THE MONKEEMOBILE REMEMBERED

In September of 1965, Daily Variety displayed the following advertisement:

Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17–21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s-types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.

And so Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Micheal Nesmith eventually became The Monkees, complete with a rather unusual car. Screen Gems used two Monkeemobiles, commissioning one for the screen and the other for PR duties. Both were based on a 1966 ‘389 4-barrel’ Pontiac GTO Convertible, provided by General Motors, with the customising undertaken by Dean Jeffries.

The Monkeemobiles had room for seven with bucket seats at the front and a wraparound bench at the rear. Jeffries also extended the nose and tail by foot, installed a taller windscreen and modified tail lamps, augmented the coachwork with side-exit exhaust pipes and even a parachute.

All of this work was undertaken at near breakneck speed, and Jefferies later recalled, “The producers waited until the last minute to give us the go-ahead on the cars”.

The customiser also fitted the television Monkeemobile with a supercharger. However, “it had too much power for the suspension and was a difficult car to drive, so we took off the blower and installed a dummy blower, so it looked the same”. In addition, the GTO lacked rear springs and had extra weight in the luggage bay so it could perform stunts.

Not all of Pontiac’s management were thrilled with the Monkeemobile; the Detroit corporate world was not renowned for being ‘far out’ in the late ‘sixties. But, the series was a global success, and you could even win a new GTO by taking part in the ‘Kellogg’s TV Screen-Stakes’.

The show ended in 1968, and the subsequent fate of the original screen car would be regarded as too outrageous for The Monkees’ film Head, let alone the series. The Pontiac accompanied the band on their world tour when, for some reason, it was left in Australia.

There were no apparent attempts to register there and convert it to RHD, and, even more strangely, the Monkeemobile then surfaced in Puerto Rico. The body was painted pink, and the one-time television star now worked as a hotel taxi before the government seized in lieu of taxes after the demise of the business.

In 1992 the Pontiac was acquired for a $5,000 bid and then shipped to New York State. It underwent a restoration and was reunited with the Monkees on a television special five years later. It now lives in retirement somewhere in New Jersey. As for the second Monkeemobile, it was purchased by George Barras, who auctioned it in 2008 for $360,000. Today it resides in Michigan.

Michael Nesmith himself fondly recalled how the band always drove new GTOs during the filming of The Monkees. The programme was just one aspect of an incredibly diverse career; songwriter, producer and pioneer of the music video, but he will always be remembered for this moment in television history: