Ryan submitted a new blog post: Tom Cobbs: Cold Calls and Ghost Roadsters Continue reading the Original Blog Post
I’ve told this story before, but it’s too good not to run again. Not long after I stumbled into the Tom Cobbs roadster, I went on the HAMB and unloaded about how much I hated printers. Couldn’t understand how, in this day and age, we still hadn’t figured out how to make the damn things usable without a ritual sacrifice. What I didn’t know at the time was that Ralph Whitworth was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. A few days later I get a call from a very official sounding woman. No small talk. No explanation. Just, “We’d like your address.” A week goes by. I’m sitting in my 500 square foot “office,” which was really just a glorified storage unit with better lighting, when I hear a box truck rumble up outside. Knock on the door. I open it to find two guys in gloves like they’re about to perform surgery. “Where would you like your printer set up?” They walked in, unboxed, installed, and dialed in a brand new, state of the art LaserJet like it was a pit stop. No fuss. No drama. It took up about half my office space... I’ve been using that printer ever since. And I haven’t had a single damn problem with it.
Ralph was famous for "fixing problems" In one fell swoop he changed your opinion about printers, Hewlett Packard and big business in general. You can't buy advertising/publicity like that
Great story and pics. Haaa...don't knock printers.... then, when you get a free one. Marketing at it's best.
Yet again we get another look at the Cobbs’ archive. Some great photos and a surprise too, I think that is a Bendix-Stromberg floatless aircraft carburetor on the roadster. Seems like a lot of carb to run on the street but if anyone could make it work it was Tom.
The guy had his fingerprints on everything. Politics. Corporate America. Technology. Racing. Hot rods. Education. Poverty ***istance. You name it, he was in the middle of it somewhere. Speech writer for Ronald Reagan. Chairman of the board for a handful of Fortune 100 heavyweights. The kind of guy companies call when they’re circling the drain and need someone to grab the wheel before it all goes sideways. He helped steady ships like The Home Depot and Sprint when they were on the verge of death. I went back and dug through our old emails recently. Reading them now feels like some idiot version of me peppering Nostradamus with questions and somehow getting real answers back. The last one he sent, spring of 2016… it reads like a rough draft of America in 2026. It’s unsettling how right he was.
I probably talked to Ralph weekly. One of the things that he used to ask me was how business was at Skyline displays (where I worked) He said that companies like that that were involved in advertising were indicative of how the economy was even though to him it was a small company (100 million annual sales) Another thing that he told me once was that he did not see the housing/economy crash of 2008 coming until he talked to his housekeeper. She was in the process of looking for a house and was pre approved for something like 800 grand. Ralph told me that he paid her pretty well but not well enough for that. She knew she could not afford a house that expensive and told the banking people so... the rest is history Oh and back on the real topic, I drove that Model A roadster once and was absolutely amazed at the power and how well mannered it was. Hell it was surely built by a genius. I remember one time at the LA roadster show Ralph was using that car like it was a golf cart driving around the event and the swap mee. It quit running on him. I was there and dis***embled the flooding carb and found a cracked float, found one at the swap and got it going for him. He tried to pay me but I refused, just the kind of stuff you do for a pal
I drove it around for a weekend when we did the Hot Rod Revolution in Penngrove. It was shockingly fast... Made so much damned torque that first gear was almost unusable. I've heard the family is still holding on to that car... and that makes me super happy.
Is that some sort of aircraft carburetor shown in some of the photos? I ***ume he later went to the multiple automotive carbs to get something that actually worked. I have a gigantic Stromberg aircraft carb on display in my dining room, it supposedly came off a B-29.
After being in Sales and Marketing for 50 years, I can’t tell you the amount of times I had clients that were skeptical of a new product and or process. Like what Ralph did was get it in skeptical hands, as quickly as possible, to have it prove itself. In simple terms you try it, you like it, you buy it. If you don’t, you don’t, you don’t pay for it. The cost savings feedback either in performance/ time is the most valuable tool you have that makes it fun. It sells itself.
Poetry in motion. Thanks Ryan for sharing. Thank you for treating us to the ***ociations that you've made.
This is an interesting image. The car is in some sort of compe***ion going by the taped headlight with number but not your usual Hot Rod location (drag/lakes/bonneville). I thought maybe one the hillclimbs mentioned previously but that's a pretty flat landscape shown in the background for a hillclimb! Also, check out the people standing around. No white tee's and dirty jeans but chinos, polo shirts and sports jackets.
Yeah, I couldn't figure that one out either... I can't remember many hot rod photos with numbered headlights.
Possibly shot at the Palm Springs Road Race event course. The taped headlight is reminiscent of the early 50'sSCCA sports car racing scene. Perhaps he ran in an opening exhibition cl*** or this was a casual road co**** event either in Palm Springs (my bet when you consider enbloc's mention of more formal attire) or one of the high desert dry lakebeds? The shots of the roadster posed on the dirt road appear to be in the high desert as (native to only the high desert) Joshua Trees can be seen in the background...
Great story and photos . One of the pictures shows a heavily chopped coupe . The rest all are the roadster. Was the body changed out at one time or the engine and grill come from that car ?
As ever, another great sampling of the Tom Cobbs treasure trove, of great shots of great machines from a great time period! It appears that the plane in question, is potentially a "F-86 Saber jet", I am sure that @warbird1 can properly identify it! Thanks from Dennis.
I take it they would have been a pressure carb that relies on ambient pressure and vacuum pressure to regulate fuel?
Correct, and that's almost certainly an F-86 in the picture. This explains it better than I can and besides that, I'm lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix-Stromberg_pressure_carburetor
what a fantastic collection of photo's with many questions! Like how well did that carb work, etc etc
The Jalopy Journal
