Thunderbirds Lady penelope’s car or the rolls version the bat monster truck! This is the best bond car of them all! But all of them are in England…sigh. The Coyote now, it looks great! It’s for sale as well… if you live in LA and want to buy it, post here! OK, now I am done. Feel free to offer up other ideas for the roster! |
Well here you go, the last of my star car posts for a while, so after this, back to batmobiles. KITT 2000, the original concept car is seriously cool inside! below, a montage of the shots that got me interested in getting the group together. Batmobiles, Movie Cars, and George Barris oh my! Batgirl’s cycle I think it’s pretty cool, she can park with us! the bat tank is always welcome Judge Dredd? really cool, it’s welcome as long as it doesn’t run over my car. streethawk. it’s in Australia, but any repros out there? Well, we can park this on the end….. Hey hey there’s a mold out there….. Expensive, way too expensive….. anyone want to screw up their Cord? Doc Savage fans out there? Wants 75 grand for it, any buyers? any batmobile is welcome…. My brother’s black beauty at a car show a while ago, he has two donor cars…. this is welcome too….. If I could find this (barris said it was crushed) that would be SWEET!!! Super Pursuit mode….. we saw this all ready, but it looks so great! This is out of Los Angeles, now in San Fran…. Oh yeah, this was CRAZY cool! Nemomobile!! |
19
Jun
New Star Car Record! 12
Actually, we had 14, but two of the new Bullit Mustangs had to leave before the photo shoot! Lou, our “Starsky and Hutch” Torino owner, is mainly responsible for the success of this event, because he offered his house and a great BBQ meal to lure the star cars out of their garages. We started the day with a car show that benefited the Girls Basketball team, and it was worth it (even worth the bad sunburn I got and am still recovering from) because not only did we have a great turn out of Star Cars, but we found four more at the show with a few leads to new members!
Cars in attendance were: Starsky and Hutch Torino, Rod Riguez Custom, Back to the Future Delorean, Magnum P.I. Ferrari, Batmobile, not one, not two, but THREE Herbies, the ever popular Star Wars car, and the premier of Charger Steve’s new Smokey and the Bandit Trans am! Then a beautiful Elenor from Gone in 60 seconds pulls in, and I invited him to park with us and Chuck pulled right in with us! What a beautiful car! You could eat off of his engine, that was one clean machine! Once I got finished making sure all the Star Car members who said they were coming were in place (Glad you made it Jerry!) I started looking around, and found a nice Bullit replica, Jesus is putting together a nice car! Then Dave pulled in with his car and parked with the team, his car has been on the cover of a magazine and he had just come from a Steve McQueen tribute show. Then I noticed Charlie’s nice green fastback, but he was quick to point out several non “bullit” details on his car: different wheels, chrome was not removed etc. but as I had been hunting to add a Bullit mustang for a while, to have three of them show up at one show was too much! Also Jesus and Dave had to leave right after the show, so Charlie graciously pulled his car in for our group photo to represent the new addition! Even though we have 4 General Lee cars in the group, none of them could make it (Bob tried!) so that was the only car missing from our original first meet (that’s the photo up top from the TV show shot at the magic castle.)
A great photo, great friends and stories, not too hot of a car show, and lots of new members and leads on new star cars, it couldn’t have been better!
Cars now in our sights, Dave said he knew of another Smokey and the bandit, Jason found a Dragula and the Joe Dirt car and we are tracking those down, and Mark (Adam-12) is working on a Squad 51 Emergency! truck!
We still have another 5 cars in the wings, that we will have to add to our next big get together, the black Beauty from the Green hornet, the Blues Brother’s police car (Blake was working at Universal…) The General Lee, tango and cash truck, Seans Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo van (next time, Joe!) , Jason’s KITT from Knight Rider, Mad Max (we missed you Paul!) Gary’s Highway Patrol, Martin’s Christine, Duke’s Mustang… that’s my new goal, to get all of those guys for an even bigger toy collection!
More photos here!
http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc226/theuiga/6-15-08%20Star%20Car%20Summer%20Meet/
May 1st part of the Star Car Association got together to attend the “Hooray for Hollywood” event put together by Ability First, a service provider for handicapped adults. SCA members who were there were: Herbie with Jason at the wheel of the Douglas Racing Team this time, Brian with his screen used Horace the Hate Bug, Oscar and his real 308 Magnum P.I. Ferrari, and Joe with his Scooby doo Mystery van. We also “found” our latest members, Jake and Elwood, and their Blues mobile!
On the same night my son Christopher was producing his final night of his Eagle Project so no batmobile this time, but it all worked out as Lee Meriweather couldn’t show up as she was out of town. check out the photos of the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/15131437@N04/sets/72157604888575332/with/2466448109
Well just a Back to the Future car and a Batmobile wasn’t enough. I wanted MORE star cars!
The first 4 car gathering happened next. Thanks to my magician friend Brian Ochab, the first official event for the Star Car Association or SCA was put together at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood. The magic castle is an invitation only club for magicians and if you can find someone to invite you, it’s an amazing place, the food is great, and the magic is everywhere!
Through various connections we added two more cars for a television piece on star cars and their owners, for LVTV and it aired nationally. New to the group was Anthony’s “Striped Tomato” Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch, and Dave Stizenger’s General Lee Charger.
After we all arrived we swapped stories on why and how we put our various star cars together, while getting interviewed for the television show and taking lots of photos. We had a great time doing donuts in the parking lot, shooting off my afterburner and doing burnouts. Really we were 4 big kids playing with our toy cars in an empty parking lot! That “price of their toys” bumper sticker came to mind as we all had big dumb grins on our faces, and climbed into each others cars.
After all the shooting was done, we decided to go get something to eat together, so out drives the Starsky Torino, the General Lee, the Back to the Future Delorian and the batmobile in a row, driving down Hollywood blvd! We turned a few heads, some other observers thought it was for some kind of promotion.
At that time a ”first” happened for me. Now when you drive a batmobile replica down the street, you get used to a few things pretty quickly. People honk and scream out their windows, sing the bat theme to me “da da da da da da batman!” ask where is Alfred or Robin. They will slam on their brakes, ask questions while not watching the road, and take photos with cell phones. That’s when you are NOT in Hollywood. So the 4 of us were weaving through rush hour traffic to find a place to eat, and we all had to make a left turn. It was a situation where even though lights would change, there wasn’t a place to go on the other side of the intersection. So Starsky and the general lee turn, and even though the light was changing, I stuck to the Delorian’s bumper so we could stay together. Then it happened! Some guy who couldn’t have cared less I was driving the Batmobile honked at me for GETTING IN HIS WAY as I finished turning! LOL! Since then I have been honked at for being in someones way only one other time…. guess where? Same area, turning into Hollywood and Highland, where they do the Oscars for another interview with the Batmobile for TV guide Channel. (Look for it to air when the 2008 batman the dark knight movie comes out this summer.) It was a great day for me, as my idea of a Star Car Association finally was happening! The photo on the top was taken that day, and for some reason wordpress doesn’t want to let me add a photo today!
The SCA… AKA the Star Car Association is gearing up for our summer season of charity events and special appearances, and I get asked many times, how did I come up with the idea for the group?
Well when I was tinkering away on my bat-car for years, I never thought about it. I just wanted to drive the “coolest car in the world” on the streets, and in the early 90’s there weren’t any street legal 66 tv style batmobiles being sold at the auction houses, so I had to make my own.
After it was all finished, I went to a few car shows, and discovered that my car didn’t really fit.
It wasn’t a hot rod, not a custom, not a ford, not really any category at any car show. I never wanted trophys (still don’t) but I DID want a group to hang with at the shows that shared my interests (kinda the point!). I had kept tabs over the years on the few <strong>Batmobile replica</strong> owners but they are spread out across the country, and getting together was unlikely for many reasons.
So then I went to plan “B”… look for other Famous Movie and TV cars. Also a very small group of owners and spread all over, but I figured that would increase my chances. I searched the internet, posted on KITT Knight Rider build boards, Herbie boards, sent emails to any listing that might be in California, and after much work, I had gotten no where.
Then at Cruisin for a Cure car show, I parked my bat, answered the 6 questions for a few hours (Every star car has about 4-6 questions practically every person asks over and over, that’s a whole topic for another blog) and decided to walk around and see if I could spy another TV-movie star car. I saw a General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard drive by, gave them my card, but didn’t get their info, and never heard from them again. Then I saw a “exterior” KITT (That means no dash or cool steering wheel, just the nose with the light and blacked out tail lights) left my info on the windshield, but he never got back to me either. Checked back several times to see if I could catch the owner next to his car but never saw him. Then it happened! I was walking down a row of Deloreans and met Dan, proud owner of a Back to the Future Delorean conversion, with flux capacitors and time machine extras!
I told him he should ditch the Delorean owners and come park next to my Bat! Well, we never parked next to each other that day, but that was the start of the SCA and StarCarCentral.com We were just two guys with similar passions that made us do seemingly strange things to the outside world, but we “got” each other on the spot!
I now had TWO cars in the SCA, with a few leads, my vision of a Star Car Association was one big step closer to a reality! After all, I had doubled the membership!
26
Feb
NATE AT THE OSCARS!
Nate on the Red Carpet!Nate on the Red Carpet!
Well lots of Cars, lots of Stars, but no STAR CARS, still it’s the OSCARS and I figured it was worth a post!
I worked with the crew from the United Kingdom for SKY1 coverage of the event, great group of folks!
It was great seeing a lot of my old pals in the freelance TV world again, after spending 25 years in Television production on over 100 shows and events I was bumping into old friends and distant memories of shows I have worked on all day! I was suprised to find that I remembered my way around so well, since the last show I did there was season one of American Idol! The red carpet was damp, and there was one cool vehicle there, the bomb squad van!
Sure Clooney was there, and all the rest, but this year the only nominated movie I have seen was “Ratatouie” on DVD! Security was tight but well done. Walking the red carpet was fun, posing with Oscar, and good friends as well as “gettin paiyed” made for a fun time!
HOW WILL IT END? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ROCKET GETS STUCK ON THE ROOF, AND THE INDIAN TAILPIPE?
Well, I actually got contacted to write the story for a magazine, but on the condition that I don’t post it or sell it anywhere else, so SORRY! Stay tuned, if it doesn’t pan out I will just post the rest here. Who’d a thunk it? The 1966 Batmobile will return!
Kinda weird!
HOUSTON TRACK DAY
Well, like every day of this race, including a few after, I didn’t sleep well, and woke up early. My mind racing, calculating all the different ways I could get the car home, if I couldn’t find the shut off problem, deciding what to do while watching the weather channel and seeing a storm front headed to Oklahoma City, my eyes popped open and I was up. So while Christopher slept, I left him a note and went down to the front desk. I sat through the meeting for the guys headed to the race track (you had to be race certified, roll bars, helmet and insurance to take the cars on the track) watched those that were racing go off to the track.
The front desk lady said there was a firestone place right next door that worked on her car all of the time, and it was walking distance. I called and told them of my problems (rubbing tires in the back from cutting my springs and not installing air shocks), sudden shut off of the engine, etc.) and they said they could fix me up. So down to the garage I went, took off the cover, drove it to the place less than a block away, and cleaned out the car in the humid heat.
THIS WAS AFTER THE RACE, BUT JUST FOR AN IDEA OF THE TRASH THAT WAS IN THE CAR! I HAD DONE SOME WIREING SO THAT’S WHY THE UNDERDASH BOARD IS PARTLY OFF… ADD ONS FOR THE TRIP, NEW CD PLAYER, GPS, COLOR DUAL REARVIEW CAMERAS AND NEW SCREEN, BLUETOOTH SO PHONE CALLS COME THROUGH THE SPEAKERS, OR THE BATPHONE DIRECTLY, THAT’S PRETTY COOL!
(AS LONG AS I DON’T DISCONNECT THE POWER!)
I was dripping sweat every time we got ready to leave, just organizing stuff behind the seats and getting set for the day due to the heat and humidity! So I leave the car with a list of safety items to check. It was running fine, but after that mysterious shut off, I wanted a mechanic to go over it, and check my brakes as they were acting weird, not that I used them much!
Once the car was squared away, I took a walk over to a Walgreen’s and got a LOT of drinks to rehydrate us. 2 kinds of Gatorade, Orange juice, Diet coke, and a few extras, batteries for the camera, Blistex and an ice bucket that was a great idea that helped us keep cool water in the car longer. Before I bought it, we were drinking hot or warm water all day! No time to stop for a cool drink on this rally!
The rest of the day in Huston was great. We drank and drank and drank, to get our kidneys working again. We had missed breakfast so we had the same great burger for an early lunch. We went to the pool and Jacuzzi, worked out in the gym, and went to the mall. Got Chris a haircut, and then had dinner at Chili’s.
A much needed day of rest was great, and Chris and I had a great time, expecting to pick up our car at 7 pm with everything fixed up. What all had to be fixed? Well, the electronic ignition control had over heated, and had never been replaced since I bought the car as a donor, so that was what shut us down the day before. Then I had asked them to flush the brake system, they did and found that two of the brake lines also from 1979 had partially collapsed, and so two of the brakes were not always working. I knew that something was wrong based on how it braked. They also replaced the rear cylinders that were leaking, also 79 original parts that I had never replaced. Then the rear tires were getting cut every time I hit a bump so they installed air shocks in the back, and raised it up, and solved that. Also a problem I was aware of and a solution I had figured I would do, but I put it off when I was just driving to closeby car shows, but with 2500 miles in front of me I figured I should do it now as I had no spare tire! A blowout would be a big time loss and could damage the car, so it was cheaper to put in the rear air shocks. Dig em!
So Chris and I wander over to pick up the car at closing time, and the car is up on the rack. More problems? They had done all the work, but when taking it for a test drive, they couldn’t get it in reverse!
Back on the rack we discovered that the shift cable that a mechanic pal had installed melted due to sitting on the manifold while I tore across a third of the USA. It also needed two front tires as a steering rod had been bent, and worn away the insides of both front tires over the last 1000 high speed miles. They looked brand new from the outside, but the car is so low that unless it was up on a rack, you would never know! So change of plans #1253! We left the car, I told them to replace the front tires (asked for Futuras, but now I am half Firestone, the original tires the #1 wore and 1/2 Futuras!) and fix the bent rod, and find me a shift cable. Now we were in trouble, as the fireballers were taking off at 7 am the next morning, and all of our pre-paid hotels and meals would be going off in the distance with them! We decided to go back to the pool and cool off, and see what happened the next day. Fell asleep watching the weather channel, and a big storm front moving towards Dallas and Oklahoma City! (Sorry, no photos from this day, didn’t think to get a shot of the great guys who worked on my car! I sent them a toy batmobile and n8mobile shirt when I got home!)
DAY THREE BATON ROUGE TO HOUSTON
We are at the Batmobile early and the starting line is down by the bay, so we follow a line of fireballers to the starting line and line up. We take lots of photos and for the first time I feel like I may have a problem free day, as the weather is cooler than the day before.
THIS IS THE OLD STATE CAPITAL BUILDING IN THE BACKGROUND! IT WOULD DO FOR WAYNE MANOR!
GT IS STILL TRAILING TEAM GOTHAM!
GETTING STILL COVERAGE OF THE VIDEO COVERAGE!
After about an hour of milling about, we get our envelopes, and the race begins! One of the clues is “turn yourself around” so we ended up back at the starting line looking for a statue,
NOPE, WRONG ONE!
but we then get back into the Batmobile and on the freeway, to find the RIGHT clue, but it’s a ruse, then we find the right one and get our next envelope. We head off not listening to directions and get turned around in Baton Rouge, and are playing catch up the rest of the day! All my fault,as I got caught up in the other teams tearing away! Once back on track, we head for a local landmark, and after asking for directions from a few folks we find our way there, get our photo, pose for a few and head back.
Christopher puts in our next destination and chooses “shortest way” vs. “fastest” way, and we are driving the batmobile through rolling back hill roads, get stopped by a bridge with a boat going by, then a train! We are running out of gas at this point, so I see a one pump station and figure it might be our last chance for gas before getting to the freeway, so we pull in.
I ask for mid level gas, and hand her my card. I go to pump and nothing. I walk in and she says, the mid level doesn’t work. “Fine” I say, “give me the Premium.” I go out and no gas. Chris runs in and is told, that only works on the other side. While this was happening, someone pulled in on the other side. “FINE!” I go for the low grade, add some octane booster and buy a couple of drinks.
Meanwhile a nice guy in a truck has been asking me questions, and I ask him to lead us to the freeway and if he had heard of the restaurant we were supposed to be at for lunch. He said there were signs on the freeway, can’t miss it. So back on the road, only to see as we come around the corner that there is a twenty pump truck stop! grrr.
On to the freeway, find the lunch stop, get some water and sandwiches and pull out after the ford GT! Amazingly we were not in last place after all of that! Other teams had to get gas about half as many times, and could go faster and not worry about rain but we still beat almost half of the field!
So off we go with the new clue!
We were so hot we just wanted to get to the hotel, and I started doing math in my head that if the dinner was near Houston, we were all ready out of competition as it was too far away. But it wasn’t in Houston. Then we hit a bridge where a truck had jack knifed and was blocking the one big bridge, creating a standstill of traffic! The car starts heating up because it’s HOT everywhere, and I pull out of traffic into a small gas station. After refueling and getting a blue icee drink, a local said we could go around the bridge and go down to the next one! So off we go, recalculating and then of course, it starts to rain! I am driving through a neighborhood of homes, with no over hangs, nothing, and it started pouring. I then see a half finished house with no doors on the garage, and I pull in! Chris and I videotape a little, take some photos and wait out the rain.
Had we waited in line at the bridge, we would have been drenched, had the truck not jack-knifed, we would have been caught in slow traffic on the freeway, so it was actually a good thing!
Well, of course we are too far behind now, I decide! The rain stops and we head out again, over the next bridge and start making great time towards Huston. Well in the instructions for the game, it suggests that we have someone with internet access or bring a laptop computer with wifi, but our brains were so fried and we were both so sure we couldn’t make Houston, we just looked for signs that reference the next clue and drove as fast as the car would go. Right through Beaumont, home of the next stop and Dinner, in time to check in! Of course no signs, just listed on Google! So as the other fireballers were waiting for us in Beaumont, we got to about 15 miles outside of Houston, doing 80 MPH, just trying to get to the hotel and air conditioning, and the car SHUTS OFF! I coast as best I can over 6 lanes of highway with armstrong steering and brakes, to a place where there is a bit of a shoulder to park, and start going through what went wrong. I can’t find anything wrong with the car, so I call AAA. A nice lady stops with her kids and tells me that this was the WORST area to stop in, and right behind those front buildings is a very bad area! Great. Next some nice Cops stop,
and then the fireballers start showing up after I called in saying where we were. That’s when I found out they were waiting for us in Beaumont! So J gets some bags of fertilizer to help get the bat on the flatbed, the driver has about three teeth and was grinding my knife blade into his truck before we stopped him!
Get everything up on the truck and take a death defying ride into the Hotel, where we unload it behind the hotel next to Movie Mike’s RV.
All of “Team Sunburn” in the fireball Lincoln jump in and start checking everything.
THATS CHRISTOPHER PULLING THE BATMOBILE OFF THE TRUCK!
HE DOES HAVE HIS PERMIT, HOWS THAT FOR A FIRST CAR TO DRIVE!
Fuel, check, spark check, everything works! So we start it up and it works fine! We move it over to the hotel for the night, wondering what that was all about. Chris and I find the spa again, and a cool pool over looking downtown Houston, we had missed dinner at Beaumont so we had the best hamburgers ever in the bar of the hotel. I spend the night trying to figure out if I should put the bat on the rack and try to figure out what that shut off was all about, or just rest the next day while the teams who had roll bars and racing school experience tear around the track. Air conditioning, cool pools on the top of the hotel over looking Houston, and a cold bottle of water never felt so good! We were over a thousand miles closer to home, and happy to be getting out of the humidity! Believe it or not, the crazy towtruck ride was GOOD LUCK, for a couple of reasons, but that’s later. If I had just waited for the car to cool down, it would have started, but as AAA was my sponsor and I have a high end AAA membership, it was a very good thing I had it towed a few miles, even though it started up fine after a rest! But that’s all later…. Stay tuned, batfans!
