The Forgotten Yellow Speedster Amelia Earhart Drove 7,000 Miles Across America
Imagine this: you’re spending the summer of 1924 in the Canadian Rockies when you hear an engine. A bright yellow, luxury roadster comes roaring up a dirt road. Two women are navigating the continental divide. When they stop for fuel, you see the car is covered in travel stickers from the places they’ve been: California, Washington, Banff. The driver tells the growing crowd that she’s Boston-bound, then sets off again. Years later, when you see Amelia Earhart’s face in the paper, you’ll recognize her as the scrappy young woman who tackled this pioneering cross-continent drive.
Nearly a decade before her nonstop solo Atlantic crossing, Earhart attempted another difficult crossing. She drove a roadster convertible across the North American continent’s primitive road network. All with her recently divorced mom riding shotgun. Her beloved yellow speedster—built by a long-forgotten Wisconsin company—made it possible.
In the summer of 2024, Amelia Earhart was nearing her 27th birthday. But she’d already lived more than most centenarians. When she was in college, she’d seen horribly wounded soldiers returning from WWI. Her response? Drop out of school and join the Red Cross as a nurse. Listening to military pilots’ stories, she became enamored with aviation.
She worked through the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, though she grew so sick that she developed lifelong sinus issues. She enrolled in medical school at Columbia University until her family moved to California.
In 1921, Amelia walked four miles to and from the nearest Los Angeles bus stop to Kinner Airfield to take all of her flying lessons. In 1923, she became the 16th woman in the U.S. to earn a pilot’s license and purchased a used bright yellow “Airster” biplane, which she maintained herself. She nicknamed it “The Canary.” Amelia flew The Canary to 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots.
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Not everything in Earhart’s life was flying high in 1924. That year, her parents divorced, her inheritance–which the family had invested in a gypsum mine, disappeared when the mine failed, and Amelia was hospitalized for sinus issues so severe they required another surgery. When this operation was unsuccessful, Earhart sold her planes.
Amelia’s sister, Muriel, took a train to Boston to enroll at Harvard and set up a home for herself, Amelia, and their mother. Amelia and her mother decided to drive east to meet her. The only problem was that they didn’t have a car. So Amelia went shopping.
She laid eyes on a gorgeous yellow “speedster” she probably couldn’t afford. It was a brand-new two-seater with a cloth top, no windows, and a big six-cylinder engine. It was a true luxury car, far beyond any reasonable budget. But it was painted the same “Chrome Yellow” aviation color that her old “Canary” had been. She plunked down her plane money and bought the grand tourer for $3,475.
The Kissel Motor Car Company Paved The Way
Conrad Kissel emigrated from Prussia to Wisconsin in 1857. His son, Louis Kissel, opened a hardware store, distributed farming equipment, and even co-founded a bank before he began building motors. Louis and his four sons founded the Kissel Motor Car Company in 1906.
“Kissel Kar,” as it was often advertised, built some innovative vehicles. They included a FWD heavy-duty truck and an early race car, which won the 1910 “Cactus Derby,” crossing the desert between LA and Phoenix.
In 1915, Kissel made a choice that would set the direction of his company for decades. He donated a car to Hollywood actress Anita King. She was attempting to set a record as the first woman to drive across the North American continent. She pulled off the trip, and Kissel became famous among the elite. This launched the car into the same segment as luxury grand tourers from Mercer and Stutz.
Celebrity drivers of the most famous Kissel model included 1915 Indy 500 winner Ralph DePalma, boxer Jack Dempsey, actress Greta Garbo, singer Al Jolson, actress Mary Pickford, actor Douglas Fairbanks, actress Mabel Normand, and pianist Eddie Duchin. But this same model would forever be connected with Amelia Earhart.
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Amelia Earhart’s 1923 Kissel 6-45 “Gold Bug” Speedster
|
Displacement |
Power |
Torque |
|
338 Cubic Inches |
61 HP |
180 LB-FT |
The Forney Museum currently displays the 1923 Kissel Speedster that was Amelia Earhart’s prized possession from 1924 through 1929 (though some sources claim she bought the car in 1922).
It was a Kissel “Model 45” with an inline six-cylinder engine. The power plant was 338 cubic inches with a side-valve “L-Head” design and a single updraft carburetor. Its factory rating was 61 horsepower @2,800 rpm (though it was confusingly also listed with a NACC taxable horsepower rating of 45). It had a traditional 3-speed manual transmission that sent the power to the rear axle through a driveshaft.
The Model 45 was a relatively high car with ample ground clearance, thanks to semi-elliptical leaf spring suspension at both the front and rear. It had a 124-inch wheelbase, 3,400-pound curb weight, and mechanical brakes for just the rear wheels.
Features such as twin golf bag mounts and slide-out sets for two more passengers made it an extremely popular “speedster” among the Hollywood elite. While early prototypes were painted black at the factory, later Kissel Speedsters all wore “Chrome Yellow” paint. This earned it the ubiquitous nickname “Gold Bug.”
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How Earhart Drove Her Yellow Speedster 7,000 Miles Across America
According to the Classic Speedsters website, Amelia and her mother drove up the West Coast to Washington. They visited Banff and Lake Louise. After crossing the Rockies and the Great Plains, they dropped into the U.S. at Chicago before continuing to Boston.
This was decades before the interstate highway system, years before reliable paved roads connected most towns. Road signage was practically nonexistent. Amelia reportedly traded her childhood stuffed monkey to some locals for much-needed directions.
The two women driving their bright yellow luxury car must have been quite the sight. To add to the effect, Amelia even slapped travel stickers from various destinations they’d checked off the list onto her brand-new car.
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The Second-Best Thing To Flying
Some sources claim Earhart learned to drive for her transcontinental trip, but in her first book (20 Hrs. 40 Min.), she claims that early on in her time in California, “I was fond of automobiles…and almost anything else that is active and carried on in the open. It was a short step from such interests to aviation…”
But she drove like a pilot, fast and pushing her Speedster “like a car possessed.” While she and her mother affectionately called her new car “Kizzle,” others nicknamed it “The Yellow Peril.”
Earhart loved her expensive car and kept it until 1929, even though she could only find a job as a teacher and social worker once she arrived in Boston. This led to the iconic 1925 picture of her behind the wheel while dozens of the children who were staying at the “Dennison House” piled onto the hood and trunk, grinning. Her friend said of Amelia’s car, “She lived poorly and went without everything but essentials in order to maintain the Kissel car, which she loved like a pet dog.”
Earhart returned to flying and became the vice president of the American Aeronautical Society’s Boston chapter, and became a Boston sales representative for Kinner Aircraft.
When Captain Hilton Railey and company were outfitting the Fokker plane “Friendship” as a seaplane to attempt a 1929 transatlantic flight, they considered Amelia Earhart to crew it. So she offered to drive Hilton and his wife to dinner. It was a night Julia Railey would never forget: “At the curb we climbed into the worst looking automobile I ever saw, bar none. Its rear end was cigar shaped and its ground color a sick canary. People got out of the way of it, I noticed. [We] scudded through traffic like a car possessed [and] with something like a flourish drew up at last at ‘The Old France’ restaurant.” For his part, the Captain appeared impressed enough to offer Amelia the job. The rest is history.
Experts suspect that fewer than 40 Kissel “Gold Bug” Speedsters have survived. Chassis number 1964 (a 1922 6-45, pictured) sold through Bonhams in 2014 for $165,000. A 1926 6-55 recently sold through RM Sotheby’s in 2026 for $195,250.
Sources: Classic Speedsters, Forney Museum
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