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Motor Trend
6 days ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
1966 Shelby 427 Cobra vs. 1972 Ferrari Daytona Spyder: Gumball Rally Revisited
[This article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of MotorTrend Classic] Given the giddy brew that comprises 1976's 'The Gumball Rally'—dream cars in an illegal race from New York to California (all for glory and a gumball machine), authentic high-speed zooming and vrooming, plenty of anti-establishment gags, plus a steady stream of spectacular stunts and pulchritudinous ladies in shrink-wrapped attire—it's a wonder the movie didn't sweep the Academy Awards. But Gumball took home not a single golden statuette. (In an obvious anti-auto conspiracy, also winning nothing was that year's other big car picture, 'Taxi Driver.') The New York Times, probably put off by Gumball's lack of subtitles, called it 'nothing but one long exhaust pipe.' 0:00 / 0:00 Hel-loooo? We've carefully watched all the big Oscar honorees for 1976—films like 'Network' and 'All the President's Men'—and haven't found a single scene involving a Ferrari Daytona Spyder or a Shelby 427 Cobra. And therein lies the guilty pleasure of 'The Gumball Rally.' For auto aficionados in the Seventies, watching Gumball was like spending 107 minutes inside Willy Wonka's Cheater Slick Factory. After all, owning a car in late-1970s America was a lot like being locked in your room by your parents—without the dirty magazines hidden under your bed. There seemed no end to the things we couldn't do. We couldn't drive over 55 mph—not without Fuzzbusters, anyway. We couldn't buy gas without a reservation. We couldn't own high-horsepower cars without feeling the static cling of Jimmy Carter's cardigan sweater. We couldn't even turn on the car radio, because the Bay City Rollers or Barry Manilow might be on it. Then the first reel rolled on 'The Gumball Rally,' and within 15 minutes the cast had raised a prerace toast that swept aside all societal fouled plugs: 'To internal combustion. And wind in the face.' Okay, 'Macbeth' it isn't. But Gumball fairly glistens with breath-snatching wheels: the sensuous Ferrari, the bulging Cobra, a black Porsche 911, a hopped-up Camaro, a vintage Mercedes 300SL roadster, a Rolls-Royce worth an astronomical '$40,000.' The dialog boasts a few 'Casablanca'-caliber gems, too, including perhaps the most immortal line in car-movie history—when Italian race champ Franco (the late Raul Julia) yanks the rearview mirror off the Ferrari as he declares to teammate Smitty (the late Tim McIntire): 'And now, my friend, the first rule of Italian driving: What's behind me is not important.' Above all, Gumball took our catalyst-choked, fuel-shortaged souls along on a vicarious thrill ride in which the only rule was 'there are no rules.' Who among us hasn't dreamt of doing naughty things with a Porsche right through midtown Manhattan? Who hasn't fantasized about outrunning a police helicopter in a Ferrari that 'must be doing 180 mph'? And who didn't go envy green over the classic, climactic duel between Franco's Daytona and the Cobra of Michael Bannon (Michael Sarrazin) down the semi-dry L.A. River to the finish line at the Queen Mary in Long Beach? Do the pictures on these pages look familiar? They should. That's the same L.A. River you see in Gumball, and those are the actual two cars that appeared in the movie (we look exactly like Sarrazin and Julia, too—at least if you're reading this while seated on a paint shaker). Drive the actual Gumball Rally cars? Who said youthful fantasies never come true? Enthusiasts will recall, of course, that the idea for an illegal cross-country race was hardly original. 'My agent sent me a clipping from the Los Angeles Times about this race from New York to L.A.,' says Chuck Bail, 70, Gumball's producer and director. 'And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, 'What a great idea for a comedy.'' Not finding the idea quite so amusing, though, was then-Car and Driver writer Brock Yates, whose notorious Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash was the illegal race in question and who had plans for his own movie version. 'I was furious about it. Really pissed off,' Yates said. Yet Gumball rolled on. 'I picked every car in the movie,' Bail says. 'The studio tried to force me to use star actors, but my feeling was, the cars are the stars.' Then Bail laughs. 'Also, I wanted to keep the budget down!' Bail remembers the first time he met his 'Franco Bertollini.' 'My agent said, 'You've got to meet this guy, Raul Julia.' And I said, 'I need an Italian!' But unbeknownst to me, Raul had already been prepped on the part. So he auditioned and he was just so Italian, so wonderful. But of course he was a New Yorker. He couldn't drive!' Bail had more difficulty finding his 'Michael Bannon.' 'Finally the studio president said, 'How about Michael Sarrazin?' And I said 'fine,' 'cause we started shooting in three days! But I gotta tell you, Michael was a wonderful choice. While we were filming, though, so many people thought he was Peter Fonda. Used to drive him nuts!' 'Michael was an even worse driver than Raul Julia!' laughs Linda Vaughn, the omnipresent motorsport beauty queen who appears in Gumball as the dishy 'Emergency Plan Alpha' to distract the amorous Franco from the finish line. 'Raul was such fun. I brought my Ferrari 246 to the set to show him how to shift gears, and I think it made Michael jealous—he wanted to go out with me. But the man could not even drive the Cobra! Raul got the hang of it. I was so impressed with how he handled himself. I still have the silk scarf he wears in the movie.' For his four-wheeled stars, Bail had backups. 'We had two of everything,' he says. 'You don't dare do a movie with just one of each car.' Bail's vehicular Noah's Ark included two authentic Cobras (plus one replica that appeared on screen briefly) and two authentic Daytona Spyders. The Cobra you see here, serial number CSX3255, is one of the two genuine cars; both were painted Guardsman Blue during the filming (CSX3255 has since been restored, repainted in red, and fitted with a new hood that lacks a scoop). While shooting, one of the two Cobras (it's unclear which) suffered nose damage during a crash into the L.A. River's concrete wall, forcing Bail to finish filming with the second car (look closely near the movie's end, and you can see the Cobra switch from damaged to undamaged and back again). Like the other film Cobra—CSX3243—the red car is now in private hands in California (see 'Ask the Man Who Owns One'). Gumball also used two genuine Ferrari Daytona Spyders. 'My stuntmen got to dicing with each other while we were filming the night race in Arizona between the Ferrari and the Cobra,' Bail says, 'and the Ferrari driver went off. Totaled the Daytona—and a Panavision camera. Somehow they found me another car in Scottsdale, and I wrote a check for $35,000 so I could finish shooting. At the end of the movie, the studio reimbursed my $35K. Can you believe it? I should've kept the damn car!' The Spyder you see here, serial number 14829, graciously loaned to us from its permanent home at L.A.'s Petersen Automotive Museum ( is likely the second car. According to the best available information, the wrecked Spyder, serial number 16467, was rebuilt, 'crashed' on screen by Kris Kristofferson in 1976's 'A Star Is Born,' and then converted into a 'NART Spyder' (however, one of 14829's earlier owners, former Ferrari racer and repair-shop owner Joseph Crevier, claims his was the Ferrari that appeared in both Gumball and 'A Star is Born'). Eventually, 14829 joined the collection of Noel and Mel (the voice of Bugs Bunny) Blanc before moving to the Petersen seven years ago. Since Gumball, 14829 has been restored and repainted, including new cockpit trim by famed interior specialist Tony Nancy. Both cars are gorgeous. Looking at the two of them side by side on the concrete of the L.A. River, just as they appeared in 'The Gumball Rally,' adolescent memories come flooding back. Why, we drooled over these very machines three decades ago. It's like climbing aboard a time machine and spending a day in 1976 with Farrah Fawcett and Lynda Carter—except the cars won't smack you if you put on a Barry White album. Unexpected for an exotic of its vintage, the Ferrari is a polished jewel (on reflection, perhaps that isn't surprising; this being the model that in the premiere issue of Motor Trend Classic our expert panelists ranked number two on the list of greatest-ever Ferraris). The engine starts easily, the five-speed slots gracefully through the pattern, and the steering quickly shrugs off an initial heaviness to become, as speed builds, quite light and fluid. The four-cam, 4.4-liter V-12 revs like a turbine, and the horses awaken smartly as the tach climbs. Beyond 5000 rpm or so, all 352 of them are racing hard for the 7500-rpm redline, emitting a howl that makes grown men weak in the knees and teenage boys stand in line to watch car movies. Franco and Smitty chose well—you can feel the Ferrari's long legs, its comfort with speed. For an illegal dash across the country, the Daytona would make a brilliant accomplice (and, in fact, in 1971 a Daytona coupe carried Brock Yates and racing legend Dan Gurney to a win in the Cannonball, averaging 80 mph over nearly 2900 miles and once reaching 176 mph). Gun this beauty through the gears, listen to it sing the high notes, and you can only smile and say, as Franco would, 'She is happy.' If the Ferrari is from Venus, the Shelby 427 Cobra is a beast from Mars. Climb aboard the Cobra, and you're tying yourself onto a rodeo bull—hell, this thing might even kick you if you try to climb back out. Twist the ignition, and the race-bred 7.0-liter big-block V-8 crackles and shudders, the flimsy aluminum body quivers like an overgrown Chihuahua, and soon your toes are slow-roasting against the firewall. You're still in neutral. The four-speed shifter juts out of the floor like a crooked cactus but finding the gear notches is effortless. Press in the clutch pedal (precursor to the Nautilus calf machine), tickle the throttle, and…sorry. We unintentionally clenched shut every bodily orifice just remembering how the Cobra charges off the line. All the acceleration clichés come to mind: aircraft-carrier catapults, NASA rockets, teenage girls catching sight of Leonardo DiCaprio. Driving this thing across the country would be pure masochism, but, man, even after four decades the Cobra has lost none of its famed bite. There's so much torque you can start off in fourth gear if you want. Put it in first, and it'd humiliate almost anything made today (it feels way quicker than the 5.3-second 0-to-60 time we recorded on skinnier tires—and with two aboard—in 1966). Legend has it that the Cobra could rocket from 0 to 100 and back to 0 in under 14 seconds—and from the way this one crushed our eyeballs, we believe it. Which car wins our Gumball Rally rematch? Without Emergency Plan Alpha on hand to bust loose a clear victor, we're happy to call it a draw, a question of taste—the Ferrari's Toscanini virtuosity versus the Cobra's shattering heavy metal. Besides, as Franco says in Gumball when yet another young lovely diverts his attention, 'Some things are more important than winning.' 1972 Ferrari 365GTS/4 Daytona Spyder Expect to Pay: Concours ready: $750,000 (perhaps $800,000 or more with Hollywood connection); solid driver: $600,000; tired runner: $500,000 Join The Club: Ferrari Club of America; Our Take Then: 'The Daytona Spyder will provide all the thrills a sane man could want and do it with full security at a level where lesser machinery might feel as though it were reaching escape velocity.'—Chuck Queener, Motor Trend, December 1971. Now: As scene-stealing as it ever was. And rare to boot: This car is one of only about 120 genuine Daytona Spyders built from 1969 through 1974 (thanks to abundant coupe-to-convertible conversions since then, of those original Spyders about 250 exist today). Still feels seriously fast, still feels robust. We'd gladly take one on a cross-country race tomorrow. Currently in the collection of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles ( 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra Ask The Man Who Owns One The Cobra's owner, a businessman and attorney in California's central valley who prefers not to be identified, says he didn't learn his car was used in 'The Gumball Rally' until after he bought it in 2002. 'It was a nice surprise,' he says, 'but really I'd always just wanted a Cobra. I used to own a replica, but when I had enough money I started looking for an original.' Why He Likes It: 'Running through the gears! I probably put 300 to 400 miles a year on the car driving it through the twisties. I've had it up to about 140 mph. But the handling is pure 1966. I can't imagine how anyone raced these cars on a road course.' Why It's Collectible: Shelby built only 348 427 Cobras (including 21 competition cars) from 1965 to 1967. Without question, the baddest automobile of the 1960s—it's a dream for many enthusiasts just to see one. Restoring/Maintaining: 'I have my Cobra maintained by a very talented guy named Brian Frick,' says the owner. 'When I bought the car it had already been restored, so I really haven't had to do anything major to it.' Expect To Pay: Concours ready: $700,000; solid driver: $550,000; tired runner: $400,000 Join The Club: Shelby American Automobile Club; Our Take Then: 'Although amazingly tractable and untemperamental for such a powerful machine, this is clearly not a car for everyone. If you want to pretend that every stop light is the grid at Nürburgring or every freeway the Mulsanne straight, forget it. You can't afford the tickets.'—Bob Schilling, MT, September 1966. Now: Still one of the most visceral and exciting rides ever put on four wheels. Fast, loud, unabashedly primal. Might want to go on a low-residue diet before you start it up.
Motor Trend
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
Driving Black Beauty, The Green Hornet's Special '66 Chrysler Imperial
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of MotorTrend Classic With trumpeter Al Hirt's manic rendition of 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' blaring in the background, thus began each episode of 'The Green Hornet,' the comic-book and radio show-inspired TV series of good versus evil that aired in 1966 and '67 on ABC. Comparisons with Batman and his sidekick, Robin (on the air, and immensely popular, during the same era), are inevitable. In fact, the four crimefighters appeared in a few episodes together—search YouTube. 'The Green Hornet's' scripts were a little more believable, with more typical thug/criminal-type characters instead of Batman's fun but caricaturish villains: Catwoman, the Joker, Mr. Freeze, and the like. Popular American actor Van Williams was cast as newspaper publisher Britt Reid, with the then-relatively unknown American-born Chinese actor and martial arts master Bruce Lee as Kato, his aide, sidekick, and chauffeur. Dean Jeffries, who already had considerable experience working with film and television studios, remembers receiving an early 1966 call from 20th Century Fox executive producer Bill Dozier asking for thoughts and design concepts for a Chrysler Imperial to suit the Green Hornet. 'They wanted something cool and smooth-looking, kind of a sporty limousine,' recalls Jeffries. 'And, of course, it had to have all sorts of capabilities: rockets and other weaponry, a flying saucer-like scanner that deployed from the rear deck (the feed from which could be watched on a TV monitor inside the car), rotating license plates, and green headlights that only the Hornet and Kato could see.' Jeffries sketched out his ideas, and the studio signed off with few changes. Chrysler provided many of the cars for the series, including Reid's unmodified 1965 Chrysler 300 convertible. Chrysler brought Jeffries a new black '66 Imperial Crown sedan, and he attacked the body with a vengeance. Off came the chrome bumpers, as Jeffries fabricated and hammer-welded in new metal that made all the bumperlines disappear. In typical custom-car fashion, he shaved off the door handles, replacing them with recessed electric solenoid switches. To give the car a more limo-like look without actually using a limo or stretching the Imperial's stock wheelbase or length (not enough time or budget money to do so), Jeffries extended the rear roofline, making the sail panels much longer. He also built in small flip-open gunports in the rear panel, next to the stock rear window. The front visage was reconfigured entirely, with a new hand-fabricated grille and rotating headlight clusters that flipped between conventional square white light clusters and the four eerie, green headlights the car used when on the prowl at night. The rear deck was also refashioned to incorporate new taillights that Jeffries cut and formed out of red plastic. Appliance Wheel provided the wide, finned, semi-spoked alloy mags. The rear and side windows were tinted nearly black. The rear-passenger compartment was reconfigured to meet the Green Hornet's special needs, including a wardrobe cupboard for his mask, hat, and trenchcoat. Kato always drove, and the Hornet rode in back, with the two separated by a partition. Jeffries built several consoles to house a telephone (long before the day of cellular communications, it was just a conventional, inoperable household 'princess phone') and all switchgear for the other weaponry, which was considerable. Panels just below the headlights opened to expose an armory's worth of rockets. Additional rockets could be fired from the rear bumper area. A pair of brooms mounted in the trunk could be deployed behind the rear wheels, ostensibly to whisk away tire tracks should the Hornet be pursued on a dirt road. Retractable 'guns' could be deployed at the front and rear of the car to lay down a smoke screen—a twist perhaps inspired by James Bond's Aston Martin DB5. Jeffries and his few helpers fashioned all the trick weaponry. 'I just drew it on paper and then built it myself.' Jeffries didn't feel that standard-duty off-the-shelf industrial hydraulic rams, motors, screwjacks, and such would be reliable enough given the hard life led by television stunt cars, so he built most of the goodies using 24-volt military surplus hardware. 'I thought, if it had to be reliable enough to work on a fighter plane or a helicopter, it should be tough enough for a TV car.' Running the motors on 12 volts slowed them down enough for the controlled deployment he desired. 'I didn't want the concealment panels to snap open and break. They had to open slowly and smoothly.' Which they did, and still do. The Imperial's 350-horsepower, 440-cubic-inch V-8 was judged to have enough gumption to do the job, so it was left stock, as were the factory three-speed automatic transmission and the suspension. (Jeffries might have installed heavy-duty shocks to deal with the extra poundage of all the wiring and defense hardware.) Jeffries never weighed the Black Beauty, but figures all the extra metal and electric hardware easily added 1000 pounds to the standard Imperial's 2.5-ton curb weight. One bit of TV magic that's especially cool: Reid's everyday Chrysler convertible sat in the garage atop a turntable, but not one that rotated horizontally or turned the car around nose for tail. Instead, the special turntable flipped top to bottom, like heads or tails, the theory being that the Black Beauty hung upside-down just beneath the 300 ragtop. Reid and Kato's routine was nearly the same in every episode. They entered the 'hornet's hive' through a secret panel in the closet of Reid's bedroom, then followed a narrow passageway built within the walls of Reid's playboy pad. The hallway led to an adjoining building that was supposedly abandoned. Kato fiddled with some buttons on the wall, and the turntable flipped over, hanging Reid's Chrysler upside down and revealing the Beauty, ready for battle. Each car had retractable rams that extended from the bumpers, while hydraulic brackets with clamps popped out of the turntable's floor in order to hold the hidden car upside down. For the cameras, the studio crafted small-scale models of each car and built the garage and turntable in scale, so the trick turntable flip and car swap could be shot in miniature. Dressed in their crime-fighting garb, the duo fired up the Beauty. The Hornet went through a brief quality-assurance sequence to ensure all their gear was ready for action—Hornet: 'Check the scanner.' Kato: 'Check.' Hornet: 'Hornet Gun.' 'Check.' 'Hornet Sting.' 'Check.'—before uttering the simple, magical command that ignited the mayhem: 'Let's roll, Kato.' Jeffries built two original Black Beauties, although several (none too accurate) clones and copies have been built since. Both cars appeared together once, chasing each other, in a Green Hornet episode bizarrely titled 'Corpse of the Year.' Our feature car (referred to as Beauty One) was the first built and has all the functional trick hardware. It's the car seen in most of the TV episodes. It wears a plaque on the dashboard that says, 'Designed and built by Dean Jeffries. This 1966 Chrysler Imperial was customized for the TV series Green Hornet in 1966. This vehicle 'The Black Beauty' is the only vehicle used throughout the filming of the TV series. A second Green Hornet Black Beauty was built by Dean Jeffries for car shows and was used in one of the TV shows. It is no longer original. This Black Beauty car was completely restored by Dean Jeffries in December, 1993.' 'The Green Hornet' TV series lasted but one season, with 26 episodes aired. (There was a feature film version in 1974). If nothing else, the series launched the stratospheric career of Bruce Lee as the world's premier martial artist/actor. Van Williams went on to appear in a variety of character movie and TV roles. The Black Beauty, unfortunately, was put out to pasture on a studio backlot, viewed as little more than an old prop from a canceled show. The car baked in the sun, deteriorating badly. A woman living in Santa Monica, California, purchased it but never restored or drove it. It ended up in the ownership of one J.R. Goodman, who returned it to Jeffries for the complete 1993 restoration mentioned above. Jeffries is understandably proud of the Black Beauty. He feels the design hit the mark, although he was a little disappointed that not all the trick features he engineered ended up on camera. His biggest disappointment is that he worked hard to make sure all the custom metalwork was finished to a high enough level to be painted gloss black and stand up to the camera's scrutiny. But the large, flat body surfaces finished in shiny paintwork caused too many reflections from the stage lighting. Within a few days of receiving the car, the studio painted it a near-flat satin black. 'It just ruined the whole thing,' says Jeffries. That's why his '93 restoration returned Black Beauty to its original glossy glory. A while after rescuing the car from certain destruction, Goodman put it up for auction. It was purchased in 2003 by Petersen Publishing Company and Motor Trend founders Margie and Robert E. Petersen. The Petersens had been collecting important movie, TV, and star cars for decades, and the Green Hornet's car was ideal for their collection. It will live out the rest of its days in the good care of their Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Other than the gloriously campy cool factor of sitting in the driver's seat formerly occupied by the legendary Bruce Lee, the Black Beauty driving experience is largely unremarkable. The big-block Chrysler V-8 starts with ease and purrs with purpose as I drop the Torqueflite trans into Drive—and, of course, whisper to myself,'Let's roll, Kato'—massage the pedal, and we're away. The steering is fingertip-light, largely devoid of feel, as the big, brooding Chrysler navigates through the Petersen Museum's multilevel, movie set-like parking structure. The headlights cast their strange green glow, but otherwise, the car acts and operates as would any other low-mile '66 Chrysler. We resist the temptation to squirrel it around a corner or two and make the big tires squeal, as it would be easy to oversteer Beauty's tail out on this smooth concrete surface—and clout a concrete structural pylon. I don't want to have to tell Bruce Lee's spirit, or Mrs. Petersen, that I wrecked their car. Road feel aside, Black Beauty is one of the great television hero cars of all time, combining the ingenuity and craftsmanship of an iconic designer/customizer, an appropriately menacing demeanor, and all the trick gadgetry one expects from a comic-inspired crime fighter. Let's roll. Ask the Man Who Built One Dean Jeffries is a self-taught automotive stylist, fabricator, customizer, and pinstriper. Why I Like It: 'I still think the look is just bitchin', and my goal was to smooth out the Imperial's strong square lines.' Why It's Collectible: It's the first of the real, original Black Beauties, and the one that appeared in the television show. Restoring/Maintaining: The Chrysler mechanicals are very straightforward, but it would be a lot of work keeping all the weaponry stuff working right all the time. Beware: Poor Black Beauty clones and fakes. Although this car is not for sale and likely never will be, a 'tribute' or reproduction is the only way a Green Hornet fan will ever own his own Black Beauty. Expect to pay: Stock 1966 Chrysler Imperial Crown Sedan Concours ready: $7,125; solid driver $3,750; tired runner: $2,100 Join the Club: Our Take The only Black Beauty that really matters. Cool in a wonderfully '60s way, a Dean Jeffries original. Our thanks: Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, California.
