the cost of the car it was made to promote.
Having spent its usefulness in its first life, the Baby ran off to join the circus in 1911, being leased to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey folks until 1936. The circus people made only one modification. In deference to their highly flammable tents they rigged the engine to run on compressed air instead of gasoline.
The next chapter of this story begins in about 1979 with a visit to REO headquarters by Richard “Dick” Teague, then VP of design for American Motors. AMC was contemplating the purchase of REO and Teague saw the Baby REO calling out to him from its display in the lobby.
Teague was immediately intrigued with the Baby REO and it possibilities. His idea was not only to restore the Baby REO but to hook it up with a perfect, matching 1906 REO Model A Light Touring Car as well.
And that’s what he did. But first he had to track it down again. In the meantime it had been moved to the Mississippi offices of one of REO’s financial backers who had taken informal possession of it. Teague would not take no for an answer and ended up paying $3,000 (just about the original cost to build the Baby) plus a nice dinner out for the seller.
That project, matching a Mama to the Baby and meticulously restoring both, became a labor of love that took Teague more than a few years. But it was well worth it by any measure, and Teague had them in his famous collection until his death in the 1980s. Mama and Baby then ended up back on the lam once again from one collector to another.
Mama and Baby REO have traveled as an identical pair continually since the late 1980s.
In mid-August 2008, Mama and Baby were auctioned in Pebble Beach, CA and were purchased by Peter and Debbie Stephens, the great-granddaughter of Ransom Eli Olds and her husband. The Stephens are loaning the cars to the R. E. Olds Transportation Museum in Lansing on a permanent long-term basis. The family is pleased to have the pair back together and in an ideal place for display.
The 1906 Baby REO is an identical, working gas-powered 1/2 scale miniature replica of its full-sized Mama. Built as a REO promotional tool for the 1906 model year, Baby REO was the first fully functional miniature gas-powered car ever built. The pair is valued at a priceless amount.
The Baby REO was first unveiled in January 1906 at the National Auto Show in New York's Grand Central Place, it subsequently made a cross country tour visiting dealers' showrooms, fairs, conventions and other auto shows to critical acclaim and enthusiastic reviews.
http://reoldsmuseum.org/1906-mama-baby-reo
http://carzhunt.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2018-05-28T20:35:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=6&by-date=false
https://www.goodingco.com/vehicle/1906-reo-model-a-16-hp-light-touring-car-baby-reo/
http://www.thebidwatcher.com/auctions/view/9794
https://www.reoldsfoundation.org/reo-gallery
https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2008/11/07/223855.html
for the Baby Cadillacs: https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/06/miniature-fully-functional-13rd-scale.html
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