The Lady and the Dale

Then the next thing I found very impressive

that stuck with me,

and stuck with me to the point that I memorized it at one time,

was the poem "If--" by Kipling.

"If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

but make allowances for their doubting too..."

And it goes on and on. There's about 15 stanzas of it,

and every one has beautiful thoughts

and all about self-determinationism.

Uh, I learned when I was just a tiny little girl

that prayers don't get answered.

Self-motivation does.

So sometimes when I feel very drained and very low,

I'll go off by myself and I'll look up at the stars

and I'll just kind of withdraw into myself

and draw from my own personal power,

but not from any belief in the Supreme Being.

I knew that this was big.

We had stability.

We were staying in one place.

Bills were getting paid on a regular basis.

We lived in a real house.

It was what I thought was normal,

what I thought everybody else thought was normal.

When the Dale came along,

she quit the little stuff, so to speak.

She really did.

The concept of the Dale car is solid.

She was going to build a car.

-She had a winner. -(TAPE CLICKS)

(OVER RECORDER)

-(TAPE CLICKS) All through automotive history,

women have played a supporting role

in the automobile development, automobile marketing.

They never really rose to the level of executive

or designer or engineer.

Liz, however, was hoping to change all that.

(TAPE CLICKS)

One thing that Liz had going for her was her timing.

Not only was the gas crisis in full swing,

but the Space Race had been won by America

a half a decade earlier.

And there were all of these people

who were ready and willing to apply their talents

to something terrestrial like an automobile.

(TAPE CLICKS)

My dad, Frank McGuinness,

all of a sudden said,

"I want you to come down and meet Liz Carmichael

and see where I work.

They might need some people to help render some stuff."

And I go, "Really?"

Dale Clifft built a prototype.

She seized upon that.

But then she thought,

"Well, for the public to really go for this,

it has to have a full body.

It has to have proper wheels too.

Just look more like a car."

And here, I'm a 19-year-old kid,

and I was the assistant to the chief designer.

He would come in, I said,

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

And he goes, "Just start drawing.

Anything you want.

Just be original. Just do it."

That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

Having known about cars

and having loved cars and been interested in cars

ever since I knew what they were...

I would have my father take me to the LA Auto Show.

By the early '70s, cars were the longest,

the lowest, the widest they were ever gonna get.

-(ELEPHANT TRUMPETS) -They were also the heaviest,

and they were also the least fuel efficient.

Nobody was really coming up with anything different,

except for one.

And here's this three-wheeler that's gonna use less gas,

-which is what America needs. -(MAN 1 LAUGHS)

Oh! Whoa, nice!

My God, look how yellow it is, for crying out loud.

And this is the Dale.

It gets 70 miles to the gallon.

It is a three-wheel vehicle and very stable.

This three-wheel configuration

was something that was extremely unusual for an automobile,

and here it is at the LA Auto Show.

I just remember looking at that car and thinking,

"This is really, really something."

It flew in the face of tradition.

I couldn't believe that it was real.

At the time, it looked like a spaceship.

The rotunda was encased

and we weren't supposed to be in there,

but we all wanted to get in it

and we were constantly trying to open the doors.

And my sister actually broke a door handle off.

Of course, we rolled it under the car...

...and then got out of the rotunda.

We stopped calling Vivian "Mother" at that time,

and she was "Aunt Vivian."

And we didn't see much of Liz anymore

because it was always past our bedtime

-when she was getting home. -(TAPE CLICKS)

I've always worked 16 hours a day

since I was a little girl.

As a result, my family has been forced

to build their life around mine, rather than mine around theirs.

Yes? Young lady named Wendi on the phone.

Okay. -(TAPE CLICKS)

We called the office, between us,

at least 20 times a day.

Just 'cause we wanted Mommy home.

I get home at one o'clock,

but it's quality time, not just quantity time.

But she still made time for the Sunday picnics.

It was always the same.

She'd start cooking late on a Saturday night.

The potato salad and coleslaw

and bean salad, which was delicious,

devilled eggs, and a homemade bread.

All night long, you'd smell the yeast,

and first thing in the morning, she'd put it in the oven

so it'd be ready to take to the park.

And we'd play our idea of baseball.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) Even Vivian played.

She'd smack that ball and run.

(TAPE CLICKS)

My name is John Griffiths,

and, uh, I was hired by Liz

to build the first running prototype

Dale three-wheel automobile.

Because up until that time, they had nothing but show cars.

Show vehicles don't have to operate or do anything.

They get pushed up onto a dais and rotate,

and the salesman just talks up as big as they can

to promote an interest in the vehicle.

She was happy to have me onboard,

and I looked forward to making her dream come true.

(TAPE CLICKS)

She said, "We're gonna make a prototype,

and we're gonna have it test-driven,

and we're gonna show the world that we're contenders."

She said, "Build yourself a machine shop.

Money is no object."

You know, it was the Mercedes of everything.

I had worked with four-wheel automobiles,

and this was a three-wheel with a motorcycle engine,

so it was all brand-new.

Some of us were doing things

that we'd never done before, but...

we were gonna figure that out.

(TAPE CLICKS)

A PR guy who calls me,

he says, "I got-- I got a mother of five who has invented a car."

And I said, "Yeah, well, is she famous?"

"No. But she's going to be."

America in the early '70s, it was on a run.

Anybody could be anything they wanted to be.

I was the paparazzi. I was very, very good at my job.

I was fascinated with those people who were making it.

Elizabeth Carmichael was clearly

one of these people who was making it.

When I was interviewing her,

I became more and more enthralled

with what she was telling me.

-(TAPE CLICKS) The two most important things about me

is that I have endless energy

and I am totally, one hundred percent, honest.

I'm smart, I'm clever,

I'm a good businesswoman.

Three years ago, I foresaw the demand

-for low-fuel-consumption cars. -(TAPE CLICKS)

Elizabeth Carmichael was an original thinker.

She was way ahead of her time.

-(TAPE CLICKS) I'm ready to throw down the gauntlet

against the big three of Detroit.

Detroit failed to respond to the need

for a more efficient, low-cost method of transportation.

Well, I'm going to build the public

exactly what they're looking for.

And I'm going to knock the hell out of Detroit doing it.

I'll run the auto industry like a queen.

My morale, it's like a tent revival.