Just picked up my new Interceptor! Maxime and I took a train from San Francisco to Redding, CA to pick him up.

Its a total overbuilt and over modified beast, with diamond plating and rhino coating (what they put on pickup truck beds, looks like powder coating) for no other reason than, as it was explained to me, so if someone slams their door into it, their door will dent and the Interceptor will be fine. It looks pretty cool but isn’t quite my style. Those big chrome mag wheels on the other hand…

Its a ’99, was previously harassing parkers in San Francisco, and has only 17,000 miles on the odometer. Its pretty insane how much the previous owner restored everything, the engine looks brand new, has all new hoses and wires, and you could literally eat off the valve cover. There’s all sorts of modifications to the brackets in the engine, new aluminum struts everywhere, I’ll try to post some pictures if anyone’s interested.

One thing he did that I love is beefed up the front forks and put wipers on them, which are new to me but apparently standard on motorcycles, they keep dust from going down the fork. And he added aux fans to cool the buried and suffocating engine.

Dan, the previous owner, having one last fiddle

As I type I’m in a hotel in Redding, CA, where Maxime and I just bought it. We took an Amtrak up here and will be driving it slowly back to San Francisco (about 250 miles) over the next few days, vehicle and police willing.

Read about days 2 and 3 after the jump.
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A beautiful ’63 with very clean shoes.

Crazy 70’s van interior.

More pictures in the cached ad.

Found this interesting Cushman ad from 1962 on ebay:

“Rain or shine, receipts from parking meters go up, and the costs of collecting them go down, when the meter patrol in on Cushman three-wheeled Trucksters. Their inexpensive Cushman Trucksters take the meter patrol off their feet, get them around fast and comfortably, even in bad weather, then increase the city’s income from parking meters at the lowest possible cost.

Many cities have already made Cushman three-wheeled Trucksters a regular part of their police fleet. The “Meter Maids” of Wichita have achieved national recognition and earned many new dollars for the city with their fleet of Cushman Trucksters.

Powered by well-known OMC engines, Cushman Trucksters use little fuel, require almost no maintenance, travel dependably and economically for many miles with no difficulty of any kind. They are easy to drive, easy to park, have a payload capacity up to 800 pounds. A Cushman Truckster can turn completely around (360 degrees) in 17 feet, can squeeze through narrow openings just 50 inches wide.

Look around and see where you can save by sending a three-wheeled Cushman Truckster instead of a  truck. Cushman vehicles are sold and serviced by a nationwide network of dealers. Call your Cushman Dealer today.”

Reminds me of the tagline in the maintenance manual for my 1983 Truckster, which said “Cushman: slow enough to spot trouble, and fast enough to catch it”.

Here’s another one, love the “more chalkin, no walkin” line, I need that on a t-shirt.

“The Cushman Police Vehicle is the best parking enforcemnet tool since the chalk stick. ” That’s about all I can read but really it says it all.

A classic. Unfortunately the video was shot on a Palm Treo, but it gets the point across nicely.

Whoops, you need Flash 9 to see this movie. It's free and easy to install if you follow that link.

From a Life Magazine article.

We found this little beast on Craigslist and picked it up for $2500, in super great shape. It’s a 1999 from San Francisco. We drove it around for a couple of days unmodified and absolutely everyone thought we were metermaids, which is kind of brutal. Everyone glares at you, and when we left it for an hour to get a bite in the Mission we came back to an angry mob surrounding it and writing grafitti. D’oh! Luckily they didn’t get very far. They felt bad when they realized we were forces of good, and told us they were thinking about tipping it. But we found that Barbie head in a thriftshop and glued her on and now everywhere we go people smile and take her picture.

The Department of Silly Little Cars is open for business. Ticketus Upyor Assum.

Now where do we get some weather-proof stickers made? This desperately needs to be on my side doors, about 8″ round. Here’s the source file by the way, hint hint.

Another one:

Yes, we are. Source file is here. I uploaded it to Cafe Press with a bunch of them on a single bumper sticker, you can buy those here (don’t worry, I don’t make anything from it).

Or if you’d prefer: