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Plymouth
Hell hath no Fury,
like a Plymouth scorned
By Mike (Roadie)
Marino
Published May 2004
Lights, camera's, action!
Quiet on the set! The casting couch and the Golden
Age of Film. It was the heady Hollywood heydays.
Glitz and glamour were personified by Gable and
Garbo, and it was the same era of over consumption
and arrogance that inspired the Gloria Swanson/William
Holden film treatment of the great washed up stars
of the Hollywood Hills..."Sunset Boulevard".
It was Hollywierd at it's gluttonous best. Premiers,
autograph's, paparazzi by the busloads...and the
cars, oh man, those cars. These were the V-8 and
V-12 chariots of the gods that had descended from
the heavens to walk among us mere mortals. Cadillac.
Stutz. Duesenberg.
Ragtops purring, humming,
wind in the hair, racing without a care down the
Malibu coast, full moon on the water, waves silver
tipped, racing shoreward to engage in oceanic
intercourse with California's golden beaches.
Gay laughter and witty repartee punctuated the
night with scarves flying and whipping in the
West Coast breeze...flags of the Republic of Celebrity.
Gasoline was being consumed in gargantuan quantities
as film land flaunted itself to the delight of
a hungry public. In time the Golden Age would
pass, the patina would fade from the movies and
the stars themselves, and in the coming of age,
piston pubescent era of the 1950's - 1970's roadhead,
the cars would become the main attraction.
Take two moonshining pretty
boys, add some backwoods mayhem with a slurred
southern drawl...a kissin' cousin-type sister
in painted on hot pants from the planet Salivation,
and you have the makin's of a recipe for success
with "The Dukes of Hazzard."
John Schneider and Tom Wopat
perfected the roles of the deep fried southern
troublemakers who gave heaping plateful's of grief
to Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane. Car
chases, car crashes, car near misses. It was a
piston pumping inbreed festival of stars and bars,
as well as cars. The women were awed by the sinewy
brothers of the backwoods. One blonde, (only his
hairdresser knew for sure), and the other the
obligatory brunette, dark, swarthy and deep. In
other words, The Anti-Blonde!
Now we need something else.
Something the guys can relate to. Soon the seas
of sexuality parted with divine inspiration and
from the fog emerged everyone's backwoods dream...Daisy
Duke. Heaven itself in hot pants, and the sexual
thunder that emerged from her rocked our world,
as we waited patiently in line to get a direct
hit by her lightning. If other sex symbols of
the day were mere thunderstorms, then, Daisy Duke
qualified as a full-fledged hurricane!
Although women dreamed of
going to the moon with Luke or Bo, and the guys
wanted to search for a needle in Daisy Dukes haystack,
the real star of the show was an automotive phallic
symbol named "The General Lee". Named
after the spirited leader of the Confederate Army,
the car symbolized the muscle of an era gone by,
and when The Dukes debuted in 1979 it was already
considered late Sixties and early Seventies nostalgia.
The venerable V-8 Dodge
Charger was chosen for a reason. Power. Power...and
more power. Mucho, macho, machismo muscle. The
Charger won 22 of 54 major NASCAR races in 1969,
so why not take the king of the track and make
it the king of the backwoods. Give it a distinctive
blaze orange paint job, add a Confederate flag
on the roof, have the horn blast out the opening
notes of "Dixie" and you have one deep
south southern-fried mo-sheen.
The Charger itself was a
thinly disguised street racing screamer that rocked
and roared as the engine came to life with the
power of the beast from 20,000 fathoms. Raw power
and energy unleashed, and the timing couldn't
have been better. The country was full of hollow-eyed
asphalt junkies, and a gallon of gas fix was just
pennies on the dollar and it all got jammed into
the gasoline vein of the Charger to burn up fast
at 10 mpg.
The "Dukes" production
company had around 17 "Gen'l Lee's"
and some models were '68's, some were '70s, but
there is no doubt about it, the Charger was king
of the streets. Soon there would be change on
the Charger horizon and the muscle era itself
would surrender at the environmental equivalent
of Appomattox, but, thanks to The Dukes of Hazzard,
"The General Lee" marches on.
The Sixties were Pow! Bang!
Zoom! when it came to high camp and pop culture.
Water pipes and tailpipes were coming to a high
point, and nowhere were the pipes higher than
on the turbine powered Caped Crusaders mighty
crime fightin' vehicle, The Batmobile! Only Batman
and the Boy Wonder could pull off a leather and
leotard 1920's Berlin cabaret look and actually
make it look manly. The crime-fighting duo took
on a cast of characters straight out of a nightmare.
The Joker. The Riddler. Mr. Freeze. Devious devices
designed to destroy were thwarted by the two tightfisted
men in tights. On the other hand, dress Julie
Newmar up in ass-hugging Catwoman leather pants,
high black boots and a whip, and you have a dream
come true.. Colorful crime fighters, indeed, but
the real star was not Bruce Wayne, not Alfred,
and no, not Dick Grayson. It was no less than
a turbo charged jet-black one vehicle Panzer division
with batwings known simply as The Batmobile.
The car had class. It was
starship power with the sleek svelte look of that
classy chassis. pulsating and rippling, black
Sabbath metal and fiberglass, whirring turbines
and enough gadgets and gizmo's to chock James
Bond on a Martini olive of overkill. "Holy
Headers Batman, this beast kicks asphalt!"
Bruce Wayne nods, "Yes, it does Boy Wonder.
May I call you Boy Wonder? This magnificent machine
is an asphalt eating crime fighter, way beyond
its time. Let Superman have his yellow sun induced
gravity fighting super powers, me, I've got horsepower
to the max, Baby."
The roots of the legendary
Batmobile are lodged in the year of our Ford,
1955. The designers at Ford-Mercury were developing
a concept car, as all auto manufacturers were
doing that year. The styling alone was alien inspired
and you'd swear Michael Rennie was ready to make
the earth stand still with his mighty robot Gort.
The car was called the "Futura" and
designed by the Versacci of auto design of the
day, Ghia of Italy. Fast forward to the Sixties.
Hollywood. Batman is on
the drawing board and ready to leap to life from
the pages of a comic book to the small screen.
The producers scratched their heads. "We
need a car. Not just any car either. We need,
a car with chutzpah, and chutzpah to spare, and
even more chutzpah after that." The design
challenge was finally dropped like an excited
salmon in the lap of the King of the Kustomizers,
George Barris, and he had three weeks to pull
it off. Pull it off he did, and created a pop
culture icon that still revs and races through
the dark, wet Tim Burton streets of celluloid
Gotham City.
George actually made three
of them and they went on tour like a comic book
USO troupe and even participated in staged racing
events at drag strips across the country, and
while actors like Val Kilmer, Adam West and Michael
Keaton have had their shot at portraying the mighty
man in black, there will always be only one George
Barris. Three Batmobiles, yes, but only one George
Barris, the caped customizer of the POW! BANG!
crime fighting generation of the heavy on the
pop-goes-the-culture 1960's.
The forces of good versus evil has played itself
out on the human stage for daily performances
since the day the Garden of Eden lost it's virginity
and it's innocence, and the 1960's were the ultimate
personification of social upheaval and the perception
that the world was filled with violence without
meaning. No sense to the nonsense, and a duality
that led to schizophrenia, and raised the question,
"just who are the bad guys anyway"?
This problematic scenario
was played out on the big screen in the early
1970's in the Dennis Weaver, cult masterpiece,
"Duel", where a traveling salesman with
humongous oversized aviator sunglasses tries to
outrun the 18-wheel version of the Headless Horseman.
It's a 90-minute monologue with accompanying chase
scene that pits a hungry Peterbilt against, of
all things, a slant 6, orange-red, four-door sedan
Plymouth Valiant.
Faceless, motiveless, the
pit bull of a big rig chases our hapless hero
down the asphalt and up the asphalt. Climbing
uphill, the valiant Valiant is loosing power.
The radiator, now red-hot, begins to overheat,
the needle racing into the dreaded red zone Dennis
Weaver sweating drops as big as Buicks, panic
etched into his face looks in the rearview. The
truck is noticeably absent, he enjoys an inward
chuckle as a sense of momentary relief overcomes
him, even in the sweltering heat of the California
day. A deep sigh and a slight twinge of joy. It's
over! It's over! Then dread and terror returns
as the truck reappears and begins to round the
bend, gain speed and close the gap. The knife
plunges deep into his spirit, slices clean through
his fragile psyche and reaches raw bone, as he
falls screaming silently further and further into
the depths of his own personal asphaltian hell,
his fears, dancing a macabre dance of death in
the shimmering mirage in the road ahead, as he
finally realizes. Objects in the rearview mirror
really are closer than they appear. David has
finally met Goliath, and now Goliath must fall.
The Plymouth Valiant is
the kissing cousin to the Dodge Dart, and why
Spielberg chose a 1968 Plymouth to be the automotive
anti-hero to the Peterbilt diesel anti-Christ
in this superb thriller is anybody's guess. The
car certainly lived up to it's Valiant name in
this conflict flick of a time that was stretched
tighter than a polyester leisure suit that was
two sizes too small. The Sixties were a confusing
time, and the Seventies sought to untangle the
tie-dyed mess that was created, and in the process
gave us a wonderful film and cheap sunglasses
along with a most valiant Plymouth that could
hold it's own against diesel evil incarnate.
San Francisco. Frisco to
the old-timers. Ess Eff to the uninitiated. The
streets of the city have been haunted by writers,
poets, dharma bums, beatniks, hippies, sinners
and saints. They've all found solace and comfort
in her shroud of fog. The Golden Gate Bridge,
the Catherine Hepburn of bridges, stretches from
Marin to the tip of the peninsula, while the heavy
metalesque Bay Bridge, spanned the gap from Oakland
to The Embarcadero. Magnifico structures that
shuttle commuters to and fro, from frenzy to fury
at times, to the slow and go madness of the rush
hour at others, that makes travel halt and congeal
like a slow moving line of caramel by the sea,
until it heats up, thins out and races along again
at 60 plus miles per hour. The Golden Gate and
the Bay Bridge, standing as sentinels over the
bay, but they're not the only bridges in San Francisco.
Not by a long shot. Let's face it, San Francisco
just wouldn't be San Francisco, without it's Nash
Bridges!
Don Johnson introduced us
to the art deco architecture of Miami, as well
as the audacious flair of men wearing pastels
with pride, and still being macho. Those fashion
statements conjugated with scripts and storylines
of modern day piracy, and created a TV child that
regaled us with bedtime tales of Columbian drug
cartels plying their trade in the salty seas of
the Caribbean on televisions cult classic, "Miami
Vice". Crockett and Tubbs, made "Vice"
an instant cop-pop culture hit, but soon Sonny
Crockett tired of wearing pink, and decided to
escape the beach culture of Miami, and seek Bohemian
peace in the Victorian quietude of the San Francisco
Hills. It was against this most Rice-A-Roni of
backdrops that became Nash Bridges and decided
to trade his cigarette boat in for one of the
most recognized Motor City muscle monster mo-sheens
to ever grace and race up and down Lombard Street.
A drop dead lemon drop, lemon twist yellow 1971
Hemi 'Cuda.
Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.
Johnson, a Crockett without a Tubbs, and Marin,
a Chong-less Cheech, were flawless as buddy-pal-partner
cops, Nash Bridges and Joe Dominguez. Crime fightin'
television with not only a sense of humor, but
more importantly, a sense of flair and high fashion.
That sense of fashion was most prevalent on the
street as the crime fightin' Nash and Joe banged
around the Baghdad by the Bay in the 'Cuda. Bare
in mind, Amigo, this is not just any old Cuda.
This one had more class than Princess Grace. Hell,
this one had panache, and not just any old panache
either. This one had Nash Panache.
In 1964, Plymouth came out
with it's first of the line Barracuda's. Ford
was getting ready to unleash the Mustang from
the muscle corral, and Plymouth's horsepower hind-end
was up against the asphalt wall. They needed something
to out distance the Ford monster before it hit
the pavement, and they needed it fast. The engineers
took their trusty Plymouth Valiant, touched up
the front-end and gave it a rear window that wrapped
around. Then they gave it a shot of medicated
muscle, and from the automotive womb emerged,
kickin' and screamin', the infamous Plymouth Barracuda.
The name alone conjured up images of a man eating
fish ready to draw first blood and tear into a
victims tissue and render them, well, you know...dead.
The Barracuda was ready to strike and hit the
sales floor and the asphalt two months ahead of
the dreaded Mustang, but even with it's head start,
the Barracuda was not the sales beast Plymouth
thought they had created, and the Mustang was
officially crowned king of the wild horsepower
realm.
The 1970's brought a muscle
makeover to the fallen Plymouth hero, and the
Barracuda was given a hemi transplant and enough
power to be damn near psychotic on the street.
Woodward Avenue in Detroit was the testing ground
of this new wild child, and the re-born 1964 east,
become known affectionately as the 'Cuda. High
performance with a demonic grin and a rock and
roll attitude.
In the Nash Bridges storyline,
the car was given to Nash when his brother, Bobby,
went to Vietnam. He never came home and ended
up instead as MIA. As a result, Nash and Joe had
one of the hottest rides on the tube. The color
chosen for the show was "lemon twist yellow",
which was actually one of the original 18 colors
available for the Cuda. Incidentally, most of
the 'Cuda's seen on the show were in reality 1970's
that were made up to look like '71s, if your a
purist that will have great and deep, if not a
downright religious meaning for you. The rest
of us, however, just close our eyes and pretend
we're at the wheel of pop cultures most famous
Cuda and racing down the hills towards Fisherman's
Wharf and wearing a really cool jacket fresh out
of Nash Bridges closet. Only in San Francisco
can high fashion and hemi horsepower wear flowers
in its hair.
Car boosting was elevated
to museum quality in the film, "Gone in 60
Seconds". Nick Cage and Angelina Jolie, along
with a memorable cast, hot-wired their way through
the streets of Long Beach in southern California.
Memphis Raines on a Holy Grail rampage of high
speed grand theft auto action, in an effort to
save his brother from the junkyard crusher, just
more proof, that blood is indeed thicker than
10-W-40. But wait. there's still one more car
to go. The one that even the great and holy Memphis
Raines fears. The almighty automobile known as
Eleanor.
Eleanor was a sexy, man
eating, asphalt eating Motor City dream machine
complete with phallic apparati and a sweet Jesus
fuel injection system to give her the automotive
equivalent of a high octane, high speed Detroit
orgasm. In the Nick Cage version of "Gone
in 60 Seconds", Eleanor was a Shelby Mustang
GT500, but in the 1974 original, she was a 1973
Ford Mustang Mach I.
Flashback! Flashback! In
the polyester year of 1974, there dwelt in the
kingdom of the junkyard, a King. The King was
surrounded by all manner of metal and junk, discards
and throwaways, formerly loved, but now forgotten
automobiles, piled high on a trash pile, unholy
ground, about to be blessed by the prophet/king.
The king's treasure chest grew full. Pieces of
metal, a car door here, a hood ornament there,
a side view smashed mirror over there amid the
piles of aluminum scrap fascinating him as they
glimmered as brightly as gold and silver in a
chaotic treasure house. Then it came to him in
a V-8 vision that only a junkyard junkie could
conjure from the spiritual depths, to put the
pieces of these old relics together and create
a tribute to what they were in their glory days,
the days when they just rolled off the assembly
line, loud and proud. Their style, beauty and
grace all but blinding, and what better venue
than the celluloid pedestal where this monument
could last a lifetime. It was at this moment of
realization that H. B. Haliki wrote, produced,
directed and starred in the original "Gone
in 60 Seconds", which was released to drive
in and indoor movie theaters across the country
in 1974.
The original film had our
protagonist on the prowl for just 46 cars and
not 50 as in the remake, however, there were more
chase scene mileage per hour than the Cage motion
picture vehicle, and most importantly, the elegant
Eleanor was a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach I and not
the equally exotic Shelby Mustang GT500 of the
remake. The flick was a hit with the asphalt crowd
and they roared and cheered as H. B and Company
revved and redlined their way across the cinematic
landscape and when the closing credits rolled
down the screen, the salivating road heads eagerly
anticipated the making of "Gone II"
as though they were waiting for the chrome-magnon
version of the Second Coming, and it wasn't too
awfully long in coming. H. B. decided in 1989
that enough time had passed and the public was
ready for Part II, but it was during filming and
the performing of his own stunts that the man
who gave life to "Gone"....was gone
himself, in less than 60 seconds.
Cage/Jolie rock n roll,
lock n load in "Gone: The Remake", and
no, yes, Angelina's red hot pillow soft lips and
gleam in the eye warm the heart and soul, but
it's that damned Eleanor that makes the heart
race faster and faster, jet propelling our erogenous
zone to the outer limits of comfort. Her redlining
engine on fire with petrol and passion. Her sleek,
svelte body an alluring aluminum vehicular vessel
of lust. Tail pipe searing hot to the touch, the
leather seats exciting the senses, and turning
asphalt into hot tar at a glance. Eleanor Rules!
Memphis Raines is no match
for the intoxicating Shelby Stang, and he knows
it, better than anybody, and in the end, after
a chase sequence that is not bad by any standard,
he presents a limping, scratched and badly beaten
up Eleanor to the obligatory bad guys who proclaim,
"I asked for 50 cars and not 49 and a half".
More chaos, more machismo, more punches, and eventually
Memphis reigns supreme, good guy wins and all
that stuff, and in the end not only gets to keys
to Eleanor, but gets to hotwire Angelina as well.
Now, just who the hell is Carroll Shelby, and
why are they naming cars after him?
Carroll Hall Shelby came
out roaring down the quarter mile track of life
in Texas in 1923, and after a stint in the Air
Corp, that need for speed led him the world of
asphaltia, and in 1952 had raced his first quarter
mile in a rod outfitted with a flathead Ford V-8.
By 1961, Shelby teams up with a British auto manufacturer
and after much Trans-Atlantic haggling, the culmination
was the creation of the Shelby Roadster 260 that
was brought to life in the Shelby facilities in
southern California. The name comes to Shelby
literally, in a dream, for his new dream machine,
The Cobra. The car is test driven, and in April
of 1962 makes it's first public appearance at
the Auto Show in New York with the Ford display,
and as a result, orders for the new monster defy
imagination. The Cobra had struck a nerve. Soon,
Shelby and Ford become synonymous, and by 1966
the first of the '67 Shelby Mustang GT350's and
GT500's are produced. By 1969 the thrill is going,
going, though not quite gone, and the Shelby project
ends. The leftover '69s are upgraded to '70 specs
and production finally ceases. The Ford-Shelby
Era is now a thing of the past, but thanks to
H. B. Haliki there will always be a Motor City
elegance known simply as the Marilyn Monroe of
automobiles, Eleanor!
It was a night of fire,
blood, and fear. The gym was alive, with death,
all around, surrounding it like water surrounds
a peninsula. The screams soon reaching to the
sky and to no avail, and soon the night fell quiet.
The journey through the tunnel of terror was not
over. It was just beginning.
Blood poured from the elevators
and filled the hallway of the Overlook Lodge.
Danny had the "shine", but daddy had
the axe. "Heeeere's Johnny!". Suddenly,
Cujo jumps at his throat and lays him to rest,
at peace, six feet under in the Pet Cemetary.
Stephen King, the King of
Horror, has given us killer dogs, killer writers,
killer storms and yes, actor Tim Curry as a killer
clown, but when Arnie Cunningham lays eyes on
a 1958 Plymouth Fury named, Christine, it truly
is a classic car to, well...die for. Christine
is more than a car, she is a primal love story
of geek meets gadget. The more time Arnie spends
with Christine, the more possessive "she"
becomes. Arnie polishes and restores her lovingly.
Her fins thrust out proudly, her engine finely
tuned, her body wet with wax and God help the
fool who tries to interfere and come between Arnie
and his gearbox soul mate. "Arnies got a
girlfriend, Arnie's got a girlfriend"! The
film was more than an automotive classic, Christine
was, and is still the Motor City bitch from asphalt
hell.
In addition to the film,
it is also a must read for any fan of classic
cars, and of course, fan of Stephen King's. There
are some discrepancies concerning the actual model
of Plymouth that Christine is supposed to be.
In the book she's referred to as a 1958 red and
white, four door Plymouth Fury, however, on the
back jacket cover, King is sitting on the hood
of a '57. Plymouth Fury's were only available
as a two-door hardtop from 1956 to 1958 and it
wasn't until 1959 that you could get a four-door
model. All that aside, it doesn't really matter,
Christine put V-8 fear into all of us and proved
once and for all....Hell Hath No Fury Like A Plymouth
Scorned!
This
Dharmabum Roadhead writer's work has been described as DELIGHTFULLY WIERD and
WICKEDLY WONDERFUL!! Mike (Roadie) Marino is a publisher of an on line
magazine called ROAD TRIPPIN' USA. It's an asphalt kickin' journey of Roadside
Nostalgia and American Pop/Car Culture for the Chrome-Magnon in all of us. The
style is lock n load and deals with the realm of where Pop Culture and Chrome
meet Asphalt and Art!!
Mike
also writes a monthly feature column under the banner THE ROADHEAD for the award
winning Offbeat Travel zine. His column deals with bizzare ashpalt and roadside
oddities and locales from mechanical museums to Cadillac Ranch. Mike is also
a freelance writer of travel and history pieces that have been published in
magazines and ezines in the US and Europe.
Most
current project includes toiling endlessly on his first book about Pop and Car
Culture in America of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Although born in the rustbelt
of industrial Detroit, he's also been the definitive son-of-a-beach and has
lived in a treehouse in Honolulu, the tie dyed spare change neighborhood of
Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, as well as the North Beach district..where
the Beat Goes On!!
Today
Mike (Roadie) Marino lives in Missouri near the banks of the Missouri
River with his word processor. In addition, to writing and backpacking, Mike
has a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, Jimmy Buffett albums and Corona Beer. If
you would like to use any of Mike's articles some of which are included here,
contact him at the email address below or at dharmabumroadie@yahoo.com He also
accepts contract work and what the hell, a good agent wouldn't hurt either.
So contact him for rates and information. Now...Have Fun Reading...Grab A Cold
Corona..And Kick Asphalt!!!
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