in an alternate universe, David Prowse went from playing manservant Julian in A Clockwork Orange to playing Clark Kent / The Man of Steel in a Superman movie (apologies to Christopher Reeve)

but being the body of Darth Vader was a decent consolation prize

thank you David. best in peace big man

Clockwork Orange‘s Durango 95

is actually the car of the (1969) future

The M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16

look ma, no doors!!

#OTD 1969: Blue Peter looked at two cars from opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum. Which is better, new-vintage or old-futuristic? pic.twitter.com/MTyV3ik6pE

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) November 17, 2017

designed by brothers Dennis and Peter Adams

only 3 Probe 16s were ever made!

(and yes, there was a Probe 15)

the Clockwork Probe, known as AB/4, had the license plate JFB 220H (and DAV 485Q in the film)

The Chequered Flag garage sold it to one Robin Gibbons, who was THE kind gentleman that lent the car for a few weeks to Kubrick’s Polaris Pictures company for the Clockwork Orange shoot

below is a photo of his Probe 16 in the parking lot of Gibbons’ place of work, the Ford Motor Company in Ilford, East London

shortly after the filming ended or the films’ release, Gibbons sold the car

not sure if there was an owner in between, but it passed onto to someone by the name of Mr Lyndon-Dyke (or perhaps Lybdon-Dyke), and then eventually made its way to America and was showcased by the Pollock Auto Showcase of Pottstown, Pennsylvania

and in the 1987, ended up back in the UK, in the possession of scientist and motorsportsman Dr. Colin Feyerabend, apparently yellow and in need of a lot of work (not sure how it became yellow or lost its bottom)

which led him to plead the British show Top Gear to help restore it, and they even featured it on the show for a contest segment hosted by James May called ‘Restoration Ripoff‘ that aired in 2004…

sadly the Probe 16 didn’t win the contest, and the one that did led to some sort of hullabaloo

well, what was once silver, then yellow, is now, restored by Club Autosport, like clockwork – ORANGE!

which has now been showcased the world over in all its glory!

and I saw it with mine own eyes at the amazing Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition held at the Design Museum of London

as for the other two Probe 16s…

the first one ever built – AB/2, license plate MJO 145H – was sold to American songwriter Jimmy Webb (best know for ‘Up Up And Away‘)

(sadly cannot find a picture of Mr Webb with his Probe):

it eventually fell into disrepair, found abandoned in the 1980s at a Los Angeles tow pound by a one David Farmer of Antelope Valley, California, and it looked like this…

the other M-505 Probe 16 – AB/3, license plate PWV 222H

was originally owned by Cream bassist Jack Bruce!

who then gave it as a b-day gift to Mountain drummer, and co-bandmate in West, Bruce & Laing, Corky Laing, seen here in the car

Laing had trouble maintaining this low to the ground car, residing in the overly snowy Montreal, and later cobblestoned, salt watered streets of Nantucket, and so he sold it to a Canadian university mechanical-engineering professor named Clyde Kwok, seen here, in 1979, with his son Hugh, in the car

then, perhaps, it came under the ownership of a one Guylain De France De Tersant of Montreal, who was looking to sell it in 1980

the Jimmy Webb and Jack Bruce Probes eventually came into the possession of Canadian collector Phillip Karam, who restored them both. he sold the Webb Probe, AB/2, to a one Dr. Mark Geach of England in 2016

the Jack Bruce one, AB/3, appeared alongside Malcolm McDowell at the 4th annual Ottawa Comiccon in May of 2015.  Karam got McDowell to lend his autograph under the hood! (even though it wasn’t THE Probe used in filming)

and this Jack Bruce Probe JUST sold for $184,800!!!

REAL horrowshow!!!

Eyes Wide Shut‘s ‘New York’ set, constructed at Pinewood Studios

[VM | WMcC | SK…]

1916 – 2020

poster for the 1990s re-release of Lolita in Japanese [Posteritati]