In 1962, a man named Dean Moon fitted the very first Shelby Cobra with a Ford V8 engine at his shop in Santa Fe Springs. He and Carroll Shelby hauled the vehicle, which was air-freighted from the UK, to the shop on a custom-built truck. Meet the 1959 Moon Transporter, one of the quirkiest race car haulers ever made.
Born in 1927, Moon was a hot-rodded and innovator of high-performance parts. He raced all sorts of vehicles and was the first to create and utilize multi-carb fuel blocks, spun aluminum wheel discs, and aluminum gas tanks. Inspired by a Mercedes-Benz truck, Dean set out to produce the fastest race car transporter in the late 1950s.
His inspiration was the Mercedes-Benz Renntransporter. Also known as the Blue Wonder, the truck emerged in the mid-1950s and was the brainchild of Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who also created famous race cars like the W194, W196, and the 300 SLR.
Built on the chassis of a street-legal Mercedes-Benz 300S, the Blue Wonder had a rather curious design thanks to a cabin mounted way in front of the front axle. The cantilevered design was used to achieve the best weight distribution with a race car loaded onto the rear section.
Powered by a 200-horsepower engine and capable of speeds of over 90 mph (145 kph), the Renntransporter was faster than any truck produced at the time. Heck, it was even quicker than quite a few production cars. Sadly, the Blue Wonder’s career was short-lived. Mercedes-Benz retired from racing in 1955 after a 300 SLR driven by Pierre Levegh crashed, killing 83 spectators. It was the deadliest accident in motor racing history.
Dean Moon’s transporter is obviously similar to the Blue Wonder design-wise, sporting an aero-optimized cab and a front axle mounted behind the seating area for proper weight distribution. Wanting his truck to be faster than the Renntransporter, Moon used a 283-cubic-inch (4.6-liter) V8 engine sourced from a Chevrolet Corvette for motivation.
Dean never got to race his hauler against the Blue Wonder, but the truck got a lot of attention in the media after it was spotted transporting many race cars in the 1960s. This truck also hauled the first-ever Shelby Cobra (chassis CSX001) and the first Chevrolet Cheetah. And unlike the Renntransporter, which was scrapped, the original Moon Transporter survived to tell its story.
The hauler is now with the folks at Undiscovered Classics, who rescue and restore unique (and often unknown) sports and race cars from the past. The truck is still in solid condition for a vehicle that sat for decades. And it appears it will be restored to mostly original specifications.
It will probably take years for the Moon Transporter to be back on the road, so until then, learn more about its history and current condition in the video below.