The 405 Aired Nov 10th, 2025
I wanna again welcome you to The 4:05 Coffee Break. Guys, it's a new week. Get your cup of coffee, glass of iced tea, bottle of water.
OK Solberg:Spring wheat $5.29 a bushel, 550lb steer calf $4.31, Butcher hog in Iowa, 67¢ a pound and a 100lb fat lamb in Billings at $2.21. But, guys, there's more, much more.
OK Solberg:Welcome to Jay and Joe's Motor Monday, the day we honor horsepower one Monday at a time. Okay. Hang on and listen to my story. I hope I can do it justice. It's not a story you've heard before because, well, it just happened this morning. Of course, I was looking forward to motor Monday, but I certainly didn't have the episode written nor did I know which theme I would use.
OK Solberg:But don't worry. The one for the last minute, nothing would get done. So last night, just before I turned in, I got a text from my dear sister, Evie, over in the Seattle area, and she reminds me that tomorrow, that's today now, that tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Guys, you remember the song by Gordon Lightfoot? It came out the next year, the year after I graduated.
OK Solberg:The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitchigumi. The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turned gloomy. With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty. That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early. Then the last verse. In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed in the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral. The church bell chimed till it rang 29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
OK Solberg:Let's pause right now and honor those men. Fifty years ago today, the legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitchigumi. Superior, they said, never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early. Well, I knew I had to pay tribute to the sailors that perished that day, but that doesn't really tie in with motor Monday.
OK Solberg:Right? Unless I tell you that the engine on the Edmund Fitzgerald, which happened to be a Westinghouse steam turbine engine, which cranked out 7,500 horsepower when fueled by a pair of coal fired boilers. But now I thought, no. We need to tip our hats to the men who lost their lives and well, leave it at that. So my goal and intent was to do just that, tip our hats to the Edmund Fitzgerald and transition into another motor story.
OK Solberg:Guys, you will not believe this, and I hope you check me out. There was another ship that gained notoriety, and her name was the Andrea Doria. You're thinking, hey, Orvin. Motor Monday is for motors and engines and automobiles, not shipwrecks. Oh, I know.
OK Solberg:I know. But lend me an ear. Please lend me your ear. The Andrea Doria, a totally different shipwreck that happened in 1956 off the coast of Massachusetts, which by the way was powered by four parson geared steam turbines that produced what? 50,000 horsepower and fueled by heavy fuel oil.
OK Solberg:Yeah. You know, it was a single screw motorboat she was. So anyway, we had the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking in 1975 in Lake Superior fifty years ago today. We had the Andrea Doria sink in the Atlantic Ocean in 1956. But listen now, just this morning just this morning, I learned through my research that in 1956, the Chrysler Corporation, you've heard of Mopar?
OK Solberg:Chrysler Corporation, one of the big three automobile manufacturers, hired an Italian engineer to build them a new car to be showcased in the 1957 new car lineup. Yes. Along with our other popular models, which I'm sure you've seen, like the Chrysler New Yorker and the 1957 Chrysler Saratoga and the four door sedan called the Chrysler Windsor. Now listen, Joe and Jay, have you ever heard of the 1957 Chrysler Norseman? Think think think.
OK Solberg:I'll tell you this, if you have, it was never that you saw one. Or if you've heard of it, it would only be in a newspaper article or an ad in a magazine because they only made one of them. And here's what I found by accident. It was being shipped over to America on shipped over how? It was being shipped over from Italy to America on the Andrea Doria.
OK Solberg:I kid you not. Check it out. I hope to shout and call the doctor. And I found it out on the fiftieth anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Oh, and PS, pull it up on the Internet.
OK Solberg:Look it out. Check me out. The 1957 Chrysler Norseman was powered by a 331 cubic inch fire powered Hemi V8 engine producing 235 horsepower. This engine was paired with a two speed push button PowerFlight automatic transmission. What about that then?
OK Solberg:Yeah. And I didn't even get give to get to give credit to Seinfeld in their season 8 episode 10 rendition titled none other than the Andrea Doria. You know where Kramer sits in Jerry's apartment comfortably at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal from Jerry's cupboard, and he chimes in. The Andrea Doria collided with a stock home in dense fog 12 miles off the coast of Nantucket. Kramer is exactly right, and it was 07/25/1956,
OK Solberg:07/25/1956, hauling a total of 1,706 people, including the crew, and a wonderful prize for the Chrysler Corporation, the Andrea Doria was hauling in the lower deck the first and only Chrysler Norseman with a 331 cubic inch fire powered Hemi V8 engine kicking out 235 horsepower that never made it to the showroom. It sits on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And I bet even Kramer didn't know that.
OK Solberg:Time enough for a bible verse, and this too, I'm not making up. It really is in the bible, and this verse is a tribute to all the lives lost in the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Andrea Doria.
OK Solberg:Listen. Psalms 107 verse 23. Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the great waters. Thanks to my sister, Evie, for getting this thing started. It worked out better than we could have imagined.
OK Solberg:So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.