I was around in the time this movie was made...I really miss the gas stations and diners from that era. Far fewer people back then as well, less people, way way way less traffic.
One of, (if not )"the" most technically correct gearhead movies of all times. The acting sucked, and content was sketchy at best, but the car scenes were the coolest. The whine from the M-22, the low gearing, and actual engine shots with a BBC and tunnel ram, twin Holleys,....really the best of the day, and today. Even the starting line runs show how quick this car really was. It could really hook up. Vanishing point, and Dirty Mary, and Crazy Larry were OK, but this one beats them all. But American Graffiti had the best story and acting. (IMHO)
While I was in the US Navy at the time. I just happened to be at Lakeland Dragway in TN where the film crew was making the racing shots of the 2 Lane Blacktop 55 making runs. I did not know that at the time but I was taking 8mm silent movies which I still have.
In 1959 a neighbor kid saved up his money and bought from a local drag racer a B Gas '34 Ford coupe with a 302 inch SBC. Chromed crank, Isky roller cam, three Strombergs, the works. Best recorded e.t. was a 12.36. The original gas tank was rusted, so the builder had installed a small racing tank in the trunk and a hand pump in the dash to pressurize it. The seller included rear wheels with street tires in the deal, so the kid took off the Bruce's slicks and put the street wheels on it. He drove it to high school, stopping to fill the small gas tank every so often, and had the fastest hot rod in Dallas until he was killed in a boating accident, September 1, 1959.
My first was a '56 Ford (2 door) Customline Ranch Wagon with the T-Bird 312. Many nights on Van Nuys Boulevard, Mulholland, the Drive ins... . Was born at Valley Hospital; Van Nuys and Sherman Way.
If you're a gear head, this movie set the bar. Technically, what they said about the car was correct. The couple pages of dialog in the movie was far more realistic than anything you see.
It is pretty accurate, right down to the hard boiled eggs. Boil up a couple cartons of eggs and hit the road for the weekend driving around the state looking for money races.
My fav part in this movie is the end with the slow mo drag scene. I grew up at a teen ripping around in my little Hondas trying to be as cool as James Taylor "The Driver".
The engine was said to be a 454 in several articles on the car, but it appears to have aluminum heads in this shot, so it was more likely an L88 427 - a beast of an engine for sure.
There were three cars for the movie two of them had 454s one of them had the 427 And the sound of the car was also used in smoky in the bandit for the black Trans Am
I saw this movie a hundred times at the Elgin theater in NYC. They would play double bills for a buck fifty and would pair this up with other car movies like Drive He Said.
What I always thought was cool, and no doubt what the attendant and Ruth's character was thinking is, having a 454 transplant then in 1971 was the equivalent of getting an engine out of 2023 ZR-1 or something today. I think Ruth had a lot to say when it came time for scenes like this one, and is what makes it a mostly technically correct car guy movie.
The acting did not suck in this movie! Warren Oates was excellent, Taylor was passable, and Wilson was surprisingly good. Laurie Bird, a non-actress, was good too. I liked it better than 'Easy Rider'.
No power adders All motor four speed wide ratio trans, and I'd be proud to drive this 55 bbc down the street Just absolute old school street car beauty, WOW nice.... Stick Shifts for Life...
Even at the time of this movie, the pump jockey isn't wrong to ask if it's a 396. That engine was the LS1 of its time--if you couldn't afford a 427 or 454, you could still find even a 2 bbl 396 and get it up to 450-500 hp with OEM parts. The Thames panel truck would have an advantage because it was so light weight.
@@alertgasper - Watch for a 402 then. Many have this idea they are dogs, but they are just a .030 over 396. The "dog" part came as they were about the time emissions was starting and the cams were very low profile. I had one in a Corvette with about a hefty of a hydraulic as I could find and it would put my Corvette up to around 150 mph top speed.
@@tommissouri4871 402's go for the same price around here (collector's value--sometimes i can land a peanut port 8:1 CR 454 for less), but I get what you're saying. Certain things can get an unfair rep, but that can benefit "those in the know" who operate on a thin budget. for example, when I was young and couldn't afford the insurance on a Fox Mustang...a Fox body thunderbird used the same parts, had less wear and tear, and didn't need as much bling to gain attention on a cruise night.
Thats the part that got me... .. pull over so I can check the jets.. Still a great movie. Taylor should not be acting. Still glad we have this piece of history.
Funny story... Dad and my uncle were in their Teens in the early Sixties. Grandpa had given them a "strip out" '55 Chevy 150 two door to use as a shared car. They ended up building the Dickens out of a 327, found an M22 and painted the whole car in grey and red primer... Saddle blanket interior, etc. They'd cruise a few states on weekends, because they lived in Falls Church, VA... They could easily get to NYC in a few hours, or into Maryland, or West Virginia, etc... So they'd hit an unsuspecting town and find out where the hot drive in restaurant was. Before they got to the restaurant, they'd stop and pull a couple vacuum hoses or a plug wire and dump a bit of transmission fluid into the carburetor. They'd pull into the hot drive in revving their missing, smoking engine in their P.O.S. looking old Chevy... Then park, order a hamburger and start finding out where everyone did their drag racing. They'd limp the car out to whatever unused local road it was, open their hood and hook back up the vacuum and pop the pulled plug wire back on...line up with the local champ and proceed to eat the dude's lunch EVERY TIME 🤣 They won a little money doing that... A few cars, too. Things lasted almost like that until the late Eighties... We sure had a lot of fun that I really wish the youngsters could experience.
Yes, they built 2. The camera car went to Canada where the new owner removed the straight axle and painted the car. The Graffiti car was sold and the owner put in red crushed velour interior.
@@josemejia9349 Neither one ' if you look carefully at the '55 upside down and on fire 'it's a sports coupe ' not a sedan ' they put in fake door pillars made out of wood from what I've heard .
Most modern day mechanics wouldn’t know how to tune one of these old beasts. They would look under the dash for a data port connector for their laptop.
It’s funny how two singers one who sings in a iconic group that embodied car culture and another who is pretty much known for the hippy type folk music comes together to make a very low budget movie that emulated how that sorta life really was. An for those who are into racing how many time have you heard that exact thing when you bring your ride out only to have someone tell you how fast this local guy is but some reason the car has an issue saving you the embarrassment of getting your ass handed to you and knowing it’s all bullshit but you just laugh just like he did making that exact statement probably would blew the doors right off our stuff. The plot of this movie was very strange to me but ever interaction they had in a racing type situation was dead on.
Same car used in American Graffiti. Heavely modified for this movie. All motor, no NOS, no turbo no blower. Who ever had the begest motor and the lightest car won.
You have the 2 films’ timelines reversed. This movie was made first. AG was 1973, so they squirted this ‘55 gloss Black and slapped a set of chrome reverse rims and a low-profile scoop on it for AG.
This is the same car used by Bob Falfa, and since American Graffiti took place in 1962, it would be the Rat's little brother, the 409. so why pass off a 427 as a 454? Because this movie takes place when the LS6 had made its mark. It would be like putting an LS1 into a stunt car but telling the audience it's an LS3--they won't be able to notice the cost savings. of course a street racer would claim it was a 396 and not scare off competition :) as for people who think the acting is bad...the point of the movie is social disconnect. "the girl" leaves her boyfriend who is constantly toking up to run with these two, and finds they have no room for her in their stripped down life. GTO is constantly BSing people to get them to like him, but no one bites. so ironically two musicians who can't act are perfect--they spend all day together, they have no new tales to share with each other, they stick to their tasks and have nothing else to offer anyway. think of the dialog in the bar between the couple, who aren't connecting either. that's the theme of the movie--disconnect.
They weren’t passing a 427 off as a 454, of the three cars used in the movie, two had 454s and one had a 427 (the interior shot car, because it was quieter)
I hear ya but where else would they check it 🤷♂️ It’s like the girls at the gym wearing pink yoga pants that ready “juicy” on their butt and get upset because guys are looking at them
From 2001-2013, I had white fender well headers on my ‘55 Chevy two-door surf wagon (turquoise & white), and she sat high in the front like a gasser. It’s currently residing somewhere in Cali now. Would love to speak to her current owner! (The car’s name was “Candie”)
And Sunoco Blue. When I had my license, they still offered 94 octane unleaded, good enough for 10:1 on some engines. But leaded fuel had its own scent...
@@alertgasper I also remember Sunoco 260 and their custom blending pump. You can get ethanol-free, 100 octane Sunoco racing gas at select stations in metro Denver. It's around $9.00 per gallon, though.
@@8avexp Around here, last time I checked, you could get it in a drum the size of the orange round coolers Gatorade used to sell. But yeah, it's not close to being cheap unless you run a quarter mile at a time. Not for me, thanks, I'll lose the 4% power per compression ratio point I drop--my Olds 455 can do 10:1 with its cast iron C heads due to its combustion chamber design on 93 Octane, and that's good enough for me. I know one guy who puts $100 into the tank of his 340 Dart just so he can drive to a cruise night on a Saturday night and get back home again.
The star of this movie is a 55 Chevy I watched this movie about 10 times just to see that car at the time Tri 5 Chevys were in my high school parking lot and could be bought for a couple hundred bucks
Which really was a good chunk of change back then. Figuring a buck sixty minimum wage, a kid was lucky to make $64 a week gross so it would take about 4 weeks to gt enough cash for one.
@@barrycuda3769 easy way is to read the suffix code on the front of the right hand and of the block . If the head is off , you can measure how far down in the bore the piston is at bottom dead center . If you're old and treacherous like some of us and have been around engines and racing forever you can tell by the sound . The car seen at the gas station was the same car in the racing scenes . That engine is a L-88 Corvette 427 , from the factory it has forged aluminum pistons which ake a slapping noise and it has 12-1 compression forcing those pistons down , so the exhaust pulses are louder . It also has a solid lifter cam in it clacking away and it has more lift and duration than the 454 cam . Notice that the in car scenes the actors can carry on a conversation without screaming at each other, you won't do that around a L-88 . Some people learned how to tune a guitar and make beautiful music , some of us learned how to build a Rat Motor and make our own kind of music .
@@leroywatermelon4025 No, I have been friends with Richard Ruth for many years ( he built all three cars for TLB the two main cars had early 9 1/4" Pontiac rear ends with a spool and 4.88's
@@garyallen8869 that would be so hard to get off the line with and go through the gears while keeping the rubber stuck to the ground. Hats off to whoever was driving it on the race scenes.
My little 327 with a M-21 Muncie in my 66 Chevelle is only 1 second slower than this Big Block with a M-22 , And mine pulls both front tires off the ground too , 475hp And my 66 Chevelle SS is Street Legal , Bumpers and interior , all metal , NO fiberglass front end or Trunk lid , I would like to add Two 4 barrel Holley carbs. like this engine has , My M-21 Muncie is the same gear ratio as the M-22 except it doesn't have the Harden gears , But this 55 is one bad A$$ car !
The LS6 was rated at 450 hp. The 427 L88 was factory rated at 430 hp. but was dyno tested at 550 hp. Just which one do you think would've been faster ? None of the car companies gave out the correct numbers .
Be a real shame to crush this classic, for what make computer junk that won't sell.this is my opinion I am old school the older is better in my book raw power double hump 194 cc fuelly heads the work's out run start every time....
