Old Parked Cars: Unique Unusual But Great

Gargling Gas adores the battered and bruised, the old dogs that compare and brag about their scars, cars that have served a purpose and clocked up the miles rather than sat gleaming in garages.

Take Christine’s ugly sister above, for example, a car that has attended the ‘University Of Life’, a mechanical Stephen King that could bend your ears for hours about their road trips, owners, bumps and scrapes they’d been through.

Whilst I try and feature all the aspects I love about cars, this post may not resonate with every petrolhead, gearhead or car guy out there. To Gargling Gas, some cars possess character, charm and personality, no matter what their condition. I recently wrote a post on murdered-out cars that partly conveys why I am so passionate about the automobile.

Not many sites are purely dedicated to such a specific aspect about the car, but I stumbled across an amazing place called, Old Parked Cars, and this is exactly what it presents. It reminded me of a guy who published a book solely on atmospheric photos of parked cars, a book I posted about – check it out, Patrick Joust is very talented at capturing just what I’m whittling on about.

I’ve also previously mentioned the horror author, Stephen King on here. If you are aware of his work you’ll have probably detected his love of machines, trucks and cars. Whilst Joust manages to capture a cars’s presence on film, King does it wonderfully through words – I wrote a post on Evil and Cars and King crops up the most.

Actually, now that I’m coming to this post’s conclusion and can see all the highlighted links I’ve added, I’ve just realised I have no conclusion – what I’ve done is unconsciously pieced together a jigsaw of EXACTLY why I love cars – a bit of a long-winded way of doing doing it, I admit, so I apologise if you’ve stuck with it and questioned just what the hell I’ve been banging on about.

Do remember this though, “Because cars have feelings too…”

 

 

 

 

Video

Screaming Bloody Murder

This article was inspired by a youtube video I watched on my phone in bed at 5am this morning. Unlike most guys who may start their day in an entirely different way, I usually spend an hour or two watching car clips and videos. Now, I’ve always been into evil cars, way before the ‘murdered out’ look took hold, and by ‘took hold’, I mean all the celebs and the whole car wrapping deal.

Because of the ‘murdered out’ tag and fad, it seems I’m among a minority who actually understand what a true ‘murdered out’ car is. There are certain esoteric rules that have to be adhered to if a car is to be accepted into the’murdered out’ gang. First off, if your name is David Beckham or Justin – I can’t even get a speeding ticket in a Lambo – Bieber, then kindly f**k off. If you are a fan and think Beckham’s Porcshe or Bieber’s Caddy are ‘murdered out’, then I implore you to do the same.

Never mind the Porsche, just take a look at the car above – it’s a Cadillac CTS-V. It’s Cadillac’s fast and expensive warrior sent to challenge zi German’s AMG and ///M badges. It’s supposed to be a shiny and luxurious car, a hi-tech machine that can be turned into a track car at a touch of a button. The Matte black wrap is hideous – it’s like handing James Bond a shovel and asking him to dig a grave for the last person he shot.

Before I waste your time by trying to explain what these esoteric rules include, please check out the video below.

Enjoy? I did, no matter how early it was, and despite what other manly activities take place at this time in the morning, I could’ve done the same over this car.

A ‘murdered out’ car can’t be forced; it can’t be a new car wrapped in black. It has to have presence, a character, as though it could start up on its own and take a slow and ominous cruise around town – think Christine on fire and taking herself back to Darnell’s DIY garage, think of other movies such as, The Car, Duel and even Jeeper’s Creepers (notice the Caddy’s horn in the vid?). In fact, now I’ve mentioned Stephen King, I’ve just remembered a short story of his, Mile 81, a tale featuring a mud-covered station wagon (which was strange because there hadn’t been any rain in the area for over a week) that veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says “closed, no services.” The driver’s door opens but nobody gets out. This is the kind of eerie presence a true ‘murdered out’ car should possess.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a short clip that will give you another accurate idea of what a real murder car is all about – it’ll definitely put a smile on your face.

Plymouth Fury Cop Car
Video

Even The Christine Cop Car Is Bad To The Bone

The California Kid

The California Kid

We all love a good car chase/road movie, especially when the 5-0 get involved. It’s even better when the cops are bad, twisted and corrupt. When the cop’s car is a Plymouth Belvedere, a car very similar to Gargling Gas’ top movie car, Christine, I’m pretty much in police brutality heaven.

The poster above is for a 1974 movie about a psychotic town sheriff who finds his excitement in the desert by forcing speeders to their deaths.

Take Collie Entragian (pictured below), the possessed cop from Stephen King’s Desperation, and team him up with another of King’s creations, the 1958 Plymouth Fury from Christine and you have the foundation onto which The California Kid is built.

Collie Entragian Meets Christine

Collie Entragian Meets Christine

After a few unfortunate hot-rodders meet the maniacal Sheriff Roy Childress’ (Vic Morrow), Martin Sheen and his 1934 Ford make an appearance to try and end the cop’s evil ways.

A simple storyline, yet one made very cool by the choice of characters and cars.

Vic Morrow

Vic Morrow

At first glance, the Plymouth Belvedere looks a little odd wearing the colours of a patrol car, especially with the incongruous red lamp ruining the glorious lines and its overall sleekness. The thought of such a long and heavy car giving chase to a hotrod is rather amusing, too… until you watch it in action.

Plymouth Fury Cop Car

Plymouth Fury Cop Car

Check out the psycho cop and his Plymouth in the clip below and tell me how cool it looks as a cop car. I have also added the entire film below if you enjoy the clip.

Fifty Shades of Grey?

Nah, I think this Plymouth is way more erotic and bad.

Stephen King’s New Killer Car Is A Mercedes

king

Stephen King is my favourite horror author and such an inspiration I started writing and publishing my own fiction, actually managing to appear alongside some of my other favourite authors in various anthologies. If you’ve delved into the world of Stephen King, you’ll know he likes cars. Everyone knows his novel and movie adaption, Christine – the 1958 Plymouth Fury that could murder and heal itself.

Some other stories featuring cars include From a Buick 8, a strange car whose trunk is a portal to an H.P. Lovecraft world of weird leathery bat like creatures. Uncle Otto’s Truck is a superb short story in which a static truck manages to kill one last time. Maximum Overdrive tells the tale of what it would be like if all the big trucks in the world came alive and started rounding up and hunting humans – the movie adaption didn’t receive the best reviews, but I loved it and it’ll remain a guilty pleasure.

There are more, including Dolan’s Cadillac and Riding The Bullet (pic above), both adapted to film and both brilliant. I highly recommend watching them, or better still, reading them.

His latest novel hitting the shelves in early June is entitled Mr Mercedes. When I received news of this I could barely contain my excitement as I searched for more information on the plot – I wasn’t disappointed:

Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes. In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the perp; and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy. Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again.

I’m a fan of Mercedes and have owned an SLK 350, two W124s and one 190e sport. The old school Mercs were the best and I really hope the killer car is one of the older models – black, of course, with tinted windows.

This will no doubt make it to film, and I for one, can’t wait to see it repeatably run people down…

 

Evil And The Automobile

My favourite kind of films are road movies or movies in which cars are heavily featured, or better still, if the star is the car. The cream of the crop will be in the horror/crime genres, so with this in mind, it led me into thinking about which cars were evil and what types of cars evil drove. No Herbie The Love Bug here (although I was traumatised as a 6-year-old witnessing No. 53 trying to commit suicide off a bridge), just the dark and the mysterious, the evil and the damning.

I’ll start with my favourite Stephen King novel and movie, Christine. This ’58 Plymouth Fury wasn’t just cool, she was possessive over her owners, choosing love songs on her radio to serenade them. If anyone else came into their lives, Christine would kill them. You could take a metal bar to her or defecate on her dash, but that wouldn’t stop Christine; it would just make her mad enough for her to come looking for you. Despite sounding like a corny horror, the film does have more depth than most, although it doesn’t quite depict the relationship a kid has with his/her first car like the novel.

Okay, this movie falls into the corny category, although it is entertaining because the main star is an psychotic custom Lincoln. The movie’s tagline: Is it a phantom, a demon, or the Devil himself? pretty much sums up The Car and its storyline, but because I’m a car freak, I loved watching it take people out.

Drive Angry is worth watching just for Amber Heard and her murdered-out Charger. Despite being uber cool, the Dodge isn’t the evil one here. The story involves a father coming back from hell to prevent his daughter going with a Satanic cult who eventually want to sacrifice her child. However, he isn’t the only one who has come back, as he’s being pursued by a man in a suit who calls himself the Accountant. At the end of the movie the Accountant summons a ’57 Chevrolet One-Fifty from hell, the car the two of them go back in.

Another creation of Stephen King involves this superb ’55 Chevy Bel-Air in Sometimes They Come Back. This is another favourite of mine – it doesn’t get any cooler than dead greasers driving a fire-breathing black Chevy with flames on the side.

This Devil is easy on the eye in Bedazzled. Liz Hurley (Satan) drives this apt Lamborghini Diablo.

Yet another Stephen King adaption in Maximum Overdrive. This was given a bit of a bashing by the critics, but if you’ve read the short story, you’ll understand how hard it was to make the transition to film convincing. Trucks come to life and surround a gas station/diner full of terrified on-lookers. If you’re not into the whole “cars have feelings too” like me and Gargling Gas, then I’d give this miss.

hybrid

Although this article features the evil and the dead, I will include this next car as, although it’s an alien, it’s a nasty bit of kit. Super Hybrid is about a mysterious car that ends up in a Chicago police impound garage after a deadly traffic accident. The on-call mechanics discover the car has a mind of its own, and with its hundreds of horsepower, it starts killing people.

If I had to make a movie and feature a car I think the Devil would surf eBay for, I’d have to go for a slammed black ’66 Cadillac Deville.