PIMP MY RIDE
Now because you wear all those fancy clothes And have a big fine car, oh yes you do now Do you think I can afford to give you my love You think you’re higher than every star above
—Jean Knight, “Mr Big Stuff” (1971)
He got a custom Continental He got an Eldorado too He got a 32 gun in his pocket for fun He got a razor in his shoe
—Jim Croce, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” (1973)
Large luxury cars traded in by suburban retirees were sold to wholesalers and who in terms sold them to the used car dealers of depressed urban areas. They were then bought by pimps drug dealers and gang leaders and heavily customized and modified for use in after-dark cruising rituals, the antitype of the Sunday afternoon drive.
The flashy, baroquely-outfitted car was partly an assertion of status and power, meant to impress and intimidate the competition. This public spectacle of wealth was also a statement of defiance. Far from skulking around in the shadows to avoid the police, the driver, excluded by racism from most respectable forms of employment, flaunted his wealth and social prestige and called attention to the highly lucrative business he had created developed in spite of its illicit nature.
The customization kits transformed standardized American, assembly-line produced vehicles, mostly Cadillac Eldorados and Lincoln Continentals Mark IV-V into personalized, funky, faux-vintage touring car. Details like pedimented grilles, visible exhaust pipes, spoked wheels, side-mounted spare tires, free-standing head lamps, pin striping and hood ornaments were lifted from fabled luxury marks like Rolls Royce, Bugatti and Deusenberg. Eight-track tape decks, mini-bars, TVs, shag carpeting, padded vinyl cabriolet tops, opera windows and metallic flake paint were modern touches. Dome lights were replaced by crystal chandeliers. There was a knowing air of parody in the world of conversion cars. Everything had to be a little bit overdone, the gaudiness and vulgarity were extensions, not debasements, of the ostentation and Euro-fakery of the original vehicles and their snobbish owners.
The “Corovado” featured in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) is a Corvette fitted out with Eldorado body panels, the work of conversion master Les Dunham on Dunham Coackworks in Boynton, New Jersey. Other well known conversion operations included Wisco, Harper and Universal in Detroit; and E&G in Baltimore.
Up next: the 1970s conversion van.
