What happened to the Mulholland "King of the Hill" RSR?

[lfot]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hail

A storm is coming (Thursday)

??

[Jeremy Cottrell]

I don't think it's the Deadmans we know and love. There is no berm there. It may be Mul Hwy.

BTW nice pic of me there Chris! Even got the little TRE on my sweatshirt! Are we going to see you and the TR tomorrow morning??

[Jeremy Cottrell]

Oh, just saw the ebay ad. Too bad Chris, come on down and have coffee with us at least.

[porcupine911]

i think that is a corner on piuma...

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&om=1&msa=0&msid=111363650054060294985.0004429a179792f2047c5&ll=34.069058,-118.671967&spn=0.005048,0.011759&z=17&iwloc=0004429a1b3052601eae7

interestingly, someone's managed to get a "mulholland raceway" tag on that road in google maps. (click "link to this page", then "customize and preview embedded map")

[Jeff Hail]

Did someone say map?

[Banning]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Cottrell

Oh, just saw the ebay ad. Too bad Chris, come on down and have coffee with us at least.

Thanks for the invitation Jeremy. However, my significant other may have plans for me.

[gostraight]

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FELLOW Mulholland dudes.!!

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by gostraight

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FELLOW Mulholland dudes.!!

Back at ya Radude,

Happy New Year to all!

[slodave]

Yee haaw! Happy 2008.

[Banning]

In a year from today, on January 1, 2009, my hope is that we all can sing, "It was a very good year" (ala Frank Sinatra). That's because 2008 will be one of the best years ever, for everybody.

[krazyman]

Yeah, ok so its Saturday the 29th and I'm thinking about what I want to do with the 911 in the coming year. Been thinking about selling it as I have four little kids and a 300 hp G35. Don't really have the time and cash to get the '81 up to the performance level of the G car.

So what to do???

I stumble on this tread and spend the next three days sneaking in an hour read here and there.

WOW - love it! I grew up in the midwest but have always been a fan of SoCal and the speed scene.

Right then, so now I'm planning on throwing on the SSI's and buying a M&K, maybe even switching to EFI.

Thanks for the kick in the a$$!

All the best in the coming year.
krazyman

p.s. yeah and I bought a couple of these for car memo pads...



http://www.cafepress.com/moscowcoup.191761459[img]

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by krazyman

Yeah, ok so its Saturday the 29th and I'm thinking about what I want to do with the 911 in the coming year. Been thinking about selling it as I have four little kids and a 300 hp G35. Don't really have the time and cash to get the '81 up to the performance level of the G car.

So what to do???

I stumble on this tread and spend the next three days sneaking in an hour read here and there.

WOW - love it! I grew up in the midwest but have always been a fan of SoCal and the speed scene.

Right then, so now I'm planning on throwing on the SSI's and buying a M&K, maybe even switching to EFI.

Thanks for the kick in the a$$!

All the best in the coming year.
krazyman

p.s. yeah and I bought a couple of these for car memo pads...



http://www.cafepress.com/moscowcoup.191761459[img]

Welcome krazyman!

I see you found lfot's MIRRC log books. Have you thought about selling the kids? Four kids buys a lot of speed parts. Just kidding. Enjoy the thread.

[lfot]

Originally Posted by Banning

In a year from today, on January 1, 2009, my hope is that we all can sing, "It was a very good year" (ala Frank Sinatra). That's because 2008 will be one of the best years ever, for everybody.

On the 8th of this month, this thread will be a year old.

[porcupine911]

Originally Posted by lfot

On the 8th of this month, this thread will be a year old.

wow. thanks to this thread i've met some really interesting people and made a few good friends!

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by lfot

On the 8th of this month, this thread will be a year old.

I guess if something bad happened last year we all had unquestionable alibis!

On the other hand how about a birthday cake for Derek

[Noah930]

I don't know if it's sad or funny, but if any of us actually got that cake on our birthday, we'd be pretty stoked.

[kcassady]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Cottrell

Follow this one till the end!

great video!!!

[Banning]

For a New Year's Treat, here is the interview with Bobby Carradine.


Bobby Carradine Interview 2-4-06

Bobby: We came back from Daytona, a buddy and me. We timed it so we could be back in LA Wednesday night. We were so beat we simply didn’t have the energy to unload the racecar. Can you image a full competition Daytona making a run, how *****in that would have been?

Dan: Did you have any success on the track?

Bobby: Yeah, you don’t know my resume? There is a really good article by Laura Colly from On Track it is the perfect piece of information to get my racing history. You guys could just read that. It is the perfect place to get information. I went to Bondaran in ’76. I started racing Ford’s in ’77. The whole time I’m running on Mulholland. My brother bought a Ferrari Daytona, so we could race Daytona. Of the three drivers, I was quickest at night, because of all of my racing Mulholland at night experiences. You just get fast at night.

Dan: So that prepared you for racing.

Bobby: Yeah!

Dan: Did you disintegrate a brick mailbox?

Bobby: I forgot about the brick mailbox. That was the burgundy ‘69 Vette. You know the ¼ inch------on the Trans leaf spring? There are these rods that are perpendicular to the ground, to that spring that it holds to. To get it exactly the way we wanted to, there is a little piece of past the bolt. When I was loading the car really hard in the corners, I did a right-hander or lefthander I don’t even remember. If you were really making a good run you were really loading the car. That tire would blow. I could never really figure out why I was blowing a tire occasionally. I finally figured it out but not before I took out the mailbox. That’s how that happened. I blew the tire and took out the mailbox.

Dan: Do you remember when you were chased by a cop in your Turner?

Bobby: Yeah it was a Saturday night. I saw a cop sitting up on Bowmont. I turned to my friend as I was racing down passed Grandstands. I said ‘have you ever raced a cop before?’ He said, ‘no.’ I pulled right in front of the cop car, and I looked right at the guy and dropped the clutch, and laid a patch in the Turner of all things. I lights came on and off we went. I left him in the dust.

Dan: So you weren’t smoking grass in the weeds?

Bobby: Not to the best of my knowledge I always raced straight up there.

Dan: We were just trying to confirm that.

Bobby: I don’t remember that, but I’m not saying that it didn’t happen.

Chris: Didn’t you yell **** You to the cop?

Bobby: That is incorrect. The cop was parked up on Bowmont facing Mulholland and I pulled up right in front of him. Not headlight to headlight. I came to a dead stop and sidestepped the clutch, laid a patch and took off.

Dan: Can you tell us a little about the atmosphere up there at Grandstands?

Bobby: We would come up there on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I was up there almost every night anyways. Wednesdays and Saturdays were official nights. We just would hang out. We would see a guy coming either east or west. We would see if it was worth even bothering to start the car. We would just shoot the ****. Then we would see somebody really coming hard. We would mount up and get ready. As soon as the guy went passed Grandstands we would go after him. The protocol was if you caught up to the guy at Coldwater or Beverly Glen you would turn around and the pursuing car would now be in the lead. If you’d lose the guy coming back you were clearly faster. Not only did you catch him, but when you turned around a lost him going the other way you were quicker. That was pretty much the drill man.

Chris: What years did you race?

Bobby: 1971 to 1983 all the time. I was pretty much all the time whenever possible.

Dan: Do you have a two line quote we could use on the back of our book?

Bobby: Went I went to the Bondaran School they had a name that they used when I saved my ass on Mulholland. It is a technical tern trail brake. Sometimes when you get in too hot you have to carry your brake into the corner. When the car is rotating and you are braking the only way from losing it is to pick up the throttle. That is an actual racing technique that I learned on Mulholland.

Dan: Do you think your experiences on Mulholland led you into racing?

Bobby: Absolutely! Big time, I had hundreds of hours on Mulholland. I was always developing the car to work better. One of my goals was to clear 100 MPH in the Sweeper. I was finally able to do it after Guldstrand put in the new neoprene bushing in the front suspension. The suspension in the ’69 Vette is not that good. It can use a lot of help. We were able to finally reach 100 MPH in the Sweeper.

Dan: Did you get chased by the cops?

Bobby: Yeah! One story I was thinking about last night was I was coming up Coldwater from Beverly Hills, and way up in the distance I saw a police car up there. I shut off my lights after he went around a curve and he couldn’t see. I was following the cop with my lights off. I was trying not to get too close. I was just messing around with him. I let him get far enough ahead so I could turn my light on again. I was getting where Coldwater meets Mulholland and I went to turn right or eastbound on Mulholland and he was backed up in a driveway on the corner of Coldwater and Mulholland. He just lit me up and I just stood on it and we hauled ass all the way to Grandstands to Laurel Terrace. I don’t know what possessed me to do this but I waited at Laurel Terrace for the cop. There was an island at Laurel Terrace and Mulholland. I was on one side of the island the cop was on the other. I was on this little turnout and we were just looking at each other. It was a standoff. He committed which way he was going to go, and I just dropped it, sidestepped the clutch and did a 180 degree turn and went back.

Dan: What kind of car were you in?

Bobby: That was my ’69 Vette. Most of my success on Mulholland was in my ’69 Vette.

Dan: Can you tell us about a couple of car crashes you had up there?

Bobby: The one we talked about with the mailbox. The car of course was very cherry at that point. It really messed up the backend of it. The real significant wreck was when I almost went off the hill. I was in my ’60 Corvette. I was eastbound from Coldwater on Mulholland. There was one turn that you couldn’t really see either way. It was a blind corner. I never committed to blind corners on Mulholland. It was one of my things where I really didn’t do that. It was one of those nights where everything was running really *****en and I was going to really show the guys at Grandstands a run that night. I committed to the inside line on that blind corner and sure as **** there was a Thunderbird rolling down the hill with his light off. I guess he was rolling down the hill to get gas. That was a real ‘oh my.’ I was able to swerve around the guy, but I was already in a two wheel drift. I was committed to a full line, and it simply took ten feet of road away from me. I took me ten feet off the outside of that curve. From some miracle, the Corvette hit the telephone pole exactly at the center of gravity from front to back. It bounced off the pole and landed back up on the hill. I went back the next day and took a look at the site where it happened. The telephone pole is down a good ten feet at the beginning of a cliff. The point where the Corvette struck the telephone pole is maybe six to eight feet in the air. I was off! I bounced off the telephone pole and landed back on Mulholland. I jammed it in reverse and started taking off. Everybody is just pouring over Mulholland out of Grandstand to see who went off. I was driving away and that Vette looked like a clown mobile because it was going ‘clunk, clunk, clunk!’ I drove it back to my pad on Mulholland and I got my girl to drive me to the hospital to get my nose stitched up. At that time I didn’t wear seatbelts and I cut my nose of the rearview mirror.

Dan: Do you remember one night where you raced George Metsos and he beat you?

Bobby: Did he beat me because I crashed? He beat me beat me? Huh! It could have happened. The part of Mulholland that really sticks in my mind in the ’69 Vette era, I was really dead serious at that point. I got the car in ’75 or ’76. I had it until 1983.

[Banning]

Chris: You were known as Bobby Vette.

Bobby: I had that blue and white 1960 Corvette, and I had the Turner. The Turner was back in the Mini Cooper era. The Turner had a cracked frame which I fixed with hose clamps. They finally failed. The ’60 Corvette I put a fuel injector on it, and I went to Hollywood Spring & Axel and had some leaf springs made for it. I went into the Chevy catalog and found some road race springs from the catalog, order them, and stuck them in the car. That car developed pretty good until I hit the telephone pole. That was my first retirement from racing on Mulholland. My second retirement from street racing was when I finally waded the ’69 Vette beyond repair.

Dan: Did you ever get caught by the cops?

Bobby: Only when I waded the ’69 Vette beyond repair and that was in Ventura.

Dan: It wasn’t on Mulholland where you got caught and beat.

Bobby: Nope! I do kind of remember a silver Trans Am that was really fast. I think that might have been in the era when my car would habitually flip the fan belt. On of the fan belt incidents put Darrel into the wall. At one point I think he had a Z car a 240 or 260 Z. He was really fast and there was no idiot light that read that you were overheating. It was just a gage. In my estimation I lost the belt eastbound somewhere in the middle of the run. I got down to Laurel Terrace and I was coming back when there were houses and stuff and a wall. I got a little loose and I had never got that loose before. Darrel go into it and just jammed right into the wall. I looked at my water temp gage and it was at 230 degrees. I realized that I had slipped a belt and I almost crashed in my own coolant and he definitely did. So maybe the incident with the guy in the silver Trans Am was in that timeframe.

Bobby: The only time I remember getting beat up there, and it wasn’t by much, was by John Hall. On another night I could beat John and he couldn’t beat me. It was always back and forth between me and John.

Bobby: I honestly don’t remember racing you Chris. I remember hearing the stories. I thought it was a little odd that you would do publicity about racing your car on Mulholland with your name and everything. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. I just don’t remember it.

Chris: It is on my calendar with the date that read I beat Bobby Carradine.

Bobby: Wow! Like you said, ‘memory is a selective thing.’ I remember winning a lot.

Dan: What are you doing now Bobby?

Bobby: I’m about to direct a feature film. I’m in the process of building a XR 750 Harley Dirt Tracker for the street. I have a Triumph Dirt Tracker that was built by Jack Haley. I used to race that in the daytime on Mulholland. I’m still a guitar player. I finally finished my latest car which is a Mercury Marauder. I had some aluminum wheels made for it. They look like Chevrolet Rally Wheels. They are the same dimensions as Marauder wheels. I didn’t want to change suspension because the car really works good. I put Ford logos on it so it doesn’t look like a Marauder, it looks like a under cover car. I’ve been driving under cover cars since 1984. The reason is you can go as fast as you want.

Chris: Do you miss racing Mulholland?

Bobby: Yes, the good old day. I remember when they started putting those little yellow reflectors on Mulholland. I knew that the end was near. After I retired from street racing I would go up there a few times and check it out. When they changed that section going from Grandstands down to Coldwater it was really very sad. It was such a great racetrack.

Chris: What about the signs No Parking Dust Till Dawn?

Bobby: I remember that. They had these California Rangers up there patrolling the turnouts so you couldn’t park. By then I was living on Mulholland and I didn’t really want anyone racing fast by my house. Not in my backyard.

Chris: Is there anything you want to say for prosperity? We are doing this because right after college I wanted to do this before all of us croaked. Nobody really knows what Mulholland is really all about. I wanted to get the stories down so no one would forget.

Bobby: I was one of founding members of ACR.

Chris: John Hall, Dave Gainey and you?

Bobby: Yeah! There was a guy up there that used to race a Falcon Pick-Up Truck kind of an older guy. Which guy was that?

Chris: Gary.

Bobby: Gary, what a whack job. He used to think that by raising his vehicle that it would corner better. There was a long haired guy up there when I first started racing and he gave me a ride in my Turner. He showed me what the car was really capable of. I wish I knew who that was.

Dan: Did you know Charley?

Bobby: I never knew Charley. I think I only saw Charley up there once. I recall it was really rare when he came through. He didn’t stop. He just kept on going.

Dan: Can you tell us a little about your racing after Mulholland?

Bobby: In 1976 my brother had Ferraris. One of the guys at Modena Sportcars was working on a competition Daytona. This is about four or fives years into my career as a Mulholland racer. I thought I was hot ****. I said that I could drive that. They said, (In a Italian Accent) ‘oh yeah why don’t you get your racing license and you come to Daytona and we will let you drive the car.’ I’m like far out man. I enrolled in the Bondaran School, even though I missed the first day in a five day course, I had the highest score. That was in 1976. I got my ISMA license and flew down to Daytona. I showed up in the Modena Pits and said, ‘I got my license and I’m ready to go.’ They responded ‘its okay we have our drivers.’ My brother David found a Narc Daytona and he bought it from Luigi Conetti. It was one of two cars that had a special big valve engine in it from the factory. We raced it in ’77 and ’78; in ’77 at Sebring, Portland Oregon, Phoenix International Raceway, and Trans Am races. In ’78 we raced it in Daytona. We came in I think eighth overall and third in class. We were the only non Porsche in the first twelve finishing positions. I passed Peter Craig on the last lap. He was lining up to do a photo finish with three other Porsches. There score keeper had the Daytona a lap down and I was actually on the same lap. They were all up on the bank doing 120 MPH and I went by in that Daytona at 185 MPH. I blew them right off the banking and got a position. Concurrent with the Daytona in ’78 I started racing formula Fords for Pierre Phillips.

Bobby: After you read the Colley article it will reference when I hooked up with Guldstrand which is 1982. I had been taking my Vette to him since the mid-seventies. He asked me if I was interested in doing a Showroom Stock Race with him. In my mind I was thinking no way Showroom Stock. I wanted to be a Trans Am driver. My mouth said ‘yeah I’m into this.’ We went out to Willow Springs and test his prototype ‘83 Camaro Z28. I think I was the quickest. He had been working on my car for a long time. He saw how my tires were wearing. He could see that it was being driven to the max. I really owe it to Dick Guldstrand that he resurrected my career.

Bobby: In 1985 I started driving unmarked police cars. It started with “Revenge of the Nerds.” They had an unmarked 440 Dodge Monaco. The producer gave it me because nobody wanted the car. That started my pursuit of purchasing a brand new police car. You cannot get one unless you are a policeman, fireman or ambulance driver. Anyhow, it culminated with a 1990 Capris with a police package with a 350 engine in it. I had a spare Corvette Challenge motor from my Corvette Challenge racing days. As soon as the car was out of warrantee I put it in there. It had a built Trans and that car really worked for a four-door sedan. I’m cruising Mulholland one day and these two rice rockets go by me eastbound between Beverly Glen and Coldwater. The second guy was scrapping knees and stuff. He flips me off, screw that. I just did and E-brake and caught up to these guys. My car had a siren in it because I was a volunteer fireman in Colorado, so I could legally have a siren. I flipped on the siren and that guy pulled right over. I rolled down the window and said, ‘you better be watch who you flip off.’ Then I just took off. The stern look on those guy’s faces, they were cooking right? I made a u-turn and caught them. That must have blown their minds.

Bobby: The columniation of my cop car thing Mercury Marauder which has been re-batched as a Ford and now it looks like an unmarked car, but it has the Cobra engine in it.

[Banning]

Dan: Do you want to mention the film you are directing?

Bobby: Yeah, it’s called the “Black Dogs,” and it is a teenage rock and roll movie. It takes place in Martha’s Vineyard. Our lead guitar player is a kid named Matt Curin, who according to Eric Clapton is the next Clapton. He is the star of our film. I’m going to shoot that this summer.

Bobby: One of the things that I used to do was find unsuspecting new Porsche owners and draw them into a race. At Deadmans I would draw these guys out, and I would lead they would get to that Deadmans and they would just loop it. A Porsche is rear-engine and if you don’t know how to drive it you are going to lose it. We would just laugh. A good friend of mine David would say, ‘it’s a good thing that nobody ever got hurt up there, because you were laughing so hard that we couldn’t help them.’ That was one of our things that we would bate new Porsches into that curve.

Bobby: You want to hear the funny thing? After the Corvette Porsche rivalry and I was a diehard Corvette guy. I wound up driving a cop car, a GT30. It was a UPS car. I had to do the test in the rain. The best thing was that I was within one-tenth of a second of the best time ever at Bisack. They were really impressed and they signed me up to do Ackenheim in the GT. I thought that I had to get some stick time before I went over there. So I rented a Porsche from a guy in Willow Springs. I blew a tire a turn 9. At the apex on turn 9, at Willow Springs there is a bump. I was loading the car at two seconds quicker than the car had ever gone. Hit that bump, blew the left rear tire and t-boned that car into the end of the Willow Springs retaining wall. It broke both my legs. That ended my European racing career. The moral of the story is; here I am a Corvette guy and I hated Porsches my entire life and I wound up driving for Porsche. How’s that?

Dan: End quote.

Bobby: My racing on Mulholland, lead me to my dream of being a professional racing driver.

Bobby: I was on the 101 Freeway southbound in Ventura. I was doing about a buck and a half in my Vette. I took my eyes off the road for a second. The Vette has an open trunk area, and I had some clothes that were blowing around. I went to retain the clothes at 150 MPH. I dropped a wheel of the left side of the freeway made a 180 degree turn and backed it through the freeway fence along the 101 Freeway. I took out five hundred feet of freeway fence. I just sat down and waited to get arrested. I went back to the accident site the next day after I got out of jail. I looked at the skid marks that I had left as I backed across the freeway. The trajectory of the skid marks were exactly, dead nuts, aimed for the entrance of the cemetery. If there was no freeway fence then I would have gone directly into the entrance of the cemetery backwards at a buck and a half. I just looked up to the heavens and said, ‘okay I get it, no more street racing.’




Thanks to all who has contributed to this thread, it proves without a doubt how famous and important Mulholland Drive is to Los Angeles, The World, and our Car Culture.