What Happened To My Vehicle, Pt. 1

Photo #1 for today shows a vintage stat of a Disneyland vehicle on the backlot of the Disney Studios in Burbank. For the life of me, I can't figure out what this ended up being. My guess is that it might have been repurposed by Bob Gurr for the Carnation Gurr-mobile that sat on West Center Street for years, as the bodies are somewhat similar. But like I said, this is only a guess.



From the Mickey Mouse Club Magazine of August 1957 comes this information:

BRAND-NEW OLD AUTOMOBILES: UNIQUE ANTIQUES

Those delightful, brightly-painted antique autos, trucks and buses one sees at Disneyland have a special charm for everyone. It is fun to see them, but even more fun to climb aboard and putt-putt down Main Street toward Sleeping Beauty Caslte. Building them was fun, too.

First, two autos of the period around 1904, with two-cylinder low speed engines, were constructed. All parts were similar to those used in the cars of those early years, but they actualy were brand-new stock parts*. The resulting vehicles were antiques but they were of no particular make of car, and being completely new they were unique. A Carnation delivery truck, in the style of 1910, was also built. Then came a double-decked omnibus patterned after Frnehc and ENglish buses of 1908. It was such a hit all who rode in it that a second one was built. All of these colorful vehicles, designed and constructed by Robert Gurr and a group of experts, are referred to as Gurrmobiles.

*Bob Gurr himself told me that he felt it was much more logical to use standard parts already available than to create something newfangled; his theory (which makes a lotta' sense) was that whenever something was broken or needed to be replaced, it would be much easier to repair.

Next up are two vintage shots of (once again, guessing) a vehicle that could have been what was refurbished into the Bekins Storage Truck.





Here is the Bekins Truck in Town Square:





When Global Van Lines replaced Bekins, a completely different (and motorized) vehicle was used:





I am sure there are a few readers out there who know if there are correlations or not between the vintage shots taken on the Burbank lot and the vehicles in the park...

See more vintage & current Disneyland Behind-The-Scenes/Construction photos on my Disneyland Construction web page.