I think it’s safe to say that the popularity of the airliner stair-car in the popular zeitgeist peaked during the initial run of the show Arrested Development from about 2003 to 2006. The show featured, quite prominently, a stair car, and if anyone gave much thought to stair cars, it was probably sometime back then. But now I’m asking you to consider stair cars again, because I was recently shown a picture of the stair car used way back in 1972 when then-president Nixon went to China, and it’s fantastic. So let’s take a moment and actually look at this vehicle, one that so often just gets processed away into the background, doing its humble job, quietly.
It was our own Bishop who showed me these images of Nixon entering China, which I think must be part of his research on Quaker American Presidents, a list so far that starts with Richard Milhous Nixon and ends with, um, Richard Milhous Nixon. I think he’s either writing a book or a one-man show, likely on ice, about this subject. Anyway, He was right to point this image out to me, because the stair car being used is fantastic, and, importantly to me, has some really incredible taillights.
Let’s take a look at this striking machine:
Look at that thing; it’s almost an elegant design. Let’s get a better look. COMPUTER! Zoom, and enhance!
Dammit, that’s worse! What the hell is the matter with this thing? So many rheostats and switches and – oh! My chair was on the primary data hose from the information excorpulator. So, I just plug this back into the port on my Commodore PET, and…
There we go! Look at that thing! The red carpeted stairs, those ’70s-era-Cadillac-style rear fenders, with the integrated taillights; it’s fantastic. Just for comparison, look at the stair cars we were using here in the West around this era:
It seems to be either non-car-based things like that very flat unit up top there in the black-and-white photo, or Ford pickup truck-based stair cars that are pretty much just a stock F-100 with a staircase slapped into the bed. They’re fine and all, and I’m sure they did their jobs with reliability and consistency, but they do feel more, I don’t know, utilitarian than the Chinese one, which surprises me.
I thought we were America, land of verve and bold visual statements and hot pants and sequins and all that shit? How are the Chinese, especially 1970s-era Chinese, doing this with so much more style?
I mean, let’s look at the taillights here:
Are those extra side marker lamps on the inside of the fender? There must be a better picture of this around here, somewhere, right? Ah, here it is! Look!
Yes, yes, that is exactly what is going on! There’s three extra side marker lamps on the inside, matching the three on the outside, which must give those red-carpeted stairs and extra injection of crimson light at night. The amber turn indicator seems to be in the pointy lens below, and the main taillight is that lovely rounded obelisk-like lens atop. And it’s all ringed with chrome. That whole thing is a motherflapping celebration of taillight and chrome and automotive opulence!
I mean, if anything, these lights remind me of that most American Capitalistic of cars, a Cadillac, and its distinctive taillights:
How is this what China uses to get people off airplanes? And what is this stair car? Here’s a better shot of one driving through the Pyongyang airport, under the ubiquitous gaze of, I think, Kim Il Sung:
That’s a pretty stylish stair car; look at the character lines stamped into those long sides. Maybe they don’t exactly fit with the cabover front end, but it all works. And now that we mention it, what is that front end? What were Chinese stair cars based on?
It’s based on a vehicle that I think we can consider China’s Ford Econoline: the Beijing BJ130. The company that made them, from the late 1960s (well, that was the trial period, production officially started in 1973, according to one source, but the one seen with Nixon is from 1972, so who knows) to the late 1980s, is now consolidated as BAIC, still a major player in the Chinese automotive world, and they do proudly note the BJ130 on their website.
The BJ130 was one of the key workhorses of the Chinese commercial vehicle world and, with any number of different back ends (pickups, flatbeds, tankers, box trucks, probably mobile trampolines, you know) these did pretty much every stuff-moving-around job that needed doing in China.
With their 2.4-liter inline-four engine making a respectable 77 horsepower, these things could hit 53 mph and carry about 4,800 pounds while doing so. It was a workhorse!
And, it seems, it was a workhorse that could be prettied up when acting as a stair car, in ways that, somehow, seemed to eclipse the West in gaudy stair car opulence.
Who knew we had such a Stair Car Gap? I hope our current adminstration takes note, and suitably glams-up all of America’s precious stair car fleet. We can’t be outshone again!
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