A friend sent me this interesting article from a 1919 newspaper.

Headline: A Ford Still Is Operating.

Kansas has a real whiskey still made out of a wash boiler and secreted in rear end of car. A statewide order has been sent out for the arrest of a man who is touring Kansas in a Ford car which has a whiskey still built under the rear seat. The machine makes "moonshine" as it runs and the operator of the auto still sells this liquor whenever he has a worthwhile supply, and then disappears. So far, efforts to catch him have been futile.

Throughout last winter a man named Dickson has been living at Hugotown, Kansas. He owned a Ford car and seemed to be an industrious citizen, law-abiding in every respect. Recently the car has not been used much, and it has just developed that it was undergoing an overhauling and rebuilding that has made it into a real distillery, a movable distillery that makes whiskey as it runs, avoids the usual nuisance laws by moving and makes Dickson so hard to catch.

A blacksmith at Hugotown, who does some tin work, told what he had done to the car for Dickson and submitted a diagram to the Attorney General and he has forwarded it to the internal revenue collectors.

The Attorney General and his law enforcement helpers, the Sheriffs and police of every county in the State and the Government's internal revenue collectors are all hunting for Dickson and his Ford with the complete traveling distillery. Dickson has been heard from in several communities, but from the time advices come to the officers to the time they reach the spot where Dickson was selling, the supply has been exhausted and the distillery was moved to parts unknown.

Dickson put a washboiler under the rear seat of the car. In the boiler he installed a worm and then had the blacksmith build and solder the pipes to connect with the water jacket and radiator of the car. The intake and outlet pipes were constructed of tin in the approved fashion of stills and when furnished the outfit was as complete a distillery as anyone could wish.

When the car is under way, the heat from the engine, most of which is wasted anyway, would operate the still. The harder the car was driven to escape the officers the faster the still would work. As the supply of liquor was made it could be packed to bottles around the boiler.

So the car could be a still while it's a rolling.

And if he ran low on gas...

Hmm, that hybrid would be corn powered.

That's my kind of car...perhaps I should reconstruct one like it. For history sake of course!

Hmmmmmm engine powers the still. Still makes ethanol. Engine runs on ethanol. By golly, it's perpetual motion!

That might be an idea for those of us with marginal radiators. The still should remove some of the heat from the water and take some of the load off of the radiator.

I need a set of plans!