January 10, 2024 • 45 mins
You like fast cars, Slackers?
Perhaps a 1976 Ford Gran Torino? What about a 1977 Pontiac Firebird? Maybe even a 1969 Dodge Charger - or would you prefer something more practical, like a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire?
Whatever your preference, the cars (and trucks) of Hollywood in 1970s & 80s were all pretty badass.
Starsky & Hutch. The Dukes of Hazzard. Smokey & the Bandit. Even National Lampoon’s Vacation - all had what have become iconic vehicles.
Now, I am not much of an under the hood guy - definitely not my strong suit - but I know what I like and some of these vehicles almost seem like core memories. Although I can’t recall the exact date & time, the moment I saw the Manta Coyote from Hardcastle & McCormick, I was stoked. I even watched that mediocre show just to see that car!
What are some of your favorite cars from childhood? And did your family have any cool rides of their own? And do you have a dream car that you own or hope to in the future?
Perhaps a 1976 Ford Gran Torino? What about a 1977 Pontiac Firebird? Maybe even a 1969 Dodge Charger - or would you prefer something more practical, like a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire?
Whatever your preference, the cars (and trucks) of Hollywood in 1970s & 80s were all pretty badass.
Starsky & Hutch. The Dukes of Hazzard. Smokey & the Bandit. Even National Lampoon’s Vacation - all had what have become iconic vehicles.
Now, I am not much of an under the hood guy - definitely not my strong suit - but I know what I like and some of these vehicles almost seem like core memories. Although I can’t recall the exact date & time, the moment I saw the Manta Coyote from Hardcastle & McCormick, I was stoked. I even watched that mediocre show just to see that car!
What are some of your favorite cars from childhood? And did your family have any cool rides of their own? And do you have a dream car that you own or hope to in the future?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Welcome to be Stuck in the Middlepodcast, the podcast dedicated to the music,
movies, and culture of Generation Acts. What is Up, Slackers,
(00:33):
and welcome to another episode of theStuck in the Middle Podcast. I am
your host at Jason ek. Sothis week's episode all stems from the fact
that a legend, an icon,if you will, not of jen X
as a person since they themselves werea boomer, but I think is ingrained
(01:00):
in I think our childhood's either firstrun or in reruns, but certainly also
as a singer. And on Januaryfourth of this year, David Soul passed
away at the age of eighty yearsold. Eighty years old. I think
(01:25):
that he is obviously most well knownfor Starsky and Hutch as far as a
big star role. Now Here's thething that show only lasted for about four
years, but he was also thelead in Salem's Lot, so the Stephen
King TV adaption with one of themost terrifying and frightening scenes in the history
(01:49):
of movies. And I believe thatSalem's Lot was directed by Toby Hooper,
who's also pretty well known for movieslike The Texas Chainsawn, Maasacer and Poltergeist.
But David Soul was known for thatas well as being, you know,
one of the bad guys in aDirty Harry movie in nineteen seventy three's
(02:09):
Magnum Force, and I mentioned itwhen we did the Let's See nineteen What
year? Was this one of thenineteen seventies episodes that I did as far
as Billboard, and that was hehad a number one hit with Don't Give
(02:29):
Up on Us, I mean massive, and I don't know, it's just
something so interesting about I guess howhe was somewhat portrayed in media. I
don't want to call him lothario becauseyou know, he was married five times.
But I just think there was thiskind of, I don't know,
(02:50):
preconceived ideas kind of about who hewas, I think to some extent.
But what's interesting is when you goback to Starsky and Hotch, Hautch was
the smart guy, the more reservedone, leaving you know, Paul Michael
Glazier as Starsky as being kind ofthe hot head, the you know,
the brooding kind of I don't know, as someone describes his character as being
like a whining child. It's justso interesting because I think in real life
(03:14):
they were probably different. I don'tknow, I never knew him. But
first of all, just rest inpeace to David Soul, who is listenly
as an American British actor because hedid spend the last twenty years of his
life as a British citizen. Youknow, his longest marriage was his last
marriage to Helen Schnell, who isa British citizen, and he spent the
(03:36):
last years of his life a lotof it on the British stage, which
is just kind of cool. Butyou know, I mean his television debut
was on Flipper. Yeah, hejust did a lot of different stuff,
everything from Star Trek to I Dreamof Genie, gun Smoke, all in
the Family, just really a littlebit of everything. And then to have
(04:00):
like hit singles. Yeah, justkind of a cool career. But this
got me thinking about starskin Hunch andstar skin Hutch made me think of iconic
vehicles. Now, I'm gonna putthis right out there. I am not
a car guy, which was probablyto the great consternation of my father and
(04:26):
probably to some extent even you knowmy stepdad, is that I always appreciated
cars, but I never have gotteninto the mechanics of it. So when
I'm talking about cars this evening,I'll give you some very basic specs,
not even really basic specs. It'sjust going to be Hey, here's the
(04:47):
car. It was fricking cool.Now. I had an extensive matchbox and
hot wheels collection. I was tryingto remember the name of the British company.
Let's see if I can find outreal quick, because I did some
other other research. I guess it'smaybe it's Oxford. I think it's Oxford,
(05:17):
either at Oxford or Atlas that hadBasically they were the hot wheels,
the matchbox cars from Britain, andI had a couple of those in my
collection. But ultimately, my wholeconcept of cars was really more about look
and sound without ever really knowing fullywhat was under the hood. And I'll
(05:40):
be honest, I've never had agreat car in my entire life. So
I'll just give you the quick rundownmy very first car of my own.
I bought it for five hundred bucks. It was a nineteen eighty one Suberu
GT no subrew DX. It wasn'teven like a Suberu out back. It
didn't have a name, it wasjust Superu DX. It was orange,
(06:05):
it was a three door, hatchback, four cylinder, manual transmission. Just
a beater, just an absolute beater. My second car ended up. It
was kind of like a I paidmy mom a small you know, a
few bucks whatever for her car,which was a excuse me, I want
(06:27):
to say, like a eighty fiveor an eighty six Ford Escort GT.
Now the GT was supposed to belike the higher horse power, which meant
like one hundred and eight horse power. Now again I can't tell you all
the you know, the displacement andyou know the engine blocker and all that.
So it was a four cylinder andit was supposed to be a little
bit not even turbocharged. But hundredand eight horsepower was like its max.
(06:53):
And it looked cooler than a regularEscort, but I mean still a Ford
Escort. I had a h aneighty one Mercury Lynx after the Ford let
me down. So Mercury Links isbasically an es Court. I feel like
I had one other beater somewhere then, like a ninety one Toyota Camri No,
(07:18):
excuse me, a ninety one ToyotaCorolla. Then another Escort which was
a gift, and then a FordFocus which is basically like the It was
like the new generation of es Court. I had a what an O three
or four or something like that,had that for like a decade, but
(07:38):
ran it into the ground two hundredplus thousand miles on it absolutely dead.
Then a Toyota Camri that I hadfor a number of years, probably ten
years on that and I currently drivea twenty twenty Jeep Compass and I have
been nothing but displeased with it,I'll be very honest, And we're actually
in the market for new car.But again I can't tell you all the
(08:00):
specs. But my mom and daddivorced, you know, when I was
two. I've mentioned that in thepodcast. But each of them were kind
of into cars in different ways.So my dad was actually away at college
when he got the call to comehome. My mom was pregnant all that,
and we can get into that anothertime. But he was an auto
(08:20):
school and he you know, leftschool to become a dad and go to
work and then they end up gettingdivorced. But he really didn't have a
lot of excess cash. You know, he's paying child support and all that.
So his cars for my earliest yearswere typically hand me downs from my
grandfather to him. Meanwhile, mymom, who's like dating this other guy
(08:45):
and has I guess a little bitmore disposable income. I'm imagining she had
like a seventy something Mercury Cougar.I want to see a cougar. Mercury
Cougar. So let's see the cougarwas derived from the fort Mustang. Let's
(09:16):
see. Yeah, Va engine,which will be a recurring theme tonight.
So that cougar was like this darkblue I know she ended up getting rid
of that. And then she hada Dodge Dodge Challenger. She didn't have
a charger. I think it wasa I think it was a Challenger.
(09:45):
Anyway, The point is like hada couple of nice cars. That car
got totaled, the Challenger or thecharger, I forget which one. But
my dad was like driving like mygrandfather's hand me down like VW Bug.
And then he had a you know, a Jeep Wrangler. Excuse me,
sorry, folks. Yeah, it'sback and forth with I think I need
(10:09):
a humidifier is what I need.So he didn't really get his first like
okay, the car that I reallywant to have until like eighty five,
eighty six, which was a ChevyCamaro, which then he got custom paint,
which is like this oil slick paint, so depending on which angle you
looked at it, it looked like, you know, black, but then
you would see all these different likecolors in it. Very cool. And
(10:31):
then he was at a point wherehe could start getting vehicles that he wanted
and then putting work into him.So like he had a sixty eight dumpster
green Cadillac, Cadillac Coupe Deville.He had like this like panel truck.
He had his seventy seventy two ora seventy four just Chevy Silverado, just
(10:52):
a base of pickup. And thenhe ended up getting a nineteen eighty two,
which I believe was the last oldschool or vet body style. But
again I couldn't tell you any ofthe stuff going on underneath the hoods of
these cars. All I know isif it gets you to point A to
point B. I was a gooddriver, I was a delivery driver.
This was very comfortable behind a wheel, but never with the mechanicals. That's
(11:16):
what Snight's about. Iconic vehicles,not just cars. Because there's a couple
of trucks in here, and acouple of different things. But I'm gonna
start with the honorable mentions Herbie thelove Bug, who doesn't love Herbie?
I mean the Volkswagen Beetle. Andin the movies it was anywhere from a
(11:37):
nineteen sixty one with nineteen sixty five. This is just a simple little four
cylinder car. And Herbie was alive. It was a sentient vehicle and a
good guy, if you will.So there's a couple of movies that were
made. This is out at Disney, and they couldn't use the word Volkswagen
Beetle, but you knew who itwas. It was the love Bug.
(12:00):
And then speaking of vehicles with mindsof their own, again under the honorable
mentions, we have a nineteen fiftyeight Plymouth fury by the name of Christine,
of course, coming from Stephen King'snovel of the same name, about
a car that was very much aliveand with a little bit more murderous intentions.
In fact, Christine was basically giventhe personality of a jealous girlfriend,
(12:26):
if you will, and was verypossessive of her owner, to much of
the scrin of everyone around, whowas then, you know, potentially killed
or maimed for having any kind ofinteraction with her owner, which I'm forgetting
the name of the kid who ownedit, but he didn't make it at
the end. Tragic story if youwill, on a fun So the Plymouth
(12:52):
theory. So, one of thethings that is almost universal with most of
these vehicles, obviously not the VolkswagenBeatles, but almost everything here is a
V eight engine with various different sizeblocks. Excuse me, So basically the
block size you have, like athree fifty big block or a three fifty
small block or whatever it is,is about displacement. And what I think
(13:18):
that means, and everyone can correctme if I'm wrong here is that obviously,
in a combustion engine you have aliquid that's gasoline converted to vapor so
smoke if you will, and thatgoes through pistons and all that. So
basically, the amount of displacement,the bigger the block, the potential for
(13:41):
higher horsepower. I think that's correct, not even starting to get into stuff
like you know, torque and turbocharge and carburetion and all that. But
by basic knowledge is different blocks typicallya VA on these these American muscle cars,
most of them are American cars,I should say, which goes ahead
and provides more horsepower. You havethe legendary nineteen seventy nine Ford Limited Country
(14:07):
Squire Wagon, also a V eightengine from National Lampoon's Vacation, of course,
the Griswold family car. And thenthe last honorable mention is the oldest
vehicle on the list, which isa nineteen fifty Mercury Monterey Vaight engine,
and that was the car of choiceof one Marion Kobreddy, of course,
(14:28):
played by Sylvester Stallone in the actionhit Cobra, which had one of the
most bad ass pieces of movie posterart, like peak Stallone. He's got
the gun with the laser site andthe shades and just a complete badass.
And his name was Marion, whichof course was an homage to another Marion
(14:50):
who is most well known as JohnWayne. So those are the honorable mentions.
So now the list I have isnot really in a particular order.
So of course, the first onewe have here I mentioned at the start
of the show star Skiing Hutch anineteen seventy six four Grand Torino the striped
(15:13):
Tomato if you will, V eightengine, and it was iconic, just
such an iconic looking vehicle and youknow this kind of like this this odd
asymmetrical striping down the side, andit just looked so cool. So you're
also talking about a California based showin star skin Hutch and you know,
(15:37):
some of those those driving scenes arecrazy, so of course Starskin Houtch.
Also you have characters like Hoggy Bear. But I think it's so indicative of
the time, Like it's one ofthose things that you look at that vehicle
and it just screams nineteen seventy six. And those two guys were just yeah,
just icons, absolute icons. Nowthe next one it kind of gets
(16:07):
it starts getting into like time andplace kind of thing. What I mean
by that is a lot of peoplecan't accept things for the time period in
which they existed. And to me, that's very important because I don't think
that you can apply things I talkabout, you know, the model moral
esthetic, so applying modern morality tothings, and I just don't think.
(16:33):
I think that any art, nomatter what it is, can be appreciated
for the time in which it wascreated, no matter what you know modern
scholars, it's usually academics. AndI don't say that dismissively. I mean,
I've gotten two degrees. It's notas though I dismissed the potential power
of education. And I loved learning, and I loved my master's program even
(16:55):
more than my undergrad But the nineteensix nine Dodge Charger from the Dukes of
Hazzard, the General Lee, hasbecome kind of a symbol in a lot
of people's minds, or some people'sminds. I shouldn't even say a lot,
because it represented the General Lee,who was, you know, the
(17:18):
South's general in the Civil War,and it had the Confederate flag. Now,
these are two country boys living ina Hazzard County who I don't think,
at least the way the show wasrepresented that was indicative of a mindset
that made them hateful. I justthink it was like this kind of Southern
(17:41):
pride thing. Now, bear inmind, I am in Northeast through and
through even did some like genealogy andlike it's just kind of funny, like
I did a you know, diggingback, and I'm one of those American
mutts where it's either I have familywho came over turned the center like twentieth
century, right so early nineteen hundreds, or people who were like here,
(18:07):
like pre revolutionary just very strange,but it's also very American, and that's
typically like the British side of thefamily. I think a lot of the
Irish also came later, right,But nevertheless, I had ancestors who fled
to Canada during the war against Englandbecause they were loyalists to the Crown,
(18:33):
which I thought was fascinating, LikeI never even thought about that everyone up
here in New England is going tobe fighting against you know, the King.
No, they fled to Canada,and then they came back after the
United States was formed, like afterindependence was won. Like way to not
take a side, okay, butI guess they didn't want to fight brother
(18:55):
against brother countrymen versus countrymen, sookay. But then I had have like
some of my ancestors who fought inthe Union on the Union side and against
you know, the South. Veryvery curious. But anyway, that nineteen
sixty nine Dodge Charger. So Ithink I mentioned before that for my junior
prom my girlfriend at the time,her grandfather had a it was either a
(19:22):
sixty seven or like a seventy.It was somewhere before or after this version
of the Charger, and he alwayscalled me Herbie. Now He was very
Italian, very Northeast Italian, andnever called me by my name. Hey,
Herbie, and like, h yeah, what's going on, Herbie?
(19:45):
Look, yeah, you taken Nicki. You taken Nicki to the to the
prom Gota. You gotta go ina nice car, and like he hands
me the keys, take it,Like no, I can't, I can't
take it. Take my Nikki tothe prominent nice car? You take it?
You take the charger, like,are you serious? Coolest fucking thing
(20:07):
I've ever driven, Like, withouta doubt, but without a doubt,
drove my dad's Camaro. I've I'vebeen in a Porsche nine to eleven.
I think it was nine to eleven. My stepdad had a white, white
with red leather interior Porsche. Healso had a Triumph TR six. So
I mean I've driven some cool cars. Nothing was like that that charger.
(20:32):
I mean, oh, just thefront end, just the power. There's
just nothing like it. But Idon't want to leave out Daisy Duke and
her nineteen eighty Jeep CJ seven,which had Dixie emblazoned on the hood.
I mean it was a cool littleJeep. While by myself right now,
(20:59):
I'm not going to get into likeyou know, cooters tow truck like toe
materer. One of the coolest thingsI ever had as a kid though,
and it almost made the episode forFamous Christmas Toys Favorite Christmas Toys, but
I think I got it for mybirthday, which was the Dukes of Hazzard
Slot Car Racers, with which includedRoscoe's car, his cop car. So
(21:25):
now we have and let me justmove this one to the end of the
list because I do I do havea favorite, and it sometimes gets lost
in the shuffle. So Smokey andthe bandit the nineteen seventy seven Pontiac Firebird
trans am. But not to beforgotten, you also have the Rockford Files
(21:51):
and Jim Rockford played by James Gardner, so of course Smokey played by Burt
Reynolds. Also the Pontiac Firebirds allVI eights. Which interesting is that in
Rockford, for every year the showwas on the air, they would get
the latest model of Firebird, whichI thought was really cool up until so
(22:11):
the last season that it ran wasin seventy nine. James Garner didn't like
the nineteen seventy nine Firebird, sothey kept the seventy eight for the last
season. But those are just beautifulcars. I mean, they certainly have
a I don't know, kind ofa connotation I think in some regards just
(22:32):
because of the flashness with you know, Phoenix Firebird on the hoods of the
cars. But they're just gorgeous.Was never the car that I was my
dream car, which I don't knowI'll ever have it, but I always
liked, you know, a Mustangin nineteen sixties era Mustang, you know,
(22:52):
that was like my favorite matchbox card, like this is what I wanted
to have. I don't know ifI'll ever have one, but that frickin'
Firebird was definitely high on the list. So yeah, Pontiac made some amazing
cars. So again I don't knowthe stuff all going on under the hoods,
but some of these great American carbrands, which are kind of a
(23:14):
bummer, they don't exist anymore,or they exist in like like there's like
these independent like kit companies. Butanyway, Yeah, those nineteen seventies Firebirds
were badass and if you saw iton the street, it turned heads without
a doubt, looked cool, soundedeven cooler. So then you have the
car of choice for many iterations ofone double O seven James Bond now most
(23:41):
most frequently it was Ashton Martin's AstonMartin dB five's, for example, but
it also kept going all the wayup to like you know, Pierce Broston
had a V twelve Vanquish. Nowmost of the time this was a V
six car, a little bit smallerthan the others. I think a lot
of European cars tend to be alittle bit smaller, more compact. But
(24:03):
those Aston Martins are just beautiful.I don't only have much to say about
it other than you turn heads andyou see those as well. And the
fact that it became like the carof choice for Bond, even though when
you if you want to take alook, there's the cars of Bond,
all these different different vehicles that he'shad, whether he had you know,
had to grab them in a pinch, and that even goes like you know,
(24:26):
I mentioned Jason Bourne. I talkedabout like the trilogies and stuff,
you know, last week's episode.He did amazing things like Jason Bourne's character
for the Mini Cooper and like thatwhole you know, chase scene through the
streets of Paris. It's really cool. But anyway, yeah, the Aston
Martins. Can't leave that out.Now, The first truck on the list
(24:48):
is also a bit of a kindof guilty pleasure show. So I've mentioned
that my you know CRS where Ihad all these posters was of Heather Thomas.
Now. Heather Thomas was, ofcourse, on a TV show called
The Fall Guy. Now The FallGuy was a lead character Lee Majors by
the name of Colt Seavers, whohad a gmc K twenty five hundred Sierra
(25:15):
Grande three point fifty V eight jackedup truck that was just excuse me,
sorry about that. I'm coughing,I'm belching. Holy cow, But it
was so cool. It was inlike the opening trailer, and obviously he
(25:36):
would jump that thing because he's astuntman, and that was just the coolest
looking truck. Ugly when you lookat it from again a modern view,
because it was brown, right,I mean, it was as ugly as
could be. I mean it's brownwith uh I guess it's like a faux
(26:07):
wood grain kind of or is itjust really just brown with a tan piping?
Yeah, I don't know. Thetruck made thirty three jumps on screen,
mostly suffering only body damage and theoccasional broken ball joint. That's freaking
cool, dude, that's cool.But I loved that truck. I mean,
(26:32):
if I could get one right now, A replica of the truck just
sold at auction for about one hundredgrand in this article a little couple years
old now, just twenty twenty three, one hundred grand for the fall Guy
truck. Just a GMC twenty fivehundred, basically stock with just some beefed
up frame and suspension. So cool. Now, So the next one is
(27:00):
kind of universally beloved just because itis the entire impetus for an entire series.
Again, I mentioned the trilogies andthe trilogy of all trilogies Back to
the future, of course, talkingabout the nineteen eighty one DeLorean DMC twelve.
Now, the thing about DeLorean isthat those were fod V six engines
(27:23):
and they can still be purchased viakit. So you can build yourself a
DeLorean, or you can have itbuilt for you. They'll assemble one for
you, complete replicas, all theoriginal spec all the original plans, designs,
et cetera. And there's a companythat is making Delorius. What's the
name of that company. Not thatI'm getting anything for this, but if
(27:45):
anyone wants to go ahead and getthemselves one, you can do that.
DeLorean Motor Company. Yeah, it'sjust you can. You can just get
one. Let's see what is this? Who new designs? Wow, it
(28:07):
looks as though they're developing a newone, the Alpha five, or you
can get the classic DMC. Theyalso buy and sell them. Huh.
Pretty cool. So anyway you'd liketo, you can get yourself a DeLorean.
(28:34):
The fact that it became a timemachine, it's pretty freaky cool,
you know what I mean? Reallycool. Now. Another one of my
favorites, one of my favorite seriesthat is no longer a trilogy by the
way, and the Mad Max PursuitSpecial nineteen seventy three Ford x B Falcon
(28:59):
GT. Three point fifty one veight. It was the last vehicle that
was in their mythology, the tippytop pursuit vehicle, the Interceptor, and
it was made for someone who isgoing to be chasing down the bad guys
in this kind of new world thatwas unfolding post apocalypse, and it was
(29:25):
offered to Max as a way toappease him, but also kind of an
invitation for him to become like theguy, right, because he lost his
partner, his family, everything,and he declined, right, He's like,
I'm not gonna be a cop anymore. Yet he went and he got
that vehicle, and he went andchased down the bad guys. And then
(29:45):
it became like the vehicle, youknow, got customized even further. And
then yeah, I mean it madea reappearance, and Fury wrote as well,
but yeah, the Pursuit Special,the Ford Falcon badass vehicle looked amazing.
And then they you know, allthe work that was done on it,
(30:06):
I mean the carburetion and turbot chargingand and all of it. It
just it looked like the vehicle fora road warrior, am I right?
I mean it did. It wasfitting and Mel Gibson looked pretty fucking cool
driver. So then you have thefirst van on the list. Now,
a friend of mine's family had oneof these, the nineteen eighty three GMC
(30:33):
Van Doorra. Now, this particularvehicle was a stock four cylinder with the
option for a V six, which, of course was used that V six
engine for the A Team BA barracasIn. The crew had the iconic black
with red piping, just bad ass. A team van that is somewhere in
(30:57):
matchbox form in my house. Allof my matchbox cars are here somewhere.
And yeah, the eighteen van thatwas always very very cool. Now a
lot of people had these vans.So, oh, that's another vehicle that
my dad had. I think Imentioned this on an episode when I was
(31:18):
talking about driving movies, right,so I think my dad's van. I
want to say it was a Dodgemaybe, or maybe it was a Vandora,
I forget, but nevertheless, hehe had that whole back like custom
(31:38):
upholstered, had like rug in itlike so many people did. Like one
of my buddies when I was inBoy Scouts, his dad had a bar
and cabinets and stemware. I mean, just absurd, Like, okay,
dude, we know you need todrink all the time, including while you're
driving. We get it. Andeveryone's dad did it. Okay, I
(32:00):
shouldn't say that. Not everyone's alot of our dads drank when they drove.
It was common. It was common, and we didn't have cup holders,
so you just you held your beerbetween your legs and you drove.
And unfortunately a lot of times thosecans got tossed right out the window,
littering on top of it all.Then also sometimes if you had to take
(32:21):
a leak, you also pissed inthe can of the bottle and you threw
that out the window. It wasa different time people, you all know
it's true. But yeah, mydad's van. I mean that was the
easiest way to pack a whole bunchof people in had to the drive in
movie, and by placement of youknow, pillows and blankets, it looked
as though there was no one inback. You pay for the two people
(32:44):
in the front seat. You goand watch a movie, get in there
back that sucker into the spot,open up those back doors, everyone pops
out, boom, movie time.A lot of fun, very seventies,
very eighties. So then the lastone I had on my list, just
my own personal favorites. So againI don't know donkey shit about what's going
(33:06):
on under any of these these hoods. The nineteen seventy nine Manta coyote from
Hardcastle and McCormick. Now, Idon't know how to describe this vehicle.
Let's see, I will let someoneelse kind of explain it. So the
(33:32):
coyote was a monta Montage that hadbeen tricked out and renamed the Cody Coyote,
but it was basically a car kitreplica of the McLaren M six GT,
(33:55):
which I guess was based on whatCody was actually modified Manta Montage,
a car kit Repicod McLaren but basedon the humble VW Beetle. Bruce McLaren
had big plans for the original Msix GT. Lance came to a halt
this untimely death in nineteen seventy,but thanks to Manta, this classic shape
(34:16):
did not go quietly into the night. Contrary to popular belief, the montage
is pretty faithful representation of McLaren's originaldesign. It shares many cues with the
Porsche racing cars like the nine,seventeen and not aweight, but the montage
seems much leaner, especially in profile. Co Coote takes the step further,
removing the rear glass and emphasizing anopen air feel. The rough goes professionally
(34:36):
built and powered by a three pointthree liter GMV six at only nineteen hundred
pounds in weight. It flew soanyway. I read somewhere that it was
actually a V eight UM, butyeah, I mean it's just a beautiful
vehicle. I mean, it didn'tseem like anything else. I love this,
(35:00):
huh. Like most TV cars,this one had an unhappy ending.
After series one of the show,the original Coyote was replaced with a Deloreum
based car, one eighties icon maskgreat against another. Brian Keith, who
played Hardcastle, had difficulty climbing inand out of the first car, and
the new goal winged configuration solved thisproblem. But the boxy Cody was so
(35:22):
ill proportionate thrown together, even atwelve year old like myself could tell something
looks seriously wrong. After three series, the show was canceled and a Cody
Coyote was parked for good. Sonow that I'm looking at it, you
can't see the difference big time whenthey replaced it with the Delrion. I
see what they tried to do andhow they tried to do it. But
(35:45):
yeah, it just was not quitethe same with that original profile. I
mean, man, gorgeous, sucha gorgeous car. Yeah, I'm just
ogly it. Sorry I should bespeaking, but I'm just going look at
that beautiful beast, like that weirdlittle logo, which I guess is supposed
(36:10):
to be a coyote. Like thesubtle yellow piping in it. Yeah,
just so cool. Many just likethe pinch striping inside details. But don't
all TV cars need a little icingon the cake. Absolutely, the smoked
headlamp lenses made a stronger impression thanthe clear McLaren lenses. Agreed, Yeah,
(36:30):
the smoked headlamp lenses very cool.Yeah, it's like no other.
It's one of my favorite. It'swhy it's on the list. It's why
I wanted to talk about it.It's one of the vehicles along with that
Grand Tarino that I couldn't help butlike just love as a kid and if
you could get like either. Sothere was a time too that people the
(36:51):
surprise, surprise some of you maybestill do them, like you actually bought
model kits and put those things togetherlike painstakingly looing and painting, and I
mean it took a lot of time. I only did a few, It
did a handful. That's a lotof work. But it was just kind
of I don't know, it wasvery cool because you're putting together the layers
(37:14):
in the same way that you imaginethat they're doing on an assembly line,
and that's what made it such acool experience. But yeah, there was
this one in particular that I rememberlike painting with my dad and like each
panel and like taking its time andreally making sure it was using spray paint.
That it's very, very smooth.Yeah, I have always loved cars,
(37:34):
while not having any inclination. Ithink they, you know, in
mad maxually use the term black thumb. Right, I've never had a black
thumb. Just very basic stuff Icould do, you know. I mean
obviously, back in the eighties andnineties you could go down to a junkyard
and you could get parts for stuffand just basic knowledge you can kind of
(37:55):
fumble your way through it. Nowobviously you know, I couldn't do any
advanced stuff, but like basics hereand there I was able to figure out.
I used to always change my owntires and stuff like that, so
I'm not a complete idiot. Butlike my buddy would go, okay,
I'll give you two up, andlike because doing things like timing, like
I couldn't do timing. I didn'tknow what the hell I was doing,
(38:19):
you know what I mean. Butyeah, cars, we had so many
iconic cars and it's funny, youknow, I mentioned that that escort GT
that I had, and I rememberI raced one of my buddies who had
a eighty something Thunderbird, right.So Thunderbird, you know, that was
a V six engine rear wheel driveand it had something like one hundred and
(38:45):
eighty horsepower, and now my GTis one hundred and eight horsepower. But
sometimes it's the ability to drive thatmakes a difference. So we raced a
couple of times, and I smokedhim on the highway, mostly because I
think, one, I'm driving amanual transmission and I know how to drive
and very comfortable at the high speeds. And I was driving a you know,
front wheel drive vehicle. During thewintertime. If we'd go out for
(39:07):
the night, it would always beme driving, including in that Thunderbird.
So I was comfortable driving pretty muchany vehicle. But I remember thinking about
how his family got new cars onthe regular, whereas my family drove them
into the ground, right, AndI remember his mom ended up replacing her
daily driver. And it was likea Toyota might have been a troller,
(39:32):
or might have been a Turcell,but it was one of those first rounded
kind of bodies that was starting tohappen in the nineties, and I just
remember thinking to myself, I know, this is supposed to be the future,
but I felt like design of vehicleswas actually going in the wrong direction.
(39:58):
Yeah, Like all of those toyotyas in the early nineties were all
just very round, and then likeyou know, Ford had stuff like the
contour. But then even how theychanged the design of something like a Taurus,
which had been like a more traditionalkind of you know, sedan again
all rounded off now I think tosome point it was meant to be kind
(40:19):
of a throwback and or an homage, if you will, Like we talked
about the Mercury Materrey. There wasa lot of really round vehicles in the
fifties, and then things got moreand more angular. But there was something
about like that era with excuse me, like vehicles like the Coyote or the
Corvettes, or some of the thingsthat Lamborghini was doing at the time,
(40:43):
like these body shapes that I don'tknow, felt they were very interesting,
and then they were going into likethis weird plastic I don't know, I
feel like vehicles have gone backwards somuch. Think about the troubles that I'm
having with this cheap that I havenow, and it's all computer programming issues.
(41:04):
It's motherboard stuff, it's brain stuff, Whereas there's another simpler time,
which I'm sure if I put thetime and effort back then into actually learning
how to do it. There's areason that a lot of people, even
people who wouldn't be like super youknow, mechanically inclined, could do a
lot on their own vehicles that youcan't really do anymore because you got to
(41:24):
plug it into your computer to findout what's going on. I think that
the simple mechanicals, the you know, big metal behemoths, there's just something
about it that we'll never get back. And I don't know if that's good,
bad, indifferent. It doesn't reallymatter in the grand scheme of things.
I mean, certainly the lighter vehicleis the better it is for gas
(41:46):
mileage, and some of the designsthey've come up with are very very safe,
and I get that too, ButI don't know what of been the
iconic vehicles of the two thousands.So obviously this show really kind of focuses
(42:07):
more on this nostalgia stuff and seventies, eighties, nineties, But I don't
know, maybe there's a bunch ofreally cool stuff that I'm just missing.
I think the only thing lately thatpeople talk about are things like, you
know, the Tesla vehicles that havecome out. Cyber Truck seems really interesting.
Ugly as hell, ugly has nohuh. I don't know how to
(42:31):
describe it. I'm sure it's anamazing vehicle, very versatile, but it's
ugliest sin And I just like thetime where everything made sense, even like
the layouts on your dashboard. Idon't know. I think it's gone kind
of the wrong way in some ofthat. But hey, vehicles of the
seventies and the eighties, some ofthe nineties. What are your favorites?
(42:54):
What vehicles your dream vehicle? LikeI mentioned, I would love some day
to have a Mustang, but Iwould also be very very happy with a
Bronco. I'm a little bit morepartial to the Fords. My dad was
always a Chevy guy. My momwas kind of a Ford gal. I
don't know if because I grew upin her house, but you know,
(43:16):
some of the stuff that she liked, like Cougar's Mercury, and then she
had all those Fords. Really,she had Fords up until I don't know
about five six years ago and shegot her first Honda. I guess that's
more like ten years ago now.But yeah, tell me what are your
favorites and what are some of yourwhat are the ones on the list?
What did I miss? I'm surethere's something I missed some of You might
(43:37):
go, well, what about youknow, Ferrispueller. Okay, I don't
talk about Ferris Bueller. If youguys have listened to the show, you
know I don't. I don't doit. Well, what about the novelty
vehicles like the you know, theGhostbusters mobile. Well, I didn't really
go with gimmicks really, you knowwhat I mean. I kind of went
(43:59):
with like straightforward like vehicles. Cannonballrun to me, the big vehicle in
that was basically a converted ambulance,right that Burt Reynolds trove. But somebody
would be like, well, therewas a Lamborghini in there, and you
know there was Aston Martin because RogerMoore, you know, was in there.
(44:20):
Yeah. I mean there's a lotof great cool vehicles. But I
didn't really go into any of thenovelties, like you know, batmobiles like
those kind of things. I wantto just kind of keep it simple.
And just not necessarily right off theassembly line, but pretty close to it.
So let me know what you think. How do you do that?
Well? You can email me atStuck in the Little Pod at yahoo dot
(44:44):
com. You can find me onInstagram X and YouTube at stockpot X.
Head on over to the Facebook pageStuck in the Middle of gen X podcast
the five star reviews, like,comment, share, and most of importantly,
please subscribe to the podcast. Sountil next time, Later, slackers M.
Welcome to be Stuck in the Middlepodcast, the podcast dedicated to the music,
movies, and culture of Generation Acts. What is Up, Slackers,
(00:33):
and welcome to another episode of theStuck in the Middle Podcast. I am
your host at Jason ek. Sothis week's episode all stems from the fact
that a legend, an icon,if you will, not of jen X
as a person since they themselves werea boomer, but I think is ingrained
(01:00):
in I think our childhood's either firstrun or in reruns, but certainly also
as a singer. And on Januaryfourth of this year, David Soul passed
away at the age of eighty yearsold. Eighty years old. I think
(01:25):
that he is obviously most well knownfor Starsky and Hutch as far as a
big star role. Now Here's thething that show only lasted for about four
years, but he was also thelead in Salem's Lot, so the Stephen
King TV adaption with one of themost terrifying and frightening scenes in the history
(01:49):
of movies. And I believe thatSalem's Lot was directed by Toby Hooper,
who's also pretty well known for movieslike The Texas Chainsawn, Maasacer and Poltergeist.
But David Soul was known for thatas well as being, you know,
one of the bad guys in aDirty Harry movie in nineteen seventy three's
(02:09):
Magnum Force, and I mentioned itwhen we did the Let's See nineteen What
year? Was this one of thenineteen seventies episodes that I did as far
as Billboard, and that was hehad a number one hit with Don't Give
(02:29):
Up on Us, I mean massive, and I don't know, it's just
something so interesting about I guess howhe was somewhat portrayed in media. I
don't want to call him lothario becauseyou know, he was married five times.
But I just think there was thiskind of, I don't know,
(02:50):
preconceived ideas kind of about who hewas, I think to some extent.
But what's interesting is when you goback to Starsky and Hotch, Hautch was
the smart guy, the more reservedone, leaving you know, Paul Michael
Glazier as Starsky as being kind ofthe hot head, the you know,
the brooding kind of I don't know, as someone describes his character as being
like a whining child. It's justso interesting because I think in real life
(03:14):
they were probably different. I don'tknow, I never knew him. But
first of all, just rest inpeace to David Soul, who is listenly
as an American British actor because hedid spend the last twenty years of his
life as a British citizen. Youknow, his longest marriage was his last
marriage to Helen Schnell, who isa British citizen, and he spent the
(03:36):
last years of his life a lotof it on the British stage, which
is just kind of cool. Butyou know, I mean his television debut
was on Flipper. Yeah, hejust did a lot of different stuff,
everything from Star Trek to I Dreamof Genie, gun Smoke, all in
the Family, just really a littlebit of everything. And then to have
(04:00):
like hit singles. Yeah, justkind of a cool career. But this
got me thinking about starskin Hunch andstar skin Hutch made me think of iconic
vehicles. Now, I'm gonna putthis right out there. I am not
a car guy, which was probablyto the great consternation of my father and
(04:26):
probably to some extent even you knowmy stepdad, is that I always appreciated
cars, but I never have gotteninto the mechanics of it. So when
I'm talking about cars this evening,I'll give you some very basic specs,
not even really basic specs. It'sjust going to be Hey, here's the
(04:47):
car. It was fricking cool.Now. I had an extensive matchbox and
hot wheels collection. I was tryingto remember the name of the British company.
Let's see if I can find outreal quick, because I did some
other other research. I guess it'smaybe it's Oxford. I think it's Oxford,
(05:17):
either at Oxford or Atlas that hadBasically they were the hot wheels,
the matchbox cars from Britain, andI had a couple of those in my
collection. But ultimately, my wholeconcept of cars was really more about look
and sound without ever really knowing fullywhat was under the hood. And I'll
(05:40):
be honest, I've never had agreat car in my entire life. So
I'll just give you the quick rundownmy very first car of my own.
I bought it for five hundred bucks. It was a nineteen eighty one Suberu
GT no subrew DX. It wasn'teven like a Suberu out back. It
didn't have a name, it wasjust Superu DX. It was orange,
(06:05):
it was a three door, hatchback, four cylinder, manual transmission. Just
a beater, just an absolute beater. My second car ended up. It
was kind of like a I paidmy mom a small you know, a
few bucks whatever for her car,which was a excuse me, I want
(06:27):
to say, like a eighty fiveor an eighty six Ford Escort GT.
Now the GT was supposed to belike the higher horse power, which meant
like one hundred and eight horse power. Now again I can't tell you all
the you know, the displacement andyou know the engine blocker and all that.
So it was a four cylinder andit was supposed to be a little
bit not even turbocharged. But hundredand eight horsepower was like its max.
(06:53):
And it looked cooler than a regularEscort, but I mean still a Ford
Escort. I had a h aneighty one Mercury Lynx after the Ford let
me down. So Mercury Links isbasically an es Court. I feel like
I had one other beater somewhere then, like a ninety one Toyota Camri No,
(07:18):
excuse me, a ninety one ToyotaCorolla. Then another Escort which was
a gift, and then a FordFocus which is basically like the It was
like the new generation of es Court. I had a what an O three
or four or something like that,had that for like a decade, but
(07:38):
ran it into the ground two hundredplus thousand miles on it absolutely dead.
Then a Toyota Camri that I hadfor a number of years, probably ten
years on that and I currently drivea twenty twenty Jeep Compass and I have
been nothing but displeased with it,I'll be very honest, And we're actually
in the market for new car.But again I can't tell you all the
(08:00):
specs. But my mom and daddivorced, you know, when I was
two. I've mentioned that in thepodcast. But each of them were kind
of into cars in different ways.So my dad was actually away at college
when he got the call to comehome. My mom was pregnant all that,
and we can get into that anothertime. But he was an auto
(08:20):
school and he you know, leftschool to become a dad and go to
work and then they end up gettingdivorced. But he really didn't have a
lot of excess cash. You know, he's paying child support and all that.
So his cars for my earliest yearswere typically hand me downs from my
grandfather to him. Meanwhile, mymom, who's like dating this other guy
(08:45):
and has I guess a little bitmore disposable income. I'm imagining she had
like a seventy something Mercury Cougar.I want to see a cougar. Mercury
Cougar. So let's see the cougarwas derived from the fort Mustang. Let's
(09:16):
see. Yeah, Va engine,which will be a recurring theme tonight.
So that cougar was like this darkblue I know she ended up getting rid
of that. And then she hada Dodge Dodge Challenger. She didn't have
a charger. I think it wasa I think it was a Challenger.
(09:45):
Anyway, The point is like hada couple of nice cars. That car
got totaled, the Challenger or thecharger, I forget which one. But
my dad was like driving like mygrandfather's hand me down like VW Bug.
And then he had a you know, a Jeep Wrangler. Excuse me,
sorry, folks. Yeah, it'sback and forth with I think I need
(10:09):
a humidifier is what I need.So he didn't really get his first like
okay, the car that I reallywant to have until like eighty five,
eighty six, which was a ChevyCamaro, which then he got custom paint,
which is like this oil slick paint, so depending on which angle you
looked at it, it looked like, you know, black, but then
you would see all these different likecolors in it. Very cool. And
(10:31):
then he was at a point wherehe could start getting vehicles that he wanted
and then putting work into him.So like he had a sixty eight dumpster
green Cadillac, Cadillac Coupe Deville.He had like this like panel truck.
He had his seventy seventy two ora seventy four just Chevy Silverado, just
(10:52):
a base of pickup. And thenhe ended up getting a nineteen eighty two,
which I believe was the last oldschool or vet body style. But
again I couldn't tell you any ofthe stuff going on underneath the hoods of
these cars. All I know isif it gets you to point A to
point B. I was a gooddriver, I was a delivery driver.
This was very comfortable behind a wheel, but never with the mechanicals. That's
(11:16):
what Snight's about. Iconic vehicles,not just cars. Because there's a couple
of trucks in here, and acouple of different things. But I'm gonna
start with the honorable mentions Herbie thelove Bug, who doesn't love Herbie?
I mean the Volkswagen Beetle. Andin the movies it was anywhere from a
(11:37):
nineteen sixty one with nineteen sixty five. This is just a simple little four
cylinder car. And Herbie was alive. It was a sentient vehicle and a
good guy, if you will.So there's a couple of movies that were
made. This is out at Disney, and they couldn't use the word Volkswagen
Beetle, but you knew who itwas. It was the love Bug.
(12:00):
And then speaking of vehicles with mindsof their own, again under the honorable
mentions, we have a nineteen fiftyeight Plymouth fury by the name of Christine,
of course, coming from Stephen King'snovel of the same name, about
a car that was very much aliveand with a little bit more murderous intentions.
In fact, Christine was basically giventhe personality of a jealous girlfriend,
(12:26):
if you will, and was verypossessive of her owner, to much of
the scrin of everyone around, whowas then, you know, potentially killed
or maimed for having any kind ofinteraction with her owner, which I'm forgetting
the name of the kid who ownedit, but he didn't make it at
the end. Tragic story if youwill, on a fun So the Plymouth
(12:52):
theory. So, one of thethings that is almost universal with most of
these vehicles, obviously not the VolkswagenBeatles, but almost everything here is a
V eight engine with various different sizeblocks. Excuse me, So basically the
block size you have, like athree fifty big block or a three fifty
small block or whatever it is,is about displacement. And what I think
(13:18):
that means, and everyone can correctme if I'm wrong here is that obviously,
in a combustion engine you have aliquid that's gasoline converted to vapor so
smoke if you will, and thatgoes through pistons and all that. So
basically, the amount of displacement,the bigger the block, the potential for
(13:41):
higher horsepower. I think that's correct, not even starting to get into stuff
like you know, torque and turbocharge and carburetion and all that. But
by basic knowledge is different blocks typicallya VA on these these American muscle cars,
most of them are American cars,I should say, which goes ahead
and provides more horsepower. You havethe legendary nineteen seventy nine Ford Limited Country
(14:07):
Squire Wagon, also a V eightengine from National Lampoon's Vacation, of course,
the Griswold family car. And thenthe last honorable mention is the oldest
vehicle on the list, which isa nineteen fifty Mercury Monterey Vaight engine,
and that was the car of choiceof one Marion Kobreddy, of course,
(14:28):
played by Sylvester Stallone in the actionhit Cobra, which had one of the
most bad ass pieces of movie posterart, like peak Stallone. He's got
the gun with the laser site andthe shades and just a complete badass.
And his name was Marion, whichof course was an homage to another Marion
(14:50):
who is most well known as JohnWayne. So those are the honorable mentions.
So now the list I have isnot really in a particular order.
So of course, the first onewe have here I mentioned at the start
of the show star Skiing Hutch anineteen seventy six four Grand Torino the striped
(15:13):
Tomato if you will, V eightengine, and it was iconic, just
such an iconic looking vehicle and youknow this kind of like this this odd
asymmetrical striping down the side, andit just looked so cool. So you're
also talking about a California based showin star skin Hutch and you know,
(15:37):
some of those those driving scenes arecrazy, so of course Starskin Houtch.
Also you have characters like Hoggy Bear. But I think it's so indicative of
the time, Like it's one ofthose things that you look at that vehicle
and it just screams nineteen seventy six. And those two guys were just yeah,
just icons, absolute icons. Nowthe next one it kind of gets
(16:07):
it starts getting into like time andplace kind of thing. What I mean
by that is a lot of peoplecan't accept things for the time period in
which they existed. And to me, that's very important because I don't think
that you can apply things I talkabout, you know, the model moral
esthetic, so applying modern morality tothings, and I just don't think.
(16:33):
I think that any art, nomatter what it is, can be appreciated
for the time in which it wascreated, no matter what you know modern
scholars, it's usually academics. AndI don't say that dismissively. I mean,
I've gotten two degrees. It's notas though I dismissed the potential power
of education. And I loved learning, and I loved my master's program even
(16:55):
more than my undergrad But the nineteensix nine Dodge Charger from the Dukes of
Hazzard, the General Lee, hasbecome kind of a symbol in a lot
of people's minds, or some people'sminds. I shouldn't even say a lot,
because it represented the General Lee,who was, you know, the
(17:18):
South's general in the Civil War,and it had the Confederate flag. Now,
these are two country boys living ina Hazzard County who I don't think,
at least the way the show wasrepresented that was indicative of a mindset
that made them hateful. I justthink it was like this kind of Southern
(17:41):
pride thing. Now, bear inmind, I am in Northeast through and
through even did some like genealogy andlike it's just kind of funny, like
I did a you know, diggingback, and I'm one of those American
mutts where it's either I have familywho came over turned the center like twentieth
century, right so early nineteen hundreds, or people who were like here,
(18:07):
like pre revolutionary just very strange,but it's also very American, and that's
typically like the British side of thefamily. I think a lot of the
Irish also came later, right,But nevertheless, I had ancestors who fled
to Canada during the war against Englandbecause they were loyalists to the Crown,
(18:33):
which I thought was fascinating, LikeI never even thought about that everyone up
here in New England is going tobe fighting against you know, the King.
No, they fled to Canada,and then they came back after the
United States was formed, like afterindependence was won. Like way to not
take a side, okay, butI guess they didn't want to fight brother
(18:55):
against brother countrymen versus countrymen, sookay. But then I had have like
some of my ancestors who fought inthe Union on the Union side and against
you know, the South. Veryvery curious. But anyway, that nineteen
sixty nine Dodge Charger. So Ithink I mentioned before that for my junior
prom my girlfriend at the time,her grandfather had a it was either a
(19:22):
sixty seven or like a seventy.It was somewhere before or after this version
of the Charger, and he alwayscalled me Herbie. Now He was very
Italian, very Northeast Italian, andnever called me by my name. Hey,
Herbie, and like, h yeah, what's going on, Herbie?
(19:45):
Look, yeah, you taken Nicki. You taken Nicki to the to the
prom Gota. You gotta go ina nice car, and like he hands
me the keys, take it,Like no, I can't, I can't
take it. Take my Nikki tothe prominent nice car? You take it?
You take the charger, like,are you serious? Coolest fucking thing
(20:07):
I've ever driven, Like, withouta doubt, but without a doubt,
drove my dad's Camaro. I've I'vebeen in a Porsche nine to eleven.
I think it was nine to eleven. My stepdad had a white, white
with red leather interior Porsche. Healso had a Triumph TR six. So
I mean I've driven some cool cars. Nothing was like that that charger.
(20:32):
I mean, oh, just thefront end, just the power. There's
just nothing like it. But Idon't want to leave out Daisy Duke and
her nineteen eighty Jeep CJ seven,which had Dixie emblazoned on the hood.
I mean it was a cool littleJeep. While by myself right now,
(20:59):
I'm not going to get into likeyou know, cooters tow truck like toe
materer. One of the coolest thingsI ever had as a kid though,
and it almost made the episode forFamous Christmas Toys Favorite Christmas Toys, but
I think I got it for mybirthday, which was the Dukes of Hazzard
Slot Car Racers, with which includedRoscoe's car, his cop car. So
(21:25):
now we have and let me justmove this one to the end of the
list because I do I do havea favorite, and it sometimes gets lost
in the shuffle. So Smokey andthe bandit the nineteen seventy seven Pontiac Firebird
trans am. But not to beforgotten, you also have the Rockford Files
(21:51):
and Jim Rockford played by James Gardner, so of course Smokey played by Burt
Reynolds. Also the Pontiac Firebirds allVI eights. Which interesting is that in
Rockford, for every year the showwas on the air, they would get
the latest model of Firebird, whichI thought was really cool up until so
(22:11):
the last season that it ran wasin seventy nine. James Garner didn't like
the nineteen seventy nine Firebird, sothey kept the seventy eight for the last
season. But those are just beautifulcars. I mean, they certainly have
a I don't know, kind ofa connotation I think in some regards just
(22:32):
because of the flashness with you know, Phoenix Firebird on the hoods of the
cars. But they're just gorgeous.Was never the car that I was my
dream car, which I don't knowI'll ever have it, but I always
liked, you know, a Mustangin nineteen sixties era Mustang, you know,
(22:52):
that was like my favorite matchbox card, like this is what I wanted
to have. I don't know ifI'll ever have one, but that frickin'
Firebird was definitely high on the list. So yeah, Pontiac made some amazing
cars. So again I don't knowthe stuff all going on under the hoods,
but some of these great American carbrands, which are kind of a
(23:14):
bummer, they don't exist anymore,or they exist in like like there's like
these independent like kit companies. Butanyway, Yeah, those nineteen seventies Firebirds
were badass and if you saw iton the street, it turned heads without
a doubt, looked cool, soundedeven cooler. So then you have the
car of choice for many iterations ofone double O seven James Bond now most
(23:41):
most frequently it was Ashton Martin's AstonMartin dB five's, for example, but
it also kept going all the wayup to like you know, Pierce Broston
had a V twelve Vanquish. Nowmost of the time this was a V
six car, a little bit smallerthan the others. I think a lot
of European cars tend to be alittle bit smaller, more compact. But
(24:03):
those Aston Martins are just beautiful.I don't only have much to say about
it other than you turn heads andyou see those as well. And the
fact that it became like the carof choice for Bond, even though when
you if you want to take alook, there's the cars of Bond,
all these different different vehicles that he'shad, whether he had you know,
had to grab them in a pinch, and that even goes like you know,
(24:26):
I mentioned Jason Bourne. I talkedabout like the trilogies and stuff,
you know, last week's episode.He did amazing things like Jason Bourne's character
for the Mini Cooper and like thatwhole you know, chase scene through the
streets of Paris. It's really cool. But anyway, yeah, the Aston
Martins. Can't leave that out.Now, The first truck on the list
(24:48):
is also a bit of a kindof guilty pleasure show. So I've mentioned
that my you know CRS where Ihad all these posters was of Heather Thomas.
Now. Heather Thomas was, ofcourse, on a TV show called
The Fall Guy. Now The FallGuy was a lead character Lee Majors by
the name of Colt Seavers, whohad a gmc K twenty five hundred Sierra
(25:15):
Grande three point fifty V eight jackedup truck that was just excuse me,
sorry about that. I'm coughing,I'm belching. Holy cow, But it
was so cool. It was inlike the opening trailer, and obviously he
(25:36):
would jump that thing because he's astuntman, and that was just the coolest
looking truck. Ugly when you lookat it from again a modern view,
because it was brown, right,I mean, it was as ugly as
could be. I mean it's brownwith uh I guess it's like a faux
(26:07):
wood grain kind of or is itjust really just brown with a tan piping?
Yeah, I don't know. Thetruck made thirty three jumps on screen,
mostly suffering only body damage and theoccasional broken ball joint. That's freaking
cool, dude, that's cool.But I loved that truck. I mean,
(26:32):
if I could get one right now, A replica of the truck just
sold at auction for about one hundredgrand in this article a little couple years
old now, just twenty twenty three, one hundred grand for the fall Guy
truck. Just a GMC twenty fivehundred, basically stock with just some beefed
up frame and suspension. So cool. Now, So the next one is
(27:00):
kind of universally beloved just because itis the entire impetus for an entire series.
Again, I mentioned the trilogies andthe trilogy of all trilogies Back to
the future, of course, talkingabout the nineteen eighty one DeLorean DMC twelve.
Now, the thing about DeLorean isthat those were fod V six engines
(27:23):
and they can still be purchased viakit. So you can build yourself a
DeLorean, or you can have itbuilt for you. They'll assemble one for
you, complete replicas, all theoriginal spec all the original plans, designs,
et cetera. And there's a companythat is making Delorius. What's the
name of that company. Not thatI'm getting anything for this, but if
(27:45):
anyone wants to go ahead and getthemselves one, you can do that.
DeLorean Motor Company. Yeah, it'sjust you can. You can just get
one. Let's see what is this? Who new designs? Wow, it
(28:07):
looks as though they're developing a newone, the Alpha five, or you
can get the classic DMC. Theyalso buy and sell them. Huh.
Pretty cool. So anyway you'd liketo, you can get yourself a DeLorean.
(28:34):
The fact that it became a timemachine, it's pretty freaky cool,
you know what I mean? Reallycool. Now. Another one of my
favorites, one of my favorite seriesthat is no longer a trilogy by the
way, and the Mad Max PursuitSpecial nineteen seventy three Ford x B Falcon
(28:59):
GT. Three point fifty one veight. It was the last vehicle that
was in their mythology, the tippytop pursuit vehicle, the Interceptor, and
it was made for someone who isgoing to be chasing down the bad guys
in this kind of new world thatwas unfolding post apocalypse, and it was
(29:25):
offered to Max as a way toappease him, but also kind of an
invitation for him to become like theguy, right, because he lost his
partner, his family, everything,and he declined, right, He's like,
I'm not gonna be a cop anymore. Yet he went and he got
that vehicle, and he went andchased down the bad guys. And then
(29:45):
it became like the vehicle, youknow, got customized even further. And
then yeah, I mean it madea reappearance, and Fury wrote as well,
but yeah, the Pursuit Special,the Ford Falcon badass vehicle looked amazing.
And then they you know, allthe work that was done on it,
(30:06):
I mean the carburetion and turbot chargingand and all of it. It
just it looked like the vehicle fora road warrior, am I right?
I mean it did. It wasfitting and Mel Gibson looked pretty fucking cool
driver. So then you have thefirst van on the list. Now,
a friend of mine's family had oneof these, the nineteen eighty three GMC
(30:33):
Van Doorra. Now, this particularvehicle was a stock four cylinder with the
option for a V six, which, of course was used that V six
engine for the A Team BA barracasIn. The crew had the iconic black
with red piping, just bad ass. A team van that is somewhere in
(30:57):
matchbox form in my house. Allof my matchbox cars are here somewhere.
And yeah, the eighteen van thatwas always very very cool. Now a
lot of people had these vans.So, oh, that's another vehicle that
my dad had. I think Imentioned this on an episode when I was
(31:18):
talking about driving movies, right,so I think my dad's van. I
want to say it was a Dodgemaybe, or maybe it was a Vandora,
I forget, but nevertheless, hehe had that whole back like custom
(31:38):
upholstered, had like rug in itlike so many people did. Like one
of my buddies when I was inBoy Scouts, his dad had a bar
and cabinets and stemware. I mean, just absurd, Like, okay,
dude, we know you need todrink all the time, including while you're
driving. We get it. Andeveryone's dad did it. Okay, I
(32:00):
shouldn't say that. Not everyone's alot of our dads drank when they drove.
It was common. It was common, and we didn't have cup holders,
so you just you held your beerbetween your legs and you drove.
And unfortunately a lot of times thosecans got tossed right out the window,
littering on top of it all.Then also sometimes if you had to take
(32:21):
a leak, you also pissed inthe can of the bottle and you threw
that out the window. It wasa different time people, you all know
it's true. But yeah, mydad's van. I mean that was the
easiest way to pack a whole bunchof people in had to the drive in
movie, and by placement of youknow, pillows and blankets, it looked
as though there was no one inback. You pay for the two people
(32:44):
in the front seat. You goand watch a movie, get in there
back that sucker into the spot,open up those back doors, everyone pops
out, boom, movie time.A lot of fun, very seventies,
very eighties. So then the lastone I had on my list, just
my own personal favorites. So againI don't know donkey shit about what's going
(33:06):
on under any of these these hoods. The nineteen seventy nine Manta coyote from
Hardcastle and McCormick. Now, Idon't know how to describe this vehicle.
Let's see, I will let someoneelse kind of explain it. So the
(33:32):
coyote was a monta Montage that hadbeen tricked out and renamed the Cody Coyote,
but it was basically a car kitreplica of the McLaren M six GT,
(33:55):
which I guess was based on whatCody was actually modified Manta Montage,
a car kit Repicod McLaren but basedon the humble VW Beetle. Bruce McLaren
had big plans for the original Msix GT. Lance came to a halt
this untimely death in nineteen seventy,but thanks to Manta, this classic shape
(34:16):
did not go quietly into the night. Contrary to popular belief, the montage
is pretty faithful representation of McLaren's originaldesign. It shares many cues with the
Porsche racing cars like the nine,seventeen and not aweight, but the montage
seems much leaner, especially in profile. Co Coote takes the step further,
removing the rear glass and emphasizing anopen air feel. The rough goes professionally
(34:36):
built and powered by a three pointthree liter GMV six at only nineteen hundred
pounds in weight. It flew soanyway. I read somewhere that it was
actually a V eight UM, butyeah, I mean it's just a beautiful
vehicle. I mean, it didn'tseem like anything else. I love this,
(35:00):
huh. Like most TV cars,this one had an unhappy ending.
After series one of the show,the original Coyote was replaced with a Deloreum
based car, one eighties icon maskgreat against another. Brian Keith, who
played Hardcastle, had difficulty climbing inand out of the first car, and
the new goal winged configuration solved thisproblem. But the boxy Cody was so
(35:22):
ill proportionate thrown together, even atwelve year old like myself could tell something
looks seriously wrong. After three series, the show was canceled and a Cody
Coyote was parked for good. Sonow that I'm looking at it, you
can't see the difference big time whenthey replaced it with the Delrion. I
see what they tried to do andhow they tried to do it. But
(35:45):
yeah, it just was not quitethe same with that original profile. I
mean, man, gorgeous, sucha gorgeous car. Yeah, I'm just
ogly it. Sorry I should bespeaking, but I'm just going look at
that beautiful beast, like that weirdlittle logo, which I guess is supposed
(36:10):
to be a coyote. Like thesubtle yellow piping in it. Yeah,
just so cool. Many just likethe pinch striping inside details. But don't
all TV cars need a little icingon the cake. Absolutely, the smoked
headlamp lenses made a stronger impression thanthe clear McLaren lenses. Agreed, Yeah,
(36:30):
the smoked headlamp lenses very cool.Yeah, it's like no other.
It's one of my favorite. It'swhy it's on the list. It's why
I wanted to talk about it.It's one of the vehicles along with that
Grand Tarino that I couldn't help butlike just love as a kid and if
you could get like either. Sothere was a time too that people the
(36:51):
surprise, surprise some of you maybestill do them, like you actually bought
model kits and put those things togetherlike painstakingly looing and painting, and I
mean it took a lot of time. I only did a few, It
did a handful. That's a lotof work. But it was just kind
of I don't know, it wasvery cool because you're putting together the layers
(37:14):
in the same way that you imaginethat they're doing on an assembly line,
and that's what made it such acool experience. But yeah, there was
this one in particular that I rememberlike painting with my dad and like each
panel and like taking its time andreally making sure it was using spray paint.
That it's very, very smooth.Yeah, I have always loved cars,
(37:34):
while not having any inclination. Ithink they, you know, in
mad maxually use the term black thumb. Right, I've never had a black
thumb. Just very basic stuff Icould do, you know. I mean
obviously, back in the eighties andnineties you could go down to a junkyard
and you could get parts for stuffand just basic knowledge you can kind of
(37:55):
fumble your way through it. Nowobviously you know, I couldn't do any
advanced stuff, but like basics hereand there I was able to figure out.
I used to always change my owntires and stuff like that, so
I'm not a complete idiot. Butlike my buddy would go, okay,
I'll give you two up, andlike because doing things like timing, like
I couldn't do timing. I didn'tknow what the hell I was doing,
(38:19):
you know what I mean. Butyeah, cars, we had so many
iconic cars and it's funny, youknow, I mentioned that that escort GT
that I had, and I rememberI raced one of my buddies who had
a eighty something Thunderbird, right.So Thunderbird, you know, that was
a V six engine rear wheel driveand it had something like one hundred and
(38:45):
eighty horsepower, and now my GTis one hundred and eight horsepower. But
sometimes it's the ability to drive thatmakes a difference. So we raced a
couple of times, and I smokedhim on the highway, mostly because I
think, one, I'm driving amanual transmission and I know how to drive
and very comfortable at the high speeds. And I was driving a you know,
front wheel drive vehicle. During thewintertime. If we'd go out for
(39:07):
the night, it would always beme driving, including in that Thunderbird.
So I was comfortable driving pretty muchany vehicle. But I remember thinking about
how his family got new cars onthe regular, whereas my family drove them
into the ground, right, AndI remember his mom ended up replacing her
daily driver. And it was likea Toyota might have been a troller,
(39:32):
or might have been a Turcell,but it was one of those first rounded
kind of bodies that was starting tohappen in the nineties, and I just
remember thinking to myself, I know, this is supposed to be the future,
but I felt like design of vehicleswas actually going in the wrong direction.
(39:58):
Yeah, Like all of those toyotyas in the early nineties were all
just very round, and then likeyou know, Ford had stuff like the
contour. But then even how theychanged the design of something like a Taurus,
which had been like a more traditionalkind of you know, sedan again
all rounded off now I think tosome point it was meant to be kind
(40:19):
of a throwback and or an homage, if you will, Like we talked
about the Mercury Materrey. There wasa lot of really round vehicles in the
fifties, and then things got moreand more angular. But there was something
about like that era with excuse me, like vehicles like the Coyote or the
Corvettes, or some of the thingsthat Lamborghini was doing at the time,
(40:43):
like these body shapes that I don'tknow, felt they were very interesting,
and then they were going into likethis weird plastic I don't know, I
feel like vehicles have gone backwards somuch. Think about the troubles that I'm
having with this cheap that I havenow, and it's all computer programming issues.
(41:04):
It's motherboard stuff, it's brain stuff, Whereas there's another simpler time,
which I'm sure if I put thetime and effort back then into actually learning
how to do it. There's areason that a lot of people, even
people who wouldn't be like super youknow, mechanically inclined, could do a
lot on their own vehicles that youcan't really do anymore because you got to
(41:24):
plug it into your computer to findout what's going on. I think that
the simple mechanicals, the you know, big metal behemoths, there's just something
about it that we'll never get back. And I don't know if that's good,
bad, indifferent. It doesn't reallymatter in the grand scheme of things.
I mean, certainly the lighter vehicleis the better it is for gas
(41:46):
mileage, and some of the designsthey've come up with are very very safe,
and I get that too, ButI don't know what of been the
iconic vehicles of the two thousands.So obviously this show really kind of focuses
(42:07):
more on this nostalgia stuff and seventies, eighties, nineties, But I don't
know, maybe there's a bunch ofreally cool stuff that I'm just missing.
I think the only thing lately thatpeople talk about are things like, you
know, the Tesla vehicles that havecome out. Cyber Truck seems really interesting.
Ugly as hell, ugly has nohuh. I don't know how to
(42:31):
describe it. I'm sure it's anamazing vehicle, very versatile, but it's
ugliest sin And I just like thetime where everything made sense, even like
the layouts on your dashboard. Idon't know. I think it's gone kind
of the wrong way in some ofthat. But hey, vehicles of the
seventies and the eighties, some ofthe nineties. What are your favorites?
(42:54):
What vehicles your dream vehicle? LikeI mentioned, I would love some day
to have a Mustang, but Iwould also be very very happy with a
Bronco. I'm a little bit morepartial to the Fords. My dad was
always a Chevy guy. My momwas kind of a Ford gal. I
don't know if because I grew upin her house, but you know,
(43:16):
some of the stuff that she liked, like Cougar's Mercury, and then she
had all those Fords. Really,she had Fords up until I don't know
about five six years ago and shegot her first Honda. I guess that's
more like ten years ago now.But yeah, tell me what are your
favorites and what are some of yourwhat are the ones on the list?
What did I miss? I'm surethere's something I missed some of You might
(43:37):
go, well, what about youknow, Ferrispueller. Okay, I don't
talk about Ferris Bueller. If youguys have listened to the show, you
know I don't. I don't doit. Well, what about the novelty
vehicles like the you know, theGhostbusters mobile. Well, I didn't really
go with gimmicks really, you knowwhat I mean. I kind of went
(43:59):
with like straightforward like vehicles. Cannonballrun to me, the big vehicle in
that was basically a converted ambulance,right that Burt Reynolds trove. But somebody
would be like, well, therewas a Lamborghini in there, and you
know there was Aston Martin because RogerMoore, you know, was in there.
(44:20):
Yeah. I mean there's a lotof great cool vehicles. But I
didn't really go into any of thenovelties, like you know, batmobiles like
those kind of things. I wantto just kind of keep it simple.
And just not necessarily right off theassembly line, but pretty close to it.
So let me know what you think. How do you do that?
Well? You can email me atStuck in the Little Pod at yahoo dot
(44:44):
com. You can find me onInstagram X and YouTube at stockpot X.
Head on over to the Facebook pageStuck in the Middle of gen X podcast
the five star reviews, like,comment, share, and most of importantly,
please subscribe to the podcast. Sountil next time, Later, slackers M.
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