We previously encountered Richard Harp and his Jetmobile a couple years ago in a collection of photos sent to us by a reader, so we weren’t too surprised to come across Richard and his three-wheeler again in (and on the cover of) the May 1952 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. But it looks a little different here: The windscreen’s smaller, more jet-like (as opposed to the UFO-like windscreen in the other picture), and the grilles to the rear-mounted engine don’t appear as tall and narrow as in the other picture.
With a little bit of digging, we see why. The Mechanix Illustrated photos were taken right around the time of the Jetmobile’s debut, at an auto show in Washington, D.C., not terribly far from Harp’s home in Boonsboro, Maryland (this configuration is also seen in a briefer piece about the Jetmobile in the March 1952 issue of Popular Science). According to a widely distributed article following the Jetmobile’s display at the New York Auto Show in early April 1952, the first incarnation of the Jetmobile – as seen in the Mechanix Illustrated article – was destroyed by fire after the D.C. auto show. Harp, with help from his friends, was able to rebuild the Jetmobile into its second incarnation (as also seen in the June 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics), which earned him more exposure. The discrepancy regarding the May publication date of the Mechanix Illustrated article can probably be chalked up to either long lead times or to MI’s editor at the time, Bill Parker, sitting on the story for a few months.
The Jetmobile very well may have burned down again or disappeared altogether – we see no mention of it at all after April 1952.
