In What’sNEW#1, posted February 2nd, mention was made of one of WNEW’s red mobile units, taking News Director Lee Hanna, Tech. Supervisor Shel Hoffman and engineer Howie Epstein to Washington D.C., Aug. 26, 1963 to cover the March On Washington. A photo of one of those Chrysler red hots, was discovered just a few days ago by chance on the internet. The photo, taken by Bill Cotter in April, 1965, shows the wagon in front of the Irish Pavillion, during the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair. Cotter posted the photo, and others, in 2010 on “World’s Fair Community.org.
http://www.worldsfaircommunity.org/topic/10385-wnew-news-at-the-fair/
When trade-in time came, WNEW stayed with the Chrysler New Yorker, but in quieter white.
One of my assignments as the WNEW newsroom gofer from 1962 to 1965 was the care and feeding of the mobile units. We had a bright-red 1963 Chrysler New Yorker station wagon and Plymouth Valiant wagon, and a darker-red 1964 Chrysler wagon with an Imperial “Police Special” engine. The Valiant was vandalized and burned during the unrest in Harlem in the summer of 1964 — for the coverage of which WNEW News won the Sigma Delta Chi award. The first time I drove in New York City, it was to take the 1964 unit to the Bronx to be lettered. It was rush hour, it was snowing, it was dark — and I got lost. Somebody slammed into me on Hunts Point Avenue, badly damaging the right rear quarter of the unit, and begging me not to report the accident to the cops. I finally got to the body shop just as it was closing, and the owner assured me he’d fix it up as good as new. I figured I would be fired, but nobody said anything about the incident until months later, when Ed Dennehy, the business manager, came into the newsroom with the bill from the body shop. “That was an awful lot of money for a lettering job,” he told me. “Yeah,” I finally said, “an awful lot.”