History Pasadena, CA, Model A

During the middle '60's or so there was a yellow Model A coupe sponsored by a radio station out of Pasadena CA. The station was KRLA and they called the car their KRL "A". They would cruise around the L A area handing out promotional material.

Does anyone remember? Any pictures? I have wondered what ever happened to it.

I was running a Model A banger at the time and used to see him at all the local haunts.

 

Don't have anything on the "A", but almost as cool....

 

I don't know anything about the car but I used to listen to KRLA all the time (KHJ Boss Radio also) and Art Laboe is still D.Jaying. I am curious about the car now so I will be keeping a eye on this thread.

 

Growing up in Pasadena we all listened to KRLA. I remember the KRL"A"
The dragster on the album cover is also a Pasadena car.
It is Doug Robinson's "Horsepower Eng." AA/FD & he still owns it!!!

 

There's a promotional piece about the car on the back of the original album (reprinted on the CD booklet):

"KRLA King of the Wheels" was a rewrite of an earlier Bobby Fuller Four song, "King of the Beach."

 

Yeah, that's the stuff. I had forgotten about that album, too cool.

 

There is a cartoon picture of the car and some description of it on this KRLA newsletter from September 1965, on page 10. The PDF file will take a while to load. It is described as a "stock" Model A with a 283, 5 spoke mags, cheater slicks and an Chevy automatic.

http://krlabeat.sakionline.net/issue/25sept65.pdf

 

This one?

 

Not only remember it, but rode in it. Got back from the Navy, and went to Irwindale, and there was my old pit crew guy, Steve Lakatos, driving the KRL"A" in the pits, yelled out to me, opened the door, and I got in...we tooled around the pits. Steve said he had a hand in building it, later went on to crew for Don Blair's sprint car, made the cover of HRM with the rest of the Blair crew when Don won the '74 CRA championship.

As noted earlier, KRLA also sponsored Doug Robinson's fueler, a twin to the car he built for Bob Keilty and myself. KRLA station was in Pasadena's Huntington Hotel, was pretty car-friendly: Les Hawkins of 15oz coupe fame did construction for them, tale is that he tried to get them to play country music instead of rock....

 

Cool story.

 

Hey thanks for the link. Went through the whole thing and what a cruise down memory lane. Reading about the songs and the artists and remembering what I was doing at that time in my life.

 

The song "King of the Wheels" mentions the yellow coupe and "a radio station".

 

That's it!

 

OH MAN, reading the top 40 from then really brought back some memories.

 

Btt

 

I remember listenng to KRLA, and KFWB(before it went to all news) on AM. No FM, tapes, etc.back then. Bill Ballance, the Real Don Steele, Bob Hudson, Gary Owens, Lohman and Barkley, Gene Weed. Who did I forget?

 

B. Mitchell Reed

 

Please, let's not forget Bob's ***le: Emperor Bob Hudson.
("GET OFF THE FREEWAYS, PEASANTS. HIS HIGHNESS IS COMING")

 

Apologies to his Highness....

But back to the original question...any more pics of the car?

 

Johnny Hayes brought us The Big 11 Countdown every week. Dave Diamond was another KRLA notable, having worked at KHJ and KFRC as well. Dave Hull was the real name of the legendary "Hullaballooer". KRLA was privileged to have two other nationally-known jocks: The irrepressible Real Don Steele (featured in Grand Theft Auto), and cultural icon Wolfman Jack (featured in American Graffiti and the subject of The Guess Who's 1974 hit Clap For The Wolfman.) Many other "legends" got behind the KRLA mike at various points in history: Humble Harve, Machine Gun Kelly, Casey Kasem, Mike Ambrose, **** Biondi, Roger Christian, Bob Eubanks, Al Lohman, Gary Mack, Charlie Tuna, B. Mitchel Reed, Wink Martindale and Johnny Williams. Also Johnny Hayes, Don Burns, Lee "Baby" Simms, Jimmy Rabbitt, Gregg Shannon, Russ O' Hara, and Mikel Hunter
In the 70's it was Shadoe Stevens (and his later ego Fred Rated when doing commercials for Fedrated Stereo). Shadoe pioneered what became known as Album Oriented Rock that all the FM stations would soon take up and when he left for upstart KROQ, many of the jocks followed him, and then onto the greatest radio station of all time The Mighty Met, KMET
also **** Hugg, aka Huggie Boy. Don't forget Mr. Rock 'N' Roll, Art Laboe

 

God I miss KRLA. They used to broadcast once in a while from our hoagie shop in Hollywood. Would listen to them all night man

 

Yes, yes, yes remember them all! Great history here.

 

Wow...having grown up in Pasadena during the 60's this post really brings back a lot of memories .... a big thanks to all who have contributed!

Ditto on this:

Originally Posted by Stu Pad***o
I remember listenng to KRLA, and KFWB(before it went to all news) on AM. No FM, tapes, etc.back then. Bill Ballance, the Real Don Steele, Bob Hudson, Gary Owens, Lohman and Barkley, Gene Weed etc. etc. ...................

 

The Real Don Steele sponsored an injected fuel dragster, forgot who drove it but he had a part in a television show and featured the car and driver...the driver unexpectedly asked him to put a blower on it, and Don, surprised, sort of stumbled and said "...well, we'll see about that blower..." think there are a couple of pictures of in on Don Ewald's site.

 

Later, "Emperor Bob" (blue skys and green lights for you and yours, mama come get your baby boy) later teamed up with Ron Landry at KGBS for a morning show, and they did comedy in clubs and albums (most memorable line; "where Bambi goes......nuthin' grows...). Hudson ended up here in Seattle for a brief time as his career was winding down..............looked like 80 (double the norm) miles of bad road.........live hard, die young.

 

I believe Doug Robinson had a brother named Dennis. Anyone know how to contact either of them?