Unfortunately, "Chrysler New Yorker" only exists on four-track cassette tape, and my ol' Tascam Porta 01 died years ago. That means you don't get to hear that fine song, which thrilled dozens of Japanese college radio fans during the late 1980s. What you do get is the "music video" for the Murilee Arraiac song "Hajoi Hotai," which features the circa-1990 replacement of a 2-speed Powerglide with a junkyard Turbo Hydramatic 350 3-speed in a 1965 Impala. That's me with the Plumber Butt on the right left, and my friend ChunkyDeath on the right. Note ChunkyDeath's innovative "floor jack leg pump" maneuver.

Mr. Hansen is also the guy who sold a running '72 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 4.5 to a LeMons racer for 500 bucks, so that we might have a Roten Sau shoving those boring E30s and RX-7s into the perceptual background noise. OK, here's "710" for your dancing enjoyment:

This music video by Da Yoopers starts out with maddening slowness- as in first-year-film-student slow- but things pick up at about 1:00, so hang in there. It's worth it! Thanks to Texan_idiot25 for the tip.

The Porsche 924-based Rooster Juice team would seem to be in good shape for Arse Freeze-A-Palooza acceptance, based on the video you're about to watch. Even though I'm not exactly the biggest Weezer fan in the world (to put it mildly), I had to watch this beautiful little film several times, just to catch all the jokes. Good work, Rooster Juice... and I suspect you've made enough of an impression on the shadowy Emeryville cabal that chooses the winning entries that we'll be seeing you at Thunderhill this November.


While you're here, might as well watch some footage from the Official Judge Murilee GrilleCam™, which the members of the Police Brutality MN12 Lincoln were kind enough to install in their extremely fast (though not particularly reliable) race car:


Here's some video from the S.O.B. VW Golf, a team we hammered with 128 penalty laps in spite of their donation of sombreros to keep the LeMons Supreme Court cool in the South Carolina sun.

These ads may not be quite as punishingly 80s as the legendary Cocaine Factory Duster commercial, but they're up there with the rest of the 80s Car Ad contenders. Check out the special scooter, designed to fit in the back of the City!

I spent most of the mid-to-late 80s making regular OC-to-Bay-Area road trips, including a lengthy stretch in which I did that 430-mile drive every weekend to visit a what-the-hell-was-I-thinking long-distance girlfriend. Those trips usually involved packing up the cassette suitcase (remember those?) with a few dozen randomly selected 90-minute tapes, but I also made the occasional mix tape just for a particular drive. For the 1,200 mile road trip I wrapped up last night, I thought it would be fun to dig up the last few tapes from my much-purged cassette collection and play them on the Loneliest Road.

My car has a cassette deck, but I had never played a tape in it prior to this trip; in fact, I ditched the entire cassette medium at the exact moment at which it became possible to play MP3s in one's car. Would it work? I was also concerned that tapes that hadn't been played since Bill Clinton's first term might fall apart like an automatic transmission that spent 20 years sitting in the driveway. As it turned out, player and tapes worked fine

I didn't save many of my 80s road-mix tapes, but still have one from '86 and a couple from the early 90s. These song lists show what an unhip dweeb I am and always have been, when it comes to my chosen soundtrack for long-distance driving; while I might enjoy cranking up the Red Krayola or Psychic TV at home, I tend to want my thoughts unrattled by mentally demanding tunes during road-trip contemplation.

That's why I've got the admittedly lame "Walk On The Wild Side" instead of "Metal Machine Music" or "Sister Ray" for my Lou Reed choice on this Reagan Era tape. The Cheech & Chong routines are quite entertaining while driving.

The Orange Tape was one of my last-ever road-trip mix tapes, and it recycled much of the material from my earlier tapes; Wall Of Voodoo's "Ring Of Fire," Duane Eddy's "40 Miles Of Bad Road," and Sister Double Happiness' "Wheels A Spinnin'" made it onto more than one tape.

The song is Un temps pour tout off Vincent Delerm’s fourth studio album Quinze Chansons and the car is a one of those Citroëns from back when Citroën was still the weirdest and coolest mainstream carmaker in the world: a Citroën GS.

A GS Break to be specific, and contrary to what you might be thinking, this does not allude to its typical 70s French tendency for instant rusting but is simply the French term for station wagon.

Designed by Robert Opron—who did the swiveling headlights on the DS and followed on with that most gorgeous of French-Italian marriages, the Maserati-powered Citroën SM—the GS launched in 1970 in typical Citroën style: suspended by hydropneumatics, powered by air-cooled flat-four engines.

Realizing they could out-weird that, a 1973 version called the Birotor was launched with a—that’s right—birotor Wankel engine. The launch was perfectly timed to coincide with the 1973 oil crisis, resulting in a grand total of 847 units sold. The base GS was much more successful: by the time production wrapped up in 1986, Citroën had made 2.5 million of them.

And even though many have succumbed to the harsh mistress of oxygen, at least one is still on the road. It’s good to know. After watching this, it’s rather tempting to dress in stylishly offbeat clothes and spend all day doing nothing in particular, with strategically timed glasses of wine.

Photo Credit: kanonn/Flickr, dave_7/Flickr

Naturally, we'd like to see an American band based on a Fordson or IHC tractor. It could be the next big thing! Thanks to Novaload for the tip.

We're guessing by the lack of a steering wheel, the straight jacket and the fact the car's moving in the wrong direction, that Depeche Mode's trying to make some sort of metaphor for lacking control in your life and being a prisoner of circumstances. But we'd even go so far as to say driving in general works great for this, modern American roads and the laws that apply to them do their best to remove the decision-making process from drivers, turning us into a series of automatons abiding rather than thinking.

Just like Momma always used to say, "These hoes wanna fuck my car." We wonder if they meant it literally.

Catch the exclusive cameo from DJ Microsoft Sam. Hype Williams, you better watch your back.

[Youtube]

Like bacon with just about everything, music and cars are the perfect combination. As a kid we can remember riding our bike down the street to the local record store to pick up a copy of the Sammy Hagar, VOA cassette. We had a Sony tape cassette player hanging from the handlebars and blasted the volume on the ride back to the neighborhood, singing along to “I Can’t Drive 55.” We were cool like that. We didn’t know much about them, but we loved cars, and loved listening to music about driving. Commander Cody’s, “Hot Rod Lincoln” was one of our early favorites and when we got our first taste of road rage from The Offspring’s, “Bad Habit” – it was all over.

Songs written about cars or driving are always fun, but we wondered how many albums actually featured cars on their covers. There were definitely some interesting autoerotic album art over the years like Neil Young, Trans and The Cars, Heartbeat City, but we wanted to find more. We took a look at iTunes, pulled some photos from our friends at VWVortex and pulled a list of some of the greatest autoerotic inspired album art for you to sift through. Enjoy!

[via VWVortex]

Made by Honda as part of an upcoming advertising campaign, the road's incredibly out-of-tune rendition of "The William Tell Overture" (you might know it as the theme from The Lone Ranger) attracted tourists but annoyed locals to no end. Honda states that the road was tuned specifically to the tires and wheelbase of a Civic, so that may explain why it sounds so terrible in this video. We're thinking that the neighbors living about a half mile away and can't get to sleep at night from the racket really don't care to hear it at all. [CBS2, dailybreeze](Hat tip to Rene!)

• Cell phone use among teens while driving is 76%
• 57% admit to texting "sometimes" or to often reading or sending text messages while driving
• 93% of teens play loud music when they drive
• 48% admit they're easily distracted when friends are passengers
• 91% think they're good drivers
• 34% say they're friends are good drivers
• 97% have witnessed other teens take risks while driving

...you see, I'd put together a special Black Metal V8olvo Team Playlist, containing songs to inspire us as we wrenched our way to V8 Volvo Glory and leaning heavily towards Scandinavian black metal... but then a song from The Stooges' Raw Power came on and it was just perfect. Naturally, we had to listen to the whole album, over and over, for the rest of the day. Look at our intensity in the video above, our singularity of purpose. God help those other teams at Altamont, now that we've found the ideal Wrenching Album!

But that got me to thinking: sure, you've got your album that's ideal for a specific project (and when you're on a team full of guys who came of wrenchin' age over a 35-year-span, from the 60s through the 90s, the Stooges are one of the few bands that can really bridge all the generational boundaries), but what about overall favorites? For that matter, is the album even a relevant form these days? Let us blow off our work on this fine Friday morning, as we look busy for The Man while discussing this extremely important matter! I'll prime the pump with my personal Top Ten, and (though I readily admit that my musical taste isn't quite as cool as, say, Herr Johnson or Señor Lovermman) hope it provides sufficient inspiration to get all of you Project Car Hell vets to share your lists with us:

#10
Quincy Jones & Ray Charles: In The Heat Of The Night Soundtrack

This album, the soundtrack to the 1967 Sidney Poitier film, has just about everything you need for the full garage experience. Scary chase-through-haunted-woods themes, rough-edged blues, weird gospel, 60s bubblegum pop, even a supremely twisted country song (see above). You'll maintain your focus on all those little tiny carburetor bits as long this album blasts your garage.

#9
Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed

Words cannot describe how incredibly sick I am of the Stones (well, words can describe it, but it would take too many of them to do the job right) and just about all "classic rock," for that matter. Have you noticed how classic rock stations always play "Under My Thumb" every 10 minutes, to remind the Baby Boomers of a time when it was considered the height of cool to crush a proud woman's spirit- yeah, the good ol' days! Yet... Let It Bleed is a work of fucking genius when you put it on your duct-taped garage boombox, open your toolbox, contemplate the project in front of you, and follow the "THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD" advice printed on the album cover. Maybe the key to this album is that the band members were all hopeless junkies when it was recorded... which means it's not too late for their ancient, unspeakably rich asses to redeem themselves- come on lads, you owe it to the fans to pick up the needle again!

#8
The Residents: Stars & Hank Forever

Here's a good example of an album I only listen to when I'm working on a car project. I'm a big Residents fan, of course, but this album's profoundly twisted versions of John Philip Sousa marches mixed together with Hank Williams covers don't really sound right until I have a wrench in my hand.

#7
Dr. Dre: The Chronic

Yeah, every annoying 14-year-old wannabe rebel kid in every suburban cul-de-sac in America was playing this album over and fucking over for the entirety of the early 1990s, and we all got extremely tired of Snoop Doggy Dogg as the decade wore on... but that doesn't mean it isn't a great album for engine rebuilds. I once put together a Chevy 400 small-block with nothing but a cassette of The Chronic to keep me company, and I came to appreciate Dre's storytelling expertise more than ever after hearing it so many times (it's also good for inspiring some musing on the Nature Of The Album and what will happen once that form is completely outdated). Just don't get too heavy into the real chronic while this album plays, or you'll forget whether you torqued those head bolts or not.

#6
Various Artists: Repo Man Soundtrack

From the Iggy Pop intro to the Plugz' "Reel Ten," the 11 songs on this 1984 soundtrack album will have you in the mood to make a quick junkyard run to see if, truly, you find one in every car.

#5
Butthole Surfers: Hairway To Steven

Now, the Buttholes are my favorite band, period (something I have in common with Amy Carter), and I'm perfectly happy to listen to nothing but their stuff for any occasion. However, for the groove you need to get into for a transmission swap, this acoustic-guitar-dominated 1988 masterpiece keeps you focused much better than, say, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac.

#4
Butthole Surfers: Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac

Focus? Who the hell cares? Yeah, you'll be forgetting where you set that goddamn 9/16" deep socket by the time "Concubine" is finished, and you'll be on your way to the liquor store for another 12-pack after "Cowboy Bob" finishes its work inside your dome, but that's fine. Great wrenching album.

#3
Hank Williams: The Original Singles Collection

OK, this isn't really an album, in the sense that the artist put the songs together in the order in which you'll hear them, but Hank Senior died before the album-as-we-know-it existed. There's nothing like some real country music (not that other kind- you know what I'm talking about) for working on your car; you'll feel like you're hauling the engine out of Junior Johnson's moonshine-running '54 Ford using a rope over a tree limb as a hoist, even when performing just a simple oil change. Now I'm regretting not having made this a Top 20 list- where's the Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and all the others? Damn!

#2
The Atomic Bitchwax: Spit Blood

Here's the one band that carries over to the Ten Best Driving Albums list, though I prefer Spit Blood to their first album. You know the lead mechanic from the oil-refinery compound in The Road Warrior? You will become that man, complete with the ability to fix a bullet-riddled diesel truck with the Lord Humungus' army circling outside the walls, if you listen to this album while working on your car. This one's another big favorite for the Black Metal V8olvo crew.

#1
Psychic TV: Temporary Temple

No, really. I got past my Young Urban Nihilist phase while Reagan was still in office, so Psychic TV gets scant play in my everyday life these days... but I make an exception when I'm heading out for some serious Hell Project action. Temporary Temple is an EP-only release of a 1984 live performance, and its clangs, shrieks, groans, and general Nihilismo Garage air are ideally suited for whatever project I happen to have before me. This one is pretty tough to find (no way was it going to be on YouTube), but worth the search.

Well, there's my list. Where's yours? It's Friday- you gonna let The Man tell you how to spend your morning?

In Waits' song "Romeo Is Bleeding" (see above), we get the lines:

Well it was just another night,
but now they're huddled in the brake lights of a 58 Bel Air
and listenin' to how Romeo killed a sheriff with his knife.

The condition of the 1958 Chevrolet in question isn't stated in the song, but it very well could have looked just like this '58 Bel Air 2-door, available for just $1,500 (and a trip to Alaska). It needs "some metal work" (iron + oxygen = fun), but it's reasonably complete and even comes with a 283/Powerglide combo sitting nearby.



But maybe you're looking for a somewhat more sporty project. Perhaps a car that gets a shout-out in Waits' excellent "Gun Street Girl" (see above) is a better fit for your lifestyle:

He took a hundred dollars off a slaughterhouse joe
Brought a brand new michigan twenty-gauge
He got all liquored up on that road house corn
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette
A hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette

There's no birdshot damage on the hood of this yellow '87 Corvette, and in fact it doesn't look bad at all... in the four not-very-illustrative photos we get in the listing. The seller claims this $3,700 Vette "runs and drives great," but the smog-check problems aren't so encouraging. But come on- a running Corvette for under four grand?

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

Made up of 26 bagpipers and drummers, the band hasn't had a hit since 1972 when their cover of "Amazing Grace" rocked the glen. But now that the queen's on board we're sure that's to change. A source close to the queen said "The queen loves to relax to the band's music, especially when she is being driven to her royal engagements." God Save the Queen! [M&C]

Remember these things? My friend (and future brother-in-law) Jim and I lived in San Francisco at the time, and a CD player in one's vehicle becomes a crucial part of the [rock-through-window + prybar on dash = exchange CD player for 20 minutes worth of crack high at UN Plaza] equation.


So if you want tunes in your SF car, you want a crappy, not-worth-stealing junkyard cassette deck, in this case a mid-80s Subaru separate-radio-and-cassette combo, with a high-tech plywood mounting system. So, in April of '95, each of us found ourselves with a few weeks between jobs and friends all over the country we hadn't visited for a long time. So we figured we'd just drive to see them and see the country- mostly from secondary highways- in between visits.

Here's the obligatory "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" photograph... I wonder how many of these have been shot over the years? But getting ahead of my story here... our destination cities were Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, New York City, Chapel Hill, and Atlanta, and if we decided to crash out between cities we'd just set up tents and build a fire at a campground. It worked great- we had a complete set of cooking gear, so there was never any need to eat fast food, and even the stretch where we drove nonstop all the way across the widest part of Texas was low-stress (although driving across Oklahoma the day after the OKC Federal Building bombing, at a time when the suspects were being announced as "two white men in a pickup truck," was a nail-biter, and before that we had an unfortunate incident with the South Dakota Highway Patrol that involved a lengthy search by lawmen convinced California plates = guns and drugs in the vehicle- they were so sure we were packing 100 pounds of Black Tar and a 20mm antiaircraft cannon that they put us in the Crown Vic's back seat immediately. Imagine their disappointment when we turned out to be clean!).


Here's the truck as it looks today: 250,000 miles and has never required a serious repair. It's still on the original clutch. Say what you will about Toyota's contribution to the Boredom Era of forgettable automotive design, but their 80s pickups may be the most reliable vehicles ever manufactured.


Right. So, the tape. Prior to the trip, I made about ten 90-minute mix tapes, each with the same label design and color-coded according to its intended purpose. For example, the Red Tape was to be played when we were getting tired 18 hours into a stretch of driving; it started with Faith No More's "Surprise! You're Dead," then went to Oingo Boingo's "Cry of the Vatos" and Fear's "Let's Have A War." The Blue Tape was, of course, entirely scratchy 1930s country blues with Death Row, hookworms, and sharecropper's shacks as the subject matter. The Gray Tape was all Tom Waits. And so on. Each tape had artwork featuring my '65 Impala driving into a nuclear sunset, done in my early Photoshop days and printed on a dot-matrix printer (a what?).


The Orange Tape, however, ended up being what we listened to most of the time, and we started writing the date we entered each new state on the back side of its label. It was intended to be sort of the all-purpose tape, not too nerve-wracking yet also non-soporific, with a semi-road-trippy theme (hence "Radar Love" and "Back In The USA," "On The Road Again" etc.). At each stop, we'd play the Orange Tape for our friends and they'd demand a copy. Since then, the Legend of the Orange Tape has spread in our social circles; I still get requests to burn CDs with these songs. They're not the greatest songs ever recorded (although I do think that the Sister Double Happiness song might belong on that list), I've outgrown some of them since I made the tape, and they don't exactly paint us as super-hip connoisseurs of edgy music. But they work great for serious long-distance driving.

Remember, no irony is permitted with second-gen Camaros, which means no punk stuff makes the cut (though we realize Joan Jett edges into punk territory, the song we present here comes straight from her inner Camaro driver and thus qualifies). Since the pinnacle of second-gen-F-body-ness was reached when they were new enough to be common, yet old enough to be cheap, we're focusing on the mid-70s to mid-80s here. We're drawing from a pool of songs you might hear in a 12-year-old '75 Z/28, with a 406, B&M Megashifter, Holley double-pumper, and plywood over the rust holes in the trunk floor. Feel free to make your own suggestions, though links to some means of hearing your preferred Second Generation Camaro Anthem are appreciated.