in 2009
Models and prototypes After purchasing "The Californian", Davis intended to
reverse engineer it with a group of newly hired engineers, including Peter Westburg from
Douglas Aircraft Company. Together they built a
1/4th-scale model of the car, which they then photographed for a
Hollywood Citizen-News story on July 22, 1947, in which they claimed their ability to build 50 of the cars a day and sell each for $995. While testing "Baby", Davis was able to achieve
tire marks with a
circumference of just , demonstrating the vehicle's impressive
turning radius. Davis obtained significant coverage for his new car in prominent
magazines such as
Business Week,
Life, and
Parade as well as in a period
newsreel and a syndicated television crime drama,
The Cases of Eddie Drake. For additional promotion, "Baby" was repainted and put on display in a
Philadelphia department store for the
holiday shopping season, after which it was repainted once more in preparation for participating in
Pasadena's
Rose Parade before the
1948 Rose Bowl.
Pre-production At the factory in
Van Nuys, the pace of development became frantic, with workers occasionally staying 72 hours at a time and sleeping in a nearby house that Davis had rented. Busy with promoting the Divan, Davis delegated production duties to newly hired Bob "Pinky" Howells. Howells worked feverishly to meet Davis' deadlines, which called for prospective dealers to receive their cars within just 90 days; he ordered a
drop hammer press, two
gas furnaces, and a set of
kirksite dies from a Pasadena tool-and-die maker. However, when he demonstrated his progress to his boss, Davis fired Howells because, as his colleague Westburg put it, "he had spent $45,000 of company money ... on production." At the time, Davis was paying himself a monthly salary of $1,000, and the Davis Motorcar Company had already raised $1.2 million through the sale of 350 dealerships.
Demise Increasingly concerned investors began demanding a return on their investments, and as they became less satisfied with Davis' claims, they began arriving at the company's factory unannounced to press the engineers for accurate delivery dates. In early 1949, prospective dealers sued Davis for
breach of contract; company employees followed suit in May 1949, as many of them had not been paid for their work after taking an offer from Davis that promised them double pay after production began if they worked for free during the pre-production phase. After a
Los Angeles County District Attorney investigation, Davis was convicted on 20 counts of
fraud and eight counts of
grand theft by a jury in 1951. While the Davis Motorcar Company's assets were
liquidated in order to pay
back taxes, Davis himself claimed that he could not repay his debts and was instead sentenced to two years at a "work farm"
labor camp in
Castaic, California. == Specifications ==