Here’s something a bit different: To showcase the toughness of Goliath’s 46 hp engine, they turned on of their little truck into a semi, hauling a 40′ trailer with three Goliaths on board, although the front one isn’t quite complete.
Here’s the full text that accompanied this:
“The Goliath Showmobile is a new concept in merchandising automobiles. The Goliath 46 h.p. truck shown pulling the 40′ trailer loaded with a Goliath truck, sedan, and chassis, is powered by the same 46 hp. 4 cylinder airplane-design engine that is found in the Goliath automobile. This is the truck that Goliath bet Detroit they can outpull them with.”
It’s quite the mammoth achievement for the Goliath to pull a 40′ trailer.
I wonder how fast they got it to go?
I suspect Slowmobile was more like it.
I’ll take the Isabella. Was this photo taken in the United States? The car in back of the Isabella looks American.
This one would still be called just a Goliath 1100. Isabellas came later if my memory serves well.
That looks like a California license plate.
Definitely California. Goliath Sales Corporation, which commissioned the Showmobile, was headquartered near San Mateo. The rig was shown at the 1959 California State Fair too, so that could well be where it was heading in the photo.
Goliath Sales Corporation’s president thought the Showmobiles (he evidently commissioned five of them) would be travelling showrooms, able to take multiple cars to potential customers’ homes. One was obviously built… I have no idea if there were ever any more of them.
That shot looks like it is on the Broadway Interchange in Burlingame, CA, just north of San Mateo. Built in 1947 that looks like the rig is headed westbound. The SF Bay would/could be the water in the background. It’s also where I totaled my GTI in 1993 heading the other way.
Donaldo,
Yes, It’s in the USA, and the license plate does look like a California plate. The wide whitewall tires are also a clue, those wouldn’t be used in Europe. Plus, the last car in the photo appears to be a black 1957 Packard Clipper.
I’m guessing here, but what I think happened with the 3 vehicles on the trailer is that when this truck visited various locations around the USA, all 3 would be unloaded and displayed, probably under another circus tent, and the trailer converted to a sales platform with smaller sales displays. The vehicles on the trailer were not for sale and not on their way to Goliath dealers. This was Goliath’s mini version of the GM Motoramas!
And FWIW, the proper German pronunciation of the company name is “Go-lee-at”, with the “h” silent.
What I find of interest is the fact that these cars & trucks were front wheel drive, this means the entire load was thru the 2 front wheels, not the dual wheels on the back axle of the truck.
It can pull a 40′ trailer, but it can be defeated by a boy with a sling. 🙂
My bad, didn’t realize that is a Goliath to the rear of the trailer. Did all of the Isabella’s have a diamond in the front?
46 hp seems like a reasonable amount of power for a car of that class in 1959.
Reminds me of this…..
“This” had tractor-class low-end torque.
I don’t know about the Goliath?
“Give me a gear low enough and I will move the earth ”
Archimedes
Your local friendly Goliath dealer.
Wonder how many clutches that went through? If it ever got any speed up, stopping the combo was probably frightening. Looks cool though.
I never heard of these—Wiki filled me in a little bit.
For the curious, a parts manual on eBay, with beautifully-drafted exploded diagrams like these:
Cute rig .
You may be amused/horrified to learn that at least two of those Metropolitan Nash “fire trucks” survive and have been restored .
-Nate
Doing some rough math, I put the absolute minimum weight at 12,500 pounds. Maybe 20K or more. 46HP? Sure it could move it as long as the gear mass wasn’t too much to overcome, but travel on the highway that way, no. Not even then with lower speed limits and slower trucks. 4 axles, at least 8 tires, I can’t tell if the rears are dual although I suspect not, but I bet it couldn’t do over 35MPH on a level road. Probably down to 5 or lower on a moderate hill. Cool pic and story, but I’m sure they didn’t travel that way, the pic, while cool, was promotional only and not how it would travel.
In the 1950s, trucks of all sorts had similar power-to-weight ratios. The typical semi truck of the era had some 150-180 hp, for a total weight 3-5 times of what you calculated for this one.
I don’t know how old you are, but if you were around back then, and well into the 60s, truck speeds of 45-50 or so on the flats was still common, and of course drastically slower on long hills and in the mountains.
One was simply much more used to encountering very slow vehicles back then.
You think that a 1950s Chevy six cylinder car carrier with some 115-125 hp hauling five or so big American cars had a significantly better power to weight ratio?
My best friend Achim Strauss grew up in Germany and is a dedicated gearhead. I sent him the photo of the Goliath traveling circus, and here is his reply:
What a lovely foto! I never expected Goliath to sell in the US! Being
very advanced cars, first fuel injected motors 1957, but for your
highways not useful. The flat engine was a Borgward Hansa first in
1954, I think. In the car, very powerful. The truck, not so powerful.
These trucks mostly disappeared from German roads by 1970.
Many were sold to France and then to Spain, where I still see them
in small towns.
Could this very rare truck even reach 45 mph?? The little 3 wheeler
truck(1 ton truck!!!) made top speed 35 mph, the last production from 61
to 67 reached 55 mph! Borgward changed the name Goliath for the sedan
in 1957 back to Hansa, to avoid people thinking about a name
-correlating to the 3-wheeler trucks.
What Paul said ! .
I remember rattling along two lane highways in New England (mostly) in the 1960’s, when I went back to visit a few years ago I realized I’d be _KILLED_ now but at the time vehicles going under 50 MPH was normal .
-Nate