We are in receipt of a fine letter from one of our friends, a Doble owner of long standing. MR. E. O. HERMAN of Momence, Illinois, writes us a note about his Doble model E-18. He insists on one thing.  This car is NOT FOR SALE at any price, so if you have any wild ideas about buying this Doble, forget it!   Doble owners have been awakened at all hours of the night by people from across the country, travelling through and they want to see the amazing car. If you feel that you MUST see this car, please write Mr. Herman well in advance of your time of arrival and make your arrangements by mail. Even then, might be wise to phone him the day before arriving to finalize the meeting.

     Mr. Herman writes as follows “it is just about the finest performing car that I have ever had the pleasure of driving and my maintenance problems have been negligible. Only one major repair has been needed; I replaced the thermostat-coil and tube When the original developed a leak. (From rust no doubt.) The coil would have had to be opened up to weld anyway so, as long as we had it open we replaced it with a new one.

     "Economy is very satisfactory, fuel is no problem as the carburator type burner will handle anything found at filling stations and will handle even common furnace oil. The turbine-driven burner-blower delivers more air as speed of the car increases and the venturi picks off more fuel to match. You can appreciate that a fixed atomizing pressure type burner would not be this flexible. This demonstrates again, that Mr. Abner Doble had a knack for developing devices to give his cars the very best in top performance.

    "Water is almost no problem. I keep the pH between 7 and 8 and watch the Phosphorous ratio and add little Silicate when taking on unknown grades of water in which there might be some substantial amount of dissolved Oxygen. Scale material comes out of the scale trap on blow-down as a soft sludge and accumulation in the tubes is almost nil. I get 1,000 miles to the tank of water in cold weather as an average, and some 500 or so in the hot Summer. The condenser pulls a very good vacuum in cold weather, and the exhaust-driven condenser-fan helps the thermal efficiency of the whole system. Vacuum falls to about 6" in the Summer.

    "I have shown the car at several meets and have won a few trophies, The important thing is the tremendous interest manifested by visitors at these meets, in the work by Mr. Doble and his associates in producing such a fine automobile. This praise is much deserved. Many other great men were not fully appreciated during their lives among us."
 

From Steam Calliope, Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1965, Thomas P. Hall, publisher, Panorama City, California.

Since restored and owned by Jay Leno.