What exactly is this machine supposed to be though? Many of the cars in the series are based to some degree on real vehicles, and having become very well acquainted with the AC or Invacar Model 70 invalid carriage it occurred to me just how much Crazy Vaclav's 'put it in H' car looks like a Model 70. This uniquely British model is a very off-the-wall choice for an American show, but the likeness is too great to be a coincidence so here's my take on its backstory.
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| A strange little car from a country that no longer exists |
Some sources claim Crazy Vaclav's car is based on the 'Harper Invacar', but unfortunately there is no such thing as Harper and Invacar were completely separate companies each building invalid carriages to their own designs. It does bear a striking resemblance to a Model 70 with some cosmetic additions but is the wrong colour, olive green instead of ministry blue. It also appears to have a three-speed automatic gearbox with a column change labelled in Cyrillic, the 'H' Vaclav tells Homer to put it in actually being a Cyrillic N for neutral. That means it isn't a Model 70 but seems to have been developed from one.
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| The Model 70 is clearly a close relative |
So what country is this car from? Vaclav says something that sounds like "Zagreb ebnen zlotny diev", seemingly the car's marketing slogan and apparently just some random Slavic-sounding words that don't make sense in any language. Zlotny is very close to zloty, the currency of Poland, but that country doesn't use the Cyrillic alphabet and very much still exists, so it can't be Polish. Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, in the former Yugoslavia which certainly is a country that no longer exists, and the Serbo-Croat language can be (although it isn't usually) written in Cyrillic so this is a possibility.
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| A Harper invalid carriage. It doesn't really look like Crazy Vaclav's car, does it? |
But if this car was built in Yugoslavia, how is it connected with the uniquely British invalid carriages? Here's my theory...
By the 1970s, the invalid carriage had gained a bad reputation with serious concerns over its safety. The Model 70 was a step in the right direction and a vast improvement over the old Villiers-powered machines, but there was still more work to be done. Thus, in the late seventies AC began work on the next generation of invalid carriage to address the critics. The Model 71 was a more sophisticated development of the Model 70, using the same basic bodyshell but incorporating extra safety features along with some cosmetic alterations to add a bit of style and more closely resemble a normal car.
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| The Model 71 took this design and made it better |
The raised rear light sections were enlarged into tail fins, the back wheels faired in with spats and a dummy grille added at the front to make it look less obviously rear-engined. Safety fears were allayed by the addition of proper metal bumpers front and rear for improved impact resistance, and the ride height reduced a little to increase stability. Little is known of the Model 71's intended mechanical specification, but it probably would have retained the Steyr-Puch engine and CVT drivetrain of its predecessor. In this form, the Model 71 should have taken the invalid carriage into the 1980s and hopefully shaken off its negative connotations.
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| Like a Model 70 but much improved |
Sadly it wasn't to be, as during the Model 71's development and before any running prototypes had been built, the government decided to pull the plug on the Invalid Vehicle Scheme. That instantly killed the project stone dead as without regular government orders and with no other products on the market (the 3000ME sports car was also in development but wouldn't reach showrooms until 1980) there was no way AC could survive on making a private sale once in a blue moon; contrary to the common misconception it was possible to buy a Model 70 privately but very few people did.
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| It's strange that this British sports car is a close relative of Crazy Vaclav's automobile |
In an effort to stave off bankruptcy AC started looking for a buyer to take on the Model 71 design. It isn't clear how exactly it happened, but the company somehow managed to make an unlikely deal with the government of Yugoslavia, a country looking for a cheap car to mobilise its citizens. Thus it was that AC sold the rights, possibly in exchange for imported goods from the Eastern Bloc, and Yugoslavian production of the Model 71 began in Zagreb in 1980 under the name of 'Zlotny', as can be seen on the numberplate of Crazy Vaclav's example. For some reason a fly was adopted as the new company's emblem and appeared as a mascot on the bonnet.
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| Why a fly for a logo? Nobody knows |
In Yugoslavia the former Model 71 wasn't aimed at disabled drivers but was adapted into a conventional car for the able-bodied. All had steering wheels, this being one of the 50 control layout options for the Model 70 and presumably intended to be carried forward to its successor. With the Austrian engine and CVT unavailable behind the Iron Curtain, a normal column-change automatic gearbox and a small diesel from a tractor were substituted. This power unit had the ability to run on kerosene and would supposedly deliver 300 hectares on a single tank of this fuel, a strange and confusing claim as the hectare is a measure of area rather than distance.
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| Is that good fuel economy or not? |
It isn't known when the Zlotny went out of production but it had disappeared some years before the Yugoslavian civil war broke out in 1992. Production figures also remain unknown but despite being significantly cheaper it wouldn't have sold well compared with the much more practical Zastava range so probably not many were made. It was never exported to the west so how this example ended up at Crazy Vaclav's Place of Automobiles in the USA is a mystery; it may have been imported by one of the American collectors of invalid carriages or possibly an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia.
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| Column shift auto with the famous H gear |
Homer didn't buy the Zlotny and its ultimate fate is still a mystery. It probably languished on Crazy Vaclav's forecourt for years, attracting little interest despite its excellent fuel economy as potential buyers were scared away by the thought of trying to obtain spare parts from a country that no longer exists. I guess he eventually got fed up of it sitting there and sold it for scrap so the car itself also no longer exists.
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| Seems Mr HubNut and Crazy Vaclav have something in common! |
So that's my interpretation of Crazy Vaclav's crazy automobile that does 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene and needs to be put in H. This strange three-wheeled car from a country that no longer exists was originally supposed to be the next generation of the UK's infamous little blue invalid carriages but was killed off by a change in government policy and found a new life in the Eastern Bloc. Is it a convincing tale? Well, as the great man himself would say, "take her for a test drive and you'll agree, Zagreb ebnen Zlotny diev!"
I've just realised what the fly ornament represents. I've been googling that scene to see if anyone else spotted it and I came across this page. Since you have done such a detailed breakdown of the car I think you will appreciate this detail too.
ReplyDeleteI believe the ornament is a reference to a novel that not many people in the west have heard of even though it was written by an Anglo-Irish woman, Ethel Voynich. She was born Ethel Boole and was the daughter of the famous mathematician George Boole.
As an adult she wrote "The Gadfly" in the late 19th century. Many decades later, unbeknownst to her, it became a massive success in the Soviet Union, where it was compulsory reading and sold millions of copies.
I believe someone on the Simpsons writing staff knew about this and that the hood ornament is actually a gadfly in homage to the success of that novel.
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