Speed To Burn: Box 13

“Speed To Burn” is an episode of Box 13, the old-time radio show. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

Listen to Box 13 free, live around the clock: every episode, in the order it first aired. No sign-up.

What happens

Dan Holiday receives an unsigned letter inviting him to witness a 1938 car traveling at 100 miles per hour on a highway. The mysterious challenge leads him to Nancy Peters, who asks him to infiltrate a stolen car syndicate operating out of a garage to help rescue her brother Tom from the criminal organization. Holiday takes a job at the Acme Filling Station and works his way into the inner workings of an elaborate car-theft ring that dismantles and disguises stolen vehicles for shipment across the country.

A city with a highway route 36, an Acme Filling Station on Braddock Road, and the Southern Auto Works garage at 714 South Elm Street, a movie theater lobby, and the streets of the city.

Characters: Dan Holiday, Nancy Peters, Tom Peters, Swanson, Mike, Marty, Susie

Listen for: The description of the elaborate stolen car operation including the special paint that washes off with caustic soda, the collection of license plates from different states, the removal of manufacturer's numbers from engines, and the specially modified getaway car with a British tank engine and armor plating.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.