Automotive Culture Mashup...Roundup

Sometimes amazing things happen when you mix two diverse things together like, for example, chocolate and peanut butter. Each are uniquely delicious but when you combine them together...oh boy, what a treat! Kahlua and vodka, that's called a Black Russian! Want a drink with perfect layering? Take some Kahlua, carefully pour in some Bailey's Irish cream, then finish it off with Triplesec and with a little practice you should have three distinct color layers in a neat drink called a B-52. Some people are are diverse mix that creates an appealing whole...like whatever genetic makeup is responsible for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jessica Alba, or Halle Berry. Car cultures are like that too. Gassers have their own set of rules, lead sleds have their own rules, but mix them together and you just might have something pretty neat. That's what we set out to do when we came up with a little challenge we like to call Automotive Culture Mashup. And to be clear, some mixes are so heinous, they should be shunned from this Earth and banished to the bowels of hell from wince it came. Like mayo and rice, and the steroid enhanced genetic abomination that is Carrot-Top. Maybe our team of crackerjack car builders will demonstrate either scenario for us. Let's see what we cooked up, shall we?


Johnni D starts us off innocently enough by combining British class with all American muscle with this 1956 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in white, the perfect wedding car.



His buddy Paulo D shows up a little later with what he calls a Subaru Forester in full Time Attack attire. Time Attack Attire apparently means a roll cage, twin turbos and an aero kit but also being too underwhelmed to photograph it more than once. Hmmm, you learn something every day.



Lino Martins shows that when you take a beloved European icon such as the VW Golf M1, (VW Rabbit to us Americans) give it the classic American hot rod treatment, you get a rabid halfbreed mongrel that's too weird to live and too rare to die!



Tim Inman knows what I mean. He also build an iconic European Ferrari 250 GTO sports car and takes its IQ and pedigree down a few notches and gives it the American Gasser treatment. Ah, is there nothing American ingenuity can't ruin?



Before you answer that, consider for a moment that not just car cultures, but car companies can join forces to form a hybrid car containing both identities. Take this 1936 Mercedes-AMG K54 Coupe-Roadster F1 Celebration Edition, which may be a real car or a product of Peter Blackert's imagination. I'm too lazy to research it.



What's made of raw sugar and you're pretty much guaranteed to puke if you eat more than two of them? Peeps. Every Easter, these hit the stores, as well as this yellow and white Volkswagen Type-3 Squareback Hot Wheels car with the Peeps logo blazoned across the side. I'm pretty much gonna hurl now.



But I can be made to feel slightly better cuz Peter made good on a request. We have the technology. We have resources. We have the know-how. We can put truck nuts, gun rack and a confederate flag on a Toyota Prius Aqua Hybrid. Talk about clash of automotive cultures!



You mix high performance sports cars with the roomy sensibilities of a wagon and you get something called a shooting break. Here is Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Shooting Brake built in 1975 by a small UK company called Panther Cars. They're also responsible for a six wheeled ultra-luxury sports car that didn't take the world by storm either.

When Peter was in college he got to house sit for a professor. Part of the job description included taking car of his pets and running over hippies in the professor's old and slow Mercedes-Benz W123 690E Saloon. This one has a hot rodded engine; the better to show those hippies you mean business.



Artist Sebastian Motsch likes to photoshop production cars into dream cars, and this time chose the goofy Citroen CX Break as his muse, to create the Citroen CX Shooting Break Gullwing: CX Sport Break. Peter renders it nicely here.



The Datsun 120Y is the worst car ever. Much of Peter's entries have been about taking awful cars and making them better somehow. You take the top half 120Y, bottom half of a much wider R32 Skyline and combine them with a crazy kind of mayhem only truly creative crazy people can come up with. Like all of Peter's other entries, someone actually did this.



I'm not sure if this is a product of spray paint or Photoshop trickery but the end result is a fully monochromatic white on white on white time attack Superbird by Raphael Granas, which brings us to a smooth, satisfying finish for our roundup.



I learned two new things this round; time attack cars and and shooting break cars. I didn't know what those were called before. And now I know. And hopefully you all know too...unless you're the type to leave unrelated comments with links to your own stupid agenda...which seems to be the only comments we get around here. But we soldier on. If you soldier on with us next month you'll just might see what we do when French cars are all the rage. The challenge will be called The French Connection and I bet there'll be more than a few Citroens. Tune in next time, same bat time, same bat channel. Thanks for reading.