Once-Famous Mustang Art Car Falls On Hard Times, Faces Crusher

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

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
Murilee Martin

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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  • VanillaDude VanillaDude on Dec 07, 2011

    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.

  • Ronnie Schreiber Ronnie Schreiber on Dec 07, 2011

    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.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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