to Cobar with his 1934 REO for the
Running on Empty Festival.
Ted King, a former Cobar resident who
was a local consultant on some of the stunts
shot in Cobar for the Running On Empty
movie, was back on the weekend for
ROEF2022, which celebrated the 40th anniversary
of the movie’s release.
Ted, who was the local Ford dealer at the
time, and the movie’s director John Clark,
shared some back stories about the movie’s
stunts at Thursday night’s ROEF2022 Cocktail
Party. Both agreed it was a wonder that some
of the stuntmen and actors weren’t seriously
injured or killed!
Ted now lives at Bathurst and drove his 1934
REO (a Ransom Eli Olds) Flying Cloud to
Cobar for the festival and had it on display at
Saturday’s Show ‘n’ Shine event.
“I’ve always liked REO’s.
“I had my first REO when I was about 16,
my dad brought it for me,” Ted told The Cobar
Weekly.
At one stage he had 15 REOs in his collection
before he sold most of them.
Ted found this one last year which had been
kept in storage for a long time.
He did the motor up, put some new tyres on
it and replaced the upholstery himself (after he
taught himself how to sew) which he said
saved him a bit of money.
“It gets along at 60-70 miles an hour (that’s
about 100kms an hour). It took about six hours
from Bathurst,” Ted said.
When they were released, the stylish 1934
REO models boasted a “Self Shifting” transmission,
which Ted explained was: “It has the
full run of an automatic so it changes gear at
14 mile an hour from first into second gear.”
It was predominately marketed as a “ladies
car” but Ted reckons it needed a pretty strong
lady to drive it with its heavy steering wheel!
