As we discovered last year, Hudson conceived a nifty publicity stunt in 1934 to get the Terraplane some attention. The Hudson-Terraplane Ruggedness Run selected 20 different 1934 Terraplane owners from across the country to participate in two-week tours in cars lettered up as billboards by Hudson. It’s a sort of viral marketing (or possibly astroturfing) from an era long before the terms were ever invented. Each car and driver had its own region of the country, and Hudson ran a parallel contest for the general public to choose the names for each car.
Thus, we’ve already seen the Colonial Cruiser, which toured New England; the Cascade Express for Washington state; the Golden Gate Flyer for California; and the Gulf States Flyer in Florida. Add to that list the car in the photo above, which we found at the University of Illinois’s photo archive via Industrial Artifacts Review. Chicago policeman Henry Sheldon won the contest to name the Century of Progress Ranger, which he christened at the 1933-1934 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. No mention was made of the Century of Progress Ranger’s route, but we presume it would have included Illinois, Wisconsin, and possibly Indiana.
Does anybody know of any other Terraplane Ruggedness Run cars?