Attention! ATTENTION! Everybody, stop what you’re doing, drop that wedding cake, let go of that pulley, leap out of that forklift seat, fling those dental instruments to the ground, because I have important fictional worm-related vehicle news! Before I relay this news, I’d like to implore you to stay calm. If you’re driving, pull over, if you’re operating a power tool, set it down. Make sure you’re somewhere safe. Are we all good? Okay, here we go.
I think I’ve figured out the driving interface of Lowly Worm’s Apple Car.
Hey! I said to stay calm! Let’s all just keep it together. I also have what I think is the most plausible diagram of the internal layout of the Apple Car as well, so this is all a very big deal, as you have no doubt surmised.
In case you somehow didn’t have a childhood and were birthed, fully born, from the head of Athena or some pyrex vat, I’m happy to remind you who Lowly Worm is. Lowly is part of children’s author/illustrator Richard Scarry’s series of books about anthropomorphic animals who live in and operate remarkably busy and often chaotic towns and cities. Lowly is, as his name suggests, a worm, and is a sort of free-spirited worm, maybe not one that always makes the best decisions, but a kind worm, and is always clad in a tube-like outfit, punctuated at the top with a Tyrolean hat and at the bottom with a lone shoe.
Lowly has a car (as vehicles figure heavily in Scarry’s Busytown) — a distinctive apple-shaped one:
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Lowly’s Apple Car is quite famous, and I can’t think of another fruit-themed car that has as many positive associations as Lowly’s Apple Car. So many people have Apple Car tattoos, for example. That says something.
Now, if you’re like me, you’ve probably found the Apple Car very appealing, but have always been a bit frustrated by the lack of details and visuals of the car. It’s almost always seen in profile, the rear is effectively almost never seen, and other than what we can spy through the big wraparound windshield, the interior is a mystery.
In fact, one of the rare alternate views we get of the Apple Car is in animation, where we get a glimpse of the rear and a better view of the front, revealing an air intake grille flanked by the external headlamps:
This version also seems to have leaf-like rear fenders, but I’ve never seen that on any other versions. You can see a bench seat inside, and there is a sort of steering wheel, but I don’t think that’s accurate, for reasons I’ll get into soon.
Still, it’s one of the rare angled views of the Apple Car that we get, so I’m happy to have it. Based on this and other images of Lowly’s Apple Car that I’ve seen in books, online, embroidered on tapestries, carved into marble, and so on, I think I’m ready to extrapolate the interior layout and mechanical design of the Apple Car:
In many ways, the Apple Car is similar to a Japanese Kei-class “tall boy”-type city car or little van, like a Subaru Sambar. A first-generation Sambar chassis is pretty close, even:
What we have is a short wheelbase with a rear-mounted inline-three engine (it could be a twin or a four; I’m just guessing here) laid on its side, like a Fiat Giardiniera. The engine is under the rear floor of the car, just aft of the rear axle. Just ahead of the engine is a radiator, behind the bench seat, fed air from that front grille via an under-seat air duct. A fuel tank is to the side of the engine, and the only door is at the rear, possibly an upward-opening hatch, though it could be side-opening as well. I just don’t have enough information to make that call.
There’s likely a 12V battery under the seat as well, but I forgot to draw it in there. I forgot because I was focused on a much more interesting problem: how does Lowly drive this thing?
Being an annelid, Lowly has a distinct lack of any sort of limbs. A conventional steering wheel and pedal system would simply not be usable by Lowly, who really only has one appendage that could be of use, his tail, which he often uses as a foot, to the point of wearing a shoe on it.
Looking at how Lowly tends to drive his Apple Car, we can see him upright on the seat. His lower half isn’t exactly visible, but I think we can extrapolate an arrangement like this:
Okay, so Lowly sits on the seat, bending at his “waist” and “knee,” which are both simply part of his worm body that roughly approximate those joints on a human body. To control the car – which I think we must assume has some manner of automatic transmission, possibly a belt-driven DAF-like CVT – Lowly would place his “foot” in a special Brannock device-like receptacle in the middle of what I’m calling the Main Control Disc.
To control the car, Lowly pushes his foot forward to accelerate, moving the Brannock-like shoe cradle forward. The further forward, the more throttle the car gets. To brake, Lowly pulls his foot back, which actuates the hydraulic brakes. Like forward, more rearward motion equates to more pressure on a brake pedal, and hence more braking force. Oh, and if the car is at a stop and the foot cradle is pulled past a detent at the rear, reverse gear is engaged, and past that detent, rearward pressure adjusts the speed in reverse, but much more limited than forward speeds.
To steer, lowly rotates his foot left and right, turning the disc like a steering wheel. Lowly’s foot remains in the cradle at all times while driving; in fact, there may even be a pressure switch to cut power to the car if the foot is removed from the cradle, for safety reasons.
This feels not just plausible to me, but likely. How else is a one-appendage’d worm going to control a car? If anyone out there knows Mr.Worm or any of his representatives, I would appreciate the opportunity to confirm my speculations.
The only potential improvement I could think of would be to keep the foot cradle in the same orientation the whole time. As this is, it either only has 180° of rotation lock-to-lock, or would get really twisty, and I don’t know how well worms twist along that axis. By attaching part of the foot cradle to a pivot, it can continue to face forward even as the control disc is spun.
The Busytown Seek and Find book from 2020 shows Lowly driving the apple car with some kind of joystick.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/X6VMQimmXMSUGGX4A
Love this, hahaha!
Cars are fun, but these Torch articles are the best thing I get for my subscription. Please continue for as humanly possible!
My wife and I are having a heated discussion about this as we speak! I’m trying to get her to read this but she won’t stop throwing plates at me.
Thanks again Torch!
First, one of your articles helped me find out which was a car I had seen as kid, my attention drawn to its boomerang shaped tail lights framing the top corners of the rear window – a Ford Taunus 17M Turnier. I had been racking my brain for years. And now, after a similar number of years wondering about my favourite long-lost childhood book, you’ve done it again, boom, memory unlocked with pictures, names and author. Please never stop providing this service to mankind.
When I was a kid, I got these Busytown toy sets, plastic bases with thick cardboard pieces that slotted into grids in the bases. The cardboard pieces made buildings, street furniture, and even crops (there was a farm). Characters were included, slightly rubbery, 3D figures about 3″ high—for instance, the dog cop pictured above, along with his motorcycle (with a sidecar for stability). Great stuff.
Anyway, Lowly was included, but he was in a barrel (again, for stability). Which meant that he did not have the apple car, but instead rode in… a classical touring car! Somewhere between a Silver Ghost and a Stutz Bearcat, I’d say. Mayor Fox, incidentally, had the same car, but in a different color.
OMG, this has been plaguing me my entire life. I’ve always wondered how the heck does lowly worm drive his damn car. This is the kind of deep investigative journalism that brings me back to the site on a regular basis. Now, if you can figure out how Baloo and Kit managed to get pilot licenses after living in the jungle for so long that’d be great.
I gotta say Jason, this is a pretty plausible solution and it also explains why Lowly needs to wear a shoe in the first place.
I bought Cars, and Trucks, and Things That Go for my kids when they were little and now I desperately need to find it.
Surely some sort of tilt-based mechanism like a joystick with a flat top would be more ergonomic.
Plausible. In fact this is now canon Busytown lore.
So as a worm he needs to stay moisturized or he’ll dry out and die. Does the apple car have a misting system? Some type of swamp cooler perhaps? This is very important.
How would Lowly achieve reverse?
It’s in the article!
The front of the pedal wraps up and over, so he can get the ‘toe’ of his boot under it and pull up, past the detent, into reverse. Reverse would also be spring loaded to return to neutral/park.
The toe hook would also allow him to pull back while driving forward to apply brakes more aggressively.
There is probably a reverse lockout, like in modern cars. Maybe, when the car is stopped, one turns the pedal far to one side and pulls back, to get past the lock.