The Monkeys car...

Never did care that much for a modified GTO. There was some crazy customs back then but this wasn't one of my favorites. To each his own.

 

Not strictly true.
Peter Tork was a very competent musician who played piano, banjo, guitar and harpsichord.
Mickey Dolenz was a guitarist who learnt drums.
Mike Nesmith was a musician as stated.
Davy Jones was an actor.

RIP Davy Jones.

 

mickey dolenz also acted as a boy and was in the 50's tv show "circus boy". he did most of the vocals on the monkees songs as well.

 

Scroll down a ways for pics of it being built & a neat diorama.

http://thecaveboard.yuku.com/topic/6502/t/Monkeemobile-Model-Show-Us-Your-Work.html

 

Scroll down a ways for a cool little story behind this pic, lucky kid!

http://boomertechtalk.com/evolution-of-technology-vinyl-records/

 

I never cared for that car. A 20's touring car roofline doesn't go with a '60s car body. And the nose is like a beak, did they think they were building a car for a show called "The Byrds" ? But it's a shame to see Davy die so relatively young.

 

Peter Tork was a profecient musician long before The Monkees. Plays Keyboards, guitar bass etc. He was a Greenich Village type who even played with Stephen Stills. Mike Nesmith 's mother invented Liquid paper and sold that company to Gilette in 1979. He does NOT own it. The movie HEAD was not written by Nesmith but by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nichoson ( yes that Jack ).

 

I loved the show because of the car

 

Thank's for sharing, love the story. I remember the shows from swedish television back in the days, altough, as a 10 year old, didn't understand so much. But I liked the car and had a model of it too.

 

Haters gonna hate.

Nice.

 

What a waste of sheet metal......

 

If you want all the info on the Monkeemobile, and the whereabouts of the first one, here you go, reprinted in entirety from Jalopnik.com

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<cite> By Jason Torchinsky
</cite> Mar 1, 2012 4:45 PM
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Why Is George Barris Getting Credit For The Monkeemobile?

With yesterday's unexpected death of the Monkees' onetime-hearthrob Davy Jones, there has naturally been a resurgence of interest in the amazing, funhouse-mirror version of the Pontiac GTO that was the Monkeemobile.
Shows like TMZ have been interviewing famed customizer George Barris, asking him questions about the unusual 7-seater's whereabouts, build, and more. There's only one problem: George Barris didn't build the Monkeemobile.
Dean Jeffries built the Monkeemobile, back in 1966. Jeffries was given two Pontiac GTO convertibles to use for the project, as Pontiac felt an association with the Monkees TV show would be great publicity. Two cars were built, one for the show, one for promotions. Some interesting details about the cars: they had a solid, unsprung rear axle to assist in wheelie-popping, and were so over-powered they were difficult to drive, which led to their superchargers being replaced by dummy ones.
After the show ended, Jeffries declined to purchase the cars back for a grand each (he figured he could rebuild them cheaper). The TV show car was left in Australia after a tour, and somehow ended up as a courtesy car at a Puerto Rican hotel, reappearing at auction in 1992. Nobody knows how it got halfway around the world to end up in Puerto Rico; I'm sure there's a good story there.
George Barris did purchase and restore the second Monkeemobile, and showed it at many events, eventually selling it in 2008 for $360,000 to a private collector. Barris' company has also built replicas of the Monkeemobile, but that is the extent of Barris' involvement with the car.
I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for Barris, but to publicly take credit for a car he didn't create just isn't right. Barris is 87, and perhaps he's not specifically saying he built the car, and the journalists have gotten in wrong. Maybe, but so far I haven't seen him quoted mentioning that the car was Jeffries, and many of the current batch of Monkeemobile-related stories are crediting Barris with the design and development of the car. It does seem that Barris has been taking credit for the Monkeemobile for a while now, with sources saying that in addition to small-scale irritants like autographing posters of the car, he pressured toy and modelmakers who made versions of the Monkeymobile into replacing Jeffries' name with his own on packaging and documentation.
This controversy over the Monkeemobile's birth has been discussed before, and I suspect we'll be hearing more about it again. This quote from a 2006 interview does seem to sum up Jeffries' position pretty clearly, though:

Motor Trend Classic: There seems to be some confusion. Was it you or George Barris who designed and built the TV car for the Monkees, the Monkeemobile?
Jeffries: That's one of many bad spots in regards to that man. He sure does take credit, but he had nothing to do with it. I made the car. Every bit of it. He also says he made the Green Hornet's car, still does to this day. He puts his name on a lot of things he had nothing at all to do with.
​

Perhaps the whole story isn't known, but an unarguable point is that Jeffries is not getting the credit he deserves for an iconic custom car, and that's not right.

 

If I built that turd id let him have the credit.

 

I think Barris is taking credit for the Titanic also lol!

 

Turd or not, that car was pretty iconic, especially to a 12yr old at the time. Still holds some big cred, seen by more people than most legit 'rods' of the day, on a weekly basis. Seems like Dean got steamrolled. With the resurgance of Monkee interest with Mr. Jones passing, it may be the last chance to set the record straight, to the masses.

 

I've heard these stories about Barris before. It;s a shame.

That said, while the Monkeemobile is ... ... .. unconventional... .. It has a bizzare coolness about it. More by association than it's own merits.

 

Watch it...

There will be a bunch of guys, ready to argue with you for saying something negative about this wonderfull old Kustomiser.
Who did so much for Hot Rodding.

( or did he just do a lot for himself, and the rest was just a byproduct...)


And isnt the Monkeemobile based on a '66 Pontiac?

Why is it even on the HAMB?

 

I have a old magazine around here somewhere (Car Craft I think) that documents Jeffries building the Monkee Mobile. What I thought was interesting is that the car (at least the original) was all steel! It showed pics of the whole thing being built in sheetmetal with minimal filler needed. I'll see if I can dig it up and scan it on here, it's certainly interesting to see.

 

Does anyone know what Davey Jones was doing living in Indiantown FL? Indiantown is NOT a pretty place to retire to. I've driven thru there many times. It is just west of the former MOROSO Raceway which is west of West Palm Beach.

 

Maybe he bought property there, back in a time when it was a nice place? Curious too...

 

Somebody mentioned he owned and raced Horses and wanted a large ranch type place ...????

 

Maybehe was just wintering there like so many others. As far as I knew he had a horse farm in the UK and liked to ride a lot . At one point even jockeying. Are the horse race tracks in that area of Florida??

 

Hey, don't make fun of Florida, it's beautiful.......everywhere.

 

There's a cool episode where they're racing against an A/C COBRA

 

I've in Florida lived all my life. Indiantown is not Palm Beach.

 

This is all Off Topic.

The modified Musclecar is, and the singer who passed away is too.

We didnt have a RIP thread for Don Cornelius either, and you could argue he did a lot more for American Music than the Prefab 4 did...