Getting Really Weird

   There's a few quips and quotes that I've heard over the years in reference to my glorious, misspent youth; "The
'60's were weird. If you remember them, you were either too young or too old to truly live that era." The second one was, "If you thought the '60's were weird, the '70's were even more strange." I guess it depends on how old you were during those respective decades and what you might call "weird". When chatting with some older family relatives, some mention that the time frame between the late '60's and early '70's were the weirdest of years. Others state that both decades were somewhat unhinged, because societal norms as well as numerous other aspects of life changed so quickly that you needed a detailed score card to keep up. I think it finally depended on what your "norms" actually consisted of. For this post, we're going to define our weirdness quotient to the automotive realm. 

  

The first examples we'll look at when peering under the weirdness microscope, would be the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona (left) and the 1970 Plymouth Superbird (below). Without going into phenomenal detail about either limited production vehicle, their sole purpose was to dominate the race tracks of the NASCAR circuit - period, end of story. While both these vehicles are coveted by collectors today and carry insane price tags for purchasing, they were considered weird or odd by the public back in their day. The interesting part is, the Superbird has always been considered the weirder of the two. But why? This author believes that several factors came into play like production numbers, vehicle cost, novelty, and timing, even though both vehicles completely changed the course of racing history.

   When dealing with the Daytona, the production numbers required by NASCAR that a manufacturer had to build in order to qualify said vehicle for racing was 500 units. Depending on where you get your information from, the total number of Daytona's that were built hover around 503 or 505. Some sources say only 392 units were built and in fact, some cars were counted twice. In any case, the novelty of the vehicle was incredible. 

   Numerous performance car enthusiasts had seen off-the-wall show cars before, like Bill Cushenberry's Silhouette (below) or the made for

TV Monkey Mobile created by Dean Jeffries, but to have a domestic manufacturer build a car of the Daytona's nature and sell them to the public, was unheard of. The Superbird, on the other hand, for some reason, was a different story. NASCAR rules literally changed every year, especially when the winged wonders were being built. The revolving changes involved production numbers as well as safety and fairness concerns. Plymouth had to build almost 2,000 units in order to qualify the car for racing (two cars for every US dealership). The MSRP of the special bird started at over $700 more than the Daytona, which was a good deal of money back then. The insurance companies didn't help matters as they finally tuned into that owning a high-performance car was a greater risk, in both driving and theft. Regardless of the extra monetary problems, the novelty of the cars was wearing off in the public eye and many Superbirds sat unsold. Numerous dealerships converted the Superbird's back to regular Roadrunners or took huge sales losses just to get rid of inventory. To quote numerous dealership owners, "...the car was just too weird looking and too expensive."

   Speaking of show cars, one has to agree that concepts and vehicles took a totally left of center turn at the dawn of the '70's. While numerous show cars were considered futuristic back in the '60's, things got downright abnormal by 1970. Maybe people were running out of ideas - who knows. One of the weirdest show rods of all time, which is still in existence today, is the Bathtub Buggy. In an extreme exercise of dropping too many hits of LSD while designing it, the show car was initially built starting in 1968, but it didn't really hit the show circuit until the 1970 season. As the name suggests, the Bathtub Buggy is a hot rod that has twin bathtubs for passenger seats and, yes, a plush toilet throne for the driver’s seat. All porcelain surfaces are covered in velvet-like fabric in a very dated but still pretty cool yellow-ish  mustard, (depending on the light hits it), which matches the gold copper of all that extra “plumbing” perfectly. This show rod spawned other creations that followed like the Outhouse, but shortly afterwards, designs really calmed down in concept. Perhaps the acid was wearing off and everyone had a headache...

  

In the toy realm back then, weirdness wandered and followed into that industry like a little puppy. In my never ending quest to collect Hot Wheels toy cars, a new series from Mattel debuted in 1971 called Farbs. They were goofy as all get out, and in one case, a little politically incorrect by today's standards. Initially, there were four racing dudes, all with catchy names, that were part human, part hot rod. They all had engines attached to their bodies, had slightly silly faces, and one in particular called Miles Ahead, had the fuel tank sticking out his butt. It was actually between his legs, but us kids thought it was funnier the other way around. But hey - this was 1971 and it was hilarious. No harm ever came to a kid who purchased one. 

   Finally, we take a look at a toy model kit that actually had the term Weird-Oh in it's name. A very well known, extremely colorful, and eccentric artist and car designer named "Big Daddy" Ed Roth truly inspired these initial characters. The Hawk model company took it from there and specifically called them "car-icky-tures". Ed Roth became famous from building show cars of various themes, to creating the immortal Rat Fink character, as well as being the originator of the popular weirdo t-shirts and sweatshirts throughout the '60's, amongst other ventures. Unfortunately, he never trademarked or patented his designs and several companies took substantial liberties with very similar art work. One series that was hatched in 1964 was the Weird-Oh's model series that featured such off-the-wall characters as the Drag Hag, Digger, and Endsville Eddie. Hawk also released a glow-in-the-dark series of these same model kits by the late 60's. I was just starting to get into model kits of sorts by 1970 at the tender age of seven, although that phase didn't last very long. But one Weird-Oh model kit I wanted was "Davey; the Way Out Cyclist" - mainly because we shared the same name and I thought it was cool looking. He was a deranged looking monster on what looked like a Harley Davidson motorcycle. 

   My Mom said no and I kinda forgot about it after the initial bummer reaction wore off. She later told me that she thought the model kit would be a bad influence on me at some future point in my life. She tried, but the bad influences still crept in - like extremely fast muscle cars and hot rods as well as a bunch of other crazy shit. It still hasn't left my system yet. Oh well... and sorry Mom. 

Until next time, peace out. And it's more than okay to be weird.