Why are cars not more so transported?

Posted on 13-07-2015 at 9:09 am by CasperH – 36 Comments”

To reduce transport costs was in the ’70s, this bizarre transport system developed by General Motors. Bizarre, but effective!

The cars in the train cars will see its Chevrolet Vega. A traditional car train was about 18 cars per wagon lost. Because the transport costs are the price of the then $2000 dollar Vega greatly influenced, showed GM the shown system develop. Because of this, the transport costs will be reduced from thick $260 dollars per car for the longest ride, to $160 dollars per car. The new wagons were able to 30 Vega’s transport.

The ingenious system was Vert-A-Pac, but it also brought some complications with them. So had to certain parts of the Vega re-designed. This is to prevent the liquids from the cars would run. So there was a customized design is needed for the crankcase, the battery and the carburetor. In addition, there were plastic beschermringen necessary to prevent damage to the engine and gearbox would arise during the transport.

Because the cars on the opening ramps were detached, they could also relatively quickly in and out. The cars were on the tail secured with a special set of nuts on the bottom plate of the car. In addition to the financial incentive of more cars per wagon, had the Vert-A-Pac also has other advantages. So it was more challenging to the cars of the transport to steal and were the cars are better protected against damage by the closed model of the wagon. A number of moving images are in this video (from about 5:00).

Unfortunately for General Motors, and the lovers of this freaky car transport was not very good with the Vega. When the car once it is out of production was no longer useful to the railroad cars, and so they were converted to regular cars. However, we secretly wondered whether this is not better, more efficient way is to have cars to transport. We will probably never know. More photos of this unique transport system are to be found on Autojunk.