With only 65,000 miles on the celebrity owned Town Car, it might just be a steal, but we're not ones to obsess over the celebrity factor of random rides. Actually, the price is sort of embarrassingly low. We hope a true Deluise fan steps up and makes a real offer. (H/T To Chad!)

[eBay Motors]

DeLuise first came to fame in the 1960s as "Dominick the Great" on The Dean Martin Show, but he is perhaps best remembered today (by us, anyway) for his role as split-personality oddball Victor Prinzim (aka Captain Chaos) in Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II, two movies near and dear to our hearts. Earlier, he had also appeared alongside Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit II, another movie with significance to any gearhead worth his salt.

DeLuise went on to act in a series of increasingly forgettable films in the 1980s and 1990s (A Troll In Central Park, anyone?) and spent several years memorably shilling for Ziploc bags. But we choose to remember him at his peak, racing across the country dressed in a garish superhero outfit yelling "dun dun DUNNNN!!!" Rest in peace, Dom.

Ken emailed us about his plight last night (see below), telling us he's dropped a Paypal link at the bottom of his website where you can donate a couple bucks that'll go towards paying for the huge overage we all caused by rabidly clicking through his pictures of the build process. Don't think this is us just passing the buck; we kind of helped get Ken into this situation by telling the story then getting the inside scoop later on, so we're going to pony up a couple bucks to help out too. Obviously we don't normally do this kind of thing, but in this situation its the least we can do.

Please don't take this the wrong way. I have given everything free to the world on my story and expected nothing in return, that was my intention. My website service on the other hand doesn't feel that way. I have been charged $957 this month over my normal $8. That would feed my family for a month. I will make this short. If the story pleased you and your readers please go back to www.kiengineering.com and I have placed a PayPal donation to offset the costs. Every little bit will help.

Thanks again
Ken Imhoff
aka Countach Guy

(Keep in mind, once the thing is road tuned, Ken is up for us taking a spin in the car!)

The Story
The time was 1985 and I was watching the movie Cannonball run. Yeah, you know the one with Farrah Fawcett and Adrienne Barbeau? 'That red car was a what?' I asked. A Lamborghini Countach. I was mesmerized. I spent the next five years figuring out how I was going to build one. The idea of buying something was out of the question — I was raised by a German perfectionist of a father who would quote, "I can't understand why anyone would buy something when they could make it" whenever the topic of buying something came up. He would say, "You have the skills, just build one". As things were starting to heat up with the Lamborghini, I got involved with a young lady and things started moving pretty quickly. When the topic of car finally came up, I told her 'I need to build this car and I hope it isn't going to be a problem.' She said 'I can't see how it would. I love you.' I figure I would test the waters and asked her if she had two grand for a ZF transaxle. I had a guy in CA with a Pantera ZF he wants to sell, but I was short on cash at the time.
Long story short, she lent me the money and we got married a year later just before we closed on a house with a 2 1/2 garage.

The idea to build the car in the basement is pretty simple really. I recalled back to my childhood again and remember my Dad's car projects always being put on hold during the winter because we couldn't afford to heat the one car garage. Sure I could heat my garage and do the work in there, but then my cars would have to sit in the driveway. I live in Wisconsin where winters seem to last six months out of the year, so that would be a long time with no place to put the daily drivers. This was going to be a long project and I figured the house had an unfinished basement with plenty of room and was heated anyway, what a perfect scenario. There would be no excuses not to work on the car right? Before I started off on the project, I had a neighborhood contractor take a look at it and he was confident I wasn't losing my mind. I will admit, the one thing I didn't think beforehand was how everything was going to either go down the stairs or go through a small basement window. There were times I wondered how well those 50 year old stairs were built, but thankfully I never did have an incident.

When I started the project, my wife would read in a recliner next to me but soon that faded. Even the dog left as soon as she did. I shouldn't pick on her though, she was very supportive coming down to see the latest part I had completed or asking "Sweetheart does this look right?" She seemed to always say the right thing and I always was always thankful for her outside point of view. Sometimes I would be way out there in la-la land and she would have to reel me back to reality. She had a level way of thinking I don't think I ever acquired.

At the beginning of the welding process I tried my hand at gas welding aluminum. Despite putting hours of practice in In ever quite got it. I tried everything. Cobalt glasses, flux and welding rod, I think I tried for six weeks but could never master it. I talked to an old timer about gas welding aluminum and all he would say was "Practice, practice, practice." His younger son, who was also in the family business pulled me aside and said "Buy a Tig machine and get it over with." The old man meanwhile mumbled something under his breath about "Always looking for the shortcut. Whatever happened to doing it right?" So with that advice in mind, I bought a Miller Syncrowave 250 a week later and never looked back. I did hear much later from the neighbors that they could tell when I was welding as it interfered with their TV antenna and picture.

I built a paint booth in the corner of the basement to prime a panel when needed. It worked really nice with a positive pressure blower forcing the fumes out a basement window. The neighborhood smelled like paint but my neighbors never complained, they would just move their cars to avoid the long distance overspray. I'm not quite sure how my wife put up with the paint smell that lingered in the house despite my best efforts. For those wondering, I choose not to color paint down there, after the mess I made priming and the fact that it wasn't all that clean to start. It was OK for priming but painting is another thing.

The project did end up costing a lot more than I ever thought it would — projects always seem to do that. You buy a 160MPH speedometer because that was the highest made at the time. You don't even get it out of the box and you see that they now make on that tops out at 180. Two units later I got a 200MPH... buying parts goes on like that until you end up with shelves of stuff you don't need and keep in mind, for a lot of this project, E-bay had not been invented yet. Speaking of the internet, if my project had started when the internet was available, I actually think it would have cost me a lot more. There are so many more options now right at your fingertips and I seem to have champagne tastes with beer money. I think I have 40K in my project without the equipment/tools I bought. I used to save every receipt until I started getting depressed at how much I was spending. Besides it could be held against me as spousal blackmail, so I eventually got rid of the evidence!

I remember the first time I started it. I filled the tank with racing gas, set the timing, and hit the start button — the engine exploded with life. Open headers in a basement, no matter how ready you are for it, will catch you off guard. I decided to not run it too long and made sure no one was home at the time. By the way, those carbon monoxide sensors really do work and you have to keep the windows open unless you want the sweet smell of racing gas lingering in your basement.

Actually getting the car out of the basement was pretty straight forward to be honest. I built a skid to put the car on — a trailer without wheels you might say. The rig is basically an angle iron frame designed to make it down into the basement to which I added 4 swivel casters to move the car to the opposite wall. We used an excavator to dig a ramp and then cut the block of the foundation out. We pushed the car to the opening, hooked it up to the excavator and pulled it out. Simple. I was like an expectant father watching it come through the wall. I was literally shaking and running the supposed plan over and over in my head. 'Have I overlooked anything? Is some of the wall going to fall on my work of seventeen years?...' The blankets I covered it with surely wouldn't stop that from happening, but I worried nonetheless, an it was in the end, worry for nothing. It went as smooth as something like this could. The neighbors started gathering around as it emerged, waiting for me to remove the blankets. It was like a artist unwrapping his masterpiece. I had never seen it in the light of day either. As the last blanket and car cover were removed I knew at that moment I had accomplished what I had dreamed about so many years ago and to see it sitting there in front of me was surreal. The whole process took two and a half hours and there it was, my Lamborghini safely in the garage. The next day we filled the hole in the basement with new block in no time it was good as new.

All that said, I couldn't have done this alone. A lot of people have helped me along the way. My wife and family that helped when things got rough. A close friend that would never let me give up even though at times I wanted to. I owe a great deal of gratitude to those people in my life.

The end of this story really wasn't about owning the car of my dreams, but the lessons I have learned, the people I have met, and the inner satisfaction knowing I built something piece by piece, each piece a new and different challenge and having it all come together. Paraphrasing an old cliche here, 'It wasn't the destination that was important, it was the journey along the way.'

Ken Imhoff

Tech info:

• All hand formed aluminum body representing a euro spec 1982 Countach LP5000S
• Real Lambo tailights, parking lights, windshield, badges
• All tube space frame
• Ford Cleveland Boss 351 (514hp@ 6800rpm) with a Probe 377C.I. stroker kit with
• Forged 11.75 comp. pistons H-beam rods
• .630 lift roller cam and Milodon gear drive
• Crower pushrods and S.S. roller rockers with S.S. HiFlow manley valves
• Ported and polished heads and Hall Pantera Weber manifold
• 48 IDA downdraft Webers built by Inglesse
• Canton 10 qt. trap-door road racing pan and oil cooler
• Twin Howe sprintcar aluminum radiators with 2400cfm puller fans
• ZF 5 speed transaxle with 4:10 gear
• 15lb. aluminum flywheel
• MSD box and billet dist.
• Tires rear Hooiser 25.0x13.0x16 front 23.5x12.0x16 slicks
• Wheels custom BBS rim shells with hand made center sections. 12x16 rear 10x16 front
• Brakes Wilwood Suprelite 4 piston calipers and 12"x1.25" rotors.
• Exhaust handmade 180deg. 2" S.S. headers, 3.5" collectors, 12" long x 3.5" racing muffers.
• Wilwood racing pedals/master cylinders/hyd. clutch.
• Pantera shifter and linkage
• Performance untested weight 2700lbs.

For those of you that don't know, Speed Zone was the third installment of the Cannonball Run series. And as you'd expect, it's terrible as an actual movie. The proper way to enjoy it is lying down on the floor in front of your TV, with assorted Hot Wheels to one side and some milk and cookies to the other. The movie is shamelessly ridiculous in all the best ways. But don't think it's a carbon copy of the first two Cannonball installments. Whereas the opening scenes of Run and Run II are identically cheesy, the opening of Speed Zone can actually stand on it's own merits. In this infamous scene, a trusty Lamborghini Countach is hotly pursued by the fuzz in their Dodge Diplomats. As opposed to the boring desert highways of the first two films; Speed Zone's chase is on windy country back roads. The Countach slides sideways on the loose dirt surface, as if it's enacting the hand-held 1:64 scale powerslides of boys everywhere. Then, to top it all off, the Lambo drives straight onto a pond and skims across the surface like a skipping stone. For me as a child, this was what ingrained the idea of what a Lamborghini or any other supercar is supposed to be: something rebellious, ridiculous, and rapid. Yes, I know some of the action shots are of a lowly Fiero-based kit rather than the genuine Italian article, but it was the '80s—people were more interested in spending money on blow than on movie props. Besides, every handsome star has a cheap lookalike stunt-double. Ok, I've said enough, just sit back and enjoy the awesome '80s soundtrack.

Most people automatically consider "James Bond" synonymous with "cool." It's easy to see why; he's got a license to kill, all the guns and gadgets the Her Majesty can afford, and he always delivers a witty punch line. And when it comes to iconic symbols that represent 007's character, Roger Moore's Lotus Esprit submarine is always near the top of the list, right up there with Sean Connery's Aston Martin DB5. Nowadays when we think of an Esprit, we imagine a very long-in-the-tooth model of late; but when The Spy That Loved Me came out, the Esprit was a fresh new model with a very modern image. So the Esprit was the perfect car to convince audiences that it could somehow transform into a fully-loaded submarine. Now, of course there was never an actual Esprit sub; just a series of different props and mock-ups. But that's all "movie magic," which is just fine. Let's pretend all those extra Q-branch goodies worked for real. Now ask yourself, are all those gadgets actually cool? or just very dorky? As you watch the chase scene, you're likely laughing. That's fine, except for you can't help but think that the people making the movie weren't making it with comedy as the primary goal. It's sort of the same feeling you get when watching the new Knight Rider: you laugh at the movie rather than with the movie.

So which do you like? The obscure b-movie hero? Or the blockbuster superstar?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

The ever-lovin' Herr Roy knows a thing or two about transcontinental control of incontinence in the service of swaths of ground covered in short amounts of time. He's harbored a friendly rivalry with both Richard Rawlings and the Collins Brothers since his first Gumball back in '03. And as a classic business-giver, Alex has laid down his call for third-party verification of the record (which, according to our conversation with Bullrun organizer Andy Duncan earlier today, there is ample evidence of). While refutations have been flying all morning, there are rumors of Rawlings appearing on Jay Leno tonight (which we heard from Bullrunners, but haven't been able to corroborate with our Tonight Show contact), and Andy insists that they "Definitely, definitely, definitely" went. If it all checks out, even given the distance between Darien, CT and Manhattan it sounds like they well-and-truly broke the Cannonball record from '79. Meanwhile, we're waiting for the exact mileage and a route map to see if there's any possible way that they outdrove the Diem/Turner US Express time from '83. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Did Rawlings and Collins Break the Transcontinental Record?; Texas Duo Claims to Have Broken 1979 Cannonball NYC to LA Run [Internal]

We've been on the phone all morning sorting out the veracity of Collins and Rawlings' stab at the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash Record. And frankly, it seems pretty legit to us. Collins and Rawlings are notably two of the fiercest competitors on the rallying scene. But there is another record, of thirty-two hours, seven minutes. While it seems as though Collins and Rawlings have legitimately smashed the Cannonball record of 32:51, the 32:07 record set by David Diem and Doug Turner during the 1983 running of the US Express (a successor race set up after Brock Yates shut down the Cannonball) hasn't exactly fallen. Why? Hit the jump for our reasoning, as well as the second part of Jay Riecke's challenge to the Transcontinental Texans.

The Dave Heinz/Dave Yarborough Jaguar XJ-S that set the 1979 race didn't leave from Manhattan, as previous Cannonballs (and the later US Express did); rather, (as commenter PatFromGundo noted) the Cannonballers departed from Darien, Connecticut. Factoring in getting out of Manhattan, we estimate a 25 minute penalty leaving Darien. Spinelli asserts it could be as tight as 15 minutes, but given the vagaries of traffic that particular morning, our NYC-area contingent is pretty comfortable with the 25 minute penalty. Which means that what Rawlings and Collins were actually dealing with was the 35:53 mark, set in 1975 by Rick Cline and Jack May in a Dino.

If the verification pans out, and according to Bullrun organizer Andy Duncan, it definitely will, Rawlings and Collins have definitely obliterated the Manhattan-to-Redondo run, and they likely outpaced Heinz and Yarborough. But there's a catch. The 1983 running of the US Express was run from Manhattan to Newport Beach, which is a longer distance than the shot to Redondo. The 10 Freeway is the main conduit from the east into Los Angeles. We're assuming that Rawlings and Collins cut across on the 10 and then took the 405 down to Redondo and then cut across to the Portofino, which is right off of PCH. In fact, pretty much any sensible route to Redondo includes the 405, even if it is a nightmarish road. From what we've been able to gather, it looks as if Rawlings and Collins ran just about 2,800 miles, vs. Heinz/Yarborough's 2855 miles.

Meanwhile, the route that Diem and Turner took in '83 spanned 2871.7. That gives Collins roughly 70-80 miles to cover in the space of eight minutes to equal the US Express record. The last time we checked, not even a V-12 Fezza with two seasoned drivers (as Rawlings and Collins are) could pull that off. The 550 Maranello has a top speed of 199mph. Which means — completely maxed out — they only could have covered about 26 miles in those eight minutes.

On the other hand, Rawlings and Collins now have the Ferrari loaded on a transporter headed for Miami in an attempt to cash in Riecke's chips. They now have to beat his RennTech 600CL. Jay and his co-pilot Byron were the second runner-up in last year's "Always First" awards, and the dudes are fast. We'll keep you posted.– Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Texas Duo Claims to Have Broken 1979 Cannonball NYC to LA Run [Internal]

NEW YORK TO LOS ANGELES, 31 HOURS 59 MINUTES [Bullrun2007.com]

Related:
All our 2007 Bullrun coverage [internal]

Cannonball Run Europe, one of the many high-profile road rally events making the world's idle rich just slightly less idle, is expanding to the US. The founders are inaugurating a new event in mid-2007 called the Great American Run. But more newsworthy than that is its confirmed partner in crime, as it were. That is, motorsports shop Saleen. The winner of the don't-call-it-a-race will receive one of 25 special-edition Saleen Mustangs to be built for the event. According to rally site GT Spirit, the cars — 11 of which have been sold to rally entrants — will be tuned to produce 600 hp. The cars reportedly do zero to 60 mph in under four seconds, with a top speed of 200 mph. They're no TransCom ambulance, but well, Jack Elam's no longer with us anyway. – Mike Spinelli

Unique Saleen Mustang for Cannonball Run winner [GT Spirit]

Related:
J.J., Where'd You Park the Ambulance? Cannonball to Return? [internal]

"Dandy" Dick Landy, one of the most innovative men in drag racing history, has died of kidney failure at the age of 69. Proprietor of Dick Landy Industries, Landy kicked the 1/4 mile onto its ear with what was the predecessor to the Funny Car, rocked early Pro Stock, built a flathead that was good for 300mph at Bonneville and constructed the 440 for what is undoubtedly the most famous ambulance of all time: the Yates/Needham/McClure/Chaos TransCon Medevac. Dick, you passed too soon, but thank you for everything you gave us. We at Jalopnik offer our deepest sympathies to the Landy family. – Davey G. Johnson

Veteran Mopar star "Dandy Dick" Landy dies [NHRA]

Related:
Noooo! In Memoriam: "Dyno Don" Nicholson, 1927-2006 [Internal]

Not only is there an extended scene of Jackie Chan's Starion crossing from San Pedro to Long Beach, but he then uses his afterburner to elude capture. It's a tossup between this car, Clarkson's infamous pseudo-rally car and Uncle Bumbeck's Battlecar Galactica as to which is the coolest Starion of them all. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
SUPER POTENTIAL! Older than Starion, Younger than Mitsubishi [Internal]

We actually haven't seen The Cannonball Run since we got back from our first road rally experience. Oddly enough, these clips, strung together by some high-minded altruist, remind us more of our time on the Bullrun than we thought they would. And we'd totally forgotten about Reynolds' line about the black Trans Am having already been done. Meanwhile, we wanna see Victor Muller dressed up as Captain Chaos. All he needs is an orange Peking-to-Paris Intercon-Medevac ambulance and a co-driver. We volunteer to regrow our 'stache.

Related:
Who Was Cannon Ball Baker? [Internal]

After retiring the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy dash, which famously terminated a bit above Pedro in Redondo Beach, Brock Yates launched the One Lap of America. Now, with renewed interest in point-to-point rallying due to the Gumball, the Bullrun, the Player's Run and the upcoming documentary about the 1983 US Express, which set a transcontinental record of 32 hours, 7 minutes, Yates is looking back to get in the game he invented. According to ForbesAutos, Yates may revive the Cannonball as early as this spring. Is that sound we hear Chuck Mallett sprinting to his garage? And will the Polizei take up the gauntlet Yates is about to throw down? Hang on, kids. It might get a bit bumpy.

Cannonball Comeback? [ForbesAutos]

Related:
More on the Cannonball Run [Internal]

Erwin G. "Cannon Ball" Baker was a legendary long-distance record setter in the first half of the last century who traversed the nascent roadways of the nation on what were essentially sponsorship dares from manufacturers. He later became NASCAR commissioner, and when the idea for a cross-country road race popped into Yates' mind in the '70s, the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash was born. (Yates claims not to know why he compounded Cannon Ball's sobriquet, at least that's how we remember the story.) The One Lap of America is an outgrowth of that, ostensibly legal, but offering a copious opportunities for mad hoonage along the way.

Erwin George Baker [Wikipedia]

Related:
More One Lap [Internal]

From the May/Final Issue of mph

Welcome Brock [note irony here]
In his first [and last] column for mph, the soul of automotive journalism, Brock "The Assassin" Yates, Tells Us How He Got Here

WARNING: Quit reading this immediately.What follows is a brief r sum of a wasted life spent hanging around automobiles. In the event you are tempted to travel a similar road—while resisting a thrilling career riding a desk as an accountant,computer geek,or tax analyst—I'm telling you, messing with cars is a dead end.

Look at me. Since about the time the printing press and the internal-combustion engine were invented, I got hooked on these machines. In high school I built a 1932 B Ford five-window coupe hot rod.Then my dad,who loved cars,bought an MG TF and a Jaguar XK120 roadster, in both of which I nearly killed myself.

Somehow,after a stint in the Navy, I began racing and writing,the former with Formula Juniors and the latter for a little California paper called Competition Press (now known as AutoWeek).From there it was a move to Manhattan where Car and Driver was based, to become managing editor (although I knew absolutely nothing about either managing or editing).

With it came racing, including a couple of seasons with the then-booming professional Trans-Am series. My best ride was a factory-supported Camaro that put me into the same fender-bashing fields as Parnelli Jones,Mark Donohue,Peter Revson,George Follmer, and a mob of other serious shoes. In that wild bunch I managed a few decent top-ten finishes and then went on to write a book,"Sunday Driver,"that somehow made the New York Times bestseller list.

Of course, the single black mark on my career was the creation of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in 1971—the infamous cross-country race,New York to L.A.—that led to five major motion pictures (including Cannonball Run,which I wrote) and several idiotic copies, both here and in Europe.

The big blast came when superstar driver Dan Gurney and I drove a Ferrari Daytona coast-to-coast in just under 36 hours.When asked how fast we went,Gurney told the L.A.Times,"We never exceeded 185 mph."That was true, in that the Daytona ran out of steam at 176 mph on I-10.

Other great rides in the Cannonball for me came twice in a Dodge Challenger,built by NASCAR pro Cotton Owens, that I still own and that will soon appear in these pages as we build a series of Cannonball Challenger replicas using old E-bodies but with 300C chassis and the new 6.1-liter Hemis.

Then there was the Dodge ambulance.The same ambulance used by Burt Reynolds,Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise,and Jack Elam in Cannonball Run. My beautiful wife,Pamela; movie director and stuntman Hal Needham; and an L.A.doctor named Lyell Royer used the actual vehicle (packed with a monster motor built by drag racer Dick Landy) in the Cannonball in March 1979.As luck would have it, the transmission blew up 50 miles short of the Redondo Beach finish.

But the Dodge was not only in the movie, it was also used as a chase vehicle when Needham attempted to break the land-speed record at Bonneville. While the Cannonball lives on (and you'll read more about the latest madness in these pages in the near future) the old ambulance remains a mystery.

Needham donated the legendary machine to a NASCAR wives' charity and now it has disappeared. Was it scrapped? Is it lying under a haystack in some North Carolina barn? Was it repainted and being used by somebody who has no idea of its value?

Trust me, based on the giant bucks being unloaded at the major classic-car auctions like Barrett-Jackson and Christie's, I would guess that the Cannonball ambulance is worth six—maybe seven—figures to a collector or museum if found.

That's your assignment: Go find the Cannonball Runambulance and roll in dough. It's gotta be out there someplace.

You were warned. Like I told you, reading this will mess up your brain. You're gonna need to find the ambulance.

Hey, we're so not getting paid by anyone to say this. Hell, we're barely getting paid by Denton. (God, it's a sad day when we have to say we didn't even get the idea from a press release.) But here's the deal: why not buy The Cannonball Run? It's raining in San Pedro this evening, and well, we can't imagine much better than curling up with a cute girl and Captain Chaos. That is, Captain Chaos onscreen, hot girl in our arms. Although Dom's kinda cuddly... Oh shit. We've been single far too long.

The Cannonball Run [Barnes & Noble]

Related:
Calling Captain Chaos: Errors in the Cannonball Run [Internal]

Could one of the greatest so-bad-it's- freaking- awesome films of all time actually have mistakes in it? So say the people at Movie Mistakes, claiming that there are a number of egregious errors in Dom DeLuise's finest hour, directed by Hal Needham and penned by Brock Yates (Hi Brock!). To wit: "JJ and Victor's ambulance's engine sounds are dubbed, and a few times you can hear the sound of shifting a manual transmission when the ambulance is shown to have an automatic." However, that can't be true. Dick Landy built that engine, and Dick Landy would never deceive us.

The Cannonball Run [Movie Mistakes]

Related:
German Police Thwart Europe's Cannonballers [Internal]