Jim Tighe - Deceased 1942 - 2012
March 10, 1964 - April 27 2012
There is a thread on here with a photo of the name plate on a Dixie in a junk yard, but I cannot find it, so will start from scratch here with some more Dixie info. I had never heard of Dixie before that other thread, but I have stumbled across some interesting Dixie info. My cousin in Colorado tells me he drove two Dixies in El Paso, TX, in the early '60's, a '58 Olds with fuel injection and a '59 Pontiac with the Tri-Power 3-carb setup. Both were low-headroom ambls stretched from wagons, had heavy duty cooling systems and tranny coolers, and were very fast. They were used on out-of-town runs because they were much faster than the 2 Cads - a '56 and a '57 - the firm owned. ( This was before med-evac choppers. ) He said the Cads held 2 patients, vs. just 1 in the Dixies. He also mentioned that the warning lights on the Dixies were rather crude add-ons, unlike the ones on the Cads. I had no idea he had ever done this sort of thing, and he had forgotten about it until I e-mailed him about going to Piqua, etc. Wouldn't we love to have a photo of that fleet?