Johnny Dark Movie Book

59 One - Off Bohman Special Emerges After Nearly 60 Years Hemmings Motor News: February 2nd, 2012 Author: Daniel Strohl For decades, Tom Sawyer of Salt Lake City thought he owned a special handbuilt Allard of some sort. Un- derstandable, given that it was sold to him as such and it appeared to date from the early 1950s, an era of Allard dominance. Yet he never scrutinized it much, and he could never get Allard researchers or historians to confirm or deny that his car was indeed the product of Sydney Allard's experimentation. Meanwhile, one of the eight cars that starred in the 1954 film Johnny Dark , which Geoff Hacker discussed earlier this week, refused to turn up despite frequent investigations into its fate. One of the three non - fiberglass sports cars cast for the film, the Bohman Special - known in the film as the Tiger Special - was built with an aluminum body three years prior by Lawrence Chris Bohman, the son of Christian Bohman, one of the principals of coachbuilding firm Bohman & Schwartz. Chris Bohman, as he was known, went into partnership with his father after the dissolution of Bohman & Schwartz in 1947, then after his father's death in 1950, took over the firm entirely. As noted in the SIA Flashback on Bohman & Schwartz, Chris Bohman built two sports cars after taking the firm's reins. One of them, built in 1950 for Rosan Engineering, used a Maserati six - cylinder chassis and re- portedly hasn't been seen since the early 1970s. The other used a hand - rolled aluminum body atop a 1947 Ford chassis; so far, nobody seems to know for whom Bohman built it in 1951, but shortly before it ap- peared in Johnny Dark (and, of course, after filming wrapped), Bohman placed an ad for it in the March 1954 issue of Motor Trend , describing it as a "1953 Custom Sports Job." From then on, it appeared as if the car had simply vanished from the face of the earth. Motor Trend: March, 1954