Clem Gibson and his Airmobile

I ran across this photo sometime ago. The title of the image said: “Clem Gibson bought a damaged, wingless P-51D and converted it, using some old car pieces and a hot Ford V8 Flathead, into this ‘Autoplane’ (Circa 1947)”.

Obviously one can’t really call this contraption a ‘hot rod’, but in nevertheless intrigued me… Who was Clem, where was this taken, and what was the story of this WWII aircraft body he crudely plopped on the chassis of a pre-war Ford with a hot Flathead?

After a bit of digging, I finally found the article from the September 1947 Bloomington Pantagraph (a paper founded in 1837) that offered missing pieces to the puzzle:

Imagine what could have been? What if Clem had actually taken the time to channel the aircraft body over the frame? Maybe made an aluminum bullet nose for a radiator shell? This wingless wonder could have been ahead of its time, instead of surplus wreck on wheels…