| Inside Black Beauty Timebridge exclusive |
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| These vehicles come from an era before computer graphics and special effects. The rockets, for instance, really had to work. Early installed rockets had to be resized due to being too powerful, resulting in damage to the car, according to Louis. Dean Jeffries liked my comparison of the rockets to those signal flares used on boats, which they resembled when I examined them. So the working rockets are more theatrical rockets than true armament. Other Black Beauty myths include silent running, being bulletproof and the ability to be hung upside-down. The scanner also was not actually a true flying scanner, nor was the TV monitor it worked with on the show. |
| This is the nose gun, which at various times shot Hornet gas, flames, and even served as an external loudspeaker for the Hornet on a microphone...inside Black Beauty |
| Photos courtesy Karl Kirchner and Dennis Rau |
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| Black Beauty has telephones, supposedly front and rear. In fact, Black Beauty #1 has a single phone in front, while Black Beauty #2 has them front and rear. Can you imagine the person in the back seat telephoning the person in the front? Black Beauty #2's telephone even has a phone number, not divulged here. These days everyone has a phone in their car, but in 1966 you were a bigshot to have a phone in your car. The theoretically early-era remote telephones did not actually work, they were props. |
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