I think it was 1995 when I met Mr. Louie Mattar. He was funny and gregarious by nature, but when he rolled his 1947 Cadillac out of the garage, he found another gear entirely. Louie became positively gleeful. “I just had it painted 50 years ago,” he said.
I will get right to the story, because what San Diegan Louie Mattar did three quarters of a century ago required an astonishing degree of mechanical ingenuity, almost superhuman endurance and, I suspect, a very disciplined bladder.
A mechanic by profession, he began to wonder what it would be like to settle down behind the wheel of that car and drive to New York and back non-stop. For 6,320 miles, he and two co-drivers would not stop rolling for gas or food. There would be no hotel or bathroom breaks. If they blew a tire, they would have to find a way to change it while still motoring along the highway.
He built catwalks alongside the car with a shower and drinking fountain, a kind of rolling platform that allowed a corner of the car to be lifted as necessary to change tires, a trailer to carry 50 gallons of water, 230 additional gallons of fuel and motor oil, plus an onboard chemical toilet, stove, refrigerator, clothes iron, a world-wide radio phone, and a Turkish water pipe.
In 1952 all was set. The Cadillac’s parking brake was released and not applied again until his triumphant return. State police met and escorted the car through each jurisdiction. As pre-arranged, fuel and water trucks came alongside to toss a hose as needed. And they were not alone. Newsreel photographers and curious spectators followed Louie’s progress cross country and all the way back home to San Diego, where he soon announced plans to drive the same car non-stop from Anchorage to Mexico City.
Taken together, these were amazing feats. Louie’s “Fabulous Car,” as it came to be called, made him an international celebrity. He always spoke lovingly of San Diego as his hometown and the place from which he drew his inspiration. In the years that followed, on TV shows or when he and his car were featured in fairs and celebrations around the country, he became a kind of mobile ambassador for our city until his death in 1999.
Today Louie Mattar’s Fabulous Car is a featured display at The San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park, where new generations can see for themselves the spaghetti of pipes and tubes that kept engine and driver heathy and hydrated. The car’s interior is like nothing imagined before or since.
According to the Museum, all told, it took Louie five years and $75,000 to build his car. But he never regretted a penny of it. Looking back, it was “worth all the money in the world,” he said.
Fabulous. Just fabulous.
