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Show Where Cars Run Thousands of Miles Without License Plates - - , t y ' i v , i . t j . vl -:'. vt: 'a ", - x s J "" , " 1 Two automobiles without license plates have been averaging aver-aging 25 miles a day on Detroit streets and getting away with it. No traffic cop holds them up. Detroiters do not know of these cars or the streets on which they run. The pilots of these unlicensed autos drive in eternal darkness except for their headlights, which burn constantly. The beams of these headlights flash on crystal pillars and arches and roadbeds as the cars curve and twist through 20 miles of streets in the great salt mine lying a quarter of a mile beneath be-neath the traffic of Detroit. Few Detroiters even know that the mine exists. Thirty years ago immense deposits of salt were discovered a thousand to fifteen hundred feet below Detroit's west side. A shaft was sunk by the International Inter-national Salt Company, which has been burrowing under Detroit De-troit ever since. Distances finally became so great that the automobile idea got into the company's head. The difficulty was that no road ran into the mine. The only way was by vertical shaft. So the salt company put its problem up to the Ford Motor Mo-tor Company. The next difficulty was that a regular closed car wouldn't fit into the shaft. So a couple of convertibles were sent over and the tops removed. re-moved. Then into the depths of the shaft went the topless cars. There was no need to put the tops on again, for no rain or. snow ever falls in the city of salt, where the temperature is always 58 degrees. : One of the cars was assigned to foreman Edward Yipee, who has worked in the mine since the shaft was first s : in 1910. The other Ford is equipped as a repair and maintenance car and is used chiefly by the; mechanical trouble shooter in t keeping the mine's far-flung machinery in working order. |