Host Truman Bradley tells us the show opens in “Mesa Flats . . . 105 degrees in the shade . . . but there is no shade.”  WTF?  Could there be a more useless piece of exposition?  We see prospector Mort Woods who is luxuriating in a cool swimming pool . . . but there is no swimming pool.  He is sitting on some rocks beside the dusty flats.

He sees a car approaching which is strange because there are never cars there.  He tries to flag down the car, but it zooms right past him.  He can see that there is no driver.  Being from South Florida, he even checked for skeletal fingers on the wheel and the tip of a hat.

Mort thinks this is so significant that he runs in the 105+ degree heat to report it to Sheriff Barney Cole in Mesa City.  Mort has had hallucinations before, but Barney goes out to the desert with him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Arthur Gress and his wife Regie are also in the desert.  She calls up to him on a ridge to ask if he sees anything through the binoculars.  He says, “No, I can’t see a thing, Regie.  Better turn off that engine.  As soon as it cools, I’ll tape up that radiator hose.”  So he has brought his wife to collect samples in the 105+ degree desert, left the car running, knows there is a radiator problem, and risked stranding them in this furnace because the car overheated?

Dr. Gress heads into the desert where he spotted an outcropping of ore.  Regie is left at the car.  Soon, she hears another car coming.  She attempts to flag it down, hoping they have some water or eligible bachelors.  Unfortunately, the erratic car swerves and mows her down.  Gress arrives just in time to see that there is no one in the car!

The sheriff meets Gress’s car in the desert.  Both cars stop and the Sheriff says, “You won’t get very far that way, mister.  You’ll burn up your engine.”  I guess he thinks Gress was speeding.  They put Regie in the Sheriff’s car and head back to Mesa City.  On the way, they are surprised to meet an ambulance that has already been summoned.

At the hospital, she remains unconscious with the diagnosis of a concussion.  The local doc calls a specialist in Los Angeles, but learns the doctor is already on his way to Mesa City, summoned, like the ambulance, by a mystery caller.

Morty and Sheriff Cole go back to the desert to search for the driverless car.  At 1:45 they spot it and begin a swervy pursuit.  Somehow, on the vast empty flats, the driverless car is able to shake these two bumpkins.

The specialist, Dr. Avery, is able to patch Regie up pretty quickly.  Gress dutifully stays by his injured wife’s side, nursing her back to health, making sure no further harm comes to her.  Naw, he borrows some equipment from the Air Force and heads back to the desert with the Sheriff and Morty.  I guess the deleted scene where they convinced the Air Force to hand over a million bucks of radar and acoustical equipment to a Geologist, a Sheriff, and a smelly desert rat will be on the DVD.

While they are fiddling with this high-tech gear to locate the car, it does a drive-by and almost clips them.  Nice work, fellas!

Back at the hospital, Gress says the car they are looking is radar-controlled, and electronically-guided.  And apparently solar-powered because it seems to go forever without gassing up.  When the Sheriff gets a call about another hit-and-run they go back to the desert.  WTF — the victim is the local doctor!  Before he dies, he confesses that he built the car and tells them how to stop it.

There isn’t much going on here, yet I liked the episode.  Hollywood, not noted for ever learning a single f***ing thing ^[1], has never understood the appeal of just watching a pile of American metal zooming down the road.  Whether it is Barry Newman in Vanishing Point or Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Americans are hypnotized by a vehicle in motion.  Even when there is an utter nothing in the driver’s seat like in the schlock classic The Car or Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.^[2]

The shots of the runaway car zooming across the desert were just awesome.  By any objective standard, the episode is awful, but I give it a thumbs-up.  God Bless America!

Other Stuff:

• [1] Like how the overuse of the F-word hurts movies.
• [2] R.I.P.
• Title Analysis:  Hmmmm, it is pretty clear that it is a real car.  The phantom seems to be the driver.