Hooniverse Asks: What's the Best Non-Car Thing Any Car Company Has Ever Built?

By Robert Emslie May 6, 2016

Jeep Boombox
 
I remember reading a bit of trivia – unverified so don’t hold me to it – that said that three-quarters of all the cars built by Rolls Royce over the course of its existence are still around. Some of them might be in museums, but they’re still ticking, which apparent is the only noise they make.
As I said, I don’t know if that is in fact true, but it seems plausible considering the care and craftsmanship that seems to go into Rolls Royce products. That raises the question; how cool would it be if everything we used could be built by Rolls Royce and to their exacting levels of quality?
That naturally leads to today’s question which is; what IS the coolest non-car thing that any car company has ever made. I mean, they can’t all be as nice as what Rolls likely would make – would you want a pacemaker made by Yugo? – but I’m sure there’s still some cool swag out there. Let’s see it!
Image: Stereo2go

108 thoughts on “Hooniverse Asks: What's the Best Non-Car Thing Any Car Company Has Ever Built?”
    1. YAAAAAASSSS! I first read about those several years ago, and spent some time looking through the site victorysiren.com. Strangely, most of the site has now taken over by a site promoting antique shows, but this page of .wav files, where you can hear Chrysler Air Raid Sirens, still exists:
      http://www.antiqueweekend.com/x/wav/sound.htm
      As these used a Chrysler Hemi for power, many of the engines went into street rods once the sirens were retired.

      1. I like imagining the conversations that that must have resulted in.
        “Nice ‘rod. What’d you pull the Hemi out of?”
        “An air raid siren.”
        “…come again?”

        1. A friend was building a rat rod and saw an ad for a 50s Chrysler hemi with 30 hours on it. It was in an air raid siren. He later found a still new in the crate army surplus 727 transmission. So his home built rat rod has a essentially new yet vintage drivetrain.
          P1150688

      2. All these years, and that sound still scares the ever-loving crap out of me.
        The last cry from the last ,lonely, dying dinosaur….
        The internal sound of a heart breaking…
        The sound of Western Civilization ending…
        Flashbulb pops….

    1. I vaguely recall a story that Honda licensed their brand for ladies’ brassieres in Japan at one point, but I am afraid to do a Google image search on it at work.

      1. Going fast and revving high translates well into the lingerie business, I suppose.

        1. ‘The Power of Dreams’
          (many of my dreams involve ladies’ brassieres, anyway)

    2. Honda is and always will be an engine manufacturer, first and foremost. That’s what enables them to be a car, motorcycle, airplane, lawnmower, etc. company. On that basis I would definitely agree with Asimo.

    1. To be fair, Inland(division of GM), IBM, Underwood typewriter, Quality Hardware,Rock-Ola Jukebox Co, with sub-contracted parts by Auto-Ordnance and Marlin Firearms, and others.
      Come on, man; everybody’s doing the M-1 rag…..

    1. This is the winner, solely because I’ve ridden in the copilot seat of that exact plane.

  1. Odd that you should mention Rolls-Royce, the “original” Rolls-Royce doesn’t make cars anymore, only jet engines.

      1. Everyone appreciates a good diesel vehicle but nobody wants to know how the sausage is made.

      1. Looks notwithstanding, back in the the GM car seats topped the Consumer Reports ratings, so the engineers knew what they were doing.

      1. The 1954 International Harvester refrigerator on my garage is still going strong.

      2. Whoa. Wonder if they offered gas refrigerators? My grandparents had a Servel gas fridge, and an aunt and uncle had a Bryant.

      1. Don’t forget Nash Kelvinator, although that was more a case of the fridge company buying the car company.

    1. To me, this has an air of frigidity.
      Pop-up stove seems clever to me who used to live in/on/over 100sqf as a student for a year. In that huge kitchen not really necessary.

    1. The red double-strikethrough of RUNNER probably didn’t do much to inspire confidence among any copy editors contemplating a purchase.

        1. That looks sturdy and safe with it’s round frames. Modern boats are so flat, making them roll less, plane better, but creating a tricky tipping point, too.

          1. Even the same epoch, no matter how one feels about the proposed Anthropocene. Personally I’m content to await the decision of the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s Anthropocene Working Group.

      1. Isn’t that one of the three you had tipped up in the corner of the garage
        we talked about last year?

      1. That’s a Schimmel, right? Or a Bösendorfer? The paint is very, very, very deep in any case!

      1. Sadly Singer cars are unrelated to the sewing machines. The sewing machine company was founded in the US in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer, Singer Motors was founded in the UK in 1874 by George Singer (no relation) to make bicycles.

    1. That’s a nice pistol, more accurate than the Taurus 92A by miles. Grip extenders on the mags are a must though, South Korean hands are apparently pretty small.

    1. Ours lasted until all three of our kids grew out of it, and was still in good enough shape to hock for $50 on CL afterward. We didn’t exactly take care of it, either, having left it out in the sun and rain a number of times. I think I had to clean dogdoo off of one of the the tires before taking photos for the ad.

        1. Plus the cup of tea is less likely to catch fire, although it can still burn you…

    1. Just listened to a restored one on Utube last week. Ze sounds! Ze noizes!
      Delightful!

      1. Some of the suggested usages are quite a stretch: where do I use charcoal in trucks and clubs? The first has a ICE for propulsion and heating, the latter won’t let me in if I showed up with a bag on saturday night.

      1. I love that the Dulles Airport mobile air lounges are in there too; they always strike me as a concept from an era long before the Apollo program.

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