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Showing posts with label Norm Grabowski. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norm Grabowski. Show all posts
Saturday, November 15, 2025
Sunday, May 04, 2025
Thursday, July 04, 2024
FWIW, someone is making a book about Norm's skullshifter knobs... aka Normskulls, and it's supposed to be sold this fall
I read that Norm sold these in a Crown Royal bag
Rumpsville will offer a 60 page hard bound book featuring a photographic collection of over 200 uniquely hand carved wooden skull themed sculptures produced by Norm Grabowski between 2000-2010
by the way, I never saw this until now, his Henway was featured on the cover of the March 1974 issue of Rod & Custom magazine.
Monday, March 18, 2024
George took photos of Norm's '37 Ford truck! (thank you George!) at the 2009 Bucket Bash in Mountain Home, Arkansas in July '09
Go full size on the above, read the name on the door under the window, and that the side mirror is mounted on a shovel
I don't remember where I read it, but this front bumper log was found, was too heavy to move without several people helping, then was chopped on until it weighed less, the was chopped on to balance it side to side
Friday, March 15, 2024
Sunday, September 05, 2021
do you remember the handful of photos of Norm chain hoisting his T bucket? With a toddler, and a kid seat, in the car? That wasn't Norm's kid, it was a niece or nephew
it's odd to me that Norm didn't have kids, or get married. Maybe he was just too damn busy in show biz and hobbies like the shifter knob carvings, hot rods, and the rocking horses.
oh, and I found an obit I haven't read before http://www.rumpsville.com/?p=101
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Norm and the Lightning Bug at the races
In 1952 Norm bought a fenderless 1931 Ford Model A V-8 roadster for $100.
The A body was swapped for the front half of a 1922 Ford Model T touring with a shortened Model A pickup bed.
20 some inches were removed of the rear framerails, starting six inches forward of the cross member.
Up front, Norm installed a Ross steering box from a milk truck. A Bell three-spoke steering wheel was then installed nearly in a vertical position. Once completed, it steered backwards.
Valley Custom Shop fixed the steering and made a special raked-back and shortened windshield, and made the car a black paint job for Norm's bucket
Valley Custom Shop did also give the car a black paint job before Norm had Tony Nancy stitch a red rolled and pleated interior
Wednesday, June 02, 2021
Sunday, February 28, 2021
Thursday, November 05, 2020
another look at the 1st model T
so, has anyone ever figured out who the kid is? I never heard Norm had kids
Saturday, January 25, 2020
So, today I learned
That Norm Grabowski, a favorite of mine - along with Von Dutch, Ed Roth and Barris - being some of the very very 60s of hot rodding https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/11/norman.html
As I was saying, Norm was in the Munsters, and Cannonball Run, and Hooper. In the Munsters was Jackie Coogan, he played Uncle Fester, and so there is one connection, Norm and Jackie, but also Jackie, Norm, and Mamie in "Sex Kittens go to College" 1960, connection number 2, and Norm and Mamie in "Untamed Youth" 1957 connection number 3
(Sidebar, the movie College Confidential, had in it's cast Rocky Marciano, heavyweight boxing champ, and Conway Twitty, country music star.)
I think I find Norm to be a part of it because of the many Disney movies he was in, that I was watching as a kid in the early 70s.
I'd like you to remember that Disney put on a car show, and who was there displaying a hot rod? Barris, Roth, and Norm! https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-disneyland-car-club-day-and.html
oh yeah, the hot rod... Norm Grabowski's of course, later to be disguised as "My Mother The Car". Well with Mamie Van Doren, who Norm often acted with, so maybe this was just another fast movie production for a paycheck, or maybe it was part of a series of college movies with Mamie Van Doren
So, when you think 60s - very very 60s - which people in hot rodding seem to embody the era/decade?
Friday, January 24, 2020
There was a movie called "Out of Sight" back in 1966... they did some publicity for it at the Riverside 1966 Motor Trend 500, and brought the Barris ZZR and Munster Dragula. By the way, this is another Norm Grabowski movie, and a year after he was on the Munsters - so, it all ties together.
the "customized weirdo" was a 2nd fiberglass body for the Munsters Coach, called the ZZR for the goofy beach and spy movie
and it's followed in the above video by the Munsters Drag U La
The ZZR Out of Sight show car included in the rare retouched pictures had about twenty-one weapons. Some say fire came out of all fenders,and others say bullets. It had tar and feathers,and oil slicks,the bed has and arsenal of weapons,rocket launchers, machine guns,hand grenades, and other weapons.The right passenger side's upper wind- shield frame had a flower pot with sleeping powder,if you got to close to the flower pot. The ZZR was made of from a extra Munster Koach body of fiberglass.
The top was cut off, then after the first doors, then cut after the second doors. Next the rear of the body was shoved forward to mesh to the front,and the front doors. By removing front doors, and the smaller third doors, they could mesh them together as one reinforced by plywood to the back of the doors. This then gave a longer slender look with the new custom body. The frame was square tubing. The front axle was tubular axle on hot rod tires and Radir Star Mags with right Radir Knock- offs.
The body was channeled over the frame, and tilted down and then bolted into place. A tall fiberglass scoop was made over the cowl area. The top was made of steel, which wrapped around the back like a Model T but had two port holes on both sides of the top, with chrome rings, to seal the port windows.
The flat top was squared and was yellow with pom poms. The windshield was like the Munster Koach, but had another type of windshield angled at diagonal, to fit the top securely.
The engines were two 1966 Buick Riveria 425 CID bored out to 440 CID. Each engine had one four barrel carburetor, but the front engine has a Cadillac air cleaner, and is higher with it's four injector type scoop then the rear one.
This has two radiators. The engines are mounted tandem style.
Barris employee Les Thompson had engineered, designed this marvel,which does actually work. It you move the gear shift forward, the second engine will engage. The rear fenders are lavender from the Munster Koach. Flames come out of the rear fenders.The two long front tear drop fenders do have barrels that shoot bullets if the caps are popped off. They incorporate spare tire holders with lavender straps to hold the tire holders in place that are supported by pontoons.
The ZZR tire holders are covered with gold Naugahyde tuck and roll. The top side is also covered the same way along with the upholstery for the gold bucket seats. When the driver turns on the car, the seat moves forward. Then the side arms snap into place. Special graphics were applied to the doors with House of Kolor Gold used the paint the car.
The car has custom headers for each engine.Then the headers were collected into a cylinder type pipe, which looks like a CO2 capsule, to move exhaust to the rear and cut the noise to the engines.
The ZZR also had side hood doors with custom headlight shells for the French headlights which turned vertical to fit between the front fenders, that served nicely for the two radiators which the custom brass grill snugly fit onto.
The rear mags were Tri-Rib Radir Mags with Radir Right Knockoffs. The rear tires wear 15 inch Dirt Track Mickey Thompson tires. The engines were painted red.
This car had a Ford Econoline Van steering column, two metal coolant overflow tanks to keep the Buick engines cool, and Mercury rectangular gas gauges. The rear end was a Oldsmobile to the Buick 2 spd automatic transmission. The hood ornaments were like two sets of branches on the custom brass grill.
According to http://themonkeemobiles1966.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-famous-turnpike-hauler-was-built-by.html it was Dick Dean who built these and more at at Barris Kustoms. George Barris main body man was Dick Dean, who did the scroll work on both Munster Koach#1 and built the car. He had helped the Barris crew, and 1984 built Munster Koach#2. He built 4 Dragulas. Only the first was used in film.
I had forgotten I had posted about it before
http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/10/barris-zzr-show-car-from-spy-movie-out.html
http://thezzrkustomkarshowcar.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-famous-out-of-sight-1966-movie-car.html
https://www.filmposters.com/pd/OUT-OF-SIGHT-Movie-Poster-1966/17544
Wednesday, August 08, 2018
Once upon a Hollywood, there was a hell of a stuntman. Hal Needham
The Bud Rocket... it did run on Muroc and Bonneville, it was fast, and Hal Needham owned it.
Needham didn't drive the Bud Rocket though, Stan Barret did, and Barret was Paul Newman's stunt double, and was sparring with Bruce Lee. He also was on the Dean Martin Roast of Ronald Reagan, and since Needham was friends with Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, they starred in the movie Cannonball Run, which we'll get to at the bottom of this post.
His run was witnessed by some famous people who knew about speed... Chuck Yeager, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and William J. "Pete" Knight, who, to this day holds the all-time speed record for level flight, when he flew an X-15 at Mach 6.7.
Unfortunately, there is no accurate or verifiable way to know what speed it ran. But that's what you get with publicity stunts vs real hardcore attempts at landspeed records. There was no FIA, no SCTA, etc etc to get an accurate high speed, average speed, and they didn't turn around for a return run to get a both ways required run for the international record. But, they really didn't care about all the hoopla. They made money, got rich, caused a hell of a media splash.. and didn't have to hire Evel Knievel.
But there once was a time in America when crazy guys built these land speed rockets in their garages. Not warehouses, not military testing facilities, but in their garages. That's where Breedlove built his Spirit of America. https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/03/lots-of-cool-photos-over-at-hamb-heres.html
Paul Newman climbing into the Budweiser Rocket at Bonneville, Newman was responsible for putting together the relationship for Budweiser to be the lead sponsor.
After 9 runs at Bonneville, the Budweiser Rocket kept digging into the unstable salt surface which presented a serious safety issue, and Chuck Yeager interceded and got them permission from the Air Force to run at Muroc, now part of Edwards AFB.
It wasn't Needham's 1st land speed vehicle though, the SMI Motivator was. You've probably never heard of that, because it never accomplished anything.
During 1976 Needham tested the Budweiser/SMI Motivator –sponsored vehicle in excess of 600 mph on a huge dry lake located in Oregon. So... credit him that, and give him 2 of those ballcaps that celebrate breaking the 300 mph barrier... or a 400 and a 200. I just don't thing they ever made a 600 mph hat, as only a couple people have ever, or will ever go faster on wheels.
Nothing but a publicity gambit.
Needham's sponsor had paid out more than $75,000 to get him the drive, but after a high-speed foray on Mud Lane at Tonopah in Nevada, he run out of lake and into the sage brush on the surrounding desert, vowing never to drive the car again. (I've never heard of a dry lake near Tonopah, and the internet turned up no info)
Lets face it, no one even tries, and if they wanted to, Bonneville probably can't support that if everything I've heard about the condition of the salt is correct.
In May 1977, his movie directorial debut was released... and Smokey and the Bandit which cost 12 million reaped tenfold that amount in less than 6 months. And that was the summer all movies had to compete with Star Wars for ticket sales, which had been released 2 days earlier than Smokey.
Burt Reynolds became the highest paid actor in cinema history up to that point, for this movie, making five million dollars for four weeks work.
Roger Moore never drove an Aston Martin in the Bond movies, but he drove a DB5 in Smokey.
The Ferrari 308 used in the movie belonged to Director Hal Needham.
Ron Rice, owner of Hawaiian Tropic, loaned his black Lamborghini to his buddies Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham.
The moustache worn by Burt Reynolds in this movie was subsequently auctioned for the charity, UNICEF. The auction was held in Geneva, Switzerland, and the winning bid was twenty-five thousand dollars from Freddie Mercury
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082136/trivia
And that's when Needham might be considered to have created redneck buddy movies. He directed, Burt Reynolds drove, and everyone was happy. He created movies with fast cars, car stunts, bar fights, country music and devil-may-care men who’d do anything for a buddy, and for a good time.
Just in time for Dukes of Hazard to catch the wave and ride it to CBS in Jan 1979. It was based on a 1975 movie, Moonrunners, which was identical in every way to the tv show, just not as cute and funny.
The movie was narrated by Waylon Jennings who introduces and comments on the story of cousins, who run moonshine for their widower uncle Jesse who knows the Bible better than the local preacher. He makes liquor, according to his "granddaddy's granddaddy's" recipe, in stills named Molly and Beulah. In the opening, one of the cousins is in the county jail for a bar fight at the Boar's Nest. So, you can see, it's a movie version of the tv show, with a couple character names changed. There's a Cooter, and a county boss bad guy who owns the Boar's Nest and the local brothel. He sells moonshine to yankees. To get at Jesse’s supply, Sheriff Rosco Coltrane harasses the cousins who use bow and arrows because they are on probabtion and can't own guns. There's the whole Dukes of Hazard County in a nutshell.
Anyway.... getting back to Hal Needham.
He was a paratrooper in the Army. No wonder he got a job in Hollywood as a stuntman
As the highest paid stuntman in the world, Hal Needham broke 56 bones, his back twice, punctured a lung and knocked out a few teeth. His career has included work on 4500 television episodes and 310 feature films as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, 2nd unit director and ultimately, director.
Needham wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, rescued the cast and crew from a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, set a world record for a boat stunt on Gator (1976), jumped a rocket powered pick-up truck across a canal for a GM commercial and was the first human to test the car airbag.
He wrote Cannonball Run II, Stroker Ace, Smokey and the Bandit one and two
In addition, he directed Smokey and the Bandit one and two, Cannonball Run one and two, Hooper, Stroker Ace, and others that really aren't important or impressive.
(By the way, Norm Grabowski was in both Hooper and Cannonball Run)
Jackie Chan makes one of his first U.S. film appearance in Cannonball Run, and inspired by Hal Needham's notion of including bloopers during the closing credits, Chan began a tradition of doing the same in most of his movies.
The ambulance used in the movie, is the actual ambulance that Hal Needham and Brock Yates souped up and raced in the real Cannonball Run. It had been upgraded with a hemi, and topped out at 145 mph, and was equipped with 4 gas tanks, and 4 filler holes, so that the max ninety gallons could be pumped quickly from one gas station island. Needham and Yates didn't win the race (the transmission blew in Palm Springs, California) so Needham kept it in storage for several years, until the time came to make this film.
Stan Barret related the true story about how he was the stunt double for Burt Reynolds on the movie Hooper and loaned Burt his Rolex to wear in the movie as Burt played the role of Hal, and they kept passing it back and forth as Stan wore it in the stunt scenes and Burt wore it in the regular scenes. The action movie Hooper was loosely based upon his and Hal Needham's careers as stuntmen.
He invented and introduced to the film industry, the air ram, air bag, the car cannon turnover, the nitrogen ratchet, the jerk-off ratchet, rocket power and The Shotmaker Camera Car to make stunts safer and yet more spectacular at the same time. He also directed the 1980's hit BMX movie Rad.
Needham co-owned a NASCAR race team and was the first team owner to use telemetry technology.
In February 1981 Needham and Burt Reynolds debuted their Skoal Bandit Racing team at the Daytona 500. They intended to run 19 races with (previously featured at the beginning of this article) Stan Barrett at the wheel. The Skoal-Bandit race team was one of the most popular NASCAR teams ever - second only to that of Richard Petty
After running the Bud Rocket and using real time telemetry, Needham decided to employ it on his stock car. With permission from Bill France, it was installed in the car for the Talladega race. Every other team in the pits had a fit because they were getting real time updates in the pits from the car on exactly what was going on. It was the only time France allowed it.
Journeyman driver Harry Gant was enlisted to assist crew chief Travis Carter in setting up the car for Barrett. After Gant, driving for another team, finished second to Cale Yarborough at the Atlanta race, Needham approached Gant about driving a second car for the team.
Gant's first start for the team came a month later at Darlington and he finished second. Halfway through the year Barrett was gone and the team now competed fulltime on the NASCAR circuit. After five more runner-up finishes, Gant broke through and won his first race at Martinsville in April 1982.
After 17 years of racing, most of them in NASCAR's lesser divisions, Gant was a star and his fans that cheered him on the short tracks had a Winston Cup hero. Gant won eight more races and finished in the top-five in points four times before Needham bowed out of the sport after the 1988 season.
Gant credits Needham with being a major force in changing the face of stock car racing. "Hal was the first to dress the crew in matching embroidered uniforms. He had a big hauler with the car painted on it. He brought people from Hollywood to the races. He even had cheerleaders in the pits once."
In 2012, Needham received a Governor's Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy, which gives no Oscars for stunt work, cited Needham as "an innovator, mentor and master technician who elevated his craft to an art and made the impossible look easy."
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0624102/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm
http://www.gregwapling.com/hotrod/land-speed-racing-history/land-speed-racing-smi-motivator.html
http://www.bluebird-electric.net/budweiser_rocket_car.htm
http://www.rolexmagazine.com/2016/07/stan-barrett-worlds-first-supersonic.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/25/local/la-me-hal-needham-20131026
https://www.motorsport.com/us/nascar-cup/news/skoal-racing-at-atlanta-the-end-of-the-trail/1781530/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/january-1998/51/been-there-done
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