WHATCHA TALKIN’ ’BOUT… WILLYS?
The Centipede is Dick ‘The Hammer’ Cook’s eight-wheel-drive, eight-wheel-steer custom masterpiece. Octane tries to tame it
WE’RE GETTING THERE, slowly and sideways. This one-of-a-kind Willys is enough to give you the willies, rendering you a bundle of frayed nerves within minutes of initial contact. The giddying aroma of carbon emissions pervades the cabin as the surround-sound fanfare of an unsilenced V8 batters the senses. Oh, and it won’t stay straight. Not even close. Pull this lever, push that button. For the love of God, man, do something.
So now the front four wheels are pointing in the right direction, sort of, but even with the rear diffs locked it feels like the tail is about to start wagging the dog. And we haven’t even left the car park yet.
Scroll forward ten minutes and the initial lurch of apprehension has given way to laughter. We’re now crabbing down a country lane, performing an eight-wheel drift at walking pace. The vinyl-clad driver’s seat offers nothing so sissy as support, and the spine-rattling ride ensures that your head makes contact with the roof more than once. Press down the throttle pedal as far as it will go (actually, it’s a hook), and now we’re travelling way faster, maybe even 40mph, and heading for something immovable. Ease off the gas, and it lurches back into line before swinging wide the other way. This results in a lava flow of bespoke swearing; normal synaptic firing has long given way to something more, er, custom. Who on Earth would build such a thing? And why?
Dick Cook was never one to follow the herd, that’s for sure. This renowned American fabricator was a close collaborator and foil of the equally left-field Ed Roth, having helped fashion such legendary show-stoppers as
Outlaw and Rat Fink. Cook became Roth’s right-hand man, having impressed him with his sense of humour as much as his ability to create something out of nothing. He recalled in Tony Thacker’s excellent Hot Rods by
Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth: ‘As I worked on Outlaw , I was plannin’ a tow rig and trailer. Enter Dick “The Hammer” Cook. Dick could solve any problem with a hammer. Dick had put an Olds Tri-Power motor into a ’40 Chevy and I bought it from him. It hauled bananas! It was perfect for a tow car… It was even big enough to sleep in. The nifty part of the ’40 was the gear shift. Dick had made the emergency brake handle into a gear selector. W hen people
‘THIS EIGHT-WHEELDRIVE, EIGHTWHEEL-STEER MONSTER WAS PERHAPS COOK’S MOST OUTRÉ CREATION’
offered to drive it, they couldn’t figure out how to make the thing go. Tough!’
By the early ’70s, Roth had departed the world of hot rodding, if only for a decade or so, but Cook continued to construct ever-more-elaborate one-offs. This eightwheel-drive, eight-wheel-steer monster was perhaps his most outré creation, and it appeared in several specialist publications around this time.
Cook’s patented ‘little bit of this, little bit of that’ approach to car-building came into full bloom here, the basis for ‘The Centipede’ being a ’53 Willys and two Jeep Station Wagon bodies of indeterminate vintage. The suspension set-up was largely standard M-151-series Willys fare, or rather front suspension all-round, with unequal-length shafts front and rear as well as a pinion yoke on the front and back of each diff, allied to a Jeep Quadra-Trac transfer case.
Power for this remarkable machine came from a rear-mounted 327ci Chevrolet Corvette V8 driving through a Borg-Warner Turbo Hydramatic transmission. The engine was sited to the right and flanked by the fuel tank, positioned behind the driver’s seat. While clearly a flight of fancy, this eight-wheeled freak wasn’t built with car show appearances in mind. Far from it. Cook drove the Willys regularly, one of his longer hauls being a road trip from Las Vegas to Colorado. Not only that, he wasn’t above using it off-road as and when the mood took him. What’s more, it reputedly proved adept at rock crawling.
All of which seems a world away right now. Our point of destination is Ballaugh Beach, which is a twomile hike from The Centipede’s home in the superb Isle of Man Motor Museum. It’s a voyage of discovery, not least for its owner Darren Cunningham. This archcollector first heard about the Willys back in 2012.
‘It was on the Jalopnik web site under the headline “The World’s Most Adorable, Badass Jeep Is For Sale”,’ he says. ‘It was listed on eBay by Worldwide Vintage Autos in Denver, Colorado, and we won the auction. It appeals massively because it’s unique and it puts a smile on everyone’s face. It looks like it’s been driven straight out of a cartoon, but it’s also very impressive from
an engineering and packaging standpoint. It actually works as an 8x8 vehicle with functional eight-wheel steering, and all in a very compact package. The centre pair of axles are permanently driven, and there are locking hubs on the front and rear axles. You can have it in four-wheel-drive configuration, six-wheel drive using the front three axles – or the rear three, for that matter – and also in eight-wheel drive.’
Everything about the Willys – or Willy’s according to the grammatically incorrect signwriting – is beyond strange. Just looking at it makes you chuckle. It has a machine gun turret, so what’s not to love? Merely getting in it requires a degree of coordination that is hard to master, the cut ’n’ shut suicide doors being next to useless. There is no graceful means of entry: you just place your right foot on the second hub in-line, grab the roof as best you can and then sort of tumble aboard, hoping not to cut yourself on anything sharp-edged.
Even once you’ve threaded your way inside, it isn’t exactly ergonomically sound. The seats are staggered, the passenger throne being mounted somewhat further back and that much higher. The black-on-white aftermarket gauges look rather spiffy, the brass piano hinge that adorns the glove compartment lid rather less so. Everywhere you look there are pop rivets, exposed screwheads and a general sense of ‘It runs, it’s done’.
Then it’s time to fire it up. ‘Try something and see what happens,’ Cunningham shouts from a safe distance. No, that’s the horn. Actually, it’s a klaxon from an ambulance. Of course it is. The column-shift lever operates the indicators. Naturally. Little is labelled so it’s a case of trial and error. The lever to the side of the seat is not the adjuster, after all. Pulling it sends a shudder through the structure. Note to self: don’t do that again. The big redand-black knob under the dash drops a pin to lock the rear steering, the only token nod to normality being the regular shift pattern for the auto-box. It’s just that the gearstick sits amid a jumble of other levers.
Thumb the starter and the Willys starts with a gruff bellow before settling down to a lumpy idle. In no way is it quiet, the sound out of the stubby exhausts being matched for volume only by the screech of the fanbelt. The tricky bit is working out which diff locks lock which diff. After a while you resort to figuring things out on the fly; just go with the flow and let it do its own thing.
It’s like patting your head while rubbing your stomach: once you stop thinking, it becomes easier. A bit.
The view through the shallow windscreen and across the abbreviated bonnet engenders a false sense of scale. You sit far forward with much of the action going on behind you. The lack of door glazing to some degree alleviates the smell of unburnt petrol, but you wonder why the doors still have window rubbers… The sense of whimsy stretches to the wooden ‘rifle’ and the speedo that optimistically reads to 160mph. At considerably south of such an improbable top speed, but still crabbing like an olive-drab crustacean, you feel like you’re leading the invasion force of the Comedy Army. And you don’t need to be a lip reader to grasp what other road users are saying, either.
The same is true of holidaymakers whose jaws drop as we storm the beach. ‘It has four wheels on this side,’ one says. Look closer and the same is true of the other side, madam. Shortly thereafter, a mature gentleman just about stops short of a PowerPoint presentation as to why the rifle in the cabin is incorrect for the period. Pointing out that it is merely a prop, and not a very convincing one at that, doesn’t placate him, nor does informing him that it isn’t actually a military vehicle. What is apparent is that the Willys is nicer to drive on sand than asphalt. The ride is smoother, for starters.
After turning round at the end of the beach, it’s back to trying not to take out small cottages with the flailing tail. That, and laughing like loons. This gloriously cockamamie machine is the perfect antidote for the blues. It’s harder to drive at 20mph than most hypercars are at 200, but no exotica can match it for sheer entertainment value.
In order to get the best from The Centipede, you will certainly need practice and coordination. Oh, and big balls. Perhaps a gas mask and a cushion, too, come to think of it. The thing is, its flaws only reinforce the positives. Dick Cook really was a genius, even if that genius was for putting a smile on your face. And this vehicle is quite an epitaph. End THANKS TO the Isle of Man Motor Museum, www.isleofmanmotormuseum.com, +44 (0)1624 888333. 1953 Willys ‘The Centipede’ Engine 5354cc rear-mounted V8, single four-barrel Holley carburettor Power 350bhp @ 6500rpm Torque 360lb ft @ 4000rpm Transmission Two-speed automatic, eight-wheel drive, locking differentials Suspension Front and rear: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers Steering Worm and sector Brakes Drums Weight N/A Performance We were too scared to find out…