When Elon Musk was still wearing diapers, Elizabeth Carmichael was about to shake up the automotive industry with an extremely innovative car idea.
In 1974 – as the United States neared the end of a dire gasoline shortage – Carmichael introduced the Dale to the public: a three-wheeled car that cost only $ 2,000 and was said to be traveling 70 miles per gallon.
She introduced herself as a renegade from the auto industry, going against the so-called Big Three automakers, and the media swallowed it – calling the car “what everyone is looking for.” A poster by Carmichael showed her occupying a Los Angeles highway. Dale still shone like a prize in “The price is right”.
“Let’s shock General Motors and Ford out of their upholstered chairs!” Carmichael, then 37, said.
Well, it certainly shocked everyone.
As revealed in the HBO documentary series “The Lady and the Dale”, which debuted on Sun., Jan. 31, Carmichael was a bail bondsman, a forger and a con man wanted by the FBI. She was also young into adulthood, having been born in Indiana as a man named Jerry Dean Michael until she staged her own death – through a fake Mafia attack.
And Carmichael’s promises about the Valley, including that his “stronger than steel” body was bulletproof, were too good to be true.
But the public, suffering from rising gas prices and in the midst of a recession, wanted to believe. “The American people liked the idea that she was taking care of them,” Leslie Kendall, chief historian at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, told the Post. “In addition, she was extremely credible – enough to uproot a few million people.”
Jerry Michael, as Carmichael first became known, had five children with three wives in 1961, when he was arrested for forgery. He jumped on an injunction, bringing his fourth wife, Vivian, then pregnant with her first child. He yellowed his growing family around Sunbelt, staying one step ahead of law enforcement and landlords. “Moving is cheaper than paying rent,” he joked once.
Finally, tired of being chased by the FBI, he feigned his own death by crashing his car into a tree on a dark road. “Jerry’s car was found on the side of the road,” says Vivian’s brother Charles Richard Barrett in the document. “It had his blood. I found out that he had died – but he was still alive … He shot the car, I think. And he left. After that, he went underground for a while. “
In the early 1970s, Michael was reborn in Southern California as Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, a “widow” who falsely claimed to have a degree in mechanical engineering.
Vivian’s wife was still together, but now posing as the aunt of her five children who continued to live with them; the couple remained legally married. Carmichael worked for a company, the United States Marketing Institute, which sold advice to inventors. “This work was a turning point,” the documentary’s co-director, Nick Cammilleri, told The Post. “It was her taking long strides. She ended up in a place where she could help others to make their dreams come true. “
A customer, Dale Clifft, invented a three-wheeled car that looked like a buggy and was powered by a motorcycle engine. Carmichael was delighted. “She licensed the rights to Dale Clifft,” said Cammilleri. “Dale saw the power of his invention and saw [licensing it] as a positive step. “
She hired a shrewd public relations, rented a production space in Encino, California, and launched the 20º Century Motor Car Corporation – describing the workplace atmosphere as having “a religious fervor”. Engineer Greg Leas says in the document: “There was an energy in that place. Almost like a big family. “
However, things seemed a little wrong to the members of the company. Engineer Gerry McGuinness talks to the doctor about getting paid with stacks of $ 100 bills and remembers unpleasant numbers in fancy suits circulating: “You’re not telling me they’re not from the mafia.”
But in 1974, when a group of potential investors wanted to see the car in action, Carmichael’s crew had to mend a running version. “He had a BMW motorcycle engine,” said mechanic Hans Hasson, who worked at 20th Century Motors. “And if you made a sharp turn, [part of the front] went up in the air. “
After seeing the dangerous-looking vehicle up close, potential investors gave up. Carmichael referred to the exhibition as “a three-wheeled abortion”.
However, unsuspecting buyers flooded 20th Century Motors with deposit money, and dealers paid $ 35,000 each to secure positions as retailers in Dale. Carmichael should keep that money in custody. Instead, it seemed to finance his lifestyle and the company.
In addition, she was selling Dale shares without a license to do so.
A Dale shell was exhibited at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January 1975, generating much enthusiasm. “It generated a lot of admiration,” said Kendall, who attended the show with his father. “It looked like a bright yellow rocket … If the statements were true, it was a game changer in terms of how cars were built and configured.”
In February 1975, Carmichael and four company executives went to Dallas, where they expected Dales to produce. That was when hell started. News leaked about his illegal stock sales and an SEC investigation was underway. For some reason, Carmichael left behind his two bodyguards – former cellmates from San Quentin – and they started a heated discussion about how to end the investigation. One of the ex-convicts wanted to kill the investigator. The other disagreed and a fight broke out. A gun was drawn and accidentally went off, killing one of the men and gaining the kind of publicity that Carmichael did not want.
The once brilliant media coverage of Carmichael and the Valley became gloomy as customers demanded their money back and details surfaced about Carmichael’s fraudulent methods. “Things started to fall apart,” says McGuinness in the document. “It happened quickly – boom, boom, boom. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing a negative report. “
Like giving up, Carmichael and the main employees met at a home in Dallas, where she and her family were camped. Carmichael’s daughter, Candi Michael, remembers seeing one of Dale’s salesmen with a suitcase full of money entering the meeting. “He had just closed [the company] account. They shared the money and everyone followed different paths, ”she says in the series. “In less than 10 minutes, our whole family was in the car and we were on the road. That was the end. “
Director Cammilleri believes that Carmichael had every intention of making the Valley – if only she could have secured the financing before her misdemeanors returned to the perch. “I would say that the Dale car came as close as the Tesla in 2009,” he said. “If they got the money [from investors], we are telling a different story. “
Fleeing with his family, Carmichael was soon tracked to Miami and arrested on charges of theft and fraud of securities. About $ 6 million in company funds remained unaccounted for. She was eventually released on $ 50,000 bail provided by a studio that hoped to make a film about her life story, probably spurred on by revelations that Carmichael was transgender and was undergoing gender change surgery in Tijuana.
After a long trial in California, jurors pleaded guilty to major theft and fraud of securities in late 1977.
Carmichael once again disappeared, after a series of appeals and shortly before her sentence in 1980. Nine years later, an episode of the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” led to her capture in Texas. She was sentenced to 32 months and served more than two years in a male prison.
Around 1990, a freed-up Carmichael perfected a highly profitable scheme that employed former homeless people to sell roses on the corners of Austin.
One of the remaining four Dale prototypes now resides in the Petersen museum. Carmichael died of cancer in 2004, around the age of 67, after a lifetime of disappointment. “What she tried to do in a year, Detroit took decades to get it right,” said Kendall de Petersen. “She thought she could create a car by sheer willpower.”