Car Culture

Sly Stone now among the everyday homeless people

Plenty of rock musicians and movie stars are known for the passions for cars. But not too many celebrities get attention for living in their vehicles. Re-meet funk icon Sly Stone, the top-selling artist and former car buff who’s now living in a van in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. Stone, with the ensemble he put together called The Family Stone, had numerous hits beginning in 1968 with “Dance to the Music,” followed by “Everyday People,” “Family Affair,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “Stand!” Like other celebrities, he loved cars. According to several media accounts, he once drove a Jaguar XKE he painted purple. And he had Hummers, a London taxi and a Studebaker he still owns.

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Volkswagen Beetle, 2012: High fives and hand claps

Volkswagen isn’t the first manufacturer to make clever television commercials. But the new spot for the 2012 Beetle is among the best. It’s simultaneously hip and ideally deals a recent prevailing trend that Beetle are only purchased by women. The video features a male driver driving in various situations around town. No matter where he drives, people want to “high five” or do “knuckles.” The commercial is shot to the “The Clapping Song.” It was originally recorded by Shirley Ellis in 1965, shortly after she hit it big with a similar song, “The Name Game”. The Clapping Song song made it to the top ten on the charts. Here a synopsis of the lyrics: “Three, six, nine The goose drank

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James Bond and his cars: Aston Martin to Turbo Espirit

Paul Newman and Steve McQueen have plenty of inspiring car movie scenes. But neither has anything on the actors who played James Bond the cars the characters drove: Aston Martin to the Lotus Turbo Esprit. In one website description, the TurboEsprit is described: “As it took every single teenage and pre-pubescent boy’s inspiration and gave it a good shake. It spawned school-ground talk, made young men believe underwater driving was possible and let a new generation discover just how good the Bond films were.” But it was Sean Connery, the original James Bond in film, who started the coolness: weaponry, inventions, smoothness with women, and he drove a 1964 Aston Martin DB5. One auto web site wrote of the Aston

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Top Gear, the BBC car show, revisited by 60 Minutes

It isn’t the only television car show, but Top Gear is the program many others have copied. The BBC show is watched weekly by an estimated 350 million viewers in 170 countries. It’s so popular even 60 Minutes, the CBS news program monolith, took notice last fall and put one of its anchor, Steve Kroft, on the story. He rode “shotgun” with one of the race-car drivers from the show, the masked Stig. As CBS first reported, the program, still unheralded in the United States, ” . . is not really about cars. It’s about the adventures of its three clever hosts who travel the world conducting elaborate automotive experiments and competitions that push the boundaries of television. It’s part

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