American Pickers Land Speed Record Car Unearthed

Well the Pierce Arrow went to it's first show today less than 24 hours after being extracted from the mud behind the home in Clearwater Florida. St Pete's Festival of Speed seemed like the perfect place to unveil it! It was a huge hit with a crowd around it all day. AND IT WON AN AWARD!! LOL Not a drop of water spent washint it or cleaning the leaves out of it and it won one of the largest trophys of the event.

 

I'm in Largo, and it would be a hoot to know how close I was too it... What area of Clearwater was it found... The house looks like every other house built in the 50's and 60's, but with more room around it than most.

 

Way cool! going to document the restoration process here?

Also I had the American pickers " pick Scouts" out at my barn a few weeks ago.
They seemed to like the fact that I drive an old Checker Cab and suggested we could " meet" in traffic for a free style pick.
The places are not " seeded" like the storage locker shows, I am friends with a guy who knew Mike before the show existed, that would be John teh Indian guy. He will be on another episode soon.
I will not be on the New Jersey show this time.

Cheers!

 

The Pebble Beach cufflink crowd was already eyeing the car all weekend so I don't know if I will be the guy restoring it for now. I was robbed last fall and had all of my tools and equipement stolen by an ex-wife and a male friend of hers so it would be difficult to undertake with just the tools I have aquired since then. This car will wind up fully restored for sure. I'm just not sure if i will be lucky enough to be a a part of the process or not.

The car was just north of Largo closer to the water so it was not far from you. I had actually drove by this house five times before I saw the tiny glimpse of the Nomad barely peeking out from behind the house with the plastic covers over it. It didn't even look like a car at first. So don't kick yourself for not seeing it first, it would have been impossible to find.

 

Has anyone found pics of it running or all togeather yet?
Very cool car I thought when they had the show on.

 

Amazing find!

From Hemming's, here's a shot of what the "Thunderbowl Comet" (makes me think of toilet bowl cleaner!) looked like in an earlier guise...



More on Hemming's... http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/11/29/lost-and-found-redux-thunderbowl-comet/

Also this reminiscence from Motor Life blog... http://reservatory6.blogspot.com/2011/05/ha-ha.html

While very similar, there are a lot of profile differences between the car in question and these shots. Is it really the same car?

 

neat find hope you can restore it yourself, thanks for the update

 

I think I'd turn it into a nice little grocery getter.... lol.

 

Someone spilled beer in your trophy.

 

The line of trees look like it could be along the Trail... I'm off E Bay and Highland.

 

What are your plans for it now?

 

No, the car below is NOT our car. There are really no resemblances and the Comet was built on a Cord L-29 platform. The Comet is supposedly also located awaiting restoration in Arizona.

 

The plan for now is just to do as much research as possible. That's why we placed it in the show, to get exposure and hopefully spark someone's memory. Once we find out what it looked like, who built it and what it did and where it did it we will formulate the next plan for the car.

 

There is now an ongoing thread over on the AACA forum trying to ID the car and its components with multiple photos if anyone cares to check it out...

http://forums.aaca.org/f169/1930-pierce-arrow-land-speed-record-348722.html

 

Great car! As far as the pickers go, I was there when they picked my buddys place and bought the 48 airstream. They do confirm the items before they drive out to film but they do not plant items. Pretty much everything was real, they did have to make up a phone call for tv and they paid more for the trailer than they said( Mike and Frank are given around 2k cash from the show so no they did not pay 8k for the airstream but they really did pick his stuff and even the crew bought stuff after the cameras stopped. The freestyle picks look suspicius though. Great show to watch with the family. The storage shows, thats another story.

Glad your car was saved so we all can see it now!

 

If this Thread could have stayed focussed on the car we could have kept it open.

But people are going on and on about the show, and we dont do Reality TV Drama on the HAMB.