By Jeff Glucker
In the film The 25th Hour, Edward Norton’s character lives in Manhattan. He also drives a 1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee. It’s one of my favorite examples of a car existing in a place where you don’t expect. In fact, the idea of muscle cars being driven in spaces others would never dare do so is a personal idea that I love. Were I ever to move back to Boston, for example, I’d bring a muscle car with me to drive in and around the city. It makes no sense. It’s a terrible tool for the task. And I love the imagery of a gurgling, old, beast of machine idling as the masses stroll past heading towards offices in the sky.
The out-of-place muscle car is just one example of a car being somewhere it should not. What are some others?
On the topic of B-bodies…
https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/ubb/download/Number/374346/filename/MDSuperbirdBan.jpg
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26847/this-video-of-a-3m-bugatti-chiron-destroyed-by-a-scorned-woman-is-a-complete-fake
There are other examples, with less valuable cars, that are real, but of course also some staged ones and the CGI above. I’ve personally witnessed a guy pulling up in front of his (ex-) girlfriend’s place and I saw her her run from the house and go straight to his left front tire (he was parked on the street facing the wrong way) with a kitchen knife.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lePZF17Tz3U/maxresdefault.jpg
Went to France back in 2008 and the first car I saw when we walked out of CDG was a Chrysler 300C. Later that week we also ran across a gentleman using an E63 AMG as a taxicab.
My first trip to Japan was in 2014, on the train from the airport one of the first cars I saw was a yellow Hummer H2.
About a decade ago, my parents lived in a building in suburban Toronto, where one of their neighbors drove a Ford Ka. Just a plain, average silver Ka, and prior to it being 15 years old and easily eligible for import. I don’t know why they brought it in, but appreciate they did.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2745f10d85afaf3b0a418c4e076fb34ec38dac998392d71b0a6d28b4b09cbff3.jpg
I got a taxi ride on the island of Saint Marteen. It was a Cadillac Escalade. I asked if it was the only one on the island. The wonderful woman driving said it was the first… then these other bitches copied her. As we were driving, we past a then-new S-Class Benz. She beeped and waved. It was her husband. She turned to me and said “That’s the only one of those on the Island though” – It was awesome.
I never made it that far over on the island. Landed then went towards the ferry for Anguilla.
…I miss the Caribbean. That trip was in 2007.
Ice road trucker?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c8dbc882800ecf5f5782cd163968ab3a43d91c2a7497e9d920ef30de96cf2eb1.jpg The guy has a blog somewhere on the interwebs about it.
Films are chock full of this. It was used to great effect in Little Voice, a small British film from the late 1990s.
Ray Say (Michael Caine) is a low rent impressario in a Yorkshire resort town, the least likely place to find a ’75 Olds Delta 88 Convertible. The awkwardness of the car trying to navigate the midieval streets of Scarborough is the physical comedy lampooning Ray’s “big fish in a small pond” ineptness.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc43098e9724ee5cf9053015562f31d0575734a9ba7ca00f713c74829a9327b0.jpg
On a personal note, a couple of years ago I was delighted to see my Austin Allegro in a photo gallery on, of all places, hotrod.com:
https://www.hotrod.com/uploads/sites/21/2018/03/16_Hooptie_Con_Sonoma.jpg
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/photo-gallery-getting-kookie-hooptie-con/
For that matter, you’ve been photographed parked on the lawn where that sort of thing was actually encouraged.
https://clunkbucket.com/wp-content/gallery/1980-kv-mini-1/img_3620.jpg
Yeah, but “parked under a tree somewhere on public land” is a commonly held opinion of where most of my cars should be found, not where they shouldn’t.
Antarctica.
In addition to 3 official cars, in the 1960s one of the crew took his own VW down, but it was lost in a sea ice incident so is still there. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13052cdabfe07cc3e712c1fd3c530ca7e9f3615dd34bfd9ffc0a81ee39c4cc8f.jpg
If only they’d left it painted black.
https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-SH338_0320ta_H_20120320151124.jpg
A Holden Ute at The Nurburgring.
Corvairs in the Darien Gap.
I live in a place that only has narrow, winding roads. Last week I bought a 2 ton representational limousine. Does that count? 😛
https://i.ibb.co/XSr01gp/IMG-20200512-112227.jpg
That is a magnficent badge, although it would be all the better if Hyundai offered otherwise identical “Medium” and “Low” quality alternatives.
StreetView updated now to 2018, and is showing the 944 in my driveway, under a lose tarp buffeting in the wind, just like everybody tells you it shouldn’t be done because the paint will scratch. It’s been like that only for two weeks, I swear!
https://www.lbcnews.co.uk/uk-news/bluesmobile-spotted-milton-keynes-plays-tunes/ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/467da88ee666c316863fbcda3b3d2ae22e7cfe980860cd8ceb5595438cc756bb.jpg
This bluesmobile is a car that can be hired in the UK. Recently it was spotted spreading good cheer in Milton Keynes, home of the Red Bull racing team.
https://www.lbcnews.co.uk/uk-news/bluesmobile-spotted-milton-keynes-plays-tunes/ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/467da88ee666c316863fbcda3b3d2ae22e7cfe980860cd8ceb5595438cc756bb.jpg
This bluesmobile is a car that can be hired in the UK. Recently it was spotted spreading good cheer in Milton Keynes, home of the Red Bull racing team.
When I was a doorman around 1990 a woman pulled up to the hotel in her Ford Sierra. Not a Merkur, but a RHD UK Ford. In Cincinnati Ohio. She was going to be in the states for several months and evidently it was cheaper to bring her car than rent one. Or, more likely, she just wanted to.
One has to wonder about the rationality of anyone who would go to all the trouble of driving a mundane UK-market sedan in the US.