Taking a large coupe as the starting point for an extended limousine annex station wagon. It sounds like a pretty bizarre and rather far-fetched idea, yet this imaginary came to fruition in the late 1960s. Introducing the AQC Jetway 707, a limousine with the silhouette of a station wagon that was intended for transport to and from airports.
AQC stands for ‘American Quality Coach’, a small coachbuilder that was founded by Messrs. Waldo J. Cotner and Robert Bevington after the introduction of the Oldsmobile Toronado in 1966. The gentlemen saw a whole line of hearses, ambulances and limousines based on the front-wheel drive Oldsmobile is. The front-wheel drive of course makes such a conversion a lot easier; you basically only need to put the saw behind the windshield and then stick a new superstructure behind it. It is then no longer necessary to extend the complete drive shaft to the rear.
Under the company name ‘Cotner-Bevington’, the gentlemen already had experience in converting Oldsmobiles into ambulances and hearses, but the company was bought in 1964 by the Divco-Wayne Corporation, the merged company of van manufacturer Divco and bus manufacturer Wayne. The seniors of that company did not like the Toronado plan of Messrs. Cotner and Bevington, so the two decided to leave their former company and found AQC in 1968. AQC’s first business activity was – unsurprisingly – cutting a Toronado in half and adding a huge pile of steel and glass to it. The ‘Jetway 707’, which takes its name from the Boeing 707, was born.
AQC Jetway 707.Source: Nightshiftlimousine.com
The Jetway 707 is a six-wheeled station wagon annex limousine that is no less than 8.5 meters long. The wheelbase is an equally unbelievable 4.6 meters. The Jetway 707 was also the first stretched limousine with a double rear axle. Depending on the chosen configuration, it offers space for twelve to fifteen passengers, who can enter the car through no fewer than eight(!) doors. Another striking style element of the Jetway 707 is the raised roof – Ã la Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser – with extra windows at the front and above the side windows. Behind the passenger compartment is a large luggage area to be able to transport all the passengers’ suitcases to the airport. If that wasn’t enough, AQC could also supply the Jetway 707 with a large roof rack.
The colossus is driven on the front wheels by the ‘Rocket’ V8 from the standard Toronado. That power source was delivered over the years in several variants, in displacement ranging from 7.0 to 7.5 liters and from 375 to 400 hp. That must have been enough to get the Jetway 707 going. The weight and performance AQC did not mention. For reference: the regular Toronado already weighed more than 2,000 kilos and sprinted to 100 km/h in 7.5 seconds. The airport limo undoubtedly added quite a few seconds.
Failed project
Unfortunately, Messrs Cotner and Bevington’s idea didn’t catch on: the Jetway 707 didn’t sell. AQC reportedly only built 52 copies of the freak limousine, though another source alleges to the website Coachbuilt.com that the actual production number is approaching 150 copies. In 1970, AQC went defunct, just two years after the company was founded. The money was gone. It is unknown how many Jetway 707s are left today. Reportedly there are only a handful of them. According to a source of Hagerty the build quality was not great and the Jetway 707 often lost the battle to the rust devil.
A search on the internet shows that there still seem to be a number of copies in circulation. A black Jetway 707 with a gray roof appears to be in a museum in England, while the above white copy is used by the American company ‘Nightshift Limousine’. Furthermore, there are several individuals who have spotted driving Jetways and have uploaded their photos. Fun fact: In the movie ‘All the President’s Men’, a black Jetway 707 passed briefly in the background.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl