Once-Famous Mustang Art Car Falls On Hard Times, Faces Crusher
After judging at the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza 24 Hours of LeMons near Bakersfield, I headed north to visit my family in the San Francisco Bay Area before heading back to Denver. Naturally, I had to stop by at least one junkyard, and— small world!— I ran into a car that looked very familiar.
Yes, this is the very same ’69 Mustang that I photographed in my old neighborhood in Alameda and immortalized in a DOTS post on Jalopnik. Nearly two years later, things haven’t gone so well for this art car.
The car that was once a regular at California art-car events and a rolling political statement (which brings up a question: Why don’t we ever see right-wing art cars? Probably for the same reason there are no right-wing mimes) got towed away and dragged to a South Bay self-serve junkyard, where it sits in the “fixer uppers” lot. Since even the most ardent Mustang fanatic wouldn’t pay more than scrap value for this thing, its next stop will be the Ford section of the yard, followed by a trip to The Crusher a couple of months later. This is what happened with the legendary Groovalicious Purple Princess of Peace, which ended up in the very same San Jose yard.
Much of the stuff that was glued all over the car when I saw it on the street is gone now, no doubt knocked off during its long downward spiral, but you get the idea.
Though I approve of the concept of the art car, I’m not a fan of the “crazy hoarder with glue gun” approach. Still, I’d prefer that a car like this remain on the street, shaking up the squares.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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The reason there are so few right wing art cars is because almost all conservatives respect property and would never do this to a car they paid for. It takes a hell of a lot of disrespect to do this to a car, then drive it around to see the reaction of strangers. Left wingers intend to insult onlookers, while right wingers insult onlookers unintentionally.
One reason why I dislike many art cars is that they're a left handed critique of cars themselves. I guess there's supposed to be some irony involved.