Motorcycle Movies, Part 2: Easy Rider

By the time Easy Rider was released in 1969, three full years had passed since The Wild Angels hit the nation’s drive-in movie screens. In the sixties, three years was a very long time indeed. The Vietnam War was entering a critical phase and division within the country regarding the war was never more clear-cut. Morally, the pendulum seemed to be swinging back towards the viewpoint of the “under 30″ generation. It was in this fevered climate that Easy Rider made its stunning debut. In stark contrast to its progenitor film, The Wild Angels, the motorcycle riders were now portrayed as tragic heroes instead of undisciplined thugs. Perhaps the filmmakers had run out of ways to frighten parents and instead sought to identify with the growing youth market. Regardless, Easy Rider stands today as a quintessential film, a snapshot of America at a pivotal moment in its history when the baton was handed from one generation to another.

It’s noteworthy that this new generation was both in front of the cameras and behind them as well. Peter Fonda, reprising his role as the motorcycle-riding man of few words, produced the film. His co-star Dennis Hopper directed. We see the country and the times through their eyes, and very rarely does America look so beautiful as it does in Easy Rider. The highway scenes are incredible – and unforgettable. That goes for the custom Harley Davidson cycles the two main characters ride as well. Peter Fonda’s ride is especially distinctive, with its American flag gas tank and extra-long front fork. The value of the publicity Harley Davidson received from their bikes being featured in Easy Rider is incalculable. Speaking of value, Easy Rider was made on a very thin $400,000 budget, low even for the times.

Easy Rider is a road film, a biker film, a buddy film and a message film, all rolled into one. Others would follow, hoping to cash in on Easy Rider’s style and image, but the great majority of these were pale imitations. Forget about the rest, and go see the best. If watching Easy Rider doesn’t “get your motor running”, then you’d better check your pulse.

Motorcycle Movies, Part 1: The Wild Angels

In 1966, the widening generation gap was about to split the country wide open. The older generation who had lived through and fought World War II could neither understand nor relate to their freethinking, “flower power” children. As everyone knows, misunderstanding can quickly change to fear, and certain filmmakers played off that fear by creating motorcycle movies like “The Wild Angels”.

The Wild Angels wasn’t a cult film or a fringe independent by any means. By the mid 1960s, producer Samuel Z. Arkoff had already established himself and his company, American International Pictures, as the leading purveyor of youth culture flicks. The “Beach Party” movies with Frankie & Annette and a number of other flicks containing the word “bikini” in their titles were cranked out by Arkoff’s studio. Director Roger Corman, himself no stranger to the “schlock shock” genre, cut his teeth on drive-in delights like 1960’s “The Little Shop of Horrors” and a string of classic frighteners starring the venerable English actor Vincent Price. Arkoff and Corman often worked together on the same film, one forgettable example being 1957’s “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent”. I kid you not.

For The Wild Angels, Roger Corman chose the children of American icons Henry Fonda and Frank Sinatra as his stars, perhaps to accentuate the sharp division between the older and newer generations. Peter Fonda plays the leader of a California Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang and Nancy Sinatra plays the part of his girl. Other actors in the film who were little known at the time but later blossomed as mainstream actors and actresses include Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd and Michael J. Pollard. It’s an interesting bit of trivia to note that Dern and Ladd, whose on-set romance would lead to marriage, are the parents of actress Laura Dern.

The film itself is interesting for many reasons, not least the great scenic shots of mid-1960s southern California as Fonda and his gang roar up and down the coastal highways and byways. The powerful soundtrack by Davie Allen and the Arrows was a precursor of a style that would be called Heavy metal in the future. Then there are the bikes… vintage Harleys and other makes long gone from the road. Fans of those mean machines won’t be disappointed by The Wild Angels, and my guess is neither will you!

The Soap Box Derby – Auto Racing

You might be forgiven for wondering what the Soap Box Derby has to do with auto racing – the “racers” have no engines after all! Yet a race is a race, and since its inception way back in 1933 it’s likely that more than a few of today’s superstar racecar drivers first experienced the thrill of victory by competing in the All-American Soap Box Derby.

The Great Depression was in its darkest depths when Myron Scott, a photographer who worked for the Dayton Daily News, planted the seed of an idea that would soon blossom: kids driving homemade cars down a hill, powered only by the force of gravity. Soap was delivered to stores and homes in sturdy wooden boxes back then, and these crates were the perfect size and shape to be transformed into wheeled coaster cars. A few nails, some twine and four wheels off a junked baby buggy gave budding Derby racers the basics of what they needed to craft a competitive racer. By the late 1930s as Derby or coaster car racing took off in popularity, rules and regulations became standardized and the World Championship final began to be held every July at the purpose-built Derby Downs track in Akron, Ohio.

Soap Box Derby racing reached its peak of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, when the combination of national sponsorship by Chevrolet and exposure on television helped bring upwards of 70,000 spectators to Akron each year for the World Championships. Hundreds of competitors (boys only until 1971) raced down the concrete course at Derby Downs during the championships, to have their speed and finish times recorded by sophisticated measuring devices and overhead photography.

Alas, the good times Soap Box Derby racing enjoyed for so many years hit a series of “speed bumps” in the 1970s. Just one year after coaster racing was opened to girls, Chevrolet abruptly ended their long-time sponsorship of the sport. Over the next few years, a series of scandals that tainted the “boy (or girl) built” purity of coaster racing left a sour taste in the mouths of many loyal fans. Even so, the All-American Soap Box Derby soldiers on to this day; as thousands of spectators descend on Derby Downs every July to watch hundreds of champions from countries as far away as the Philippines and Japan split the breeze, racing to a photo finish!

The Monte Carlo Rally – Auto Racing

The Monte Carlo Rally has been called the Granddaddy of Motor Rallying, and for good reason: it was one of, if not THE, first motor rally. First run in 1911, the Monte Carlo Rally was for a time the only motor sports race of its kind but through its enduring popularity has spawned the sport of motor rallying that spans the globe today.

The relationship was formalized in 1973 when the Monte Carlo Rally was made the inaugural race of the FIA World Rally Championship season. The original reason for the race was not strictly for competition, but for testing the cars of the day under a wide variety of road conditions.

The legendary Monte Carlo Rally circuit provides drivers with one challenge after another as their reflexes are continually being tested. Run in January to take advantage of the weather, some portions of the course are especially icy. Uniquely among professional racing, spectators are allowed to throw snow onto the course, leading on more than one occasion to drivers spinning out and damaging their vehicles.

Through the first 30 years of the rally, cars that even in their day were relatively unknown won races. Makes like Berliet, Metallurgique, and Autocarrier competed with enduring racing names like Lancia, Citroen and Bugatti. Strange as it may seem, Studebaker and Buick each finished third in the 1930 and 1938 races respectively. Even into the 1960s, cars such as the Ford Falcon and the Citroen ID were very competitive.

The Saab 96 won the 1962 and 1963 editions of the Monte Carlo Rally, while the Mini Cooper S (similar to the tiny boxy cars featured in the 1969 film “The Italian Job”) won in 1964, 1965 and 1967.

These days, cars claiming the checkered flag include the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, Subaru Impreza, Citroën Xsara and the 2006 winner, the Ford Focus RS WRC driven by the team of Marcus Grönholm and Timo Rautiainen.

Jackie Stewart: The Flying Scot – Auto Racing

Sir Jackie Stewart, popularly known as “The Flying Scot“, is one of auto racing’s most distinctive personalities as well as being one of its most successful racing drivers. His unmistakable Scottish accent, high-pitched voice and boundless enthusiasm have made him the model for a host of race broadcasting parodies. In addition to bringing the world of auto racing, especially Formula One racing, to a wider audience worldwide, Stewart has been a tireless promoter of race safety and driver protection.

Born in 1939 in Scotland in the county of West Dunbartonshire near Glasgow and Loch Lomond, Stewart may be said to have cars in his blood: his father ran a local garage where young Jackie apprenticed as a mechanic and his family were Jaguar dealers. His older brother Jimmy was a promising auto racer who competed in the 1953 British Grand Prix for Ecurie Ecosse (Team Scotland). By 1963, Jackie had been signed by Ken Tyrell to the Cooper racing team, swiftly moving up the ranks until 1965 when he joined BRM’s Formula One team alongside English racer Graham Hill. Stewart won his first race at the Monza circuit in Italy.

Success came quickly for “The Flying Scot”, and by the end of the decade Jackie Stewart had emerged as a force to be reckoned with on the world’s Formula One circuits. Driving his trademark French Blue number 3 Tyrell car, Stewart captured the Formula One Championship title in 1969, 1971 and 1973 when he achieved his record setting 27th victory. With one race to go before reaching the magic number of 100, Jackie Stewart retired from auto racing to become a consultant and commentator. In honor of his many accomplishments both on and off the track, Jackie Stewart was voted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990 and was knighted by the Queen in 2001.

Ford’s Formidable 427 – Auto Racing

The early 1960s saw competition between the major US automakers on the nation’s racetracks rise to a fever pitch. Driven by the need to “race on Sunday, sell on Monday”, GM, Ford and Chrysler poured millions of dollars into engine development and support of racing teams. It was NASCAR that provided the main arena for these epic contests of speed and power, and the sanctioning body’s homologation rules meant that the cars and engines that roared down the straight-aways at Daytona could also be found on your neighbor’s driveway – albeit in very limited numbers.

It was Chrysler’s legendary Hemi engine that really lit a fire under the other members of automaker’s Big 3. The exceptional power, reliability and success achieved by the Hemi were not only winning races for Chrysler; it was being translated to showroom sales as well. Ford took up the challenge by designing a big-block engine with one goal in mind: beat the Hemi. So it was that in 1963, the Ford 427 was introduced. Marketing was just important as horsepower at the time, and even though the engine’s actual displacement was 425 cubic inches, it was referred to as the 427 because that was NASCAR’s displacement limit. The 427 was a racing engine from top to bottom. Cloverleaf molds, forged pistons and a block made of high nickel content iron provided exceptional strength. Dual 4-barrel carbs and an aluminum manifold allowed awesome power: upwards of 500 horsepower though Ford never released the actual power rating.

Astonishing as the 427 was, Ford wasn’t content to merely match Chrysler’s Hemi, it wanted to clearly beat it. The company’s engineers set out in 1964 to create the ultimate racing engine for the 1965 NASCAR season. Using the ultra high performance 427 side-oiler block as a base, Ford installed new cast-iron cylinder heads with, curiously, hemispherical combustion chambers. A single overhead camshaft (SOHC) and sodium-filled exhaust valves and a transistorized ignition system were among several unique attributes of this mainly hand built engine. Power ranged upwards of 650 horsepower for the 4-barrel version! Alas, the highly anticipated confrontation between Ford’s 427 SOHC and Chrysler’s Hemi was not to be, due to NASCAR rule changes that effectively made the formidable Ford engine illegal.

Auto Racing – Racing Flags

Most people are familiar with the checkered flag used to declare the end of an auto race. Others who know a bit about racing know that a yellow flag means “caution”. What most people don’t know, however, is that there are many other racing flags that are used in auto racing and that each of them conveys a very specific meaning to the drivers on the track. That’s the real point: these flags are waved for the benefit of the drivers, not the crowd. Although most, if not all, drivers are in communication with their teams via radio, the tradition of using flags to advise drivers has carried on and has become an integral part of auto racing.

The checkered flag, though the most well known, has unclear origins. It may have first been used to declare the winner of the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup race, though some sources state that it was the 1905 or 1906 race and not 1904. Others refer to horse racing of the mid nineteenth century that customarily were followed by a large communal meal. The waving of a tablecloth – typical red and white checked – announced that dinner, as it were, was served.

The yellow flag is waved when there has been an accident or a spill of fuel or oil on the track. Under a yellow flag, no passing is allowed and all cars should slow down. Sometimes a red and yellow vertically striped flag is used to indicate a “surface” problem such as debris on the track; if so, the same procedures are followed as when a plain yellow flag is waved. Drivers are given the all clear to race again when a green flag is flown in place of yellow, unless the damage is so great that the race needs to be stopped. Waving a red flag indicates the stoppage of the race and alerts drivers to return to their pit areas. The flying of a black flag is meant as a signal to a specific driver that for whatever reason, they have been disqualified from the race. The driver’s car number is posted alongside or just beneath the black flag. The waving of a white flag tells all drivers that the race has just one more lap until the finish.

Other flags are rarely used but are officially listed with Formula One, NASCAR and the IRL:

• A blue flag, sometimes with a yellow diagonal stripe, means that a car is approaching quickly from behind.

• A white flag with a red cross indicates the need for an ambulance, or states that an ambulance is on the course.

• A flag divided diagonally in black and white is flown when a driver is being penalized for un-sportsmanlike conduct, either on the track or by starting a fight after leaving his car.

• A black flag with an orange circle, sometimes called a “meatball flag”, is flown when there is a mechanical problem with one or more cars that has affected race conditions.

It’s said that one can’t tell the players without a program, but knowing the meaning of auto racing’s various colored flags can help onlookers determine what kind of program the other players have to follow.