In the Spring of 2007, I was contacted by John Sweeney, then director of the Larz Anderson Automotive Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts, about my father's 1950 "Green Goddess" Daimler. John owned one too, and wondered what I could tell him about the Daimler in my father's collection. I don't have any details about how or when my father acquired one, but a little research revealed that this outrageously oversized vehicle (it was 20 feet long) got 6-8 miles to the gallon, and cost $25,000 new.
As for John's car, an on-line update reveals that it was sold at a Bonham's auction in California last August for $249,000, following his untimely death in February 2009 at age sixty-four.
In the winter of 1951, Henry Ford II admired the James Melton Green Goddess when it was parked on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, chatted with my father, and ended up taking a cruise on our yacht. He and my father made a handshake deal for a television variety show to be sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and hosted by James Melton. The show (Ford Festival) debuted in April 1951 and went off the air in July 1952. So that car was instrumental in launching my father's TV career.
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