This Plymouth Radial Air is the closest thing to a Second World War fighter plane for the road, and Jay Leno has all the details.
Gary Corn’s Jacobs radial-powered Plymouth truck isn’t a stranger to the motoring media, as the machine has been featured in a lot of magazines. Even so, it remains a sight to behold, fascinating onlookers every time, thanks to its unique approach, home-built aluminum construction, and a gargantuan 757 ci (12.4-litre) radial engine.
Reminiscent of the salt-flats speed-demons, this contraption is as hot-rod as it gets.
Corn bought this truck 30 years ago, for 500 bucks, and kept it until recently in his backyard before he decided to stick an airplane engine against the firewall. The mill is a seven-cylinder, 300hp Jacobs unit that was borrowed from a 1950s seaplane. Corn and his two sons installed a new single-barrel updraft carb and hooked up to a Turbo 400 automatic transmission with v-drive, with the rest of the components, either hand-built by themselves or taken from various scrap yards.
Needless to say, you’d expect such a rig to come out of Victor Frankenstein’s lab, but it’s incredibly well put together. Sadly, the humongous engine needs a lot of air to stay cool, but there’s a lot of car in front of it, that’s why the Corn doesn’t run it more than 10 – 15 minutes at a time. Still, those are some interesting minutes, but we’ll let you enjoy Jay Leno’s presentation and discover more about the car.