Tim Worstall

Stealing it Piece by Piece

Hhhm.

A boat engineer who tried to steal a yacht from his employers piece-by-piece escaped jail yesterday.

James
Light, 35, had hoped to build his own boat by using the £55,000 worth
of parts he had smuggled out from boat manufacturer Sunseeker in Poole,
Dorset.

Isn’t there a blues song about this? "Working on the Cadillac Line" maybe by Albert King? Maybe it’s not that one but there’s definitely something rolling around the back of my head. One of the Kings (Freddie maybe?) where the guy working on a production line steals a car piece by piece over the years.

Anyone remember?

In

5 responses

  1. DocBud Avatar
    DocBud

    You’re confusing two songs. Albert King did sing about going to Detroit to work on the Cadillac Assembly Line in the song of that name, but it was Johnny Cash “One piece at a time” who sung about half-inching (12.5 millimetring)a Cadillac one piece at a time. The joke being that over the time it took, a number of models came and went so it wouldn’t fit together.
    Tim adds: Aha! Thank You!

    Reply
  2. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    The great Johhny Cash – ‘One Piece at a Time’:
    “Now, up to now my plan went all right
    ‘Til we tried to put it all together one night
    And that’s when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.
    The transmission was a ’53
    And the motor turned out to be a ’73
    And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone.
    So we drilled it out so that it would fit
    And with a little bit of help with an A-daptor kit
    We had that engine runnin’ just like a song
    Now the headlight’ was another sight
    We had two on the left and one on the right
    But when we pulled out the switch all three of ’em come on.”

    Reply
  3. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    As to the original story…
    He must have had one hell of a lunchbox if he was planning on taking out a 53 foot hull moulding in order to complete the job!

    Reply
  4. Mark Holland Avatar
    Mark Holland

    Now the headlight’ was another sight
    We had two on the left and one on the right
    But when we pulled out the switch all three of ’em come on
    What you driving there cowboy? Well it’s a ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53…

    Reply
  5. The Remittance Man Avatar
    The Remittance Man

    Dunno about Mr Cash’s song, but I do remember Radar O’Reilly in MASH mailing a jeep home to himself peice by peice using the US Military postal service.

    Reply

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