Customs I think we found one of the two missing Futurliners...

... In Alaska, believe it or not.

In late April, the attached ad appeared on Craigslist in Southcentral Alaska. It was posted at 3:40, but had disappeared by about 9:30 that same evening. I sent an email, got no reply.

The Wikipedia page on 'em says that two are yet unaccounted for- is this one of the two? What the hell is it doing in podunk, backwater Alaska? (Hey, I live in a tiny town- and Kasilof makes us look like friggin' Orange County.

After the ad disappeared, I kept an eye on ebay, thinking it'd mysteriously reappear with a starting bid of about twice the buying price. Or to see if somebody here would pipe up and say "Check out what I just bought!"

Anybody happen to have an inside line on what happened to it?

Doc.

 

WOW, What a find indeed! Eagerly awaiting more about this. Hope someone else has additional info.

 

cool!

 

good luck!

 

If i was you,i would be doing some detective work?,looking at some other similar type ads to see if you could find this guy,asking around in the general vicinity to see if anyone has seen it,oil delivery guys are good to ask,they see all the backyards,maybe even a helicopter pilot?,It would be a lot of fun to look for it.Id say someone "moved to alaska" in it back in the day,when these were not needed by GM they were easy to get,and propably cheap too. Good Luck Harvey

 

Sad to see the old girl in such a poor state with graffiti down the side, etc. Sure hope someone with the means to restore it winds up with it.

 

How cool is that. I would keep a very close eye out to see if it shows up again. I would say maybe Ron Pratte saw it but he's selling everything.

 

Try a Google earth search of the area. I doubt it is stored inside.

 

very cool find. i think either somebody saw the add and grabbed it real quick, or they called the guy with it and told him how rare it was and now he's having second thoughts. I'm sure it'll show up somewhere else soon enough. ****, for 5k, I would have ******ed it up in a heartbeat.

 

That would have been a deal at 10 times the price
A restored one sold fo $4,000,000

 

Thats crazy! !

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I could live in it.

 

What a find!
I hope this amazing piece of history is restored and preserved, it's absolutly priceless.
Keep us posted!

 

Found this, http://www.busconversions.com/bbs/index.php?topic=27300.0

 

This site doesn't seem to think any are missing... http://www.futurliner.com/other.htm

 

http://sab.hopcroft.name/2009/08/futurline_number_8.html

 

Most of the information in the Bus conversions page is wrong.
It looks like the one from Swedon and the one in Alaska are the same,it never was in Alaska,it had been in SO Cal for several years and had come form a junkyard in AZ I believe and before that had been in a yard back east,this is the one that had been rear ended in the last of GM's tours,the back end of the car carrier went to Swedon with this one to make it right.
I had the car carrier at the Madonna Inn last Sunday for the Concours de Elegance show.

 

First line on that page says " Of the 12 vehicles built in 1939-1940, 9 have been located. "

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Wow. Would surely be worth a look.

 

Yeah I didnt think that sounded rite either but, the part I noticed is where the guy contacted the owner and he said it was already sold and the guy who said it was only the next town over from him, anyone might join that forum and talk to those guys???

 

http://www.futurliner.com/brad3x.htm

 

WOW

 

I question the 5k ad, but lets say it is real for the sake of argument. By the time you get it fully restored you would probably only lose 200k when you sell it. The 4 million would by 5 of those now.

 

So, is the conclusion that the Craigslist ad was a scam?

 

Sure looks like it.

 

And the benefit of this 'scam'?

 

Guy lists extremely rare vehicle at ridiculously low price. Vehicle located in Alaska so it's really difficult to see in person. Guy comes up with some urgent story about how he needs money to "hold it" so no one else buys it, and how money must come via moneygram or other irreversible means.

Guy vanishes with money. ****.

 

So that's the same one, based on the graffitti on the side, that went to Sweden? If so, I agree it had to be a scam of some kind.

And, sadly these days, actually makes more sense than something like that showing up up here...

Doc.

 

In 1962 when I was attending General Motors Ins***ute in Flint,Mi there was one of the Futureliners in a junk yard on Dort Highway. The engine was missing and the interior was stripped. When we had nothing to do we would sometimes go over there and climb up into the drivers compartment and imagine how it must have been to drive one of those monsters on a public highway. A couple of us thought it would be fun to buy it and a put an engine and transmission back in and use it as a camping rig. As I recall the asking price was $2500 and that put an end to any dreams a couple of broke college kids had. You could buy a new Chevy Biscayne for that kind of money back then. GMI was a work/study engineering school and the Futurerliner disappeared from the yard during one of the work cycles between my freshman and sophmore year.

Frank

 

Too good to be true,but the trouble is the scammer is betting on the gullibility of people getting excited about something rare..they don't pull it off every time but enough to keep doing it. HRP