The Ultimate "Mulholland Drive/Highway" thread

[das908kind]

It's been a while since an Ultimate thread has shown up...

In response to this post, regarding Mulholland, I thought I'd start yet another "Ultimate this, that or the other thing" thread.

For those who haven't been to the Los Angeles area, here is Mulholland, briefly explained.

Link to the map
(edit: the map wouldn't show. Please follow the link)

This map is from the Mulholland Raceway website, something I stumbled upon last year after browsing the Pashnit motorcycle website, an excellent source for backroads in California.

There's lots of history with the Mulholland Highway, that dates back to 40s and 50s, the glory days of hot-roding. Steve McQueen was famous for ripping up and down the stretch between Studio City and West Hollywood with his Jaguar XKSS, as was James Dean in his Spyder.

Maybe some of the local boys can share old stories and pictures from the past(and present), as well as give some more insight as to the history.

[Jeremy Cottrell]

OK, I'm resurecting an old thread! Anybody have any old pics of "The Mul" You guys know who you are. I was really a young kid back then, but..........

My most vivid memory was sitting in the back seat of a certain maroon VW bug, as we 4 wheel drifted through the circuit between Laurel Cyn, and Coldwater Cyn. I was so terrified that I sat across the back seat and concentrated on looking out the side window....... I couldn't look out the windshield...... sheer terror! There were many other cases of running the hill with my older brother in various VW's, Datsun 510's, Capris, Mustangs, etc.

I do believe a well respected member of our Porsche community used to run little Hondas and mabye even the family Caddy up there. Maybe we'll get lucky and he will interject.

[dd74]

Mulholland isn't what it used to be. Blame that on development and real estate. Population has really brought "The Raceway" down.

With that said, Friday and Saturday nights were the ones to hang out up there. I was telling Tyson Schmidt a few days ago how along "Dead Man's" which is between Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon, one can look over the edge and see an entire era of ill-handling muscle cars piled in a heap after flying off the road.

A lot of interesting cars would show up there to get put through their paces. We ran a friend's Pantera up there for a while; broke clutch cables, burned up the brakes and one time, spun the car 360-degrees. There was one guy who had an RSR, lots of "real" Mini Coopers, Bugeye Sprites, XKEs, yeah and some quick Hondas, though my rally-prepped Cosworth Ford Fiesta with Oscar driving lights was probably faster.

Steve McQueen notwithstanding, there were also tales of Ryan O'Neal, the Quaid brothers, and a bunch of others, going up there to play around.

Then there were the celebrities who lived on the highway itself.

For example, between Coldwater Canyon and Beverly Glen, you could lose control around a steep descending right hander and end up in Marlon Brando's front yard where attack dogs would surely chew you up.

Of course, Mulholland as a name, owes itself to Mulholland the man, a pioneering Angelino as tricky as the road itself. He liked to starve people out of their water and build breakable dams that drowned out thousands - all for the sake of giving water to Los Angeles.

And all this touches only on Mulholland Highway East, which runs along the hills above Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. There's another Mulholland Highway closer to the beach, which has an entirely different history.



This photo is from the cover of Matthew Sweet's first album "Girlfriend." Not for sake of the fact that Tuesday Weld is supremely cute in this shot; what's better is the photo was taken on Mulholland back in the 1950s. If you get a chance to see the photo, it's astonishing how similar the highway looks today, except for the fact the guardrails then were just wooden posts. These days, I don't think there are any guardrails at all...