Aeroplaning, aquaplaning and Terraplaning

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While Italy had its Riva boats and Lancia and Alfa Romeo sports cars in the mid-1930s, the United States had its Chris-Crafts and beauties such as this Terraplane, such as we see along with four charming ladies in this 1935 publicity shot from the American speedboat manufacturer, founded by a man named Christopher Columbus Smith.

The Terraplane was, as you may well know, built by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit as a ‘very light car in the bottom price class, a vehicle which would combine style, comfort, and reliability’ and fill a gap in Hudson’s range. It proved to be an excellent idea and a best-seller during the Depression years, but it lasted only a few years, some say because Terraplanes soon outsold Hudsons themselves.

One marketing slogan used to promote the cars was: ‘On the sea that's aquaplaning, in the air that's aeroplaning, but on the land, in the traffic, on the hills, hot diggity dog, that’s Terraplaning’. The links to aviation and sports were enthusiastically made by the company’s marketing men. It certainly must have helped that flying pioneer Orville Wright became an early Terraplane driver back in 1932.

Chris-Craft’s photograph fitted in perfectly with that theme, too. Note that the car sits pretty low. Well, that may have been a lightweight speedboat but it must have weighed some thousand kilograms after all. Would you dare drive a car with all that weight on top? The Terraplane had a feature which may have helped with transporting loads, the so called ‘Duo-Automatic’ brakes – basically a two-way system using both a hydraulic and mechanical braking set-up, with the latter coming into play should the hydraulic brakes fail. Nothing to worry about!

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: Chris Craft
 

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