This Day in Automotive History: November 13

1927 – Holland Tunnel Opens Under the Hudson

At 12:01 a.m. on November 13, 1927, the Holland Tunnel’s two vehicular tubes first began carrying traffic beneath the Hudson River, linking Lower Manhattan with Jersey City. The engineering feat was notable not only for its scale but for its pioneering ventilation system—an ASME landmark—which kept exhaust gases from accumulating in the long, subaqueous tubes. Built under the oversight of bi‑state authorities and opened amid intense public and press interest, the tunnel immediately offered a direct automotive route where ferries had long dominated, establishing a permanent road connection that reshaped commuter patterns between New York and New Jersey.

1933 – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Cord Seen at Wisconsin Accident

A dramatic Wisconsin roadside photograph dated November 13, 1933, captures Frank Lloyd Wright’s own 1929 Cord phaeton amid an accident scene north of Oregon, Wisconsin, alongside an overturned delivery truck. The Cord L‑29—remarkable for its front‑wheel drive, low-slung body and distinctive styling—was already an automotive oddity, and seeing Wright’s personal example caught up in a wreck adds an unexpected visual footnote to both his eccentric tastes and the era’s vulnerable roads. The image survives in the state historical archive as a clear snapshot of an architect whose life sometimes intersected with the era’s most advanced automobiles.

1934 – Chevrolet’s Ten‑Millionth Car Rolls in Flint

On November 13, 1934—Chevrolet’s 23rd anniversary—the ten‑millionth Chevrolet rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan, a numerical milestone that the company and contemporary newspapers marked with fanfare. In an era when mass production techniques were defining the industry, reaching ten million cars signaled Chevrolet’s immense scale and the centrality of its Flint plants to General Motors’ manufacturing system. The event was reported locally and remembered in later company histories as a concrete demonstration of automobile production hitting truly national numbers during the interwar years.

1940 – Willys Delivers the ‘Quad’ Prototype to Army Tests

Willys‑Overland’s prototype four‑wheel‑drive ‘Quad’ arrived at Army testing grounds at Camp Holabird on November 13, 1940, submitted as the company’s bid alongside Bantam and Ford designs. The small, utilitarian vehicle—built to a tight government specification for a lightweight reconnaissance and liaison car—underwent Army trials that winter, and the Willys prototype’s performance and features later fed into the development of the production Willys MB. Delivered amid intense wartime urgency, the Quad represented the industrial scramble to produce a compact, reliable off‑road vehicle for U.S. forces.

1971 – Spielberg’s Duel Premieres on Network TV

When Duel first aired on ABC’s Movie of the Week on November 13, 1971, audiences met a stark, roadbound thriller directed by a young Steven Spielberg in which a lone motorist is menaced by an unseen, murderous truck driver. The telefilm’s tight runtime, relentless tension, and its central vehicle—a massive, anonymous tanker truck—turned the highway itself into the antagonist. Though produced for television, Duel’s cinematic pacing and nerve‑shredding chase sequences later justified theatrical releases in some markets and offered a clear early showcase of Spielberg’s gift for suspense and visual storytelling centered on automobiles.