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Ronnie Peterson in his 1974 Lotus 76, with the bizarre but interesting (and, sadly, ineffective) biplane rear wing. Peterson was in the odd position of racing with the #1 on his car despite not being the champion (Lotus had won the constructor’s championship in ‘73, but his teammate Emerson Fittipaldi left at the end of that season for MacLaren). In keeping with the F1 numbering system, Lotus had #1 and #2 for their drivers in 1974, giving the remaining Peterson the numero uno.
Although this photo isn’t labeled as such, I believe it was taken at Jarama for the Spanish Grand Prix.
(via motor--sport)
The enormous, frighteningly friendly King Kong balloons on the roofs of your louder car dealerships and apartment complexes are in trouble. They’re already banned in many cities in Texas as well as St. Louis, after city councils deemed them an eyesore and a distraction to drivers. When Houston finally banned them, the city’s mayor said: “We want to try to improve the physical appearance of the city.”
Nobody associates the 40-foot high inflatables as anything but garish sales props, but in reality they have an interesting historical connection. And perhaps one of the strangest accidental discoveries in automotive retail.
Of course, all inflatable primates reference Cooper and Schoedsack’s iconic King Kong from 1933, but car dealers didn’t start using them in earnest until the late 1970s, when three important things happened.
In 1972 the city of Birmingham, England commissioned pop artist Nicholas Munro to construct a sculpture for Manzoni Gardens in their commercial center. Munro took on the challenge and delivered a towering fiberglass King Kong, with outstretched arms and menacing red eyes. It stood at 23 feet tall.
Munro’s King Kong in Birmingham, 1972
But, some six months after its unveiling, Birmingham gave up on it. The city refused to pay for its upkeep and wouldn’t keep it as a permanent fixture. So Munro’s sculpture went up for sale and a businessman named Mike Shanley appeared with the necessary 3000 pounds sterling. Shanley figured the enormity of the thing would be a good roadside draw to his business, a car dealership. It did just that, and he rebranded as King Kong Motors. It became a fixture of Camp Hill.
While Shanley’s oversized bet paid off, that alone didn’t bring the Kong craze to American car dealers. But a 1976 remake of King Kong (starring Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin) proved to be a success and drove all manner of nostalgia for the oversized primate. Then technology stepped in: laminated vinyl grew up — and could be produced in larger and larger forms and more complex shapes. The time was right. Munro’s idea for King Kong quite literally blew up — it would now become a staple of automotive retailing.
Now thousands of Kongs brighten (besiege?) the American landscape. They cost anywhere from $5000-$10,000 and weigh about 800 pounds all in. They’re usually 40-feet tall in largest form, with grommets on the chest to display banners and signs.
Munro’s original, by the way, lives on. Shanley sold King Kong to a Scottish market owner in the late 1970s where it stood atop his store. It has since moved to Penrith (Scotland) where it could use a bath and a return to glory atop a building. Or perhaps a car dealership.
Below, a collection of Kongs in various colors and dispositions.
Today at the Montgomery MUNI station, a rare moment of quiet and emptiness.
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The fallout from Border’s bankruptcy and liquidation looms large at the shopping center down the street from our place here in San Francisco. Entrepreneur Martin Carmody bought the inventory of the above Border’s Books after it went tango uniform, purchasing the remaining 40,000 books in the store for $50,000 and establishing his own lease, turning ODE into a budget book store and more.
What I found most interesting in Carmody’s approach is that he was smart enough to use Border’s existing sign and avoid the cost of doing a new one (a cost that would have run anywhere from $10,000 - $20,000). He just rearranged the letters to create ODE. As it turns out, Carmody isn’t alone in saving the detritus of old brands and signs after they go belly up.
A collection of Frankenbrands (a term coined by my friend Sam Valenti IV), companies that use the original corporate branding…for better or worse:
Dad’s Inn in Lansing, Michigan, a barely modified frankenbrand of a Day’s Inn.
“Yes” Thrift Store in Tucson, a frankenbrand of an old Mervyn’s sign.
Conn’s reused the department signage as a partial frankenbrand from an old Circuit City.
Jon’s in Hollywood, a frankenbrand of Von’s Supermarket.
Royal Dry Cleaners in Cleveland uses the old frame and sunburst from a Red Barn restaurant.
This “Antiques” shop in North Carolina uses the original framing from a K-Mart sign.
K-Mart, coincidentally, is perhaps the ultimate and original Frankenbrander. It was the company’s CEO Joseph Antonini who brilliantly reduced the company’s signs from the full K-Mart to a single K with ‘mart’ written inside in 1990. The move reportedly saved $1 million dollars per year in electricity bills.
