Gar Wood Story

Gar invested his entire savings and built the first dump truck. He patented this and many other ideas including the "Garwood Packer"; the first garbage truck. While remembered most for his racing and boatbuilding; he was a very successful businessman.

Beautiful boats, very cool era. Attended yesterday's Madison Regatta, where the top 2 turbine-powered unlimiteds AVERAGED over 140 miles per hour in the final. I have no doubts that Gar would drive one of these today if he was still around!

Amazing!!!

He had a killer mansion on the detroit river. Made out of imported stone and had a spectacular ballroom and one of the world's largest privately owned pipe organs. The pipes went all the way up to the forth story. It was a gorgeous mansion with statuary, indoor pool, huge boat house and supposedly a bowling alley ! He moved to florida, and some developer got the property and rent it out to some hippies that had huge parties and a band called Stonefront lived and played there. The parties were legendary, with all the big rock stars coming to the parties, There is a big comment section in Detroityes, where all the old hippies tell the tales. The developer ended up renting it to the outlaw motor cycle club, and it all went down hill from there on and the old girl eventually was hit by lightning. then it was demolished. Such a horrible loss. perhaps those that hung out there back in the day, will comment here!

Thank you for these facts, and Video. Wish Detroit had in a museum of ours. Mistale Coal Company thought of him as a favorite.

Very cool! My grandfather worked for Gar Wood from 1936 to 1945, at Grayhaven in Detroit.

Gar Wood was a remarkable man. He also had the most patents of any American and owned Gar Wood Industries which included many companies.

Gar wood and iI had several discussions about his Virginia key property1967.. unfortunately the disposition of this property involved Bibi Rebosa and Richard Nixon, it. Now houses the AOML at NOAA, interesting story too.

It's funny how in any story about Gar Wood there is virtually no mention about the Chris Craft, Smith family connections. All of Gar Woods early boats were built by the Smiths. They were partners for many years and Woods first factory was Smith's original factory which he bought from them to provide seed money for the startup of Chris Craft in 1922. CC continued to build GW hulls and engines until GW began luring away key CC employees.

4 packard merlin engines in that last miss America. Raw Horsepower!!!!

What a great story and I cant believe I knew nothing about it I have been into fast boats for 40 years and the only Garwood (one word) built winches for military trucks! Its definitely a HI buck outfit when Packard is building engines especially for your boat! Great story now I have to learn more!

jimmorock- sfconifer was referring to the English challenger. That English boat was powered by Roll-Royce engines.

Yup, Packard V-12 Marine Engines (not retrofitted aircraft engines).

Interesting chap! I am a non-boat person so re the Chris-Craft comments I am not ashamed to admit that were it not for Pawn Stars I would not have heard of this name. GREAT upload thanks. 🏆

"the snow white English boat powered by Rolls Royce airplane engines flew over the water like a rocket"

No, SF is correct about the English boat, Gar's was powered by the Packard engines.

I read the books about him. I owned a wooden Boesch once. wooden powerboats are best.

share with Bob Burklin face book page por mod 2016

packard engine, not roll-royce,

Sad that these films were so poorly done, so little info, yet so much said about nothing, Nothing was said about the engines powering Gar Woods boats, they were PACKARD Marine engines the grandfather of the US Navy's WWII PT Boat engines the M2500's You can see the name PACKARD on the engines in several shots, yet the announcer had to BOLDLY proclaim the BRITISH boat was powered by RR Aircraft engines !!! Biased reporting as usual !!!